Her other admirers will be annoyed by the prospect of someone who isn't even empowered getting one of the last two dances, and so she'll do it. It's never a good idea to appear too desperate for a match, after all.

He signs. "I shall look forward to it."

Eventually, the music starts up for dances, and Lucette is off, having successfully filled her dance card with one of the six possible combinations of people she'd mapped out for herself earlier that day.

Haru is spoken for at all the dances, too, so he goes and finds the first young lady and proceeds into the merriment.

The fact that most of the participants in these balls are empowered means that the dances can be rather physically demanding, albeit not so much that skilled unempowered are unable to keep up.

Hopefully it's not suspicious that he's capable of it. Are all his dance partners in gloves, or is he going to be picking up backlash from preventing people from noticing that he feels like an empowered to the touch?

All his dance partners are wearing gloves.

Oh good.

Dance dance dance.

Sophie finds him during a break from one of the dances so they can discuss the weather some more.

"Why not. What can you tell me about rainbows?"

"Yes! Some of them actually have repeating bands if you look closely, and the conditions are good - also sometimes there are two entirely separate bows, one within the other! I went out every day when it was rainy and sunny until I saw both at once. And then I kept going out all those days so I could see them again someday, but I haven't yet."

"Ooh, double rainbow. I didn't know about the repeating bands, you mean like it'll have red twice and orange twice and so on?"

"Yeah! The other bands are much fainter, but sometimes they are visible - I don't know if they're there all the time and hard to see or if they're only there some of the time. I painted a picture of the very good rainbow but it was from memory, not while it was in front of me."

"I don't think I saw that one."

"It's at my country house because I only took some of my paintings here and I wasn't as proud of that one since I don't know how accurate it actually is."

"Are you self-taught, at the painting?"

"No, I had tutors for a bunch of things, and the painting tutor was one of the few who I actually paid attention to once I realized I could paint clouds."

"You were well-taught, then."

"Yes. It was also one of the ways to spend my time that my mother didn't complain about, so I did it a lot."

"Once you'd outgrown biting people I have a hard time imagining you doing much besides going for hikes outside to have a look at the sky."

"That was not an activity that my mother always approved of on its own, but painting provided me with an excuse to go and search out interesting weather to paint."

"Huh, what's to object to about hiking without your paints along?"

"Too hard to keep appropriate clothing appropriately clean - I was allowed to hike around our gardens and some nearby places. But also the sky doesn't really change that much even if you hike a lot?"

"I'd think you'd get better views from some places than others? Depending on things like how many trees and buildings were in the way."

"My family's estate has a bell tower which has excellent views on all sides - I did quite a lot of my painting there."