flags of red and white and black and blue

The ball is a formal affair, with soldiers from both factions stationed grimly by the exits. There's no choice but to notice those first, and ignore every other bright festoonment of the hall.

Half are clad in black, the other robed in white. If they intermingle, it is only in pairs, two by two to keep balance and distance and...and tensions high.

Like moths to a flame, those who wish to stand down the war come, the empress Melia notes. They think that if they approach in a setting that bridges the gap between professional and colloquial, they will stand a chance at bargaining.

She is not fooled. She knows what the ouroboros has come to mean. No, her eyes are only on the delegates from Agnus.

Keves wouldn't exactly do well to make friends with the other side; the war is all they have to plan for and look forward to, so stopping it lies in no one's best interests but those who don't have the same seemingly never-ending lifespan as she has.

Of course. The assassin priestess from the ether-based nation will align with her concerns. So it's all a sham, anyway. These diplomatic tensions between the two of them are more or less drummed up. It's no tabloid thing to maintain international political rivalry. It's just the way of the world.

Still, she has taken the liberty of removing her mask. It's not an insignificant clue. Guard is down at this time and this time alone. The removal of armor is never presented as such a luxury to the soldiers outside Antiqua Palace. So it is up to the onlookers to determine whether or not Melia and Nia are self-aware.

Up to the onlookers, and the onlookers alone.

"Empress."

Of course Nia, herself unmasked, has seen fit to approach to the head of the room without making a single sound to indicate her departure, route, or destination. Of course.

It's all so simple. It's all so natural. They have everything perfectly well figured out.

Melia merely nods in reponse, because somehow after all this time, all this rabble-rousing insurrection-courting, there isn't really a concrete title that fits upon Nia's gray-graced head. Melia had been an empress before. Nia had been no one. Very likely, she still wishes she could be that same no one now.

"It's a pretty nice affair. Nothing like what's gone on outside."

Outside is only battle. Outside is only war. Outside is only the reincarnation of all struggles from centuries past.

Melia hates to know how, despite all that, she and Nia both still look so young.

How the Flesh Eater's face is round but not childlike, how the white markings on her cheeks and ducking out from under her bangs flash in the light, how her hair has such a warm, supple tone, how it's not right that the both of them somehow have not yet fully eschewed their youth.

She's repeating herself, retreading all the same thoughts. Glancing back at Nia, Melia finds her arms folded exactly halfway between confrontationally crossed and demurely laid atop one another over the line of her hips.

"Indeed. It's...something I've seen many times before."

In Alcamoth, before the fall of Bionis. In Alcamoth again, this time trying desperately to ignore the creeping fear of the rift, the rift, the rift - they hadn't known from whence it had come, so how could they be confident that it was truly banished?

And now, on Aionios, with no such world-rending calamity about - maybe. Simply the fact of life: it will always be prettier in here than it is out there.

And, it will always be prettier out there than it is in here. In either of their half-cock elephantine hearts.

"Do you care to dance, Empress?"

"Not very likely. I do not trust any of the guests, and I do not feel up to dancing alone, either."

Nia smirks, and it's quite obvious that she's straying so casual and fresh because if she doesn't, she will go just as ramrod stiff as Melia feels inside. The mask becomes her in...different ways.

"I didn't mean the guests."

So even though Keves is hosting, Nia considers herself equal in the perpetration of it all. Very well.

"So you wish to dance, Nia?"

Melia laces the question with as much black poison as she can muster - she will not, will not, will not let the softness, the closeness, the abandon of it all become a comfort. No. It would not be right. There was not a person in her history who would have abided it.

Adjusting her posture the minutest amount, Nia flashes a fang. "I wouldn't dream of it, Your Majesty."

She has the advantage. She knows it. Oh, wicked, wicked gi- woman. She is far too cunning and learned to be only just a girl, no matter her countenance.

So Melia flashes brisk herself, grasping for Nia's wrists even before they have been offered and letting her hair swish behind her as she turns to nod to the orchestra. Hers is not hidden in her hood. Hers is all power.

If she can succeed in willing it, well...the power is all hers.

Nia gulps, and even if she can hide that, she cannot hide the twitch of her ears. Oh, calm down, don't you know it's only just for show?

Don't you?

The tune that next floats up from the strings and winds, an old High Entian melody that none but Melia (as well as Tyrea and Teelan - who may or may not be watching disapprovingly on at this very moment) know, starts slowly, majestically, evoking all the choral bells of the imperial city.

Once, Melia had been afraid of it. Once, she had abhorred her own impending duty. But now?

She lets the steps come naturally, the points of her boots and the clicks of her heels exactly matched to each of Nia's. She ignores the hovering hand at her exposed back. And that's fine enough, if you want to wait for forever.

Nia studies Melia's face, waiting for another crack to show, but it doesn't come. Her lips part; she's about to speak, and then--

Melia, breezy as anything, wings dormant and graceful behind her, tips one finger up beneath the assassin's chin. As she does it, the tempo begins to tick up too. A signal, perhaps?

No, she will not surrender. Whether she loves or hates her foil is irrelevant. This is not a dance of death, only a gavotte conducted among it, stepping over skulls and picking among perishing souls.

"This is nothing." It is not everything. No, never even close. Right?

"Would you care to dance - for real this time?"