"I, er, have one back home, just didn't think to bring it - seems wasteful to get a duplicate." 

"Aww, come on, they've got no shortage of anything here. You should give mine back and ask, I want to see what their lutes are like." 

"Oh, well, if you want it back, I guess..." Vanyel asks one of the dragons, politely, if he could have a lute - like Stef's instrument, he explains, in case they don't know what that means. 

The dragon nods very seriously. They have not managed to surprise them; another dragon scurries up carrying a beautiful lute.

That's kind of uncanny but also very neat. Vanyel thanks the dragon and tries it out. 

To be perfectly honest, it's a lot better than his back home.

Probably shouldn't be surprising, really. He keeps playing and singing, smiling. 

It is not even fair how distracting Vanyel smiling is. 

The Martians applaud the music, drift into and out of the dance. A dragon offers Vanyel a beverage.

Vanyel is pretty thirsty. He sets the lute down so he can drink it. 

Stef drifts up. "What was that chord progression, in the last song? The one that started with..." He hums. 

Oh a conversation about music, he can totally do that, much better than awkward chitchat when he has no idea what kinds of things the Martians will find interesting. Vanyel answers, still smiling. 

The Martians mostly have drifted over to the other side of the ballroom where Tarinda's recounting her adventures, at least those of them that bear narrative well. She's doing it in English. The dragons offer would-be Velgarth listeners glasses that will display subtitles pending their own spirit guide installations.

Vanyel feels a bit like he's being rude by ignoring their hosts to talk to someone from his own world, but also that is too many people and it's very overwhelming, and Stef turns out to be very pleasant and interesting to talk to. He likes the subtitles, though, it means he can follow along a bit anyway. 

Eventually somebody who, based on the fact that he's tried very hard to turn "evil aristocrat" into a wardrobe, might be Proster, pulls a piano out of a retracting wall, and starts up a piece of his own to replace the absent foreign performance and the dancing starts up again.

The glasses offer to teach them how to do this one.

He is absolutely going to embarrass himself but - you know, so what? No one here can possibly be expecting him to be good at it on the first go, which makes it less embarrassing, and also he doesn't know these people, and maybe if he tries it then someday he'll be non-embarrassing at dancing.

(Vanyel is, objectively speaking, actually a solidly decent dancer.) 

The piano speeds up; the subtitles instruct him to pair off and go into the next bit with whoever is at his left elbow when it gets too fast for his taste. Tarinda and Cory spin away, Dara's native guide tugs her aside, the piano is faster and faster -

Stef is at his left elbow, keeping up without apparent effort - 

This seems kind of unfair but it would be even more embarrassing to flee the dance now. He makes eye contact with Stef. They pair off. 

What an excellent coincidence, Stef is delighted and beaming. 

The Velgarth visitors will probably wind up tired or at least thirsty before the Martians do; they have little salve stabs, not full installations and buffs. Dragons keep them hydrated. Proster waves the piano back into the wall eventually, though, and then it's more milling around. People want to congratulate Leareth on getting Sing across! Since this is Tarinda's party full of Tarinda's friends, some of them want an impromptu swordfight to break out right then and there!

Vanyel is in better shape after a year of sparring for fun with Tarinda regularly, but he's also a lot older than Stef, and gets tired first. He's happy to drift up against the wall, listen to the well-deserved congratulations being aimed at Leareth and smiling to himself at Leareth's slightly baffled response to this. (Leareth's expression is polite and pleasant but Vanyel has a lot of practice reading him.) 

Stef is flushed from exertion and happy and standing uncomfortably close to Vanyel. 

Eventually the people who want there to be a swordfight settle the issue by loudly pretending to be Proster's minions and seizing Cory and carrying her, giggling, to the opposite end of the ballroom. Tarinda laughs and accepts a sword from a dragon and delivers a nice five-minute improv performance against the cooperatively sinister Proster before she disarms him and, sword pointed at his throat, collects her girlfriend and kisses her.

Awww. He's starting to see the appeal of her combat dance thing, that was a very romantic performance - 

- also he keeps thinking about Stef, specifically he keeps thinking things that are deeply inappropriate, can his brain please please please stop this.