Each couple, each polycule, rises not as who they are in daylight, but as who they have chosen to become under lantern light and desert wind. Nobles, thieves, djinn touched wanderers, silk wrapped temptors, velvet assassins, oracles and rebels. One by one they step forward, speak their chosen names, and claim their place in the story. Then, with cups raised and eyes locked across the table, they announce what they came to taste, what they came to chase, what they came to awaken over the weekend. This is not small talk. This is a declaration. A public statement of intention that turns strangers into characters and characters into living myth, and by the time the last introduction ends, the group is no longer a gathering of guests. It is a court, a caravan, a circle of chosen souls pulled together by the Serpent Winds.
