It was true that Pela's first experience with Drayton Hall had been much different, but she preferred this. Not specifically because she disliked the regimented formality but because in such a boisterous surrounding, people paid less attention to her. There were other louder, flashier, Talented in the room, hoping to catch the stray eye of someone who would take interest in them. Many of her fellow Eajorynnea had been ecstatic to receive these summons, to be given the idea that they may be taken away from the sleepy southern islands and assigned somewhere with more prestige. Pela was not one of them. She had been happy in her infrequent callings-upon, to maintain her existing wards and sigils as needed, and otherwise be free of obligation.

The crowd shuffled again as the harried clerk came back and read the names for another set of individuals, although it hardly seemed to lessen the press of bodies in the antechamber. In effort to stay out of the way at least until her name is called, Pela sidled up against the wall until her path is interrupted by the seated man with the pointed cane, and the ways it's positioned means she can't get past without shoving into the crowd.

He isn't wearing the same sort of nervous, anticipatory energy that the rest of the room's occupants is, nor does he immediately strike her as someone unfamiliar with the proceedings. No, he radiates an extremely I belong here mien.

"If you were hoping for a quiet spot of contemplation here, sorré, I'm afraid you've picked the wrong day for it," she addressed him with rueful and hopefully disarming courtesy. The unfamiliar word was a respectful mode of address native to the southern colonies, and the same accent tinged her speech.

Well, if she can't get past... she'll just sit in the empty seat next to him like it's nothing at all.