faderift | (no subject)

He will have to pay the piper when it comes to the matter of Guilfoyle and the errant fire—it will, as ever, remain a stain on his reputation, though he hardly cares to exorcise it, for to do so, he would have to reveal there was an assassin, and the whys of it. Gwenaëlle’s reputation and secrecy are far more important than a wound to his pride that is hardly a wound at all. Those who ought to know better do.

But then there is the material of Galadriel, who will find fault in another matter entirely—that he failed to stop Guilfoyle before he started the fire, the idea that he may well be weak, faltering, in need of protection.

(Mirkwood has never needed anything from Lothlórien, least of all protection.)

Still, he cuts precious time from his work on spirits and bonds and comes to join her on the steps, obligation-bound to address her concerns before returning. He keeps pace with her—man-like, she may be, and stronger than the normal elleth, but in this at least he can keep up, although anything but an hour or two will have him sweating, as they now do here.

“… and then I returned to Kirkwall,” he finishes, having recounted the whole of the story of the matter to her, for her, buzzing still with thoughts that intrude and tell him she ought to have come to him—that leaving his office at all was wasteful.

Thranduil has questions that the books can’t answer. Thranduil has a perfectly good magister sitting in his tower, whom he cannot question, cannot trust, cannot glean any information from. It irritates him like a missing tooth, an absence he must probe at between tasks, always at the back of his mind.

Eventually, it drives him from his desk, from the opened books and scribbled notes, to the library where Atticus is, under Templar guard.

“You,” he says, to Atticus, “—come. You, stay,” to the Templar, who buzzes in his mind. Lyrium’s whispering is like a wasp trapped inside a glass on the best days, dinging against the side, but now it is maddening, and he loathes it.

He is trying very much not to be a pest. Not to be insistent, to take advantage of her generous nature. Maybe it is that they are reunited, after the possibility of her death, and his, but he wants her in a way that befits a younger man. The sort of elf he would be if they were allowed the seclusion newlyweds were entitled to, in some private flet or chamber, food brought in unseen, allowed to drink in the glory of being together and nothing else.

He cannot sleep. He either cannot get enough of her or is driven to his books and notes, and goes between the two as the sun rises and then sets. And then she must be hurried back to her chamber, and the linens stolen from the general laundry stuffed in the great pile of those belonging to the whole of the Gallows, disguised by being part of a legion of nightly adventures.

But not yet. He has half an hour until the sun rises, and she is dozing, has been, for perhaps an hour, and he fits his mouth to the slope of her shoulder, kisses it, a hand on her hip to coax her onto her back, all the while murmuring in Sindarin, as he has been—Trade feels clumsy in his mouth, unwieldy as pebbles.

He knows, by now, that something is wrong, a creepy dread on his spine. He wants—he wants Gwenaëlle, her hand on his forehead, cool against the fever he now knows is brewing there, as alien to him as the idea of his hair shorn, or that he would have wings instead of arms. At least he has his glamour settled, skin tinged blue to match the rest of them, and Gwenaëlle safe, ordered to stay away, lest she catch whatever this is.

Myrobalan is not a healer. He is not anything in particular but steady and a solid elf, yet another Thranduil looked at and thought wasteful that he was born in Thedas and not in Mirkwood, and sought to nurture the ability to lead in. He might be able to distract him, though, now that the Gallows is in somewhat of an uproar—Thranduil calls for him, and waits, paces his office, sets a pot on for tea, tidies his desk, paces again—

It is unending.

Stirring, drowsy, rolling onto her back and stretching her arms high above her on the pillows—Gwenaëlle has the fleeting thought of whatever happened to impotent, nevermind that she knows. The last few nights have been something else entirely, and his damn near constant interest aside he's been almost impossible to sleep with, in and out of bed, never still whether his hands are on her or not.

(Rather more often than not.)

“Thranduil,” she exhales, her hand coming up to his face and contemplating just slowly pushing it away from her—and then frowning, palm against his cheek becoming the back of her hand against his forehead, bleary and tired but alert enough to know the difference between what a furnace a man usually is (he is very useful, come this wintertime) and the beginnings of a fever.

