There was nothing Xavier liked better than a crowded room. They...pulsed. They were alive with the beat of the people inside them, and it was beautiful.
Here, in the bar attached to the Peach, the room was alive with several other things. Uncertainty. Bravado. More than a hint of delicate, powerful lust. Patrons drinking peach schnapps - he sipped his own drink quietly, enjoying the lazy golden spark it raised in his mind - in tiny cups or cider in mugs, watching as the boys and girls not already otherwise engaged worked the room trying to reel them in.
They were so pretty. They would make such beautiful colours. He didn't know which colours yet, but they would shine.
Some of the patrons were pretty too.
He turned to Wolfram.
Privately, he'd always wondered what colour would come out if he collected Wolfram. He doubted it would ever come to that, or at least not yet, but he'd wondered. Pearly white, like the horn? Turquoise? Magenta? Would Wolfram have a paisley pattern?
"I like those three." He pointed. "That one, that one...and that one. I can't choose. What do you think?"