"Most Respected Father," began Vyarin, before scratching the address out with his quill. "Mightiest Father" was similarly dismissed, as was "Most Honourable Father." Everything he wanted to say to him was wrong. Everything he could say would draw his ire. He had gone to Annalise, the woman he had intended to court, mewling like a child for her to teach him the ways of the land he was already supposed to know everything about. He still hadn't settled the matter of the match, and he had no more than five days before his uncle would make his presence known here, at a most generous estimate. The eldest princess must have already dismissed him as a candidate for her hand. As he sat on his plush guest bed, his breaths became short as he thought of all the weight of his failures crash upon his shoulders, bringing him to his knees. He collapsed on the ground, not daring to cry, as if his father were standing over him right there in that room.

He didn't even know exactly how he managed to get up onto his feet again. How he managed to get the water heated and poured into the empty bathhouse, washing himself as he would do week after week. It was discipline that was keeping him alive; the routine that had been beaten into his bones like iron ingots. He immersed himself in the searing water, and then his soiled clothes, and scrubbed them both furiously until the water had taken on a slight opacity from the fatty soaps and the grime. He emerged almost restored, if a little damp, ambling half-alive through the halls in a new and more respectable set of clothing, following the noise to where he knew he needed to be; the ballroom.

Colours and patterns whirled around him, on the cloth they wore, on the banners adorning the walls, even upon the tablesheets and hanging from the ceiling. The contents of the room could purchase a city; they spared not a single dusting of gold and grain. It was like a fire of textiles, bursting like Gilthan 'stars-of-light', the marvel of the north immortalized and frozen in place here in the southlands of Astalia. He could not spot the princesses nor their illustrious father among the crowds and the ranks. Though the food upon the table looked tempting, Vyarin doubted it would have been appropriate to sample some. Nobody around him seemed much interested in it; it could have been made of wax and nobody could tell. He shifted uncomfortably in his traditional jacket and boots of his homeland, now appearing downright drab in comparison to his surroundings. He was underdressed, he realized, with a growing horror. He was awkward. They were ogling his height.