Peggy & Steve
It was a beautiful hotel. They were all beautiful hotels, themed to fit the terrain surrounding them. Peggy had seen glittering ice sculptures jutting from the ground, forming the illusion of exterior walls so that guests could feel like they were vacationing inside a tundra, and craggy, rocky shapes that mimicked a cave’s shadowy maw, stalactites reaching for visitors who thrilled and tittered to be so close to where blood had been spilled. The variety was endless and the expense of transforming arenas into tourist sites staggering, but it made the money back in a heartbeat. That was good business, she supposed, even if it was terribly morbid to cash in on a setting in which children died by the handful.
The jungle theming was no less pointed than the rest, and just as deceptively beautiful. Dressed in the crimson of one of the jungle's more eye-catching trumpet flowers, a delicately curving collar tilting asymmetrically to frame her jaw and bare one shoulder, she'd paused in the courtyard for a time, exchanging polite words about this newest unveiling- Isn't the waterfall lovely? Will you be taking a tour? Oh, no, I couldn't possibly walk in these heels- before drifting back through the lobby and into the bar. It felt less exposed, somehow.
Though the laden displays of food were assiduously avoided. Peggy might take risks, but they were calculated ones (and never designed to lead to public humiliations in front of this crowd or any other).
Manicured fingers- today tipped in alternating striations of glittering gold and a venomous green- twisted at the stem of her glass. It looked less like fidgeting than when she played with her hair, and anyway, that was piled high on her head at the moment in an elaborate coif that was beginning to cause something of an ache right at her temples. Or maybe that was the music, which while understated and more of a background hum, still felt like it featured too much bass and was thrumming right through her bones, transmitted from equipment to the pristine floor and up the length of the stool that was clearly more about aesthetics than comfort when it came to sitting there any length of time.
Nodding to familiar faces, occasionally lifting her glass in brief salute, Peggy didn’t turn from her idle perusal of the other guests until she heard her name. Then she swiveled, brows arching in question and a polite smile already on her lips.