by arrangement; what no one ever talks about is how dangerous hope can be

[trouvaille]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Vauquelin, Benevenuta Thevenet, Martel + YOU.
WHAT: Bloomingtide catch-all.
WHEN: Bloomingtide.
WHERE: Mostly Skyhold.
NOTES: I am terrible at coming up with open starters, so this will be a place to keep planned threads tidily! If you want to do something, hit me up on matriarchal or PM my journals, or feel free to just whack up a starter if you have an idea.

 
 

Comments

benevenuta + dorian; alone at the finish line clutching his heart like a trophy

[ungovernable]

"If I had known," she says, acerbically, taking the wineskin from Dorian's increasingly unsteady hands (hers, no better), "that I was to be interrogated on the topic of - of -"

Of Hercules Hansen, whom she has no desire to discuss, and nothing left to say about. To whom she's said all there is to say. It is not something to be examined and picked apart and swooned over. It is not romantic. It is a - something that was, and they both have rather more pressing things to attend to than whatever she's worked so hard not to even imagine for herself.

"I would not," with great dignity, "have come."

It was so much easier to be angry. She drinks his wine, regardless.

[liberalum]

"Benevenuta," Dorian says, along with a sigh, "that you think just about any personal question is seeking answer under duress does not objectively make it an interrogation. For one thing, we're drinking."

He gives a languid gesture, indicating the wine in her hand, and themselves.

And they have a view. Stone balcony, banners hanging, the great hall below them, and privacy in their perch. "Have you spoken to him? You must have spoken to him. He spoke to me, and I'm hardly his type."

[ungovernable]

The reason she fails to dignify that first observation with a response is, probably, because it is an observation and he knows her entirely too well. Arguing it is a losing battle, and while she is apparently going to engage in any number of those, she will at least be choosing them with some discernment.

She says, "I have spoken to him," very neutrally, and it wouldn't be a terrible thing if this wine were a good deal stronger, she thinks, because she still feels too sober for even that answer. "I said foolish things I care to neither think about nor repeat."

Before he can ask.

[liberalum]

Dorian doesn't ask, or begin to try to. As much as he does absolutely wish to know as well as nudge Benevenuta into the comfort of saying what is ordinarily held in secret from the unwashed masses, Herc included, that did sound awfully sincere. He leans in place, attempting to align slightly inebriated instincts to get a better sense of whatever's happened behind guarded reticence.

"Foolish doesn't sound like you," he says, still light, irreverent. "Foolish angry? Foolish besotted?"

[ungovernable]

The face she pulls makes her seem the girl he is prone to calling her -

"I have, I think, I have never been anything besotted in all my life. He said he would need the services of a diplomat's clerk to draft a suitable reply to all my. All my." A gesture.

"To my foolishness."

(Of course it was like that, of course all that eloquence and grace deserts her when she tries to be honest and it becomes some stilted, formal thing - she is genuine, but she isn't honest. Speaking plainly of her heart is an unlearned habit, this diplomatic dissembler, a muscle that has atrophied from lack of use and screams painful protest at attempts to use it.)

[liberalum]

Amusement shows immediately about Dorian's eyes, reaching over to gesture that she should pass back his wineskin, as she protests as to being besotted. Wine makes her so much more susceptible to teasing. But crinkles smooth out again as she semi-explains, nearly sympathetic.

He is polite enough to steer expressions of such over the balcony.

"I'm convinced you were charming, even unintentionally," he says, instead. "And he needn't a clerk. Nor you. He's not of the courts, you know -- I'm not even sure he knows where they preside."

[ungovernable]

"If he does," she says, surrendering the wineskin, "I am certain he'd feign ignorance. I think I've never met a man who finds himself so amusing."

Although she reexamines that statement after a thoughtful pause, a sidelong glance in Dorian's direction.

"Until I came to the Inquisition, and found myself surrounded."

benevenuta + adelaide; the daughters of kings run feral

[ungovernable]

Not terribly social, lately, Benevenuta is a difficult woman to pin down; she concerns herself with her work and not much else, pleasant and easy in conversation but rarely lingering about it. She's preferred a solitude in the wake of the illness that had swept through Skyhold, and upon consideration it may have been longer than that, a while -

The waxing and waning of her moods has a new moon, however she doesn't acknowledge it.

"Of course I can make time," however, is what she finally says, when there is no polite way left to avoid saying it. She isn't even displeased, truly, just - tired. And to focus on her work has suited her, better.

[fleurdesel]

When one is busy and another preoccupied it makes for little opportunity for meeting, speaking. Normally it is Adelaide that works and Benevenuta that also works, but not quite at the same hours or with the same strict vigilance in the same way. It made making time before simpler but now?

Now they are both quite busy and preoccupied at the same time and it's made even their occasional meetings of wine and discussion difficult if not impossible to make.

