In the summer, I remember

[rowancrowned]

WHO: Thranduil, Legolas, anyone good with a bow or who enjoys the wine on offer.
WHAT: ROOTY TOOTY POINT N SHOOTY ARCHERY CONTEST
WHEN: 8th of Bloomingtide, midmorning until sunset.
WHERE: Valley
NOTES: log for a friendly wager! 

The eighth of Bloomingtide began as a chilly morning; not quite cold enough to leave frost on the budding flowers and fresh-sprouted plants in the heights of Skyhold, but nearly, nearly.

By the time the sun was been in the sky for a few hours, most of the early-morning chill had burned off, leaving a day that promised to be nearly too-hot for those who would be stuck in full-plate and in direct sunlight. Thranduil wasn’t expecting any to come clanking down to his little fete, but had none the less secured a spot in the shade. Varric had apparently found him while he was still working on organizing—the target launchers are set neatly in line with everything else. Along the clay pigeon launchers were the standard, stock targets, blindfolds—and on a table off to the side was a few bottles of sweet wine beside loaves of brown bread and hard cheeses.

The contest did not pretend to be anything other than what it was; a chance to meet, and mingle, and possibly show off archery skills. The purses wrested next to the wine and cheese and Thranduil himself. He had found a chair to rest in while waiting for the contestants to arrive, dressed plainer than he had so far allowed himself to be seen. On his fingers, four rings glittered—but his confidence in Legolas was so absolute, he doubted he would lose even one before the days was out.

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gwenaëlle vauquelin | open

[trouvaille]

In the wake of their extraordinarily politely written spat, Gwenaëlle had considered not attending this little affair after all. Thranduil strikes her as the sort of gentleman who would not require a trumpeted announcement in order to understand her absence to be a purposeful snub; she'd likely have to do no more than simply be seen elsewhere to drive the insult home. In the end, she settles for bringing her own wine and frilly cakes down with her, Katell spreading a blanket for them that she arranges herself on.

For all she'd nearly not bothered, she doesn't fail to take advantage of the opportunity; she has her notes and pen, and her reading glasses resting on her nose, the brim of her hat sufficiently broad as to give her shade enough to write without the sunlight glaring off her page. There will be names taken down, and scores, though it remains to be seen if she'll make use of it for the next month's editorial.

She never promises, even as she makes her inquiries and writes dutifully down everything she's told; much of what is written will not make it into the final drafts she pulls together...but better to have it and not need it now than to not have it at all later, when she might.

[rowancrowned]

Watching Gwen conduct herself as she went about her business was— in all honestly, he had lacked a properly poetic comparison for weeks now, and had not decided yet if his most recent was his most apt. ‘Kitten’ was the best yet, for the prideful way she held herself, the lashing out, the mercurial bids for attention. He was yet undecided, but surely the best way to have inspiration hit was to spend more time with her.

He made polite excuses a few minutes after she arrived, excused himself from conversations, and imposed his presence on her and her frilly cakes with a smile. Katell received his attentions first—a nod in acknowledgement, a murmured greeting before she slipped away. For Gwen there was a glitter in his eyes, constrained amusement, and a polite indication of her spread.

“I did not ask for contributions to my little party, yet here you are, proving yourself virtuous and thoughtful once more.” Because, really, could she put away that much cake all by herself?

[trouvaille]

He would receive no argument from those who knew her better, probably; not from her lovers, certainly, accustomed both to her failure to grasp the concept of 'other people's personal space' and to waking in the night to discover her huge eyed in the darkness. It's like sleeping with a cat is a complaint she's heard, but not yet paid any heed to. Cats are adorable. What's the problem.

--the claws, probably, a suggestion conjured by the flat way she takes in his decision to acknowledge her maid first.

Still, she says very dryly, "It's a terribly burdensome thing to me, my innately charitable nature," and nothing's actually gone horribly awry until the point at which she does sheath them in favour of scrupulous manners, so it could be going worse. Gwenaëlle is never so polite to anyone as the people she wishes would cease speaking to her.

[rowancrowned]

"There, there," he said, in a manner approximating comforting, as he sat next to her with the movements of someone much more used to wearing clothing with long trains. He reached over her for the wine- rude, Thranduil- and set to examining the label with curiosity.

"This is older than you, my dear." By his tone, he approved. Again, reaching over her- but honestly, there was so much of him that it was impossible not to end up in her space, though he was fastidiously careful not to touch her. His hair, long and white in the sunlight, did not even brush against her as he took the glass from next to the cakes and set it next to his knee.

The cork he handled in a brisk manner, not even bothering with the wax seal. Instead, from a pocket came a little knife that folded into itself. The handle was silver, inlaid with what looked to be pale opal. He opened it; and set about scratching a thin line into the neck of the bottle, all around.

"Elven-forged steel," he murmured. "I would not try this with anything else. But, ai, the risks we take to impress young ladies. Now- watch."

He pointed the neck away from them, switched the knife so the blade was facing him. A quick snap of movement- and with a pop, the first inch or so of the neck fell off a short bit away from them in the grass. Thranduil smiled at her, took up her glass, and poured the wine with a practiced gesture before offering it to her.

"It is much more impressive with sparkling wines. But I work with what I am given."

