i try my best to become poetry. i take a bath and stain the water with black ink.

[trouvaille]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Vauquelin + YOU.
WHAT: Gwenaëlle arrives in Skyhold, etcetera.
WHEN: The current AC period.
WHERE: Skyhold.
NOTES: She is arriving with a retinue, including resources for the Inquisition (a physician who will join the healers included) and her own maid. Also, if you prefer spam to prose, no problem! I will match however you tag in.

( FOR ANDERS )
Gwenaëlle does not seek out a healer herself.

She sends her lady's maid - Katell, a Halamshiral-born elf - to give the anxious request that her lady does not wish to come to the healer's tents and won't he please accompany her back to the lady's rooms?

The small suite that Katell shows him and his accompaniment to is still in the midst of being unpacked for Gwenaëlle's comfort, but even in the arrival chaos it's plain that someone (presumably the Comte Vauquelin) has gone to great efforts to make her as comfortable as can be done, making the rooms a small oasis of Orlesian familiarity, decorated as befits a young woman of her station and inclinations. Silk hangings, art, an already mostly full bookshelf, a full length mirror, her own bedding - and the prideful creature herself sitting on a cushioned chaise, her back stiff and straight, her small hands fidgeting anxiously with the edge of her robe until a moment after the door opens, flattening immediately.

It presents an immediate explanation as to why she might not have wanted to come down to the healing tents; the bandages pressed against the thin robe tell a story that she might not want to go down where she doesn't feel entirely safe to undress.

( FOR ADELAIDE )
It's with some reluctance that Gwenaëlle seeks out the woman she persists in thinking of as Councilor Leblanc rather than Gregoire's sister; he had been persuasive, but she hadn't forgotten that he'd never actually met his older sister. A person could write anything in a letter. Had they even exchanged letters? It hadn't occurred to her to ask, too fixated on the fact he hadn't done anything else - only there's no one else here she might claim anything like acquaintance with and he did promise, and inasmuch as she trusts anyone, she might trust that Gregoire wouldn't make her a promise he didn't at least try to keep. She will, she decides, graciously not blame him for it when this goes awry. She won't even say she told him so. She will let her disappointed silence speak for itself. It will be a very short letter.

He will be so sorry.

At least Cyprienne isn't here to see her fall on her face. She squares her shoulders and dismisses Katell, carrying on up to the battlements (a bit of privacy at this hour - no one needs to see her fall on her face) unaccompanied with a shawl pulled close against the chill in the air, her face bare of the Orlesian mask she'd worn on her journey. It feels strange and uncomfortable to go without it, but she's observed enough of Skyhold in the short time she's been here to hesitate to so visually separate herself, however much she might like to be separate in as many way as possible. Even Madame de Fer is seen here bare-faced -

And if it's good enough for her, then Gwenaëlle is not going to be the one to suggest Lady Vivienne has misstepped. She's stuck here for the foreseeable future; she has to try to adapt. To learn. To be smart whether it's comfortable or not.

"Lady Leblanc?"

( FOR ANYONE )
Having reached the end of her journey to Skyhold, Gwenaëlle isn't entirely sure what - happens next. Her father had sent her here because what else could he do, but he'd been understandably vague about what he imagined being there might entail for her, and she had her doubts that anyone would be interested in helping her figure it out. They all had better things to be doing than paying any heed to some Orlesian debutante with a shard in her hand; what use is that going to be to the Inquisition? It isn't as if they could send her off to close rifts.

It probably isn't as if they'd do that, she thinks, with a spike of fear.

So- for a lack of anything to do with herself (and with Katell engaged in the business of unpacking and organising her accommodation, and for the time being no relief to be found in retreating there), she explores. She goes to see what everyone else does with their time, peering into anywhere she isn't hurried away from, huge eyed and a little bit suspicious.

Comments

[glandival]

It's early evening and Sabine is pink around her faded freckles when she emerges from the tavern, having started a little early in order to be best make herself scarce when it all gets a bit rowdier, manlier, humaner. It isn't wholly necessary, but more instinctual, and her spirits are relatively high as she steps out onto the battlements.

She is holding the lidded tankard she brought with her for the purposes of filling it with fragrant beer upon leaving again, and she holds this at a loose hover as she hops along the stone. She is dressed simply, practical and beskirted but not entirely servantly, some character and sturdiness about the sleeves, the cut of her neckline, the touches of wooden jewellery.

