when they tell you you are made of stars, tell them you know.

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Vauquelin, Petrana de Cedoux, Benevenuta Thevenet & Galatea Lourdes + SPECIAL GUEST: YOU.
WHAT: A Wintermarch catch-all.
WHEN: Wintermarch.
WHERE: Kirkwall.
NOTES: Somewhere for me to put planned, closed threads! Hit me up on keanuleaves or libbitybibbit#8828 if you desire one.

Comments

galadriel.

[elegiaque]

( Everything is displeasing.

Guilfoyle had been far from pleasant to wake up to; the fire, even less. (Her birds are all right—the entirety of their small menagerie, in fact—but there had been a stretch of time, locked in the storeroom, where she'd entertained terrible and painful ends for all of them.) Being locked in a storeroom without most of her clothes; emerging from it to discover that Thranduil had made for Orlais without so much as a by-your-sodding-leave—

Go to the Gallows for the winter! Save a bit of coin on heating that great big house! Enjoy a bit of time closer to your loved ones! Enjoy it, has she? Has she, fuck.

Hardie lumbers to his feet when it looks like Gwenaëlle might, but instead she bites off the end of her thread and stabs the needle with slightly more force than is necessarily required to mend a shirt. It isn't her shirt. It is safe to conclude Galadriel knows perfectly well whose shirt it is, since he was recently on the crystals, refusing to murder his father-in-law. )

I think, actually, that it's time to do away with men entirely.

[laurenande]

A bold decision, but one I can find little objection to.

[Galadriel, for her part, had been quietly winding fiber into thread. It was and remained an activity she found very calming and, forced to remain in one place with her newest cousin, she required some measure of calm. Unlike Gwenaëlle, however, she is not over concerned for Thranduil or, for that matter, Gwenaëlle's father.

She, of course, would have slaughtered the man wholesale...but she is a less forgiving sort than Thranduil.

Ah, but that is a strange thought, isn't it, and she looks up from the thread she winds to the mortal woman across from her. Her smile is wan, but holds a thread of genuine amusement.]

We could run away together, you and I. It would certainly startle him upon his return.

[elegiaque]

( It startles a laugh out of her that softens some of the harsher edges, the stiff and sudden way she's been moving—it suits her better, so there's that. )

That would serve them all right, ( she opines, as Hardie slowly lays back down, his legs sprawled out towards the fireside keeping them warm; probably nothing is about to go terribly wrong again. Leviathan the nug nestles down again too, currently trying to live a little nug life on the top of Hardie's back, and at least Galadriel doesn't also have to endure the incessant repetition of the birds.

They, mercifully, have been relegated to the room Gwenaëlle officially occupies, where Yva and most of her luggage reside. ) If we just left.

( Someone put her in a glorified cupboard. )

[laurenande]

Ah but should he find us there would be no end to the letters.

[Or his attempting to lure her into reading his heart from afar, but she is not seriously entertaining the idea of running away. She glances sidelong at Gwenaëlle as she twists the fine thread between her fingers. The woman is stiff, drawn taut and restless, and Galadriel finds she can blame her little. She has had a very trying time.

Convincing someone as strong willed as Gwenaëlle to relax would be rather like attacking a stone wall with harsh language. Another route, perhaps.]

I find I am growing restless in this place, trapped with the threat of winter all around. I must get out, stretch my legs, and regain some semblance of my strength.

Should I begin training, would you join me. It is a fine distraction.

[And it is a comfortable bit of knowledge, knowing you possess the strength to kill nearly anyone in any given room.]

araceli.

[ungovernable]

( The note that arrives for Araceli is, of course, nothing so gauche as a summons. )

Mistress Bonaventura,

I can only describe myself as immensely glad to have discovered you are yet with us, and I will dare to hope my own return to the Inquisition fold might be greeted as warmly. It has been some time since we last spoke in Skyhold; dare I further hope we might have more to say to one another after such time? Allow me the small imposition on your time and join me in my workspace this afternoon - I have brought a number of Nevarran teas you may enjoy.

Lady T.

( but nevertheless, she is expected at the set time. Benevenuta is attended, as ever, by the companionship of Husband and Max—the former beneath her desk chair, and the latter near the doorway, to better inspect visitors. There is water boiled, and tea steeping, and the room smells of spice and magic and Benevenuta's musky perfume. )

[foxsays]

There had been rumour that the Inquisition had returned with a plus one not from the rifts, and that it had very much been a return so the letter has Araceli smiling, definitely clearing out her day so she can be there on time.

