Being in the middle of a particularly immersive contour, Leander doesn't immediately respond to the question posed by the blindfolded elf—which is in itself intriguing, he'll have to ask about that in a minute—but he does smile about it.

And that smile withers just as quickly as it was born, back to relative neutrality. Cute, he says. Only the grimace that came before saves it from being taken as a wholly dismissive comment.

The new visitor, meanwhile, has caught his eye. It's not the young lady gleefully swinging wine (not yet), but the spirit she brings with her, which glides to join the rest. The contortions it performs to become its new fibroid shape are exquisitely terrible, and even as Leander sits up taller, lifts his chin, leans to see around all these damned people as they come and go from his line of sight, he's aware of the queasy heaviness gathering in his belly. Shapes moving how they ought not to move, vibrating in his peripheral vision, his eyes going soft—

Abruptly, his frustrated voice raises over the conversation: "Would you please stay out of the way. I can't do this much longer."