#* astrid

When she’d dreamed of her life on the other side, she’d pictured beautiful gowns, lines of suitors waiting to whisk her away with not a care in the world that her mother had once tried to poison her step-daughter over her looks, and... friends. Loads of them. Enough to fill an entire ballroom, certainly.

But she was nearing the end of her first major society event and she truly just felt like she needed to cry.

Her expectations had just been so high that it had almost been a sure setup for heartbreak.

She had stuck by Zasha’s side as much as she possibly could that evening, but as the night wore on and her smile had begun to fade, she didn’t want to risk her mask slipping in front of someone who knew her so well. She needed to keep the façade up as long as she possibly could, for her own sanity, and so she had dedicated a portion of the evening to scanning the room, looking for a single friendly face to direct her attention to.

The warm-hearted redhead from dinner was the only one who Juliette managed to locate. And thus, allowing herself a single sniffle, she was off.

“Good evening!”

It was almost too bright of a greeting, but as they were still essentially strangers to each other it was unlikely that it would be commented upon.

“Me again. From dinner. I just wanted to thank you for being so welcoming and lovely during our conversation earlier. I know that some are nervous, and it meant a lot to me that you were so open to speaking. I appreciated being able to learn about all of the creatures that you have at your gatherings.”

@discnchant​

He had not been alone.

He had not been the only one to react so strongly, so negatively to what he had consumed. He had not been the only one forced to leave the festivities because of it. And while Benedict had a supportive network of individuals who he could trust to check in on him, he wasn’t sure if Lady Astrid Bjorgman (a woman who he had zero prior knowledge of prior to their names appearing together in print) had the same.

It was almost as if it was his duty to offer support to her... and maybe a bit of questioning too.

Thus he had selected a few flowers from a shop on his way over to roughly where he knew the townhouses of the Auradonians to be. He was aware that one should not show up without a gift, and he was at least trying to maintain a positive reputation in the still somewhat new place.

 It had not been difficult to get directions to the Bjorgman’s residence in the end, and mere minutes after he had entered the neighborhood, Benedict was carefully seated in the sitting room off of the girl’s entryway, waiting for an unknown face to pop into the room.

“Good morning, Lady Bjorgman,” Ben greeted as soon as the door opened to reveal a young woman, standing as it was the gentlemanly thing to do. “I’m not calling on you to offer a courtship... unless you want me to be. Lady Chattermore wrote that we had the same reaction. At the bacchanal. Do you think we might have been poisoned?”

@discnchant​