have a gala (have a grand old time)

"You know Fei?"

"You know Yui?"

In her amazement, Flora nearly forgot that she'd long been looking forward to this moment: the time when Minoth met Yui, and she was finally free to hang back, observe, and compare who could handle who, and who'd be handled by someone with those same inmitable ways about them.

Minoth didn't like to be pushed, and Yui didn't like to do what might visibly be deemed as pushing, nudging, teasing. Flora did these things, and even Addam did. But Minoth stood stolid as stone, and Yui just willowed there, listing.

(As well, of all people, Minoth would be Flora's first choice for those likeliest to get into fights with a tree, behind Malos.)

So Yui's question had been a genuine inquiry, soft and mild. Minoth's had been a taunt, of a sort, directed at both Flora and Fei alike.

Fei hemmed and hawwed. "Well, Bart knows her. I mean, Gala knows her. Which means Bart knows her by association. So I do, too."

Yui smiled moonlessly. "My husband is also Fei's psychiatrist." Because, apparently, she had no cares whatsoever for HIPAA. Flora crossed receptionist, but not necessarily surgeon, off of her continuing mental list.

"Um, sure," said Fei. He scratched the back of his wrist. "That's true too. Doc's awesome."

As he said it, he slid his eyes over to Minoth, who seemed to appraise the exact liquid measure of sarcasm and give a shallow inclination of considering nod in response.

Doc was a lot of things. Awesome, in the strict sense, was just one of them.

"Fei and I box at the same gym," Minoth revealed at last. "Maybe it's where they put people who need psychiatrists."

Yui, now, looked from Minoth to Flora and back again. Doubtless, she was conjuring further violations of human privacy and assorted associated law.

Bart might have needed a psychiatrist. Bart might have been perfectly sane.

Regardless of what Bart was, in general, in this particular moment he was quite pleased to have Gala on his arm, waltzing through a department store like he owned the place - excepting, of course, that he had no interest at all in that, and just liked the idea that he could give Gala anything she wanted, at any time.

And Gala never wanted for much. In Bart's estimation, she wanted for absolutely nothing at all.

There were two fanciful, far-out-of-reach propositions here, neither of which had come to fruition. The first was that the Nisan Archives Historical Society could hold its annual gala without its chief archivist, as if she'd buried herself a mouse back between the stacks and the wall. The second was that they set about it to hold it, but they'd asked Gala's approval to start, and she'd said no, and they'd amicably cancelled it.

But it was not so, not in either respect. The event had to go on, and Gala had to appear - no ifs, ands, or buts.

One thing Bart knew about high-society parties: gone were the days of bulky structured vestments, as the paleontological phrasing did go. Nowadays, the men wore suits that were thick and stuffy, and the women wore dresses that were slinky and thin.

Much as Bart did love Gala's sturdy-woven embroidered pieces, he knew that they'd only sabotage her hard-won fight to fit and fade in, among donors and socialites.

And what did Gala have to say about it, anyway? She wasn't only skulking through the store with her entire self clutched around Bart's broad hand.

She surveyed the racks of outlet-mall rejects, some splashed in sequins and others slashed with slits. She peered at the young men's suit section, replete with navy polyester and clip-on ties. She stared a-yonder at the homewares, likely ascertaining the location of a six-quart ceramic-coated piece of sage enamel in which to coil herself.

"Can it be green, or is that too obvious?"

Bart shrugged, in a hopeful sort of way that - by any amount of luck - would also manage to be helpful. "I think jewel tones are nice."

They were, of course. Green in particular was an old faithful standby because it would never be too deep nor too flamboyant (unless one sought out chartreuse, unvermilion), unlike red or purple hues. To the side was set any variety of blue, as whichever one it was was likely to be unflattering to morena complexion.

"Maybe a jumpsuit..." Gala mused to herself. At least, she meant it to be a personal comment, but what Bart did with it for his own purposes, she could only hope to imagine.

