Hecate had outdone herself as usual. Athena took a slow circuit of the ballroom, admiring the artful interplay of light and threefold shadow as she took in the mill of guests, taking quiet note of who was in attendance and who was yet absent.
She was dressed in elegantly draped and pleated yellow silk. She’d purchased it new in 1940, and it was still in remarkably fine condition: Athena didn't believe in hoarding possessions past their usefulness, but what she kept, she looked after. And she had always been fond of this dress. As a young woman, Madame Grès had dreamed of being a sculptor – she had even studied it for a time – before familial objections had caused her to shift her sights to fashion design. She had taken to it with a sculptor's sensibilities, and the way she could give intricate form and structure to diaphanous silk still gave Athena a small thrill. People tended to forget that she was a goddess of textile, too.
She had paired with the gown a stylised mask, the moulded leather suggesting the features of an owl, and through it she studied the crowd with a speculative gaze. Hecate's protection was woven into the walls of this place, and Hecate was not one to mess around. Perhaps that would discourage some of the… wilder indiscretions that had characterised Peitho's symposium.
But there were a lot of immortals in attendance tonight, and when the gods came out to play, anything could happen.