When she sits up, she takes the precaution of holding the bedding against her otherwise bare body before he can decide that's interesting, too. He's been strange lately—erratic in a way she's no context for—and she'd already been a little concerned, but this doesn't feel right. “Have you slept at all?”

His office is once more in order. Books aired out, papers restored, the hint of smoke only noticeable to those seeking it—and that easily blamed upon the fire, behind the grate, burning well and keeping the room warm. He has been industrious, as of late, busy as can be and delighted by it, how well things are returned to order. That a meeting should disrupt this flow feels just so—a disruption, but it can be worked around.

When there is a knock, he calls out “Come in!” rather than answering it, and remains seated, still writing.

“Gwenaëlle,” he replies. “Wife.” She cups his cheek and even this is arousing, this gentle way she is with him, her soft kindnesses all the more joyful for how they show love, and care, and the kind attention they are allowed as a wedded pair. She holds the sheet, and sits up, and a murmured—purred—question as to why she hides herself from his gaze when he already knows her so well is cut off by her question.

The leonine posing and expression is cut as he stops to think.

“No,” he says, after a moment. “No, I had no luck with the Fade.”

Which he needs, for the next step of his plans.

Galadriel listens as they run; Thranduil moves at a loping gait that has her slightly annoyed by how unflappable he appears. She is vain, perhaps not as much as he, but the disparity in their appearances has never been quite this dramatic. She shifts the weight across her back, Gwenaëlle still sleeping deeply, her limbs limp and draped across Galadriel's shoulders.

"Quite an ordeal," Galadriel agrees noncommittally as they reach the base of the steps. She takes a moment and regards the stairs up before she continues speaking.

She could give him her accounts, let him know what she had been up to with Gwenaëlle during his absence, but that is not why he is here. Thranduil could take such accounts from Gwenaëlle without bothering to find her, let alone run alongside her.

"I imagine it could have been dealt with more swiftly, but it was good of you not to burden your wife with rash decision."

(It's because Gwenaëlle knows perfectly well what kind of an answer she's going to get to how are you feeling if she asks it with her tits out.)

“And when was the last time you slept for more than an hour?” Judging by the way he's tossed and turned beside her, thrown the blankets off to go and do Maker only knows what and then returned before she's even settled properly in his absence, an hour might be an optimistic estimation of Thranduil's ability to sleep for any consecutive amount of time.

Her concern comes more brisk than soft, her frown lingering and her hands turning his face this way and that as she studies him for signs of illness—discerning them more immediately pressing than worrying about whether or not it's catching. If he is ill (more likely every moment) and if it is catching, she's been beside and beneath him long enough to make it a case of shutting the barn doors after the horses have escaped.

“The murder of her father, you mean,” he says, and shakes his head. “No. As much as she begged, as the thought crossed my mind, no. She would come to hate me for it. He offers her protections I cannot.”

He waits until they remount the steps, legs churning—minding the ice and watching Gwenaëlle in Galadriel’s arms, though not overlong. This, oddly enough, is not one of the activities where he would be accused of being her lover.

“Cousin,” he says, and then, “Galadriel,” using the name Celeborn had chosen for her with such care, as he always does. “What would you have done, if she was yours? Knowing what we know and planning what we plan.”

“I have been busy,” he sidesteps. “Putting my office back in order, and following leads on several projects.”

He, who is normally like a rock when asleep, an arm about her waist and persuaded to wake or move for nothing more than, as events have proven, either an assassin or dawn’s light. She is clinical in her touches and that bothers him. He wants passion, the look in her eye that means she’s pleased to look upon him. But her hands move his head about and he obeys, slack in her grip and letting her do as she wishes. Beyond that, he does not understand.

“Why?” he asks, but anticipates her answer. “Have I kept you from your rest?”

“Only as long as I'm trying to get it in bed,” she says, dryly, thinking of the number of times now she's dozed off elsewhere during the day, and the increasing temptation of finding somewhere else to sleep at night—it isn't that she doesn't enjoy his attention, but this is beginning to get out of hand.

For a start, the last time a partner managed to exhaust her libido was never, that has never happened, what on earth is going on.

