Wow this is a lot of people. Vanyel is pretty good at making conversation with the excess of princes, coming off as eloquent and charismatic, but it's sort of clearly an act, for anyone who knows him well. He finds it exhausting.

Dara crosses paths with them a few times and hugs Vanyel exuberantly. She's trying to do the appropriate amount of mingling and she's having a wonderful time with it, it's sort of work but it's also a delightful adventure. 

Yep they've had this disagreement in the past. 

He's on the 'this is definitely the best part of the job' side of this, of course, but he can probably sweep Vanyel off to look at a library and a sculpture garden after a couple of hours so Vanyel doesn't have to do too much talking to people. 

The sculpture garden is really nice, and Vanyel can link up with Savil again there; she hates this kind of political meet-and-greet too, and is much worse at it. 

Leareth spends a lot of the day hiding indoors, but makes it through almost an entire hour of people-meeting, and even drifts a ways away from Maitimo. He isn't really sure what anyone is going to want to say to him, but Vinyamar is feeling less like a completely strange place today. 

Quendi are so excited to meet all these humans! If the humans seem inclined to tolerate it they'll talk to them all day, and in the evening serve drinks and play music and fry lots of delicious foods and show off Quendi magic. It is much less powerful but it's fun.

Dara talks to so many people. She thinks this is wonderful, it's even better than Kata'shin'a'in – Vanyel, it's got music! she says to him repeatedly – and once the evening starts in earnest, she drags him around to watch the magic and gets him drinks. Dara is suspicious that Vanyel has not been having enough fun in recent months. Probably he will have more fun if she gets him a little drunk. 

...it would be tempting to see if this worked on Leareth too, who she is suspicious doesn't have enough fun as a general pattern in his life, but probably that's a bad idea.

Do Quendi dance? 

Quendi dance!

Then clearly Vanyel needs to dance too. And have another drink. More dancing. 

She's really missed Vanyel, it turns out. She was so worried about him when he disappeared on her, and eventually hearing word from him did not make her appreciably less worried. Dara is so relieved he's all right.

It is nice to see Dara again, and this is a bit like Kata'shin'a'in except minus a lot of the worst parts, like 'incessant heat' and 'everything being dusty'. (Vanyel is wondering if he's ever going to want to go home, and how drab it'll seem in comparison when he does.) 

(Quendi are already conspiring to make Valdemar prettier so maybe it'll work out okay.)

Vanyel is having an incredibly good time, but the difficulty is that Dara can drink more than he can, apparently, and has not been paying attention to this fact. Eventually his head is spinning enough that he begs off and leaves her with what's-his-name, that nice Noldor man who's been showing them dances, and looks around hopefully for a secluded place to sit down for a minute. 

There's this under-construction balcony! The ground and the rails and so on are complete, it's just the artwork that's in-progress.

Perfect. Vanyel wanders onto it, looks out at the stars.

At some point there are footsteps. He starts to turn around to apologize. "...Oh, it's just you." 

"Hiding from the crowd, huh?" Stef says cheerfully. "Their music is so lovely here. ...You must not've had much time for that before, though." 

"Not so much, no." 

"Medren was really worried about you. Breda came and told us you were missing." Stef leans on the railing next to him. "Then we got word from you, war with an evil god in another world. Lots of the other Bards thought it was very romantic." He makes a disgusted sound. "Bet it wasn't. Bet it was miserable." 

"I mean, yes." Vanyel turns to look at him. "I'm sort of surprised you get it so well. I mean, I'm glad I came? It would've gone so much worse otherwise, and...besides, this way I got to invite you here, once I'd helped win the war. I remember thinking how much you would love their music." 

"I didn't realize you liked music so much." 

"Hey. I came to Medren's recitals, didn't I?" Vanyel stares off vaguely at the sky. "I've always loved music. I used to dream of being a Bard." 

"Really?" Stef laughs. "Imagine that. Maybe you should do it now, then. No one's going to begrudge you a vacation. Write yourself some songs about your victory, that way you won't get some halfpenny minstrel doing it." 

"...I'll let you do that part." Vanyel's smile is soft, gentle. "Stef, did you know that even your laugh is like music?" 

You have to be kidding me he can't be doing this by accident, is what Stef is thinking. It's been so goddamned hard to resist all evening, he's not used to - needing to put in so much self-control - and now Vanyel is looking at him like that and how is he supposed to–

Stef kisses him. 

Vanyel, stunned, lets it happen for about ten seconds before coming to his senses. It takes a hundred times more will than it should to twist his head away from the kiss, grab Stef's wrist and extract himself. "I - gods - I'm sorry, I shouldn't have..."