A more polished girl to turn up at Benevunta's workspace, all smiles, a murmur to a dog large enough to give her pause when she arrives.

"Lady Thevenet, I'm so glad to see you again!" Sincere in a way she usually is but wouldn't need to be with all people who might return to the fold, Araceli can push down some embarrassment at what she must know if Lady Vivas knows it too. "How have you been? Oh there's so much to tell you now even since we landed in Kirkwall." How much has she missed someone who knows all this better than her?

A great deal, apparently.

[ungovernable]

And if this isn't something to lighten her heart, then what is? Benevenuta rises—a fur-lined shawl the concession to the weather that her neckline is not, skirts thick and sweeping when she moves—and clasps her hands in warm greeting, ushering Araceli into the space and past the sentinel mabari.

(He is getting fat and spoiled in her care, but he is an old man like his master was, and in her opinion at least one of them ought to be fat and happy in his twilight years.)

“My dear, I'm all the better for such a welcome! Come; sit. Tell me everything.”

No, really.

[foxsays]

So many left - people like herself who hopefully returned home (though now it's less certain, what becomes of them, she's not so sure these days) or those who went elsewhere in Thedas to continue their work for the Inquisition or themselves - but so rarely do they come back. The squeeze in return is gentle before making herself comfortable, wondering where best to begin but of course, it comes to her.

"You can't have missed the garden Kirkwall boasts now where a Chantry once stood." It could sound light but for her mouth twisting; Sina is dead, no loyalty is owed here when they'd argued over it without making any peace on that account. There aren't so many people Araceli would let her feelings known plainly before but Benevenuta has earned that candour. "It's not entirely the beginning of all that went on but if looking for a place to start, that might be the easiest when I know most of it, a little less involved with certain matters together though it starts the same: people who don't think about the ripples when a stone is cast in the water, all those it touches, who do a thing because they believe they have the right."

kostos.

[ungovernable]

( In an ideal world, they'd never have seen one another again.

Of course, even before the war and the rise of Corypheus, it had been perfectly obvious that Thedas is not an ideal world. Still. She'd have preferred that her little kingdom, at least, contain fewer Averesches. None would suit her. It is, perhaps, the cost of venturing out into the world to which they'd been exiled; one runs rather more risk of coming across them, 'anywhere but the place they aren't supposed to be'. She'd come back to the Inquisition armed with intelligence ferreted out from the halls of the Nevarran court—

and who better to sift through it all with her than someone in such a unique position to testify to her adroit maneuvering of the information that passes through her hands. Much of it will need translation, and that they could do separately, of course, but Benevenuta has past experience with several ciphers key to doing those translations, and two heads, apparently, are better than one.

She thinks longingly of banging his head into something, which does put a mildly threatening cast on her faint, distracted smile. )

[exequy]

[ Kostos would have been content to ignore her presence entirely for however long it takes for her to go away again—again because there was some overlap, some time when he was blending into the crowd of the Inquisition's rebel mages, sleeping in a tent in that Maker-forsaken frozen valley, and heard her name, and immediately developed a headache. But he never saw her then. He'd been doing his best to never see her now. Unfortunately, the Gallows is a much smaller enterprise, with far fewer people fluent in Nevarran, so. Fantastic.

Fortunately, he's a quick study and a steady worker, and he expects this will be over soon. In the meantime he doesn't say much. If anything requires deciphering he can't do himself, he passes it wordlessly into the space between them—but when he makes the mistake of looking up and finds her smiling, his eyes narrow, and he returns to writing with a slight amount of unprovoked aggression toward the defenseless paper.

For the record, he has no intention of testifying to her adroit handling of anything. ]

gwenaëlle

[rowancrowned]

It takes a week for him to make his way back to her. He is slower in the returning than the leaving—no desire to wear out his horse, which until two days ago was someone else’s. He is no horse thief, but instead had been changing them on the road as he went for fresh ones, determined to make it to Emeric Vauquelin with all possible haste.

And now—now, he is thinking different thoughts than when he left. Adapting. He will need to pay the price for being absent when his room caught fire—for the room catching at all, for whatever additional lies Coupe had to tell to protect him. Perhaps he will go to the Nightingale or Cassandra if pressed too hard. Not with the motivation, but the act. ‘I am an elf’ will be what they assume, what he will encourage. And it was true.

He makes it back to the Gallows with no incident, through the frozen harbor, across the iced-over courtyard. In the saddlebags, he has a few treats to assuage the pain caused by the blockade, a benefit of being in an Orlesian market. Trinkets, only.