“Thranduil,” she says, more steadily, sliding her thumb along to find the point of his ear in a gesture she intends for soothing, “I don't think you're well.”

"I am sorry. I will stop." He tucks his face into her hand, as sweet and guileless as a fawn in the gesture. He seeks her touch like a flower seeks the sun, and if he is not getting the attention he wants, he will take what he can get.

Between an exhale, hardly minding the touch on his ear, and a shake of his head, careful not to dislodge her, he replies. “No,” he says.

“That is impossible. The Firstborn do not catch mortal illnesses. Why would you think that?” His eyes find hers, and he relaxes back onto the pillows, trapping her hand between the linens and his head.

Galadriel slows a bit and looks at him, her expression inscrutable by dint of the flush of exercise that has taken her. It is an odd question and one that is...at once difficult to answer and extremely simple. She cannot look at the woman on her back, not without risking rousing her by shifting all of her weight to one side, and so she does not.

"An interesting question," she says and turns back to keep running. It is an obvious tactic to delay the answer, she doesn't bother hiding it. Thranduil has known her long enough that he knows how few of her replies are flippant or easy and there is no need for artifice to make them seem otherwise.

"I would have done much the same as you did, I expect," Galadriel replies after a time. "But I would not have spared the assassin, and her father would have suffered some darker torment than I care to conjure for a hypothetical."

When they reach the next plaza along the route up the steps, she turns her head to him. She doesn't do him the discourtesy of looking him over, but it is a near thing.

"I presume you have prepared for the next attempt?"

He waits—so much of their conversation is waiting, in one way or another. There is so much wool to be gathered in near on ten thousand years that taking a moment or two to sort through it can be excused.

“She begged for the assassin’s life,” he says, slowly. “And then for her father’s head, all in one breath. Galadriel, I cannot get the sound of it from my mind.”

And no one to share it with but Galadriel, who understands him in a way no one else does. He needn’t explain things to her, or account for differences. She knows him, in a way no one else can, no one but Celeborn, who lived through it too, and those of their generation. He looks down as they go, watching the steps as they come, sparing a though for his wife, and how well she sleeps through all of this.

“Yes. Wards on my doors like those of Mirkwood. No one enters or leaves that I do not know of, and allow in.” And strong ones, as strong as he can muster, even if it drains him to do so. More can be set, if all goes to plan, once he can make use of glyphs. “And a knife under my pillow. Sheathed.”

She inclines her head as he tallies his precautions, as though he needs her approval of anything he does, and continues up the steps alongside him. Her path is more well trod and she doesn't bother looking down as she runs. It is the best he can do and, at the moment, she can offer him little assistance. It is no wonder she runs as she does, that she strains and stresses and desperately claws for physical strength--she has lost a token that only Thranduil truly comprehends the scope of and neither of them will speak of it aloud.

Speaking cannot conjure the shadow to these lands, but it is still too near a threat to risk.

"It will haunt you, such things always do, but take solace that she lives and that the fool assassin didn't use poison that might've truly wounded her," she says and there is a note there, an explanation as to why she would have killed that man and spared her father that goes unspoken. Thranduil is no less severe than she, his own borders no more open than hers had been, and all for the same reasons. He understands without the words being uttered.

"Her strength is building rapidly. I think she resents me for making her undertake such things," Galadriel says and quietly changes the subject. "She is learning old military forms as...meditation more than for use, but they will serve her regardless."

“You don't sleep, you don't stop, you're much, much warmer than you ought to be,” she protests, following him by necessity when he lies down, her hand beneath his hair. She leans over him, her own hair tumbled over bare shoulders, her drawn expression settling firm at his own objections and how swiftly he brushes aside even the possibility.

He is, she thinks, of no mind to listen to her. There's a Tranquil man in his office who might be more reasonable; more likely to see what she might miss during the day, and if she were to prompt him to report anything he noticed as necessary...

Her mind turns and turns and turns. She sighs, leaning down to press a kiss to his mouth— “I'm worried about you. Give me another explanation.”

