Someday. Mine, mine, mine -

Sorry to make things - complicated.

Not your fault, lovely.

Still. You deserve better. Everything should be perfect and I am annoyed that it isn't.

We'll fix it.

Yes. Yes, we will.

And a few weeks after that is the Festival of the Awakening, which like all Tirion's festivals lasts three Valian weeks. Maitimë is very busy. There are three Earth documentary crews. There are a lot of tourists for the concerts, too. 

Isabella cannot bring herself to countenance festivaling for three entire Valian weeks on the principle of "oh my god, Elves", but she picks a little while in the middle of it to have Alex come by and dance with him. Alex is pretty good at dancing for a human and Isabella does not break any of her bones because grace ring!

"I'm so glad you have that!!"

"I am too! I have no idea if I'd think much of dancing if I could do it by default but it's lovely having only later acquired the option!"

"Festivals really are lovely."

"And you can't have too much of a good thing, why, I don't know why you don't have them last twice as long."

"There are a couple back-to-back ones! My birthday festival used to fall right before the harvest festival, there were technically two workdays in between but everyone just made them contiguous."

"You have a birthday festival?"

"Until I was fifty, and then one at a hundred."

"Aha. And now your birthdays must seem dreary by comparison."

"I suppose I could rewrite the laws to give myself birthday festivals again, but if you did them for all adults in the royal family I really think we actually might never stop partying."

"Mercy, mercy."

"It was a bit out of hand a few years back when there were six royal grandchildren under fifty."

"What fraction of the year was festivals then? Did they have any overlap from birthday placement?"

"A little over a tenth. We had a tiny bit of overlap."

"Wow," says Isabella, shaking her head. "Well, now you're down to a less unreasonable festival quantity. And I will spend about a tenth of it partying. And dancing. Even though I'm still terrible compared to Elves even with the ring."

"Now, now, you're a lovely dancer."

"I will settle for 'nonlethal'. Maybe in a hundred years I will be competent by local standards for real."

Maybe in a hundred Years we could dance.