He need to see her. Needs to hold her, verify that she’s well. He trusts Coupe very much and Galadriel absolutely, but he must see.

The knock at her door is light, and done in the evening. The hallway is deserted, for now, quiet. They will need to take more precautions, going forward, and he will not hesitate to use his Craft more, but she must, must be safe.

[elegiaque]

It takes too damned long is how long it takes—oh, it could have been longer, but it could have been a single day and she'd still have greeted him the same way, opening the door with a frown and then continuing to frown up at him for longer than he would probably like for her to do when they're being 'discreet' and 'sensible' and 'waiting for a closed door between them and the rest of the Gallows'. The hall is deserted now, who knows who might be around a corner—

He isn't who she's angry at, he's just who's in front of her right now. Gwenaëlle opens the door wider (Hardie is sleeping on the end of the bed behind her, and Leviathan sleeping on top of him as is becoming their usual wont) and exhales very deeply.

“Tell me what happened.”

[rowancrowned]

He does not obey immediately. Thranduil looks at her instead, takes in the whole of her— safe, uninjured— and holds it, uses it to wipe away the last of his fears.

He owes Coupe a debt.

No talking, just an arm about her waist as he steps forward, glad the door was open so wide and stepping beyond the frame and into the room proper, his hand over hers on the knob and tugging it closed.

“I returned Guilfoyle to your father, unharmed,” achey, perhaps, but it was not Thranduil’s fault if he was old, “—and your father and I had a conversation. An accord was reached.”

The spirit of which he will hold to, absolutely, if not the terms. He will be sending a letter to Romain, soon.

“I am very sorry, Gwenaëlle, for leaving you.” And now, the apology, holding her hand in both of his, not risking an embrace until he is assured of her temperament, as much as he wants to feel the solidity of her in his arms. She will not be truly safe until he makes everything right, but that may well take years, time he finds himself loathing.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle had known what had happened the moment she'd looked up to the familiar crags of Guilfoyle's face, even if processing it in the moment had been difficult, whatever sedative he'd mixed with the magebane dragging sluggishly through her system—he does nothing without the say-so of her father. If he were there, knives out and flames licking the walls, it had been at Emeric's behest. She thinks she should feel something more at Thranduil's confirmation, but it has weighed on her mind since that moment and it's hard to muster more, now.

She frowns at nothing, and pushes his hands out of her way to lean against him, dissatisfied with this account of things but not sure, precisely, what answer would have been better.

(She never had any real expectation of his actually killing her father.)

“What accord was this,” she says, question in the words if not her still-flat tone, hands settling flat against his back and her eyes closing. She should acknowledge his apology, but might suppose her position does it for her.

Gwenaëlle

[overharrowed]

Julius doesn't know most of the details of the fire, beyond "there was one" and "it didn't substantially damage his office." He's not entirely sure if that's because no one knows the details or because he hasn't yet befriended the right person to get that kind of gossip from; either way, he's not concerned for her particularly because of the fire.

That said, it is indirectly the fire that makes him seek her out. Since it happened, he's been working on an idea for a system of fire-retardant glyphs that might protect her Hightown property from a similar misfortune whenever they move back. (He still has details to sort out -- perhaps, he thinks, he'll ask Myr -- but the theory seems sound enough to him.)

(If it's the fact that he was used to dining with her and Kieran practically every evening and he hasn't seen her in awhile that's moving him in her direction, well, that's not something he's strictly conscious of.)

Still, it's early evening when he goes looking; too early for her to be preparing for bed, but late enough he's not going to be interfering in the day's business (probably).

[elegiaque]

With more than enough on her mind to occupy any one person for some time, Gwenaëlle hasn't given much thought beyond the passing to Julius since their (temporary, Maker be merciful) relocation to the Gallows; presumably he'll go about his business much as he did before, with less travel time. It's a bit strange to spend so much time without Kieran, to eat privately with Thranduil more frequently than she's grown accustomed to, but not—fire and subsequent fallout notwithstanding—unpleasant.

He's far from unwelcome, though, just a surprise—

“Hello,” she says, not quite all the way to puzzled. There are people Gwenaëlle would be genuinely bewildered to find in front of her door, and she'll grant that someone she normally shares a home with is not one of them. “I wasn't expecting any company.”

It's a prompt, rather than a dismissal. Presumably, there's a reason he tracked her down—probably Yva would have directed him on, occupying the room that any official record will say is Gwenaëlle's.

[overharrowed]

"Hello," he says, with a smile that's not quite sheepish, but a little self-conscious. "I hope I'm not intruding. I had some ideas, after the fire, about some potential upgrades to your home's security when you're ready to return. I suppose I could have made an appointment by crystal, but I thought it might save some time to simply stop by."