Edited 2018-01-21 05:45 (UTC)

He is not a healer, but the Maker had seen fit to give him a healer's heart and with it the urge to reach out and mend whatever was broken and whatever hurt. With a third the Gallows' complement ill and the rest going to pieces (with Simon trying to kill himself through overwork like so many others), Myr has nearly given up sleeping himself in the effort to be everywhere at once. So many of the afflicted would go without food, or continue limping about on torn muscles, or carry off Inquisition property to parts unknown and forget it-- And that's to say nothing of the need to take down what they know of the illness and its victims, to match disparate pieces.

He'd promised Beleth he would take better care of himself--but when Thranduil calls him he abandons the half-eaten meal he'd been dozing over and goes straightway. (Much as it frustrates him, he's got to stop at the top of the stairs, lean against the wall and catch his breath, weary with what should be routine exertion. Once he has--)

"Messere Thranduil?" He's forgotten to knock in favor of simply letting himself in. Manners are--hard to remember, beyond the grace required not to sharpen his tongue on anyone.

The Templar's close proximity is coincidence only, given the look of befuddled surprise that is sent to Thranduil. In contrast, Atticus looks up from the book that he reading, regarding Thranduil over the rims of his (still broken) reading glasses.

Looking at him, there is something off. Atticus closes his text and sets it aside, then rises to his feet. "As you wish," he says, steps around the table, and moves to follow Thranduil from the library.

Ellana opens the door and grins at Thranduil. Even though she doesn't work under him, she thinks he's doing important work, and it's something that should be rewarded even though she can only do so in a small way. Hanging from her arm is a small basket, but perhaps its contents aren't quite the surprise if he can smell the fresh baked bread. It might be a more charming scene if she'd baked it herself, but alas, she just pounced on it as soon as it was placed out on the table. She figures that's all right because she's sharing it.

"How are you? We haven't talked since Nevarra, but you mentioned the fire since then and I knew everyone was going to be talking on the crystals to see if you were all right. And I heard you say you were all right, but I wanted to come visit when things had calmed down." She lifts the basket. "I brought a snack: bread, butter, jam, and honey, if you're interested."

He cups the back of her head, keeps her close. His fingers slide into her hair. A few minutes more, only. Then he will let her go, and they will go about their separate lives, in separate paths, only meeting at night. “I stop,” he protests. “I stopped working for you.”

Abandoned his papers to slink after her and sweep her, unsuspecting, into his embrace.

“After we wed,” he offers, “there is usually a period of seclusion. To allow for the husband and wife to—acclimate. Physical desire is new to us, remember, and learning to control the urges takes time. So—a quiet bower, food and drink deposited unseen nearby, and a month or so to shape yourself around your love, and to remember how to behave.”

He smiles, all teeth. “Perhaps I was slow to warm up, and it is only now that the feelings are rising.”

“If she died,” he says, and leaves it at that. The Men have a custom wherein the non-ruling spouse—so often a queen—has the privilege and duty of begging for mercy for the condemned. Her death, if it had been a violent one, yet another poignant example of what a lack of elves did to this land—he would not be as merciful as he intends.

“She resents the sun for shining,” fondly, they are perfect companions, “but she needs the lessons. The old forms are useful—Noldorian, I assume, for that sort of sword, antesolarian—but she is small and fast. She will not take to the bow, but perhaps knives.”

He has the ones Legolas left behind still. Maybe she will like them.

“But you, cousin,” he switches. “Any luck with your search?”

It's a persuasive argument, but she isn't convinced; she's grown used to his ways, the warmth and solidity of his steady presence at her back. He sleeps like the dead most nights, unmoved til morning, and it isn't just him behaving oddly, lately. It's hard not to look at him with lingering worry, though at this nearness she doesn't look at him at all, lashes lowered, a sigh breathed out against his mouth.

“Normally,” she says, ruefully arch, “I'd be flattered that your excuse is just my obvious irresistibility.”

And it isn't as if she isn't, now, or as if she hasn't enjoyed the attention—isn't enjoying it right now, common sense warring with the temptation to just give in and worry later—but one of them has to be clear-headed.

It's just that it's usually him. She's not got quite so much practise as he does.