[elegiaque]

"From my lord's cellar," she says, primly, in response to his approval; it's unlikely that even his cursory acquaintance with her would have missed a husband, so presumably she means her father. It's an impersonal, distancing way to speak of him, and given the fraught, often strained nature of their relationship - that's no accident.

But he does have excellent taste in wines. And in elves, she thinks sourly, watching the top of the bottle drop to the grass, the play of light on the blade and the glass (and his hair). He would probably be charmed, so she decides not to be; accepts the glass with all the dignity of a little queen holding court, biting the inside of her lip against the reflex to smile back. Her gaze lingers a few moments on the knife's opalescent inlay - the most striking part of the entire display, drawing her eye and holding it - before dropping to the wine, fingers curling around the stem to quell the temptation to reach out and touch it.

(You can't just touch everything you see if it interests you. The lesson did stick, for as many times as she had to hear it first.)

She doesn't smile, saying, "Well, it serves its purpose all the same, I'm sure," in that same neatly pulled in tone. She does retrieve the second glass from where it had been unseen in the basket, and set it down where he might fill it for himself.

If he wanted. Whatever. She doesn't care.

[rowancrowned]

"And again, your virtuous generosity." He smiled at her, and poured himself a glass with that same practiced air before setting the bottle between them in an uneven bit of terran so that it would not tip and spill. He took a sip, and settled more comfortably, making to stay and take up her time.

The admiration of the knife did not go unnoticed. He pulled it free from his pocket, and offered it to her. It was priceless, but he handled it as he would any other knife. Perhaps if she considered his age, the endless span of it, she might realize how Thranduil knew with surety that this knife would be useless, would dull beyond what could be mended, and would need to be discarded, before he himself would be unable to use it. It was valuable because it was a knife, not because of the materials with which it had been made. Those were only pretty decorations, in truth.

"My wife was a smith." He spoke casually, as if this little tidbit of information was not lost, like most of the details about her, to time. "She made it for my begetting day many years ago, before our son was born."

[elegiaque]

Her studied reluctance to warm doesn't extend quite far enough to declining to accept the knife when it's offered to her, turning it over in her free hand as she holds her glass with the other. The inlay is smooth underneath her thumb sliding along it, and for a lady who so firmly asserted her lack of experience in anything dangerous, she's deft in opening it again one-handed.

(Begetting day probably means his birthday, she thinks, but her lips quirk when she imagines celebrating the day of a person's conception and it's a shade of her reaction to elfling.)

She almost says, was? and it isn't entirely good manners that holds her back; she's not any better with other people's feelings than her own, and it's a different tone than the one her father sometimes uses to refer to things his wife was. She's already awkward, she doesn't have to make him sad as well and sit here mired in discomfort with her perpetual inability to know what to say to that.

"Everyone I know is marrying, I think," which mostly means Gregoire, who is most of everyone important. Marcellin's mother will probably buy him a wife eventually, too, Andraste's mercy on whatever poor soul gets saddled to that. "I'm spared being anyone's wife a while yet."

The hand holding the knife is also the hand embedded with the same rift-shard as all those who came through the rifts; she flexes it, illustrative. Difficult to marry off with something like that attached.

[rowancrowned]

Births, even for elves, were messy and not wholly without danger. It was much better to celebrate the joy of creation, of being blessed by Eru and the Valar with a child. For most elves, children were born a year to the day- but Gwen needn't know that.

"This is a fault? 'Tis unusual, yes, but I have hear it- incessantly- that your people think that the business with the rifts is the fault of your 'Maker'. It is not desirable to have a lady so blessed?"

The ache had faded quickly. He had forgotten the pain in the middle of the fight, and then paid little attention to it in the days after. Now, he used the hand as he always did, with very little concern or thought the shard, except when it flared in the night and called attention to himself.

He sipped at his wine, watched the challengers. "Do your people use-- bride price? And is it paid to the husband's parents, or the wife's?"

[elegiaque]

"I haven't been blessed."

Even before Corypheus revealed the true origin of the Herald's mark, as irrelevant as it is to the many who need, badly, to believe that Trevelyan had been touched by Andraste's grace - she doesn't think she'd have looked upon it so. If it came from the Maker, why would he bestow it on someone like her? Why has he allowed all of this? Any of this? Her hand full of magic she can't understand and her blood soaking through torn clothes, praying urgently to a god she's never truly believed in...she thinks if someone came courting her for it, she'd hit him in the mouth.

Or at least think about it very hard.

"I'll take a dowry to my husband's family when I'm married," she says, after a moment; she's proud of the steadiness in her voice, simple and matter of fact. Of course she'll marry, one day, obviously. Her father will never force her, but now and then the subject of arranging something suitable comes up, all the same, and each time she shies away from it the same way. Some excuse, some fault in her suitors, or the pretense that she didn't hear him at all, actually, what conversation are they having?

It will be a victory for him, to see Guenievre's child married well. It sounds like a prison sentence to Gwenaëlle, inhabiting for the rest of her life an uneasily worn lie.

And it would matter.

No one is ever going to love her enough it doesn't matter.

"But I needn't while all this is still going on. I suppose however you look at it - it's chaos. Better it be settled and these marks better understood. People are hesitant. And I'm stuck here, that's hardly conducive to--" a derisive sound, still playing with his knife rather than looking at him, "--courtship." Which she's never been particularly cooperative with, regardless, infamously difficult creature that she is.