It took Luna about an hour to prepare herself.
Although to some this was normal, it wasn't for her. Her father expected perfection, and one of the ways she delivered was by being capable of preparing herself for formal events in a much shorter time frame than others.
Hopefully he wouldn't be angry at her for missing part of the banquet. It had recently become fashionable to be a bit late, because then everyone was already there when you arrived, and all eyes were on you as the massive ballroom doors creaked open.
This ideal has been popularized by Larrisa Remont, a countess from the Outer Provinces who was said to rival the Queen's beauty.
Luna didn't have any problems with a countess being seen as more beautiful than her mother. Every time she was at a formal event, Luna always saw at least three flaws in her mother's appearance. She even kept a journal, so that she would know exactly what not to do.
Of course, if her father saw her with a journal of his wife's failures, he would be furious, so Luna disguised it by listing the names of minor nobles, some that attended the royal balls and some that didn't. This also gave her an albi when she left to explore the woods, because she could say she had been to one of the Outer Province's balls. It was quite convenient that noone would deny having seen her if asked the question. That was how popular she was.
She had considered leaving the observations with no names, but then her father would just ask her mother about it, because he didn't pay close enough attention to fashion, and she would easily be able to recognize that they were almost all actually from her.
And of course, that wouldn't go very well for Luna. She was having a hard enough time with her father even just doing fencing, despite her being disguised every time and that he had authorized it in the first place to distract her from her romps in the woods.
Luna looked down the great staircase to the main level with trepidation.
Speaking of fencing...
In her opinion, she wouldn't be half as good a fencer if she wasn't forced to walk down so many stairs in these ridiculous dresses. They were heavier than the weighted vests she often had to train with, and the coordination required to get down the stairs without tripping or falling was just ludicrous.
Honestly, most noble women would probably be better at footwork than a large percentage of the men.
Luna's current dress was made by her own hand. It was a light blue color with silver snowflakes patterned onto the skirts and silver trim all up the skirts and bodice along the seams and folds.
The current leaning of fashion was a concept some called winter in summer. The only problem was that it went well for those with lighter skin, which Luna didn't have. Although she wasn't quite as tan as most noblemen, her skin was much darker than that of the women, especially since they used a white powder to appear paler.
The problem with the commonly used powder is that Luna was allergic to it, which she had discovered at a young age, when her mother had first attempted to apply it.
Luna was able to offset that just enough that it seemed like a statement rather than a flaw by wearing a silver, gold-embroidered mask, a simple affair with a slightly beak-like peak in between the part that covered her eyes.
This allowed her to maintain an aura of mysteriousness at balls, while still revealing most of the contours of her face which, in her unabashed opinion, were about as close to perfect as a human could get. It was just another thing to set her apart. After all, no one else wore masks to balls. The idea was simply ridiculous.
So when Luna, after elegantly descending the stairs and walking up to the center table where the royal family sat with today's guests through a series that parted like an obstructed waterfall, saw a man sitting there wearing an obsidian-black mask over the upper half of his face, she was completely shocked.
This was going to be interesting, at the very least.