"Noldorin?" she repeats and cocks a brow at him. "When have you seen me willingly use a sword?"

She continues jogging and pointedly ignores the question about her searching. It is not a topic to be spoken aloud, not here, not anywhere, and her mood shifts as she ponders it. She is silent a time and then shifts the conversation back.

"I shall teach her small blades, I am not unskilled with them," she offers. "But she will require your aid for sparring, I expect. Spearwork is too deeply ingrained in my combat and it would not do to teach her to counter that alone."

“I know you prefer to,” and he makes a little shooing gesture with his hand, illustrative enough, “—but surely your father had you trained with some matter of bladed stick or sharp object while still in the Blessed Realm?”

She ignores it, he does not press, keeping his teeth together as the go up, still. These stairs are a mannish excess. An elven architect would have done—better, even if he couldn’t consider how.

“Spears,” he says, exasperated. “I will spar with her, and lose affection with my dear love for it, but you are right—she needs it, and she is clever enough that my handicap will possibly give her some success at it.”

“You are irresistible,” he counters, the hand moving to the back of her neck. “Has no one told you so?”

He is warm. He changed into his sleeping clothes and has managed to keep them mostly on, and then refastened after, during all afters, but she is right in thinking him warmer than before. Or perhaps the fire is just built better, or the frost receding. A portion of one, a dash of another, she is still overreacting.

“Gwenaëlle,” he says. “We will just lay in bed, if you are worried. For the rest of the time we have. No lovemaking. You will lay here with me, and sleep more if you like it, and you will stop worrying.”

The tranquil, she decides. Lyov, isn't it? She'll speak with him, later; it will ease her mind, and she can relent now. If she's wrong, she's wrong, and if she isn't—which she's sure she isn't—someone will do something about it. Hopefully. With any luck. He is so bloody large, though, what are they going to do if he decides to be as uncooperative with healers as with wife?

“I wish you'd sleep, too,” she says, finally, her thumb against his cheekbone for a moment before she sinks down against him, into his arms. Her own nightgown is...somewhere...discarded earlier in the night, no subsequent barriers to his hands later—their sweat mingled on her skin, tacky. She'll have to sleep, else she's going to doze off when she bathes later and drown.

“Please. Try.”

The room is not a mess. The room is perfect, cleaner than before the fire. Not that Myr can see it—not that he can appreciate the care Thranduil has put into righting everything, the spines of his books sharp and alert and perfectly in line, his desk bare of paper—

(the words start swimming whenever he looks at them)

-and the only thing out of sorts the fact that the kettle is by the fire.

“Myrobalan,” he says, and his voice is raspy, in need of a warm drink flavored with honey. “Come sit,” and a hand at his elbow, guiding him over to the chair by the fireplace. “Tea?” he offers. “Wine? Elllana was here—recently, yes, I believe she left me food…”

Thranduil, his back already to the library, notices not. He is a man with a mission, and that mission now includes Atticus, who is behind him. He only glances back once, notices the state of his glasses—

“Has someone not offered to fix those,” irritated, he loathes sloppiness, Atticus being less useful due to (he assumes) a clumsy capture, ineptitude, at least some of his people have been productive today, and there are a heap of reports on his desk to be signed off on and filed away. Even Casimir seems lagging in comparison.

“Come,” he says, and holds open the door to his office for Atticus, gesturing him inside.

Ah. So it is to be this kind of meeting, then.

"Curiously, the maintenance of my material possessions does not appear to rank high on the list of your Inquisition's priorities." It's a mild reply, with a barb in it that isn't necessarily directed at Thranduil. After all, he wasn't the one who threatened to gouge Atticus' eye out in the dungeons, nor bashed his head against a cell wall.

(In Rufus' defence, Atticus did strangle him to death.)

Removing his glasses to consider them with some annoyance, he enters Thranduil's office and then turns to consider his host. It wouldn't be right to consider his demeanour cautious, per se, but some of his usual cheek is gone this time. The rifter elf, always a competent figure, seems to swing like a loose cannon now, and Atticus has no wish to be caught in range should his fuse be lit.

"I assume this is no social call."

