we all keep our sadness cupped safe in our hands ( semi - open )

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Vauquelin + YOU?
WHAT: Settling into Hightown.
WHEN: Current.
WHERE: The new Vauquelin residence, Hightown.
NOTES: Open to anyone who'd have a reason to visit her at her home. Deliveries, pick ups, important conversations as need having.

Actually moving into her new townhouse is not as involved a process as it might be; Gwenaëlle's brought her bedroom with her, not the entirety of the Vauquelin household, so most of the interiors are what had belonged to the current owner the property is now being rented from, purchased on her behalf by the Duke before he left so that she can do as she pleases with them, replace or keep the pieces she likes at her leisure. She'd not been expecting it to be her own home in quite so literal a way, and in overseeing the airing out of the place and some rearrangements made, she finds she's not entirely -

She didn't want to rely on her grandfather, but she misses him. Maybe living together here would have been pleasant.

No sense in dwelling on it, though, when there's still a hundred things to be done - messages sent to her friends and acquaintances by runner to inform them of her new abode and ensure everyone who ought to have her address has it and will have no trouble locating her now that she's (finally) out of the Gallows. She leaves Yva to unpack her belongings, pens a request for Alistair to come at his convenience because she requires his assistance, spends a solid several hours sorting through her new library inventory to see if any of it is useful or if it's all just What This Merchant Thought Would Look Impressive On His Shelves - a selection of tomes are set aside to be donated to the Inquisition, she supposes someone from the research division might come and collect them or she'll have to have someone take them down. Her own books go up, and she has the remainder of what she certainly isn't keeping out boxed up to be delivered to her landlord's current address.

It is a very nice house, and she's more pleased with it than she isn't. Visitors will be shown to the walled courtyard, where she's spread a blanket on the grass and is settled there with her writing, reading glasses balanced on her nose, hair swept back in curls.

Comments

[elegiaque]

"Thranduil," she says, thinking that at least here she doesn't expect to be challenged quite so much on that front. "I've offered him a place to live here, and he's accepted - an imperfect solution," in a tone of acknowledgment, "but serviceable for now."

It isn't anything so gauche as offering him employ; he's an agent of the Inquisition, he has work to do there, she understands these things and beyond them she understands that even accepting a place in her household that will sometimes mean feigning a subservience wholly alien to him is something that his ego must carefully navigate. A year ago, it would have been unimaginable to expect him to bend that far, she thinks.

So he will not be at her beck and call, and not dedicated to only the protection of herself and Kieran - but it soothes her to think they won't be alone here, that there will be someone capable of acting in a crisis.

"And--" this part she likes far less, "--the Templar, Ser Coupe, has taken in hand my education in the martial realm. For reasons," a bit dryly, "known only to herself."

[arcaneadvisor]

"I am certain he shall let no harm come to pass on his watch," or if he does then he will learn what it is to have a spider spool out his innards before his eyes. If there's someone here who might live through the most part or even the entirity of that, it would be Thranduil and if Morrigan must impress that upon him then she will. Aware as she is of the stakes, she will not allow harm to come to any here.

Again, how Gwenaëlle ruffles the feathers; a lady of Orlais takes up an estate in Kirkwall. A lady of Orlais places not only an elf but an elf from the rifts within her home as not a servant but a sworn sword. She takes in a strange boy - there is a gratitude that even with Gwenaëlle does not sit easily but does Morrigan not hold a secret that could destroy in the palm of her hands same as she held a tearful head in her lap when it spilled out so easily yet not? - with his mother an apostate, a witch, advisor to the empress of Orlais. What sort of household she fills as if to become something from a tale herself, filling it with that which she loves or wants to cling to.

"Kieran will no doubt pester him for tales I have left some hint of but not the full details, should there be times when a balm is needed."

As for the Templar-- "One hopes," Morrigan's voice is dry enough it's a wonder the sides of her throat haven't stuck to themselves, "she will remember where she is. In Kirkwall. In your home. Though I do imagine the terror you would be: the shards are so little understood, your words shame folk into action - if you had a blade in hand would the world not think twice at looking you in the teeth?"

Easy to say for Morrigan when she can have teeth of her own, as many and whatever shape, as she chooses.

