#dividuntmasquerade

6:00 pm - Seraphina’s chambers

Allegra knew what masquerade balls were like. A tradition that ran through her kingdom as often as the festivals that lined various town squares did, Allegra found comfort in them. She knew how to act, how to try to keep her identity hidden if she so chose, and when to reveal. Balls like these brought an element of surprise and fogginess, and although that made Allegra nervous, she hoped for the best. 

"Everything is rather beautiful, isn't it?" Makeda didn't even speak to who she was addressing directly. Her gaze instead flickered around the orange room, drinking in the sights like which she had only ever seen when she was back home, in the grandly decorated rooms of her fathers palace. “The colors are so rich-- the food, equally so. One would wonder where our hosts have been hiding these decorations until now, would they not?”

At 4:00 pm, the masquerade ball had officially started. Noblewomen in large ornamental dresses and dawning their finest makeup were scattered around the court and first level of the castle talking excitedly between one another, giggling, and enjoying their vividly imagined masques. Noblemen spoke loudly, wined and dined, recruited women for a dance or two, and had a jovial laugh with one another. The court was decorated with multicolored candles each on a candlestand with three prongs, casting bright light around each and every corner of the room, not leaving a single space untouched. Decorations hung from the ceiling and wrapped around the walls, almost like yuletide ribbons. If one observed carefully, they could see that there were different themes about the halls of the first floor. The court, by far the most joyous, was mostly bathed in gold. Gold candle wax, gold ornaments, gold ribbon, gold thrones. The surrounding halls and rooms each had their own themes, one as white as the purest cloud of heaven, another orange as the desert sand at sunset. An array of food such as turkey, pork, greens, olives, and other foods was lined up on the far side of the court’s wall, begging the party to visit them. A group of musicians were huddled in a corner at the head of the room and played their merry songs as dresses turned and tossed this way and that to their tunes, men meeting their women’s hands as they danced the day away.