He looks up once the door is opened, and the sight of Ellana is enough to distract him from his work, if only for the space of a sincere smile.

“Ellana,” he says, holding back the dalen he might have used in its stead. “I am well. Come—sit with me, speak with me while I work.”

The soft, yeasty smell of the bread reminds him he has not eaten yet today. He missed breakfast. How odd—but with the work of putting his office in order, such a thing could be shunted to the side. What time was it? He could not see the sun outside his window, and guess the time on her position. Ah, but it was not Arien guiding her across the sky here. It was—something else.

“I would not mind something to eat while we speak.”

“No,” he says, neatly ignoring the previous comment. Were he in his right mind, were Casimir here, there would have been a comment made that that ought to be addressed and Atticus would have found himself with a new pair within a reasonable time for the lenses to be ground. But—and Thranduil’s sudden realization that he has forgotten why he needed Atticus is proof of this—he is adrift. Lost.

“I need you to—” he states, or starts to, pauses, reorients. Displeasure creases his brow, he looks at the window. “—your help,” Thranduil says, and makes for his desk. He will remember when he sees it.

"Good! It's never nice to work on an empty stomach, is it?" Though the Keeper could make plants grow for them, the clan didn't always have a surplus of food, and Ellana knows what it feels like to go out and collect firewood without a meal in her stomach. Just because Thranduil is seated with paperwork doesn't mean he shouldn't have a little something too.

Setting the basket in her lap, she carefully takes out the food and arranges it on the desk with table knives for spreading the butter and sweets.

"Am I allowed to know what you're working on, or is it top secret," she asks with a grin, spreading jam across a slice of bread.

Atticus watches him. This is either a golden opportunity presented to him by chance and providence, or a gilded trap. He would be sure to know which it is, before proceeding.

"You do appear to be in some distress," he says, unmoving, and does not affect false concern he does not possess. Yet he does fix his eyes on Thranduil as drifts, listless as a ship without its anchor, without its mooring. He could be complicit in some deception, it is true, or he could be bait, compromised to lure Atticus into revealing his ulterior motive.

He gestures to the vacant chair. "Perhaps it would aid you if you sat down."

“Not at all,” he says, and neatly organizes the paper into stacks before taking most off the off the table, lest crumbs get trapped between the pages, or jam end up on a corner of a report intended for Skyhold.

“If you would like—” he offers her a stack of papers having to do with the Corypheus’ History project—they are short summaries of the missions so far undertaken, with nothing particularly interesting or unknown. The private papers were tucked away and into his desk when he cleaned it. “For Enchanter Julius. To ease his transition.”

No one bids him to sit in his own office—that at least shakes clear some of the cobwebs and allows him the time to still himself, to look up slowly from the contents of his desk to Atticus proper. He doesn’t dignify that with a response before he turns his eye back towards the work, and ah, there, his salvation.

“Are you familiar with House Asgard of Marnus Pel?”

Loki has saved him, although he cannot know it. Perhaps this was the thing he needed Atticus for—yes, he decides. It was. Or, at the very least, it does not hurt for him to address it now, with him. It needed to be handled anyway.

"Are you familiar with House Asgard of Marnus Pel?"

That, more than the severe and kingly look that Thranduil turns upon him, elicits more of a reaction from Atticus. He raises his eyebrows and exhales.

"Yes," he replies, in the tone of voice one might adopt while discussing one's ill-favoured in-laws, "I have some passing familiarity with them."

A curious turn of his head. "Why do you ask?"

"Ooo," she says, feeling privileged all the same to see paperwork given to a Division leader. She handles the papers with care, eyes scanning over the reports and nodding along. It's definitely not anything top secret, but it's nice to be allowed in the loop of a project she's not involved with. Most days Ellana feels left out of the loop in some form or another, though part of that could simply be all up in her head instead of reality.

"It's a good start for him to have. And good to know someone's stepping up into the position. To know the enemy is to have an advantage over them." Now she returns the papers to him to put away.

Atticus has not managed to show enthusiasm about anything, still the same plodding Tevene magister, nothing to recommend him-- perhaps Thranduil should take some delight in pulling this from him, even if it isn't much at all.

