Merri/Lavitz | early evening
Merri had tried to get his mother to come out to the ball with him -- he didn't think there was anything to be embarrassed about a grown man taking his mother out to a ball, especially since she was only in town for a couple more weeks -- but instead, the conversation had been more her trying to convince him to stay home ("You never know what germs and viruses the guests might be carrying! You don't want to get sick again, do you?"). In the end, she decided to stay in the Tower and reluctantly permitted Merri to go to the ball. That, in the end, had been the point Merri was more embarrassed to admit to as opposed to him wanting to bring his mother out.
Now that he was here, he realized just how much he missed being out with people. He smiled and briefly chatted with a few people he recognized on his way to the buffet table; he knew, and not because his mother reminded him over and over, that it was important to eat the food earlier in the night for a lesser chance of someone coughing or sneezing over it, or for the food to start going bad.
Only Merri could be at a sparsely populated table and still find himself accidentally stepping on someone's toes as he began to leave with his plate of bacon-wrapped dates and deviled eggs. "Sorry!" he said, clutching the small plate closer to him so that the contents didn't plop unceremoniously to the floor.