Letters seemed impersonal, Sending crystals- likewise, impersonal, and thus Adelaide came to Benevenuta during a brief moment of free time, bottle of wine and two glasses in hand. If Benny had turned her down she'd have simply gone up to Dorian. He always made time for wine. "I am glad to hear it. You've been working long hours- and from me? That is saying something."

[ungovernable]

"There is much to do," she says, smiling, stepping aside that Adelaide might join her - Husband sprawled before the fireside, her work on her desk and her bed still neatly made at even this late hour. Her hair is down, at least, but that seems to have been her only concession; probable that had there not come an interruption, she'd have continued burning down her candles.

A little sigh. "We must capitalise on our successes, I think. We do well enough."

But it could be better.

[fleurdesel]

"That is an understatement." More mages and apprentices slip in day by day and arrangements must be made. Space prepared, lessons organized, mentors found. Adelaide uncorks the bottle of wine to pour Benuta a glass before pouring one for herself.

"We are gaining ground, I think. More come to the council with their concerns and we are addressing them little by little."

[ungovernable]

"For that, we can do nothing better than just as we've said we will," she says, shrewdly, taking the glass with a tilt of her head in thanks as she sits back. "What we must have now is consistency. Our actions must match our words, and we needn't be shouting them."

They're better not to, she thinks. Trumpeting their great works will breed resentment where simply doing the job -

"Let ourselves be taken for granted, a little," after a moment. "It is less counter-intuitive than it sounds."

[fleurdesel]

"To be taken for granted is to be trusted to do what we have sworn to be done. It means we have made ourselves reliable." Counter-intuitive as it might sound- it does make some manner of sense.

[ungovernable]

"I'd like to prove we can do that."

She doesn't always believe it - the council is a bag of cats on a good day, pulling in different directions for all that ostensibly, at the end of the day, they work toward the same things. Only ostensibly, if they're all honest. They should want the same things, but they don't; grapple with one another trying to drag out compromises that come close. It's tiring. She's tired.

A lot of things are tiring, currently, and she pulls a face - she's in no mood to analyse it all right now.

"But not tonight."

benevenuta + nerva; all happiness attracts the fates’ anger.

[ungovernable]

One of the few social engagements (a description she might even now give without qualifier - quite a way they have come) that Benevenuta keeps like clockwork when able is her chess game with Nerva, and this is not one of the various and sundry things she allows to fall by the wayside, no. At the agreed upon time and place (although neither of them have ever, in so many words, agreed upon time and place) she is there, and she has even managed to leave the various accoutrements of her research and other works behind.

"You are off having adventures," she says, lightly, as she sits and begins to place the pieces. "I am all jealousy."

[keeperofmagi]

Nerva is not late, she rarely is, and Gaston is in tow, tumbling happily around her feet with his tongue rolling. She is already seated, though she hadn't set the pieces, and she is - smiling to herself before Benevenuta approaches.

Which is odd, to say the least.

She raises her eyes when the mage joins her, her expression slipping into something more neutral, though something of pleasure lingers there, as if she can't quite completely tame it.

"You should not be jealous. I don't envy Fate his family. They were not a pleasure to deal with."

[ungovernable]

"How unfortunately rarely one might say otherwise," Benevenuta observes, as Husband trots under the table to investigate her boy, nudging him with an investigatorial nose. "A success in the end?"

Inasmuch as it could be considered successful, in dealing with such people, she supposes. Nerva is one given to brooding, in her observation and estimation, and she seems rather uncharacteristically warm overall - it could not have been such a disaster.

[keeperofmagi]

"I did not stab any of them, and they worked out a truce that may hold three days. If that's what you mean."

She watched Benevenuta setting up the pieces, leaning in to turn the face of one of her horsemen forward.

"There was - a complication. Fate was struck by a shard when we closed the rift, and it embedded into his hand."

[ungovernable]

"A three day truce is better than none at all," she says, philosophically, the close-mouthed smile that had been prompted by I did not stab any of them lingering in the softness of her sharp features. (Sharpened by the way she's pulled her hair back, braided up into the crown she usually wears only to travel, tight and shiny with the oil she used to smooth it up again when she'd slept in the braids that form it.)

What befell Fate merits a glance up from what she's doing.

"Ah. Well; better his hand."

Poor Sina.

[keeperofmagi]

"True." Nerva lifted her eyes to catch the softness in her expression, and her own softens a touch in response. "That is a wise way to consider it."

When it comes to Fate, however, she can't keep the worry away, and it creases her brows.

"... I suppose. I admit I - Him having one at all --" She cut off, trying to find the wording even as her frown deepened.

"... I have every reason in the world to distrust him." It was a soft statement, almost a chiding one, to herself, rather than Benevenuta. "And yet, I do."

