#ball2026

(aka what if you got a flower that was SO fitting to you and they gave me the flowers named after your dad and my nemesis—) He knew very little about flowers, or their language. The farthest Diamant's knowledge went were lilies and roses, maybe daisies. Alfred and the others from Firene always carried an abundance of blooms on their person, but the Brodian never thought much of them beyond their beauty, and how such things were unsuited to one like him, forged in fire and warfare.

His finger traces the edge of the hyacinth in his bouquet, and as he often found himself doing with Ivy, he voices his inner thoughts easily, without prompting.

"I know there's a language to flowers. But it never occurred to me that these... hyacinths... had meaning. Or that they were even flowers." Just a man. A man who took something precious from him, yet was dear to the person of his heart—a man he found sad and pitiful, hardly even worth his rage anymore.

But for her...

"Could you tell me what they mean?"

He meant everything. He was a man who loved and raised her. Who was once her heart.

Fate, Ivy finds, has something of a sense of humor. She wonders what small twist upon the loom of destiny could have led to this—a rose for Ivy, and a hyacinth for Diamant.

A small, sad smile touches Ivy’s lips as she looks at the flower in his hands, at the way his fingers carefully trace the edges of the blue petals. So gentle, so reverent, it is hard to think that once he rallied to kill the man who bore this flower’s name.

“It is easy to forget,” she agrees, “I never thought of the word to be anything more than my father’s name.”

She still does. As a girl, she found it hard to believe that her father had been named for the blossoms and not the other way around. In the golden light of her youthful memories, he was the sort of man eras were named after, nevermind flowers.

“I am not as versed in their meanings as I ought to be,” Ivy admits, a mite bashful. She had studied it a little, mostly at court and then a bit more at the academy, but her mind was set on other, grander pursuits. “But I remember the meaning of these easily enough, if only because they have my father’s name.”

She points. “Hycaniths can represent a myriad of different things. Jealousy and resentment, for one, so you’d best be wary if you ever receive a hyacinth of the golden variety.”

A teasing mirth dances in her eyes as she loops her arm through his, leaning her cheek against his shoulder. They are matching, she with the fur on her sleeves, him with the fur on his mantle. It is soft to the touch, and smells of him. 

“White hyacinths represent thoughts of others in their purest form—well wishes, felicitations, that sort,” she continues, “pink ones symbolize joy, and blue ones like the ones you have there…”

She reaches out to pinch a petal. “...mean sincerity, loyalty, and and fidelity. Fitting for you, isn’t it? I do not think anyone else more loyal and sincere than you, Diamant.”

She leans against him more. “Though the meaning that will never leave me is of which purple hyacinths represent. Forgiveness.”

Her father had so favored purple. It was in the clothes he wore, the strands of her mother’s hair, in the covers of books he’d give to Ivy and the ribbons he’d give to Hortensia. So many wrongs done, it is almost incomprehensible.

(Being from Elusia, Alcryst is curious if Ivy grew up learning this dance like he had. Though maybe that's presumptuous... still, he tries to be a good partner for her through this dance.)

It is a dance Ivy has only read about in dusty old tomes, snuck into her bedroom and read by sputtering candlelight, finger tracing the faded ink as she tried to envision what the steps to such a dance might look like.

Alcryst asks Ivy to dance and she happily obliges, though she struggles to recall the steps she had read about all those years ago. Alcryst’s feet are swift and sure, and it is evident that he has dancing these steps all his life.

“You dance well,” Ivy says with a smile as they spin around to face each other. It would be diligent of her, she thinks, to form a rapport with Alcryst, given how things are going with his brother. “There must be a lucky lady back in Brodia who had the honor of practicing with you.”

Another turn passes, Ivy’s skirts whirling about her ankles. Her back is to him, and then she faces him again, before the steps call her once more to turn her back.

“We ought to familiarize ourselves with each other,” she says hurriedly, in the small frames of the dance of which they can see each other’s faces. “Since we—er—are to be seeing each other more, now that things in Elyos have quieted down…”

Wherever has his lady gone? The terms from which they parted from one another would set no piece of his heart to rest. Pushing through this crowd, scouring through another, the good butler whisks this way and that in search of a prominent head of wavy white hair. Only to find that—shortly before him—is one such kind.

"Lady Corrin, if I may have a word. I am under the impression that I offended you last time we spoke. If I may offer you this plate as condolence—oh!"

But Lady Corrin it is not. The waves are not waves but tightly wound ringlets. The shade of white is too stark to be hers. And, that snooty look. . .

"Apologies, my lady. I mistook you from behind for someone else." He is truly frazzled out of his mind; to make a mistake of such proportions. To mistake anyone for Corrin! "A token of my apology: please accept this flower of mine."

“Apologies indeed,” Baldr says waspishly as she whips around in all her glittery, golden glory, hand on her hip as she looks down her nose at the man who had just approached her and called her by someone else’s name. The nerve! There was none as beautiful as she—how could he have mistaken her for anyone else? What did this lady of his look like, she cannot help but wonder…

“Well, I suppose it can be forgiven this time,” she says, “as we do not seem to know each other. I am Baldr, of the knights. You’d best not forget it.”

Did she have to go and make everything so damn difficult?

Baldr had hoped that the punch bowl would be the end of it, that Alear would have gotten the message and stayed well and far away from her. No, instead, what does the great fool do? She seeks her out. With pastries, as if that could make up for her insolence!

Baldr eyes the sweet buns with a guarded look on her face, arms crossed tightly over her chest, lips pulled back in a tight sneer.

She sniffs, the tension easing out of her shoulders ever so slightly. At least she had the decency to acknowledge her wrongs.

“Well,” Baldr says, the words coming out of her in slow, choking bursts, “I suppose… I supposed I was… uncharitable to you. I should have… restrained myself better… knowing your… difficult nature and all.”

Delicately, she reaches out and plucks the lily from the tray. What a small, fragile thing, to have caused so much chaos between them.

However, they are ruining the atmosphere of the dance hall, and she knows quite a few friends who have their hearts set on a pleasant evening.

Mitama rolls a 17. Critical hit! Inflicts Silence and Void on targets.

The light of silence flashes bright over the two wrestling fools. Whether or not they hear her does not matter, but she is sick and tired. "Enough."