"No, Addam, I can understand why you'd want to go," Flora called from the other room (actually, multiple of them, she crossed between) as she inserted her earrings, "but I'm not sure I understand why my presence has been requested."

Because you're the same person in two separate bodies, Minoth could have quipped, but he didn't, instead choosing to put in, "You know, he's like a dignitary, and junk." Of medium-sized not-quite-city towns, and junk.

"And why aren't you going, Minoth?" asked Addam, turning to him and posing the question as if he himself wasn't the one that should know.

Minoth rolled his neck (cracked his neck? rolled his shoulders), comfortably seated in his miscellaneous inexplicably stiff choice of bedroom chair. "Fei's not going."

"Oh, and let me guess, they don't allow people in need of psychiatry to attend."

"Ouch! That's harsh, Prince - and ableist too. No, I mean, Bart and Elly are going, as are the Doc and Yui, but Fei's not. So I don't have to."

"I thought Bart was going with Gala," Addam said faintly.

Minoth grinned. "Lucky guy, ain't he?"

"We won't have to stay for long." Citan pushed up his glasses, seemingly oblivious to the way they slid right back down his nose, only catching on the crook where he, perhaps, had broken it - and subsequently had Yui reset it, very calmly - many years ago. "Just enough to be seen, maybe photographed."

"I do hate dodging around viewfinders and telescoping lenses," said Yui, nodding along to the conversation as she smoothed out her dress where it lay on the bed.

Citan could have disappeared, on just such an occasion, and be reported to be out of the country. He did this rather frequently. But there was a certain judicious measure to it that involved never invoking the unwritten clause too much, lest someone actually think he was running from something.

He had nothing to run from, except Yui. Rather, except Midori. Midori, however, liked Gala, since Gala was the only markedly normal person she'd met in some time, so as long as her father's lime-green tunic was photographed somewhere in the vicinity of the plant-shaped historian, she might be appeased enough not to carbonate his water when he wasn't looking.

"Who'll watch Midori?" Flora had once asked, when Yui was discussing dinner plans with her. Yui had just looked at her oddly, and replied, "Midori will watch herself."

"I'm happy not to go, honestly. What do you do, just stand around and look nice?"

Elly peered over her own shoulder in the mirror to glimpse Fei as he organized his paints in the rack on the far wall. "Well, yes. You stand around and look nice so that you can talk to other people who also look nice, who probably have a lot of money."

It sounded as if she were explaining it to a five-year-old (one, of course, far less precocious than dear Midori), but it was also the smart, skeptical, cynical way of looking at it. Now, if the Archives were also hosting an exhibit looking back on the historical formal fashions across Ignas, then Elly probably would have suggested that Fei come along, but as it was, she was just treading in the last-fading footsteps of the Van Houten legacy.

In fact, if Gala weren't involved, Elly thought that she really would have turned her hand up at the whole thing - a celebration of the haves, ignorant to the mere existence of the have-nots?

But Bart's clever plan had been to escort himself as Elly's plus-one, which Gala didn't get, because she was an employee. This way, Elly was free to float and observe, to make her own sharp-minded conversation with whoever was bold enough to engage her, and Bart was free to shrink among shrubs.

Fei, crouched in front of the rack, turned to make eye contact with Elly through the pendant whose chain she yet held in her free hand. "If it's a beauty pageant, they should just say so."

Elly shook her head and made to fasten the chain around her neck. "No thank you, Fei. I've already had enough of being Miss Universe."

"And what are you going to wear, Bart?"

Usually Gala wouldn't be half so logistically-minded, but she'd nearly run out of patience for staring at herself in the full-length and wondering whether or not she looked too ostentatious - for herself, or for the affair itself. Bart had been such a help to her, after all, that it was only fair she remind him.

One of Bart's arms emerged from his catastrophic closet. A muffled voice issued as well: "I think I have a jacket in here, somewhere."