[ungovernable]

"Trust him?"

Well. This is an interesting development, especially after bemoaning James Norrington's failure to make it stick with Pel Ashara. Faultlessly, so far as she can tell from the lack of fireworks in its ending, but all the same. (Though her investment in Nerva's happiness is a touch more personal than her largely political reasons for having approved of that particular courtship, for all that her politics are explicitly why she's spent enough time with Nerva to have developed an interest in the first place.)

"I'm not acquainted," she offers, as a prompt. Tell her all about it.

elven sing-along

[parkourprince]

Though he thought of himself as of Silvan people, there was no denying Legolas's Sindarin ancestry. It showed in his appearance, but more importantly, it showed in his voice. All Sindar were gifted with voices most fair, and his was not an exception. He could sing too, and he liked it most of all forms of art. Singing soothed, it put his mind at ease and simply it was something enjoyable, something pleasant. In Thedas, too, it was something to brighten up the filth of the world around him. The songs were various, but always melodic, always in the tongue native to him, and conveying the sense of joy and beauty more oft than the sense of grief and sadness.

It didn't matter whether he was in public, or away from the ever curious eyes, he would sing when he felt the need. And the need came often enough.

Today it was on the ramparts, in solitude, away from all for the peace and quiet that it offered. The song was of the forests and swiftly running rivers, of young fawns taking their first steps and of birds announcing the coming of spring, of flowers brightly coloured and lush green of young leaves, and the butterflies of Mirkwood, so bright and richly blue they dazzled any that saw their dance. And as he sang, sitting on the outer ledge, his fingers worked deftly on the arrows: attaching the arrowheads and the fletching.

[elegiaque]

The clear air and the quiet to be found up on the ramparts suits Gwenaëlle; often enough she can be found there of an evening, too restless to be in her quarters and finding herself some out-of-the-way place to do her writing and not be bothered. In time, probably, people will come to know to look for her here - there will be people who think to look for her - but for now, it allows a measure of solitude that she hasn't always had the luxury of. And it is enough.

Legolas' song is an interruption in her thoughts, but, tilting her head and listening, it isn't an immediately unwelcome one. It drifts up to where she has somewhat precariously clambered to the second story of a broken-down tower room, where she isn't immediately apparent to someone passing through beneath her, and it surrounds her while she works.

It's only when the song finishes that she comes down, careful, reading glasses balanced on the end of her nose and her fine skirts rumpled, dusty. She hesitates when she sees him for who he is - considers turning back around, saying nothing. More elves, of course. It can't ever just be a normal person that she encounters up here.

She recognises him, though, from the archery. Thranduil's son. Her hesitation lingers, but -

"Are you going to sing any more?"

in lieu of actual greeting, holding her sheaf of papers behind her back in a habitually girlish gesture that makes her yet younger than she is.

[parkourprince]

The noise did not escape his notice, though Legolas didn't turn immediately. He had found it common enough that someone would wind up here just as well, to seek the same he did, or they were on a patrol. It happened, it didn't move him anymore, and the sounds did not carry threat with them: no hiss of steel, no clank of metal armour or the stretch of leather as it moved. Little things that he could recognise from the most delicate of sounds that told him much about the person without a single glance tossed their way.

But he did look over when she addressed him, unhurried yet in a manner of familiarity even though they were strangers. Though he knew her face, he had no name for it, and they had not spoken previously.

"Oh? Indeed, I am," easy smile, gentle, and so was his tone, with only an eyebrow quirked a notch to betray some mirth, "To praise the stars this time, perhaps, or to praise the sea! Ah, now you see my plight, it is the choice that stalls me, for what my heart sings louder."

An arrow finished, well weighed and prepared with great care, he let it slide into the quiver beside him.

[elegiaque]

Well.

He seems friendly enough; in fact, he seems the friendlier of he and his father, but Thranduil is a puzzle she isn't sure it's wise for her to try and solve. (And people aren't puzzles, she reminds herself, do not stay conveniently solved or in the places where you left them--) She hasn't anywhere urgent to be and she'd liked the song, so after a moment where she almost visibly considers leaving again, she takes the inch given by his easy familiarity and exchanges it for a mile, gathering her skirts in one hand and going to sit - not on the ledge. What if she fell? No. She sits on the stone below, taking her spectacles from her nose and affixing them back to the chain that attaches to the waist of her bodice, close enough to say she's joined him while leaving enough space for good manners.

If he's going to sing again, she's going to stay. For a bit.

"I'd sooner turn my back on the stars than the sea," she says, thumbing through paper, scrutinizing her own writing. "As untrustworthy as a heart. If you're taking requests," with a quirk of her lip, a little bit playful in the edged way she can't help, "I'd very much like to hear a song about the sea."

She likes poems about hearts, too, as awful as they are.