[elegiaque]

Would it not. Gwenaëlle supposes Morrigan is right enough, and from Morrigan - after some time, after a few lessons, after feeling the weight of the knife in her hands and making herself hold onto it - it feels different than it has done, hearing the same sentiment from other voices. Perhaps because it is harder for her heart to tell her the lie behind it; there are few in the world who can say they've never disappointed her, but here she is, the one. At her side when needed, without fail,

(but maybe not always, maybe not tomorrow--)

and whose faith in her has been a star to steer by.

She dims a little, all the same, but perhaps less than she might have done. The withdrawal less harsh. She's had time to brace herself; she had known the sentiment she could expect. She'd known what Morrigan might say, she's brought it up at a time of her choosing, as ready to hear it as she could ever be.

"It puzzles me a little. What she thinks to gain, or why the matter is of such importance to her. But I didn't..." An exhale. "I'm hardly going to have it said that I'm some cowardly little girl running to her grandfather to make the cruel Templar leave her be. My uncle gave me a knife, you know - well," amending, "I think you don't. He was an Enchanter at the White Spire. He mentored Lady Leblanc," who doubtless Morrigan has not forgotten, "before it all went tits up."

Charming way with words she sometimes has, this one.

"He passed the instructions to my lord and two were made to specification, his and my own."

[arcaneadvisor]

One day, Morrigan will go. Will be gone. Will gather up Kieran and say her goodbyes but there is the world spread out before her, and to linger in a single place for good will inevitably draw Flemeth down on her. This is convenience but as it was during the Blight, it will ache more than she thought to part once more because to find people she cared for was never part of the plan yet here she is with so many this time that she would keep close to her if she could.

But life is not like that and all must make their own way eventually, even Kieran will step out into a life of his own one day without her so all she can do is hope that she's prepared him as best she can.

Gwenaëlle too, differently to the Templar, in a way more preferred t'would seem.

"Templars spend their lives in service to another thing, yet if you take her lessons with what you have, do you not come closer to a life that is yours?" As much as one ever can but better than to have to pay homage to some greater beast that wants its pound of flesh. Morrigan's lip curls at mention of the Circle but she cannot help that any more than she could help her hair from blowing in the wind, it's just the way things are. "A generous gift," she says because it is, and a surprising one from a mage.

(When she thinks mages and blades, her mind slides to blood magic but perhaps that's a bias that belongs to mages first.)

"Your family around you even when they are not with you, you do him far more credit than that one ever would." Adelaide and her petty notions and her petty little Circle, Morrigan won't waste breath on the name more than she already has with her gone to wherever she is now.

[elegiaque]

"He's dead now, no doubt. It's such a little thing, to keep it with me."

But that she does -

Morrigan, perhaps best of everyone, knows the significance of the little things that Gwenaëlle chooses to keep near herself. The eclectic collection of items that decorate her personal quarters, little touches of Chasind and Dalish and Asher's fucking bears, the things that have touched her life and linger. The jeweled comb that decorates her hair most days, a remnant of her lord blacksmith and a curious geometric pattern that a hawk-eyed Starkhavener might recognise sharing its shape with flower wreaths woven by alienage elves there to mourn their dead.

(She remembers saying to Herian, you know I can't wear this, but then, she had found a way.)

[arcaneadvisor]

"So few mages learned to survive a day without the safety of the Circle walls about them, yet even now they find their way to the Inquisition, or the Inquisition finds them."

Not that Morrigan is saying for her to be hopeful but it is what it is, it's a statement of fact and far more shocking things have happened and will happen that don't include the possibility of Gwenaëlle's uncle walking out of the wilds or someone stumbling over the top of him. There's an uncanny knack for survival in the blood here against all sorts of odds.

"Kirkwall is where it is. Where the mage rebellion grew from a spark to a wildfire, ill-controlled in the hands of a madman," Anders she might get along with better, somewhat tenuously but it doesn't change what he is and the sort of dangers it placed her or more importantly Kieran in so her lip starts to curl, "and you have a home. Who knows what might come of it."

Kirkwall had a mage underground of sorts because Morrigan might enjoy her shiny baubles as she did years ago but they aren't so easy to carry with her but a magpie enjoys many a thing and Morrigan's first and dearest love was secrets, the most tender thing that might be fed to the heart. Secret knowledge of the world she has prized for long but is that not what she collects here and now, in these little moments as she did her rings, her chains? Gwenaëlle's own she keeps same as whatever has fallen into her lap that hasn't needed to be shared in a guarded way with the world.

(A secret shared is when the power is lost, it scatters to the winds a thousand ways and no one will ever get it back.)