Lady Alexandrie d'Asgard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
coquettish_trees) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2018-08-09 04:45 pm
coquettish_trees) wrote in faderift2018-08-09 04:45 pm
OPEN | Looking Down on Empty Streets
WHO: Lexie, Evie, Loki, Thor, Fifi, Gwen, anyone else who wants to deal with this actual mess of a woman (special shout out to anyone who has a four letter (nick)name apparently)
WHAT: Late nights, early mornings, a bunch of processing the horrible things that happened!
WHEN: Post return from Tevinter (so... mid-month?)
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: cw: a nice violent nightmare, general mental trauma. hmu if you want something special, will do brackets or prose as desired.
WHAT: Late nights, early mornings, a bunch of processing the horrible things that happened!
WHEN: Post return from Tevinter (so... mid-month?)
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: cw: a nice violent nightmare, general mental trauma. hmu if you want something special, will do brackets or prose as desired.
I. The Apartments (Day)
When Alexandrie is home, much of her time is spent laying on the chaise out on the balcony staring into nothing and hardly seeming to care about the oppressive heat that so irked her the month before. Her hair, if it is styled at all, is woven into a simple braid and pinned up, a far cry from the way she used to wear it. Sometimes she is a fury of diplomatic paperwork, sometimes she is repetitively and grimly throwing a knife into a target that is a new fixture in the area. Sometimes she will, all of a sudden, snap into the light and cheerful woman she was, although her laughter is harder to come by. Whichever it is, she is still welcoming of callers.
II. Hightown (Night)
She haunts the streets like a ghost; all loose hair and pale wan skin and simple white dress, dressing gown layered over it against the slight chill that still manages to cover Kirkwall by second or third bell despite the heat of the day. Often, she is in the memorial garden, sitting and watching the fountain or pacing the paths repetitively. Sometimes she makes her way to wherever the sea can be best seen. Like a spectre, too, she is gone by the time the sky begins to lighten.
Anyone else out and about in the dark hours?
III. Loki/Evie:
Smell. Noise. There's so much of it. The screams of panic, the mortal ones unlike any other, some far too high to have issued from fully grown throats. The ozone of magic ripping the air mixing with the choking char of burning stalls, the metallic smell of blood. Blood. Far too much of it. How can there be so much. The visceral nigh-unbelievable revulsion at how thickly it drips. It clings to her hands, sliding, sticking. The wink of sunlight on silver. The noise he makes around it is so desperately wrong: liquid, bubbling. The same thing, then, on a far slenderer throat. Sudden. Silver again, but streaked with red. Silver where it doesn't belong. Cannot belong. Disbelief. Overwhelming horror that grips so hard she is frozen and the sound, the sound that comes from them.
She never quite screams. While there is noise that accompanies Alexandrie's gasping terrified surges to consciousness, the shriek in her throat never truly makes it past the hands that fly reflexively to cover her mouth to fiercely stifle it as her knees shoot to her chest, her heart pounding like something is trying to fight its way outside of her. Sometimes they are clapped flat against her face; sometimes it's the side of her hand between her teeth, her jaw clenching hard enough to bruise, even to draw blood, although that is more rare. Always it is a desperate bid to prevent her horrified shuddering panic from waking her bedmate.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not.
IV. Thor/Fifi:
There is a small disturbance in the kitchens. The pour of water, the clink of metal, of china, rummaging through dry goods. Investigating will reveal Alexandrie, wrapped in a white silk dressing gown, her hair finger-combed and tied around itself in a simple knot, quietly looking through the selection of tea as the glyphs on the kettle do their work of setting the water to boil.
She looks tired and subdued—she often looks so, recently—but she manages a small smile all the same.
“Pardonnez-moi. Did I wake you?”
V. Gwenaëlle:
[ she has come looking for Gwenaëlle for a reason she can't really fathom. Perhaps it is because there is precious little in Kirkwall that is familiar and they had walked the same streets and halls, seen much of the same art, known many of the same faces, have the same mother tongue. Perhaps it is because Gwen too had been abruptly thrown from that world into one that so immediately included brutal violence and death that stood close enough to feel the hot splatter of it. Perhaps it is both things.
Whatever the reason, Alexandrie is knocking now on the door to the Provost's rooms in hopes of finding the small, concentrated, dark-haired woman, wearing a simple summer dress with her hair pinned up just as simply, the neck of a bottle containing something substantially stronger than the wine she'd offered at the Tourney in her fist. ]
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After a few sips, though, she realizes that she has very little in the way of things to say to Fifi. She could not be as familiar with her as she could with the woman who had been as nearly inseparable from her as her shadow. Could not ask advice, could not unburden herself. Well, she could, but it was all too likely to receive a perfunctory and guarded response. After all, she was as much a stranger to Fifi as Fifi was to her. She idly dips a finger into the wine, uses the liquid on her finger to make the crystal sing. Stops and sighs instead when she realizes it's the middle of the night and the sweeping acoustics of the mansion will carry the sound.
"Tell me..." Lexie begins, gesturing vaguely, "...anything. Your favourite pastry. If you like the colour of the sea better here or in Val Royeaux. If you have ever been in love." An entirely Orlesian set of questions.
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"Well," she says quietly, "I'm fond of meat pies, though they're not a pastry in the dessert sense. And I mostly saw the sea in Val Royeaux at night, so I suppose I prefer it here. Blue instead of black." She leaves the question of love unanswered, for now. It's too close still, too much of her heart to disclose to an employer.
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"The pastry dough here is atrocious no matter what it is wrapped around," she responds with a brief raise of her gaze towards the heavens and a small shake of her head as she takes a rather generous mouthful of wine. Despite the quality, she is not in the business of savoring tonight. "As far as the sea," she continues a bit more wistfully, leaning her head on a hand curled much as Fifi's was and swirling the glass to in part mimic its waves, "it has more of the ocean in it here. A hint of wildness. It is a fine blue, but the ocean brings some of its darkness with its tides. I mourn that you were largely unable to see the colour of it at home."
Lexie says the word easily enough, but home is a more complicated concept these days.
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"I suppose... some wild things are best left alone," she muses, sipping from her own glass, "wild or not. I hear the sea in Kirkwall has seen its share of sorrow."
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This is not usually the sort of conversation a Comte's daughter would think prudent to have with a servant. Especially an elven one. But it is the middle of the night, she's exhausted, and now she's halfway through a sizable glass of wine.
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