Dismantle The Sun

Chapter 7

The ballroom was the size of multiple spaceball pitches. It was bedecoured with crushed velvet draped from the ceiling in hanging swags on farbric, dotted with captured starlight that twinkled and danced like a distant sun shimmering gold. It was vast and beautiful with many artistic accents. The ceiling was high, and, although the room was filled with people, twirling and cavoting, the air felt as clear as it had outside. Merlin thrummed with awed glee. It came off him in tangible waves which flowed their way to Arthur's heart where they pooled goldenly as freshly churned butter drawn from the udder of the butter cattle in the farming fields of Ferma Six - a aplents lush with pasture and underwater resoviors of silverline crystal waters.

The residents of the ballroom were dressed in a myriad of costumes; as beautiful as they were fantastical. As the men stepped into the room they were surrounded by sparkling sealife, stylishly couture firefighters, and spooly ghosts. A sandy pyramid pirouetted passed them, her long hair billowing from her peak.

"Thank you" said Gwaine with a wink as he took a glass from tray proffered by a penguin suit clad waitr.

"Alright we're here for Alator: get what we need and get out. If you see him let me know. Focus Waine" the captain explained the the crew, giving the IRsih one a look as he eyed the glass of prosecco making its bubbly way down Gwain's throat. The group fanned out like syncronised swimmers in a pool.

"Not you, Merlin. You stay with me." he demanded softly to the man who was dressed as a ninja. He had alreay seen several attendees running their uninvited eyes along the lith lines of the body of the black-clad man appreiately. Gwaine through Leon a knowing smirk, but the smuggler was already looking about the invitees professionally. Lancelot was already moving away.

"I did wonder how I was supposed to find a man I've never met" Merlin mused and Arthur blinked like a owl. He hadn't even thought of that.

"Uh, yes! Exactly. So you have to stay by my side." he continued, as if that had bee his reason all along. Merlin looked at him, his wise eyes smiling gently in a way that conveyed that he was not entirely convinced: in a way that spelled mischief.

From across the enlarged room a dark shadow loomed in matriculously in thought. He darkly watched the group of pirates, and the two men who broke of from the party, one with golden hair that glintered like the long dead Sun of the Milky Way in its halycon days, and one with skin that twinkled darkly like iced starlight. They were a site of juxtapositions. He ran his large hand along the gentle neck of the beast that sat a patient sentinal beside him, it's hulking mass calm and placid inspite of the raucous party that gyrated about it.

It was orange. The kind of burnt orange of the dying embers of a campfire at midnight, decorated with black streaks of charcoal and unattend. Its eyes were a green that even emeralds weren't, back when there were still emeralds. Its for feet the size of dinner plates, a bright smokey white of the end of the fire, and its teeth were sharper than porcelain. Its tail swished felinely in anger: as it was a tiger. The man commanded an army of them.

The man swug his drink evilly and watched.

"There's so much...stuff here" Merlin whispered, his eyes roaming around the room, occasionally catching werily on the starlights hung above.

"Several lifetimes worth of stolen wealth i'm sure" Arthur responded, his voice a huskey whisper so as not to attract too much attention.

"Its beautiful though" Merlin answered, gazing around the dancers and then into Arthur's aquamarine eyes as he spoke. The way his lips pronounced the words had the captain, for a moment, entranced before he was jostled by a guest dressed as an elegant elephant.