It was a lot of fuss for no reason, Gala thought. Didn't it take more money to stage such an event than it would ever bring in? What did the people think who had donated the money that went specifically to funding this? Did they care? Were they dead?

Wasn't this a gala for dead people?

With a final tug to the hems of her elbow-length gloves, Gala chided herself to be positive, and steeled herself for the imminent intimate task of straightening out Bart's unavoidably chaotic appearance.

Now, Gala's intention when arriving to the, well, gala, had been to link arms with Bart and make her way to the hors d'oeuvres, at which point she could spend a substantial amount of time pretending to choose shrimp versus calamari, tapas versus canapés, and admire the giant non-cruciferous crudité platter. There were, of course, various decorative shapes carved into and formed out of the food, denoting cultural symbols of all of Nisan's organizations and institutions. Gala would have felt guilty eating these first, even though they were arranged so prominently, but Bart had no such qualms.

It was as she was screwing up her concentration to locate a tray for refuse and toothpicks that an almost-familiar voice floated its way to her, like the song of a backyard bird.

Flora zipped to Gala's side and grasped her unoccupied elbow without so much as a how do you do (well, but she did pause to give an air kiss to Gala's heated cheek), ostensibly intending to actually make conversation with her - and Gala would have loved to do this, if they were in a kitchen or a garden somewhere, away from all the prying eyes (and the cameras, goodness, the cameras).

Then Flora whispered, "Not to make too much of what already is overblown, but I know it's a nervous sort of time. Mind if I stick close?"

Bart, in a semi-regular bout of distraction, had begun floating away. So that was that.

Gala nodded, matching Flora's dimples. "I saw they had pickled purses."

Addam's grin was as wide as ever when he apprehended Bart and greeted him with a warm clap on the back. Even Bart's effusiveness was cowed, just the tiniest touch, by Addam's greater share of age (just the slightest edge).

His temperament soon lowered, however, as he made to mention, "I hear you've brought two lovely ladies this evening." He didn't waggle his eyebrows conspiratorially, except that he did, just a little bit.

"Brought? You're mistaken, Prince Addam -" Bart stabbed thumb to chest, accidentally emphasizing the gratuitous sternum window "- I'm the stowaway!"

He said it just loud enough to be too loud, but Addam still chuckled as he laid an arm over Bart's shoulders again. "A wonderful way to be, no?"

"No!" Bart exclaimed his agreement. "I mean, yes!"

Addam had also heard that Bart was sometimes considered overbearing. He now updated that piece of insider information to note that "overbearing" was a relative standard, to be applied moreover to such personages as Gala and Fei. Elly's sardonic glance at him only confirmed this fact.

A place for stowaways, scallywags, et cetera. Indeed, Addam thought it an eminently fine station.

"They are curious people, aren't they?"

Yui whispered it to Citan as they each turned their cheekbones with astonishing prescience toward the nearest camera, which alighted on them for only a moment and then just as swiftly flitted away.

"They, curious? It is the natural position of people to be curious."

Humans had many natural positions. Not all of them were attractive or deserving of adulation. As much could easily be observed, throughout this gathering of supposed elites.

"Yes, but they're not like us."

Citan frowned - only abstractly, of course. "Not something that usually concerns you, Yui."

"This is an unusual circumstance." She traced the bow of slouching satiny ribbon at his waist as if it were part of her own costume. "They're all so...frank."

"If you ever lied to me, Yui, I would trust that you had an excellent reason why. It's what I've done every time you've lied to me in the past, isn't it?"

Across the ballroom, Gala was giggling at something Flora had fascinated her with. A glance at the angles of their footwear (boots, both) showed that they would soon approach the Uzukis for introduction. Addam's coattails also flickered with the wind of fancy, and Bart was glad to come with him. Elly, too, would convene.

"Lie to me now," he concluded, hand on absent hilt of sword. "Say that we've got to get back home."