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

[lionheartedman]

"Not much of an appetite," he admits, crossing the space between them and folding himself to sit near her. Maybe folding isn't the right word. It's sort of a slow motion collapse, but he's still in control of his own body, more or less. He's just tired. He's tired all the time now. "I think the problem is more about sleep than food. The cooks do an admirable job of feeding so many mouths." Which isn't to say he eats it, but still.

Hardie is still watching him intently, and Cullen removes a glove and holds out a hand, curled in a loose fist to let the dog smell his knuckles. Once that formality has passed, he holds his hand, palm out, and then drops it parallel to the ground, smiling to see the dog drop from his seated position, stomach on the ground, though he still looks alert. "Smart boy," he says quietly. Then, to Gwen, "I'm glad you've made it out of there, though, and... I'm sorry about your grandfather." He doesn't know why she didn't come to him about it, perhaps because he managed to put his foot in his mouth on the subject of her learning to fight, but he's here now.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle observes him - perhaps better than he'd like. Listens, too, and hears the absence of words, such as: whether or not one of those mouths is his own. She recollects the untouched plates, last they saw one another, for all that she'd had other pressing matters on her mind. And if she says nothing of it now, well; she marks it, all of it, and sooner or later she will see something different or she will speak up.

"Orlais or Orlais," she says, instead, of her grandfather. "It does one thing only, and that is take. He was never going to remain indefinitely."

And his absence is...complicated. His presence was complicated. She'll miss him, but in some ways missing him will be easier than she'd found it to navigate not needing to - especially after everything with Guenievre. A representation of everything she isn't, really, a reminder. She loves her grandfather, she's glad that he loves her, but even before touching upon her willfulness and her reluctance to be seen as no more than his granddaughter, his love pricks at her guiltily, a deceitful, deceived thing. His favourite, and not his blood.

[lionheartedman]

"Well, yes-- Still, he is your family." That means something to Cullen, it always will, and he is feeling the ache of the absence of his own family very keenly. Things were better with Mia around. Things are always better with Mia around. Not that he would wish life in Kirkwall on her, though he's sure she would find a way to thrive.

Those thoughts have been creeping in more and more often. Not thoughts of Mia specifically, but thoughts of what he no longer has in his life, things that he has lost. He sighs. "If you wish to send for something, I'll drink with you, but please don't go to any trouble on my account.

[elegiaque]

She snaps her fingers briefly and says, "Tea," when the unobtrusively lingering maid straightens, then nods with a murmured milady and disappears back into the house. If her servants frown upon her so frequently being alone with a succession of increasingly strange men, they're none of them in a position to object, and for the time being the generosity with which they're being paid is worth keeping idle gossip to a minimum so as not to risk a swift cull of the untrustworthy.

That done--

"My grandfather,"

a hesitation.

"Family is complicated," she says, finally. "I've much family I'd not be pleased to see, nor sorry to see the back of. I will miss him, but I miss very little about Orlais." If she's being honest.