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Ealasaide slid quietly in the door and looked around to see if she could see any familiar faces. Not seeing anyone right away, she cast a glance down at the dog at her side and smiled. The dog, a gold-colored coyote mix, panted up at her with a friendly expression and wagged her plumy tail. Ealasaide shifted the hot plate of broiled salmon to her other hand and scratched the dog behind the ears. Idly, she looked around for the long table where the food was to be left for the party. Finding it, she walked over and added her contribution to the row of dishes and blushed slightly. Mostly salads and desserts...
"Oh, dear... out of step with the world as usual..." she murmured to the dog at her side, then made her way over to the table where the nametags had been laid out. She picked one out and embossed it with a large "E", taking special care to jazz it up with a bit of interlace. Before setting the pen down, she took a long look at it and, not finding the nametag quite artistic enough, pushed her silver bracelets back on her arms and added a few flowering vines around the edges and took another look. Since it still did not look quite complete, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a bit of wire, a wire-working jig, and small set of pliers. A few moments later, she sighed happily and pinned the nametag into place on the shoulder of her green cotton blouse. A small length of silver chainmail hung down from the underside of the tag, its ends ornamented with freshwater seed pearls and tiny silver bells. At last, it was right. Should she make one for the dog, too?
She was just thinking this over when she looked over her shoulder and realized for the first time that she had created a small logjam at the nametag table already. Blushing more deeply, she stepped out of the way quickly and apologized to the folks behind her. "Ooh, sorry," she stammered. "I'm afraid I got a little carried away." She stepped a little farther into the room, where a number of fellow wights had already made themselves comfortable, playing music and reading poetry, and again looked around for familiar faces. She saw a few that she thought she recognized, and smiled pleasantly in their general direction, but, being neither a musician nor a poet herself, she happily ceded the floor to them.
Ealasaide pushed her striped hair - blond and ash brown - back from her face and with a quick word to her dog, retreated into a shadowy corner with a glass of strong red wine in one hand and a chunk of cheese from the buffet table in the other. She put the wine glass down on a nearby end table and took a small pocket knife out of the pocket to which she had recently returned her wire-working gear and proceeded to split the chunk of cheese between herself and the dog. She had never been quite comfortable at parties, instead preferring wide open spaces and the company of only a few companions, but this was one party she had not wanted to miss.
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