With a sharp turn and a flap of woollen skirt, she propels herself around a corner, and stops short upon half-running into someone, beer sloshing heavily in hand.

[trouvaille]

"Excuse me," comes the somewhat affronted 'greeting' from 'someone' - perhaps not an unfamiliar someone, in the shape of her mouth and eyes unusually bare of the Orlesian masks, the way that she twitches her skirts with her fingers as she steps sharply and suddenly backwards to avoid the slosh of what is undoubtedly cheap Fereldan pig-swill. In this elf girl's handling of it she can find fault only in that it might spill on her, because Maker knows it hardly warrants being treated with any respect on its own dubious merits, and it smells appalling--

Her eyes narrow as her chin lifts and she studies said clumsy elf girl down the length of her aristocratic nose.

"I know you," she says, abruptly. "Don't I."

[glandival]

Whoops. Sabine hefts the tankard a little higher, a hand touching its base to inspect the run off -- fortunately, only a little has escaped, but what doesn't escape is notice that she is definitely more concerned with the state of her beer as opposed to anyone saying 'excuse me' in that inflection.

But inevitably, she looks over, and isn't shy as to her expression as her nose wrinkles and she squints, recognition slapping her in the face at about the same time.

"Lady Vauquelin," she says, before she can say no. This is probably where she should bow her head and shuffle aside, but her hand only grips her drink tighter as she gazes at Gwen directly, and then up and down as if frisking her for clues. "You were not here for the soiree."

Which means: what are you doing here now?

[trouvaille]

Gwenaëlle doesn't fight her rising irritation, watching Sabine prioritize that vile drink over her dignity (probably, she thinks uncharitably, because she has so little experience with dignity to know how to properly respect it). She hides her clenching hands in the folds of her gown, because she is very familiar with her own dignity and what is and is not appropriately ladylike.

A lady doesn't fly into a rage at the drop of a hat, just because some - some -

Well, a lady just doesn't. She can hear the Comtesse's voice in the back of her mind, so her jaw tightens and she doesn't say the first several things to come to mind, finally settling on,

"I was not," in a bored tone of voice that does not suggest she intends to explain herself to the likes of Sabine. "How astutely observed."

[glandival]

Knowing the effect it has, Sabine listens while licking bitter ale off her fingers, one at a time, and then drying her hand with a few coarse slaps against her own skirt.

"And you are here now," she says, with further astute observation. She tips her head, now in the shadow of a curtsey, affecting just a fraction of the manner she had adopted back in Orlais. "I'll beg your pardon, it is only I would never have expected your ladyship to be here. It is a cold, rough place, and you are so fair."

[trouvaille]

The resemblance between Gwenaëlle and her late lady mother is mainly evident in shared mannerisms; she has never been so much the Comtesse's creature as in the way her mouth becomes a thin, tight line of repressed annoyance. Taller, blonder and a good deal more deft in the Game than Gwenaëlle, Annegret Vauquelin had been a force in the household and Halamshiral even from the sickbed to which she'd rarely left toward the end. And she would have handled this better, probably, known the most effective way to brush someone aside without appearing to have even stirred herself to do so.

Not for the first time, she wishes she'd been a better student, less volatile and more calculated. The art of the invisible set down, the smiling dismissal - she has no gift for anything that requires disguising her displeasure.

"Well, I pardon you," she says, flatly. "That matters in Skyhold do not arrange themselves to be most clear to you is hardly your fault." She is being positively charitable, for all that her disapproving look lingers on the damp place where Sabine dried her hand on her dress.

[glandival]

So charitable, and Sabine's smile is sweet, if a little toothier than is polite. She'd made a better act of this when it was actually her job to comb the brat's hair, and now it is not. That duty must rest on some poor elf dragged here too.

Something that warrants investigation, certainly.

"I will have to pay better attention," she agrees. "But we are subjects now of the Inquisition banner. Perhaps if I can be of assistance, you can ask for Sabine. Or if you would like to learn your way around a weapon? It is dangerous as much within these walls as outside of them, often."

[trouvaille]

Yes.

That sounds like a great idea.

Inviting this creature near her with a knife. (And it is only a knife she imagines Sabine with - there is just something about it that seems fitting. And...declasse. Or maybe that's what she thinks is so fucking fitting.)

"I have every faith I will not require your assistance," she says, too prickly-sharp and proud for what would have been Annegret's liking; Gwenaëlle will never be one to glide through her life or past moments such as this. "How gracious of you to offer."

It sounds, in all likelihood, as sour as it tastes in her mouth.