Lounge Area (open to any/all, but especially open to Cat)
Elias hadn't intended on attending this party. It was very unlike him to choose to socialize, and even more unlike him to choose to socialize at a place where people went to be seen -- places like parties where costumes were encouraged. At the last minute, however, he picked himself up from the desk chair where he'd been writing, pulled off his starched white shirt and stepped into the very back of his closet. With no small amount of hesitation, he pulled out a poet's shirt with old-fashioned lace cuffs and ridiculous matching ruffles down the front, then its mated brocade jacket. Both were left over from his LARPing days, and he spared a faint smile for the memories. Brigetta was mixed up in there somewhere, but unlike many of the moods her remembrance sent him into, this one was a gentler feeling. She'd met him at a Renaissance Faire, and he'd been wearing something frivolous like this at the time. Anger propelled him to burn the outfit long ago.... but the memory still clung to the inside of his head like tiny capillaries, delicate and still so vital.
He sighed, pulled on the outfit, and absently fished from the jacket's inner pocket a hand-cured leather strap, dyed black and worn soft with use. Her hands had tied it around his neck, once, telling him that his outfit needed balance. His hands tied it this time. And as he hit the door, keys in hands, mumbled explanation shot over his shoulder to the Dov who may or may not have been in the living room behind the swath of pinned-up fabric, he tried very hard not to admit why he was going to this event in the first place.
Elias was raw with loneliness.
And that was what found him at the back of the lounge area, swathed in darkness, amber liquid in a crystal-cut glass in the cool curve of his pale hand. He watched the people in front of him and out further -- watched and felt more alone here than he had at home. There was a trick to it, he knew. Some near-magical way of being that drew others toward oneself and that allowed oneself to be drawn to others. But Elias feared he did not have this gift. He waited, waited for the courage to strike out into the throng of people, to learn someone's name, and to make a connection. Either his courage would propel him or the worse ache pushing him here in the first place -- but it would happen. Soon. He hoped.