After ending the meeting with Isadora feeling happy by the conclusion and new found alliance including the funds she would gain in the future, Zolani was walking back towards the hallway.
Only to find a girl her age near the back of the room. Or rather.. she was there and made no effort to be anywhere else, which was its own kind of approach. She was standing with her back to the wall and a glass of something red and the specific quality of someone who had come to this event for reasons she had decided on before arriving and was checking off items.
Pink hair?
Zolani was surprised. Pink hair was an exceedingly rare hair color here. How did she get it when dyes doesn't exist yet?
Her pink, short hair was not subtle.. vivid, deliberate, the pink of someone who had made a choice and was comfortable with the consequences. A curvy figure that the silver-blue dress she was wearing had been designed for and was acknowledging fully. She had real assets and was fuller in her chest area. B-cup? She wasn't sure exactly she was never good with bra measurements and she always had the shorter end of the stick in both lives.
Her daring nature from the way she was comfortable in her skin and the desirable way she moved, every twirl of her glass almost slow and deliberate.
Power.
She was indeed beautiful. Zolani wondered how her sight missed this woman throughout the night when she looked like someone who commanded attention.
She had the expression of someone who had been underestimated many times and found it useful and would happily be underestimated again. A naive temperament.
When their eyes met, she knew how wrong she was.
Pink eyes??
Her gaze did something quick. A cold assessment.
Then, a very slight tilt of the head. Almost provocative. The specific tilt of someone acknowledging that the thing they were looking at was looking back with equivalent attention.
The attention lit her body on fire.
Something was wrong.
"You're the Draveth girl," she noted. Lower than Pip had said it. The same absence of preamble but with a different texture — where Pip was curious, this was evaluative.
"You're not from any house I know," Zolani remarked. Her gaze turned sharp. She was wondering why this unknown girl elicited such a reaction from her. She was beautiful but that didn't mean she should be reacting like that. It was beyond what she usually did.
Her crimson gaze lingered back at her. Did she have something to do about it?
"No," She agreed. "Merchant family. We bought access and have been using it since." She said this without apology or explanation. The tone of someone who had long since decided that the social history of how they arrived somewhere was less interesting than what they did once they were there. "Sable Mourne."
Sable. Didn't seem to ring a bell.
"Elowen Draveth."
Sable's eyes did the quick thing again. She had heard, Zolani suspected, the same slip that Pip had heard. And had filed it the same way — not with suspicion exactly, with interest.
"You've been making an impression tonight," Sable said. "Lord Fenton is going to be talking about that conversation for a month."
"He gave me material to work with." Zolani retorted with a chuckle.
"He always does." Something that was almost a smile on Sable's face. Stunning.
"The trick is knowing what to do with it." A pause. "You knew."
"I had a reasonable guess." Zolani unexpectedly felt shy.
Sable looked at her with the evaluative expression and then reached into the small bag at her side and produced a card. Not a social calling card — something plainer, with an address written in careful handwriting and nothing else.
"I run a few — supplementary operations," she said. "For people who find the official channels insufficient." She held out the card. "In case you ever find them insufficient."
Zolani took it.
"What kind of operations?"
"The useful kind." The almost-smile again. "Come find me when you're at the academy. I'll explain the rest."
How does she know she would be coming to the academy? She has to be careful about how much information she releases you never know where it may end up. Zolani inwardly noted with a sigh.
Sable moved away with the specific ease of someone who had completed what they came to do. Her hips swaying with each movement. And all Zolani could feel at that moment was admiration