The way the young woman looked at him and seemed to struggle to find words had Alasdair thinking that he'd made a misstep, though how he could have done so just by entering the conversation was hard to imagine. Maybe it was the smile that was inappropriate, if she had been talking to someone about something particularly morbid or dour? Only she didn't seem to be talking to anyone, he realized belatedly. He'd thought that he'd been sliding into the edge of an ongoing circle of conversation, but now he was face to face with just her, and the rest of what he had presumed to be the group was moving on. Well, this was a touch awkward. He had no particular desire to talk to her — probably not in general, since she didn't look like she was in a position to be offering him a guest room to stay in any time soon, but certainly not tonight. He might have entertained it for a few minutes, just to keep up some semblance of normalcy, except at that moment he spotted the person he'd been looking for all evening. He was here — and halfway across the room at the gravity ball, which would have made the most perfect opening for a conversation. Alasdair could imagine it now, walking up and discussing the curious object for a minute or two before he casually dropped in that he had cast the charmwork for it. He would be impressed. It would open them up to talking about all sorts of things, and from there...

But first he had to disentangle himself from the gawping young woman he'd just accidentally started a conversation with. "Er, yes," he said, because even had he been devoting full brain power to this conversation (he was not) he wasn't sure what answer he could have had to something like that. "I didn't mean to interrupt you," he continued in a hurry, hoping to make this as quick as possible so that he could catch his quarry before he lost interest in the ball. "I mistook you for someone else. So sorry."

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