Welcome to Gaia! ::

Azzo gave a soft bow. Before softly nudging his Grandmother to pay attention. "My apologizes she hasn't been to such an occasion since Gramps passed." He said softly.

Watching her gaze around. "I'm glad your getting better." He said with a pause, "Oh yes the puppet show, I'm going to wait until summer. Classes have me busy speically science." He said.

Grams smiled, "I'm doing just fine dear, and it's nice to meet you as well." She paused seemingly to think before speaking again. "Are you one of Azzo's school mates?" Everyone looked about the same here, it was mostly hard to tell who was just better off and who was well off.

Jada sent Elke a surprised look, then squeezed her hand. "You'll have to introduce me later. Now go! She's your roommate, right?" Elke had told her once that the Princess was her roommate. Something was... clicking in her mind. The Princess... Serenade... roommate... but the pieces weren't quite fitting. The young woman gave Elke a smile and watched her go.

*

Lucas' purple eyes glowed as he was carefully guiding the young woman around the floor. "Thank you." he beamed up at Serenade. "You're a good dancer too. And yes, I have taken lessons since..." he paused. How old had he been when Jada had started letting him step on her feet while she practiced, teaching his legs where to go? "I think I was 4 when I used to dance with my Jayj. Jada." he corrected quickly. "And 6 when Mother put me in formal lessons?" 6 years of learning to dance- forever in a child's life.

But then, that was normal for all of the Chamberlyn children.

Finally the song ended, all too soon. He paused, his tiny face scrunching. He wasn't supposed to ask for another dance. He wasn't! "May I ask you for another dance this evening?" he finally said, quite formally, his little voice cracking from nerves in the middle of 'this.' And he offered her his little arm, guiding her towards the edge of the ballroom. She had come alone, so he started guiding her towards the chairs.

*

The air in the room lightened a little as Elke left. Odd. Jada beamed at Fallon, still upstairs in the small room with her. Made a small noise at the faux massage. "I could use a real one of those right now." she decided, and sat down on the couch. A maid peeked her head into the room, looking to see if the girls needed anything. It didn't look like it.

All too well, Jada knew the rundown of this last half hour. At 8:45, someone would peek in. They would make sure the three girls were picture perfect. At 8:58, Audrey and Fallon would head down to the ballroom, setting up their little station, wherever. Jada's escort would be here by then, hopefully. She'd met him once, a while ago. A young man about a foot taller than her; Blonde hair, blue eyes, light tan. Not very bright, but then he was only a placeholder.

"Your moral support is fantastic, Fallon. As for your mother, well..." Jada glanced at the screen wall, shaking her head. "Unfortunately for her, I think my mother has found something to like. They are such opposites, I don't know yet." she looked at her maroon-eyed friend. "I know you'd said your mother wants to take you back to France... we could use this, you know." It was odd to hear herself saying it. "I could ask my mother to help us." Jada knew what cost her mother would most likely extract from her. If it meant it was one less worry for her dark-skinned friend, she'd pay it easily enough. She'd been paying it for years, until recently.

Jada might have been kidding, but Fallon was hospitable to strangers, even more so with friends. She crossed behind the couch and massaged Jada's shoulders, kneading with her knuckles. During her bat mitzvah, she'd been a wreck, and Fallon was much younger with far less hang-ups. She could only imagine the weight that sat on Jada, especially given the general weight that Szelem typically hefted on to her oldest daughter.

It was odd how easily Iva and Szelem seemed to manage each other. Fallon knew that Iva would go right for the cultured woman, but she thought it would be a one-way street. The fact that Szelem was giving Iva the time of day, respect even, was still a bit baffling. "My mother likes those she wishes she were more like. She took one look at your mother in her heels and dress that first day and made her mind up." Fallon snapped her fingers. "Just like that." It was hard for her to imagine her mother with the same cool gaze of Szelem Chamberlyn. She simply lacked the composure.

When Jada mentioned France, Fallon's hands stilled for a moment. "You think your mother would help keep me in Destiny City?" She started back up. "I feel like it would be making a deal with the Devil," she said, then quickly amended, "no offense." Fallon still had plenty of ideas for ways to convince her mother to let her stay, and none of them involved Szelem Chamberlyn. She couldn't imagine what the dark-haired woman could do. "I haven't exhausted my list of possibilities. I could still run away. Drug her and put her on a plane. Convince her that I am allergic to France." Fallon shrugged, half-hearted.

She shook her head. "This is your day. Let's not think about me." Or her problems, especially her problems.

-As the dance had ended she'd thanked the man, bowing just slightly as she did, before excusing herself onto the next one, scoping out the next prey. She spotted a finely dressed man entering, noted the woman at his side and kept going, smiling sweetly when she approached the next lone victim.

It was early in the night, the general populace still more polite then they might have been tired. And so he agreed, as did the one after that. As she waited, patiently and hopefully, for the room to settle and men to begin seeking her out she continued in her routine, picking one man after the next. She'd continue presumably until she was interrupted or the time came for Jada to make her entrance.-

"I'll go arrange us a plate of overpriced snacks then." Jaimie promised. "We can be each others shield for a little while." He joked, though she was probably right. He'd end up dancing at least once this evening. "Any allergies or outright dislikes I should know about?"

"Adira. Darling." Szelem looked over the young woman downright approvingly, leaning in and brushing her lips near the younger woman's pale cheeks. "You look positively fantastic." It was almost as close as Szelem got to gushing about the way her daughter's competition dressed. And yes, everyone between sixteen and thirty was Jada's competition.

Michael bowed over the Adira's hand, smiling at her in a way that his more formal wife would never do. "How is your father?" he asked. "Sorry he couldn't attend. I'll have to send you home with some of the-" Zora elbowed him in the hip, and winked up at Adira. "Well. I'll talk to you later. Save me a dance, would you?" He'd send her home with a little of that absolutely fantastic scotch he'd been planning to send over to her father. If he'd started babbling on it, he might have held up the receiving line. That was 'Mike's' (as Adira's father called him) biggest flaw. He'd married money, he earned money; but he had a poor boy's improper heart.

Yet he had more friends than his snooty wife. No one wondered why.

"Everything has been fine so far." Szelem assured the dark-haired young woman. "Now, if you go to the ballroom, Lucas has taken it upon himself to dance with some of the young ladies. I do hope you have a fine time this evening, should I not get to speak to you more personally."

"Oh really? I didn't know you stayed at the dorms. I've never really been in them. Though I am surprised I haven't seen you guys in the halls. Well, its nice to meet you Quinn. You have a very pretty name." Emmy was only made of smiles now. She really couldn't stop herself. The thoughts of having to spend the night alone vanished completely.

"Don't worry, its ok. I know people are busy and just don't think of me all the time." She gave a giggle to help ease Melody's worries on the matter. She really didn't mind at all, in fact she had been keeping herself so busy she didn't notice as much as she probably should have.

Hero Barrett was not looking at Dylan as though she was going to dismember him the moment he got her away from John. The two siblings exchanged a brief, hapless look before she was whisked away by the not-so-Doctor Rasmussen, her rigid military posture still in place along with an expression of complete bafflement. Dylan couldn't guess at what was actually going through her head. If he had been able to:

-- is this a message from Nehelenia?

-- which was, after all, the most sensible conclusion.

But she said, "Dr. Rasmussen," which was obviously her being a good sport. Or still confused. Anyway. There was half a second's confusion where she tried to lead, being from a girl's school where she most often got roped into being the 'boy' partner, before she graciously gave it up.

Finally, she said, "Did you come here for the express purpose of, er, dressing up as a doctor?" (Was she stating the obvious? She was stating the obvious.)