Friday May 31st, 1894 — The Shimmering Sea Ball, Sanditon Resort

Prometheus had never been over-fond of the sea. A trip to the seaside came with salt-stuck skin and sand in his hair, and often unpleasantly direct sunlight, and in his work he had toyed with enough of the undulating creatures that thrived in the deep that he had no particular interest in using the water to escape. So far as he was concerned it was best the ocean was left to those who appreciated it, in spite of its many dangers.

Still, he could not deny that the illusionist made a marvelous working of the ballroom. The whole space seemed to glow, brilliant ripples across the floor playing like the distortion of sunlight across the sea floor and painting the many twirling dancers in otherworldly hues. It was an inaccurate representation of the darkening depths, but an effective one. Even if it did make a man as pale and thin as Prometheus look more like a ghost than a merman.

He had, thus far, taken a single dance with a lady he was not entirely familiar with before escaping into the shadows at the edge of the luminous space. There he stole a moment for himself, drink in-hand and a moment to breathe before he returned to watching. To chatting. To seeking, as so many of these people had come to seek.

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Willa had lingered by the castle chatting with Miss Weasley until her mother had caught sight of her and chased her away — not directly, as Mama would never be so pushy, but with a slightly anxious look that Willa could understand very well. She ought to be dancing more and talking less, was the general thrust of it; and maybe there was a hint of the idea that it would do her no favors to spend half the night in conversation with a woman who played Quidditch. She didn't actually know what Mama thought of female Quidditch players; she'd never been inclined to play herself and so hadn't asked. She presumed it would be a negative one, insofar as Mama was ever negative about anything (which was only tangentially negative, in the end; a glance at a backhanded compliment and then back towards bustling smiles). So she was looking for a place to dispose of her empty lemonade glass so that she could get back to the business of being absolutely delightfully charming. Many parties stashed tables and serving stations in the corners at the edges of the ballrooms, so she headed that way, hoping to either encounter a likely place to abandon the glass or someone who would relieve her of it — and startled visibly when she instead came face to face with a pale man lurking in the corner. (Was it uncharitable to call it lurking? He had a posture that seemed to lurk more than it stood — or maybe that was only a consequence of how she had surprised him in the corner).

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said — because she felt the shock had been visible on her face and now she had to say something to explain it away. "I didn't expect anyone — are you looking for an exit?" she wondered — it seemed a strange place to be lurking loitering if one wanted to actually engage with the party.

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Gorgeous Set by Bee <3

Prometheus started, too. A stupid thing to be surprised by, one of the many, many debutantes in attendance coming around the corner, as though he could really expect to go unnoticed anywhere in this place-- and still he straightened up a little too quickly, a momentary wide-eyed mirror of her own look of alarm.

"No," he answered a beat too quickly, with no plan of how to continue. He had to hesitate, then, just a fragment of a second. He had seen her before, heard her name called. The circles at these functions were not so large that he could not retain the names, at least, of those ladies who lingered on the market. "My apologies, Miss... Kensington," he landed on the name just a little too late to be entirely subtle. "I was only stealing a moment to gather myself."

There was no easy way to address how unfamiliar he was with crowds and movement and noise on such a scale as this. No comparison he could offer, truly, without treading on the countless confidentiality agreements which bound him. He had taken some time ago to explaining he worked in an office, quite alone, but somehow he doubted Miss Kensington would appreciate the excuses provided to his own family. Excuses which did not work well with them, either.

"Were you looking for something?" Prometheus offered instead, in the hopes that being of assistance might avoid... anything else.

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Willa didn't entirely understand people who came to events full of society and then took moments to seek out solitude — if that was what they wanted, surely they were much better served at home than at a party. But she had heard this sort of thing often enough that she was content to shrug it off as something that people did which she might never understand, rather than interrogating it. His question in return did surprise her a bit, though, because she thought it rather obvious what she had been looking for. What could one find in the dark corners of a ballroom aside from waitstaff or unoccupied standing tables or exits? And clearly she had not been looking for an exit; debutantes did not leave parties without company.

"Someone to take my lemonade glass," she answered, indicating it with a slight tilt.

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Gorgeous Set by Bee <3