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]

"There's a sun room between yours and mine," she says, half-turning when he goes past (Hardie rolls over in the grass to look up at him, too, inquisitive), "both doors to which lock. And I've a door to Kieran's room," the key to which she will keep, for safekeeping and both of their privacy.

Her hands rest in the blanket spread beneath her and she relaxes by increments as she gets her way, breathes a little easier.

"You can do what you please with your rooms, I don't mind."

[rowancrowned]

Thranduil has no compunction for easing onto his knees beside Hardie, offering his hand-- someone ought to remember him, if vaguely, from the few weeks when thoughtful gift was potential obligation-- and scratching him under the chin.

"I think," he says, "we have covered most of my objections."

Doubtless, more will arrive as they work out the difficulties of living together, but he is optimistic. He turns his attention from Hardie to Gwenaelle, matching the hint of a pleased expression with one of his own.

[elegiaque]

Hardie sniffs at him a moment, the testing way of an animal seeing if a familiar person has brought home any unfamiliar smells, and then lolls backwards in unsubtle suggestion as to what Thranduil could be doing with his hands, which is obviously rubbing his belly. Gwenaëlle rolls her eyes, but not without fondness. For either of them. Somehow.

"Then it's settled," she says, firmly, as if saying so makes it real and harder for him to regret and undo.

(Ask a little less, and get a little more.)

She watches them a moment, in the grass.

"Ser Coupe will come in a few days time to choose a training space. I think perhaps the ballroom. If it doesn't suit that, I'll do something else with it."

But from the outset: she does not mean to be setting herself up as a hostess.

[rowancrowned]

And so it goes- Thranduil, long-suffering, acquiescing to the demands of one dog and one young woman. He considers Ser Coupe, his unlikely ally if in only this, and stands back up, offering his hand to Gwenaëlle so that she might lift herself.

"I think I would like to see the rest of the house."

He will not be moving in immediately- it would not be polite to take his leave of the Inquisition so suddenly, and he suspects that as a Rifter and as an elf there will be paperwork- and it gives him a chance to stay with her just a little while longer. The property is large enough that they won't chafe living together, but he wants to see as much of it as possible. They live differently in the Free Marches than in Ferelden, and this visit to Kirkwall seems decidedly less spider infested.

"Have you hired staff?"

[elegiaque]

"Bon-papa - that is, my grandfather took it in hand before he decamped." Orlesian all the way down to her toes, for all that she misses Orlais little. "I expect to find his choices well enough, though I have written Guilfoyle that I want him to provide me any names he think might serve me better."

As tempting as it is to demand him; no. Better he stay where he's most needed, keeping her father in hand and occasionally putting the fear of Guilfoyle in visiting dwarves who know full well which of the two is the more pressingly dangerous.

She rises with her hand in Thranduil's, tucks it at his elbow as she leads him into the house proper. Little is personal to her yet about its layout or its decoration, but it's self-evident that she has plans, and beyond that, the eclectic way that she'd decorated her room in Skyhold might well speak for itself that she will, in time, leave her fingerprints throughout this new home.

"But I've not had any complaints yet. I don't know all of their names, but Yva does." And obliges her mistress when Gwenaëlle wishes to be able to address her servants by name when she sends for them for one reason or the next.

[rowancrowned]

Pleased, he notes the state of the shubbery with keener eyes. Whatever house and table Romain would build for Gwenaëlle- whatever Romain would have built and kept for himself, had he not been pulled away- is the exact sort of taste Thranduil must come to associate and judge class and decorum of the rest of Orlais by. Romain has always been tasteful, a hawk among songbirds, and Thranduil resolves to find his hand wherever it might be in the decoration and organization of the house.

Elven and Orlesian manners meld well enough as she settles in next to him, and she could be any lady. This, he knows how to do, matching his steps to hers and allowing himself to be guided while giving the appearance of escorting her.

"A cook?" he supposes. "And Yva, and perhaps someone to aid her, maids..."

He will not have a Yva, and he will learn their names on his own. They pass through halls and he notes the start of projects, contemplates what she might do, and the tall walls and high ceilings that Kirkwall's wealthy seem to favor.

"May I beg a favor of you, my lady?"

[elegiaque]

"I've no need of two lady's maids," she says, dismissively, of Yva being given any assistance. "There is a housekeeper, a cook. Maids, footmen, a groundskeeper. I've a woman from the Inquisition minding my horse, but she's other duties as well, so there's a stablehand, of course..."

The thought trails off into nothing in particular. He will acquaint himself with the household in due course, and she is admittedly still a little bit vague on all of the details herself. There's much to be done, though she favors much the same decorative restraint as her grandfather; her home will never be gaudy.

She's leading him upstairs, to show him where he will be quartered, and the way the room between theirs catches the sunlight; she glances up, from his side.

"What favor?" Too much herself to just say yes. Naturally.