Snippet #2568915

The air was alive with chatter and laughter, and casual conversations and introductions were forgotten on the spot between enthusiastic maidens who never really knew each other's names. Laughter was easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups changed more swiftly, swelled with new arrivals, dissolving and forming in the same breath. The fruits they nibbled on were so ripe they exploded in your mouth—melons, peaches, fireplums, most had never tasted such sweetness. Tables lining the stone walls were laden down, practically bursting with food and summerwines so expensive and so good that one could get drunk just breathing the air. Everyone was fat and drunk and rich, well everyone that was someone. People that lived worlds apart from Renly Arryn.

A nobody like Ren had to learn to notice things, to read the truth that people hid behind their eyes, and he didn't miss a beat now. His King was observing all the courtesies, but there was tightness in him that Renly had seldom seen before. Ulfirc said little, looking out over the hall with hooded eyes, seeing nothing. Perhaps balls, galas, and masquerades were not enjoyable affairs to him; they certainly weren't for Renly. Ren hovered around the desert table awkwardly now, a wine goblet in hand, trying his best to look occupied, swaying in time to the music. He wasn't sure why he bothered, it wasn't as if anyone was going to approach him...unless they mistook him for someone important. With that thought, he lowered his mask, which was plain and black--lacking any ornament, so everyone could ascertain for themselves, that there were other people more worth their time. Not that he was antisocial...he was just not in his element, more rather ill at ease among swirls and eddies of people he didn't know.

The royals in attendance were great disappointments to him. The castle servants back in Ostwall spoke of this group often: the peerless nobility, the fiercest warriors of the realm, giants among princes. Ren saw only fat men, red-faced under their beards, sweating through their silks. They waltzed like they were half in their cups; old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles; holding each other tortuously, fashionably, and keeping in the corners. Their partners weren't much better. The women had their hair so tightly pinned, and dresses so far cinched, that he wondered at how they could move at all, let alone dance. He didn't find it attractive, but judging by the hungry look on the gentlemen's faces, everyone else must have.

Renly chuckled openly as one couple just barely avoided collision with another, drunken apologies murmured as they spun away to a less cluttered part of the dance floor. In truth, He had two left feet, so he couldn't judge. Ren had never been a dancer, his limbs were too long and spindly and tripped him up at every available opportunity.