"The scion of the house and his younger brother have come to join us. The younger one immediately voiced that he thought you to be Venatori, and that your reason for joining us," Thranduil states, easily.

'I found him delightful, personally' he leaves off, it is irrelevant and he finds no joy in needling Atticus.

“Well,” comes Atticus’ mild reply, “I was. Yet it seems his information is a trifle dated.”

Which is to be expected, he supposes. The oily fop is from Marnas Pel, after all.

Atticus scrutinizes Thranduil coolly, considering his demeanour. A deeper frown creases his brow. “Forgive me for being blunt,” or don’t, he’ll endure regardless, “but you seem ill.”

He gives Atticus a long look, staring him down with a mixture of distain in the curl of his lip and the way his brows are posed to suggest 'are you stupid', and then goes back to his papers, shuffling them into piles which he then tucks away.

"How might he have known? Useless to us now, and an easy assumption given your," a gesture, "presence, and your disappearance from Tevene society, as small as shrinking a very small thing can be, have you yet written your family to assure them of your safety?"

Three years (nearly four now, isn't it?) is not time enough to learn the intricacies of how a room sounds when it is cluttered, or when it is neat, but there are enough little differences in the echoes that get back to Myr to suggest something has changed. A thought he dwells on as Thranduil helps him to his seat; his relief to find it is ill-concealed. (So long as he doesn't nod off again in the warmth.)

"Tea, please." He can hope it's strong. "If you'll sit and have a cup with me--wine'd be a mistake right now, I fear."

Though there's not much a single glass could hurt--he'd never had reason to learn his limits with it in the Circle, though; and outside, the drink's not been kind to him. Better to keep his head as tolerably clear as fatigue will allow.

Once they're settled with tea (or one of them is settled; there really is no settling anyone taken with the illness at this point, well he knows), Myr laces his hands around his mug and asks the question that brought him up to Thranduil's office: "What do you need of me?" Somehow, he manages a smile to go with the words. "I'm sorry I've not much to report in the way of progress on a cure, but if there's something else you wish to speak of--"

He puts the kettle on, makes tea—how life with Samwise had acclimated him to these sorts of things, Hobbit-comforts—and settles Myrobalan into his chair while he drifts about the room, aimless. His own cup is placed on his desk. He’ll find it later, with a dry mouth and unsteady hands, and drink it cold.

“I desired to know your opinion in who I ought to,” he rolls the words over in his mouth. “—appoint. To carry on for me, if this gets worse. In a temporary fashion. I cannot leave the word unaddressed. It would be irresponsible. So, I would have your thoughts on the matter, given that you have a perspective I do not. Would allowing Casimir to head the division in my absence create a problem among the mages here? Some nuances of Thedas' politics yet escape me. I understand you knew one another.”

That was certainly not what Myr was expecting, and he sits in what would be a blinking silence in a man with eyes. Never an enchanter, he isn't accustomed to the idea someone might seek him out for administrative business--

Albeit it's not the first time someone with power over him has asked his opinion on Casimir. He takes a cautious sip of his tea to buy himself a plausible moment of thought.

"We did; he was a decade or so at Hasmal after his transfer from Nevarra City. We're friends." Perhaps that's not something he should give so lightly away--but it's a statement of his own bias, a preface to his evaluation of how the other man might be received. (A fond and foolish part of him had always believed Casimir deserved better than how Hasmal thought of him--whether or not it was earned.) "And--that's difficult to say, messere, without having felt them all out on the matter of the Tranquil. It's not unusual for them to be regarded as less than people, incapable of much beyond mindless work."

How bitter to say it; how obvious from Myr's tone the derision he holds for the thought. "All the same, they're known to be competent. If you don't make much of it," he thinks, briefly, of the argument that had started off the week; the idea that mages had been deprived of something in the elevation of rifters, "and simply let Casimir be about his work in your stead, no one might notice--or care--enough to complain."

Tranquil did so often slip beneath notice, unnerving as they might be.

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Galadriel - Day 01

Atticus - Day 04

Gwenaëlle - Day 04

Myrobalan - Day 10

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Ellana - Day 02

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