He feels, inexplicably, a bit relieved to see her looking relatively well. If he lingered over the feeling, he'd probably suppose that taking on the responsibility for someone's safety is a bit easier than putting the responsibility down again. But he chooses not to linger over it, dismissing it as a not terribly relevant feeling to dwell upon.

[elegiaque]

The surprise is more pleasant than not, then, and Gwenaëlle opens the door wider to let him in; she's unattended for the evening, other than by Hardie sleeping curled around a small boot-wearing nug, also asleep. A brazier warms the room, and there's seating enough that no one has to sit awkwardly on a bed while they discuss whatever it is that he has in mind—magic, she presumes, and that in itself makes it intriguing enough to hear out at once.

Magic isn't, still, something with which she has great familiarity or comfort, beyond what she's grown accustomed to of Morrigan—and it's rare that mages besides Morrigan have much to say to her on the subject of magic, particularly.

Mostly, she doesn't ask. It isn't the same as not being interested.

“What did you have in mind? I assume it's fire-related. Or...?”

Petrana

[overharrowed]

[Continued from here.]

Sometime after -- though not terribly long after -- their conversation over the sending crystals, Julius raps politely on the door frame of her office. "I brought some wine, though I can pretend I didn't if you want to keep this very strictly a business meeting."

If they're going to talk about Uldred, though, he's going to need it later if they don't drink it now.

[ipseite]

As an opener, it certainly sets the tone for what she ought to expect from this conversation; Petrana lets her expression turn wry, a little, rising from behind her desk. (It still seems—and feels—overlarge for her, but she grows accustomed, and it isn't as if she lacks for work to spread across it.)

“I have glasses,” she says, waving him to the more comfortable seating by the fireside, which she's been particularly diligent about tending to, lately. Merciful that her spaces were spared the worst of it, though there's only so much they've all been able to do about the slight lingering smell of smoke. “I will follow your lead.”

[overharrowed]

"Excellent." He comes in and takes one of the seats she indicated. "I haven't any idea if you already have an opinion about the Circles, one way or the other. There's certainly no shortage of people in the Inquisition ready to offer theirs, and I'm not trying to convert you, with this story or generally. But the little I've gathered, magic isn't exactly the same in other places."

[ipseite]

The wryness is different, slightly, when she says, “It is a source of persistent bemusement to me that so many of you imagine I might have come to the position I now hold without considering such things and what has seemed to me to be a self-evident necessity that I acquaint myself with the matters of the world that is now mine, and have my opinions on it.”

It's not a personally aimed remark, particularly, so much as Julius has given her the opportunity to make it by repeating something she's heard numerous times already. It doesn't exactly bode well for what people here expect of those in leadership, but then—

well, she's seen for herself.

She will simply have to be better.

Petrana; late in Phase One

[overharrowed]

Julius talks himself into and out of checking on Petrana several times before he actually does it. He is sure that someone as well-placed as she is will have plenty of people checking on her; on the other hand, she's still a rifter and, perhaps, more alone than she gives the impression of being. Ultimately, he decides, if he checks in and she's already in someone else's care, no harm done.

His knock -- knocks, really, go unanswered, and finally he tries the door. It is unlocked, saving him the decision of whether breaking in was entirely necessary. "Hello?" he says, as he lets himself in, "I'm sorry to intrude I was just ... concerned." The pause is less because he didn't know what to say than because he's surprised at the state of her, past immediately being able to hide it.

[ipseite]

Even in the winter chill, Petrana looks overheated, damp with sweat and feverish; frazzled and out of sorts, unable to quite be still, her bedding a mess as the result of her tossing, turning, tossing herself out of bed entirely and back into pacing, robe that she'd belted at the waist sitting oddly on her for having been haphazardly done. For a woman so ordinarily put together, precise, it is a marked departure from the norm and she looks blankly back at him for a long moment, then frowns, spins on her heel, striding back to the (open) window.

It chills the room, but it doesn't actually help worth a damn.

“I wasn't getting anything done,” she says, agitated.

This may not have been what concerned him.

[overharrowed]

"You aren't the only one," he observes, mostly recovering his regular demeanor, for all the worry doesn't completely disappear. "I presume you haven't been sleeping. Have you spoken to any of the healers, or..."

Julius' manner is gentle, but the truth is, he hadn't expected it to be quite this bad and he doesn't really know what to do for her. He isn't at all sure he can do anything, but it also feels wrong to just leave her like this.