FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Dual Parliament Building.
Deliverance.
Grand Electocratic Duchy of Florys.
0955hrs Local Time
The anteroom was silent but for the ticking of the clock mounted upon the alabaster wall and the feverish clicking of a keyboard as a clerk busyed herself with her duties of the hour. Paul Royce MDP, foreign minister of the Grand Electocratic Duchy of Florys reclined back in a chair of expensive red leather as the morning birds sung outside and the sounds of city life bustled gently outside, drifting through a window left ajar on the spring breeze. Royce was a tall, thin man in his early forties garbed in a suit of pale blue and sporting the small point of a beard on his chin, his black hair streaked with grey. He checked his timepiece for the hundredth time and shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
The nation of his birth was a curious one, regarded as quite the anomaly by foreign observers. His was a beautiful land of esoteric social strata and complex unspoken conventions. It was a nation of paradoxes, it's economy was fueled by it's booming tourism industry but it rarely received foreign politicians or visiting dignitaries. Florys retained a staunchly isolationist on Aurora's political stage, it involved itself further afield but left itself far removed from the power play of it's neighbors. That was the case, until now. As Royce waited, the Prime Minister of Afalia was en route to Deliverance to discuss Florys' place along side Aurora's nations and indeed, it's standing among them.
The foreign minister opened his briefcase on his knee and with sharp click it's contents were revealed. Paul thumbed through the numerous sleeves of documents and files within, each contained the impotent subjects of the day's imminent negotiations, they included dozens, if not hundreds of facts, figures, statistics and statements regarding the Florysian economy, defence policy and potential trade settlements among others. It was not the first time he had ensured the precious paper cargo he bore was complete, and the gravity of the situation sunk in. With Premier Westman currently in session in the Chambers and His Grace, the Grand Duke Sylvan attending his first born's graduation in the nation's southern most city, Coralport, representation of his homeland fell to him, a task and honour he didn't savour in it's entirety. He was loathe to mess this situation up but from what he understood from hurried meetings with the ministers of tourism and culture, the Afalians were an agreeable breed, they maintained a monarchy not dissimilar to the hereditary nobility of Florys and they seemed, at first glance, fairly neutral politically, not as staunchly aloof as the Florysians, but as a nation they were as good as any.
He checked the clock ticking away on the wall, the hour was upon him.