Aerith is standing in front of a familiar doorway in a familiar section of a familiar city. The light is dim, lit only by the green magic inside of lanterns, the sky overhead a brilliant, luminescent night.

She knocks on the door, and her hand is a deeply rich, beautiful dark purple, a few of the fingers encapsulated by silver rings. The door opens suddenly and an extremely tall, bovine-featured man with pink hair smiles in greeting at her. "Oh! Hey!" he says in a languid, cheerful tone.

She glides - it's gliding because her feet are not touching the ground - in, and a dark-skinned human woman inside with others says suspiciously, "Is this a noise complaint?"

"No," she says quickly, "it is nothing like a noise complaint. I just, ah," - and she looks around at all their faces: a green-skinned half-orc, a scruffy man who looks a lot like Gale, a small goblin woman, a blue-skinned tiefling, a giant (literally) of a woman, the pink-haired firbolg, trying to find a way around the shyness - "I..."

There is a long pause. Uncertainty. They look back at her, waiting. She has not done this in a very long time, if at all, she realizes. Be in the presence of friends and join them for something more intimate than being begged for teleportation, or being carted around a prison.

"...If you would have a guest for dinner perhaps?"

There is another pause - of shock from them, of course, of surprise. This is not like her at all. Her? Dinner? WITH THEM? Their faces quickly break from surprise to elation.

Suddenly, the blue tiefling excitedly waves at her and says, "Come on in, Essek, we invited you before! Come, come, come!"

"I had thought about it," she says to them as she moves farther in. "I hadn't really... done something like this in a while, and perhaps it is... something I should do."

She pulls out a bottle of wine and offers it out. "This is Blooming Grove's diamond plum wine."

"Ohh," says the goblin woman, "I'll decant it right away!"

"My apologies," she says afterward. Carefully, she drops from the float onto the ground - no taller than at least five-feet-six - and begins to remove her cloak and the exquisite mantle around her shoulders and neck. Strangely, all seven of them watch her eagerly as she does this - weirdo behavior - but there isn't anything beneath except exceptional, rich boy finery.

She talks with them about a few things - about being under the expectation to float, about the firbolg preparing to cook, about the strange sound of them playing music she could hear from a distance. A cat jumps into her lap, sleek and brown with familiar striped legs and face and a spotted back. It looks at her with the same sort of iridescent eyes as the sparrow, the owl, the spider, the octopus even if she hasn't seen those forms.

It's comforting somehow. Surprised, she says, "Oh, hello," and gives it a few awkward pets. Somehow, it's comforting before Caleb - that is his name, the wizard, she knows; all their names she knows actually: Beauregard, Fjord, Nott, Jester, Caduceus, Yasha - asks how the mood is here in the dynasty.