Ethel is more than happy to let the music and chatter of the party take her away on the curtails of the fermented berries that had dissolved along her tongue. She is more than happy to yield to the movement in her hips as they sway, and the bob of her head as she finds herself enjoying the commotion around her.

And for the most part, Ethel remained within her own world, ignoring the way the inhabitants of this party are eccentric and odd…and how her tongue wishes to judge each one of them for the way they dance, speak, or exist—but she does not.

Instead, she moves through the crowd with a shake of her hips and a toothy, widening grin.

It is only the scrambling of paws against wood, and the flashing of something blue within her peripherals that ultimately piques the grandmother’s attention and re-routes her ambling paws from the only other German man she had heard of.

Instead, a crowd seems to be gathering around this curious item.

And Ethel is far too nosy to ignore it.

Was ist das? (What is it?) She asked, as suddenly she was beside the cat-colored woman and another of grey, who grasped the pulsing blue item between their teeth. A pale woman exclaims something in another language she cannot understand, beside her, and Ethel pointedly ignores her.

Cat lady, Ethel greets the calico-furred woman, What. Is. That?

Her curiosity simply cannot take it.

What is that blue, glowing thing?