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[color=ec008c]"Me? Psssh. I was almost getting trampled in raves before I could walk. This is the same principle, just more champagne."[/color]

Nicole let out an easy laugh, a chiming giggle that lilted with all the grace of her element. She immediately liked her dance partner. Her parents had always been politically-minded, sure, but Nicole had never really put much thought into the workings and lives of the nobility before. Having rubbed elbows with so much of it lately...

It turned out she just had a thing for noble girls. Curious.

[color=ec008c][i]Curious![/i][/color]

She looked around for Penny, Dana and Vanna, catching each of their eyes for a second as they engaged and bantered politely with their own dance partners. She wondered if any of them had managed to find the fun in this. For Vanna, galas like these had probably come with the territory that was her whole life, endlessly polite chat that led to no engagement and no connections. From the way she talked, that was probably how Aiya felt about them too.

[color=ec008c]"That sucks,"[/color] she sympathized with a playful grin and the same conspiratorial whisper. [color=ec008c]"You would think those are the moments that make guarding someone easier and make you better at it. Dances, inside jokes...the intimate stuff, right? The things that make you give a crap about life."[/color]

Aiya was a master of closing the distance between them and then widening it again - constantly keeping Nicole on her toes, as the distance between them bounced back and forth from hairline fracture to gulf. 

[color=ec008c]"The lights or the boys..."[/color] she mused playfully during one of the hairline fracture phases. [color=ec008c]"Well, in all the movies, they say that the people of Hasta are its real lights, so I guess I've got that covered."[/color] She winked. [color=ec008c]"Palmyra has plenty of neon if you know where to look. It's not the same, but if I work hard enough and crank up the charm, I can turn any place in the world into Hasta. The boys..."[/color]

[color=ec008c][i]Golden, surly eyes beneath bangs plastered down by the rain - they prowled left to right like tigers, discontent inside of cages. Droplets rolling down his full lips. The nostalgia-filtered snapshots that led to what-ifs, and would probably make her feel alone even in the arms of her final, truest love one day.[/i][/color]

When she blinked, it was Aiya's face she saw again - exotic and feline, gorgeous and amused at her own exotic partner. Nicole's own playful grin glinted with the sheepishness of the Best Friend Next Door.

[color=ec008c]"The boys kinda had a catchphrase for babes like me - [i]Ti voglio bene.[/i]"[/color]