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Regrettable that so many of those were written by semi-literate children unaware that riddles are supposed to have some kind of meaning, which sort of takes all the poetry out of being grouped in with every idiot with legs to spread.

( god, she's charming. )

Dear lady. Do you consider yourself a meaningless riddle, then?

I don't consider myself a riddle at all. I think you just haven't met enough women.

( she squints at him. the thought that can't possibly be right is so visible it's all but actually written on her forehead. )

Have you considered speaking to one or two of them sober? The novelty.

I make it a policy never to speak to anyone sober.

I'm starting to understand why you might find women difficult to follow.

I find everyone difficult to follow. I am, I fear, a foolish man.

You know that bad at the Game and gullible aren't the same thing, I hope.

( a lazily said thing, rather than a push, because the thing is that she is (as he so ably observed) bad at the game. and she knows it. which means, first of all, that she knows better than to think it's so extraordinarily clever of her to realise he is probably at least as clever as he is drunk. she is a sledgehammer, not a scalpel, she thinks it unlikely she's caught him out.

the best of them always seem to be up to about seven different things at once, artfully layered. a keen eye for other people has never translated into knowing how best to handle them, so she circles. she studies. she observes the absences, the shape of the whole. she hoards knowledge, both because it might become useful and because she can't help herself.

if she could, she'd not have answered him, or spoken to him so long the first time, or come today—but what she can and can't see sparks her interest, brings her back to prod at the puzzle. )

Then you think I'm not foolish? My dear lady. I never thought to hear a kind word from your mouth. If I can tell the truth -

[ He purses his lips. ]

I'm a little disappointed.

[ Indeed, the trouble with Byerly is that he doesn't even make a secret of his lying. No one could possibly trust him. He does not seem trustworthy to anyone but the most gullible of fools. It's just that he's so slippery - impossible to get a hold on, his persiflage so incessant and so chaotic that reading him takes someone impossibly perceptive. He's more than a riddle, himself. ]

I can be extremely kind, I'll have you know. I could kindness your arse off if I wanted to.

( logistically puzzling and in general not very convincing about her temperament (which is all impulse if it's anything, as thoughtlessly generous as carelessly cruel), but— )

But I don't know that that was it, really. Don't you think lackwits seem a lot happier, by and large?

[ With an arched eyebrow - ]

I'm a very happy man.

Yes, ( lightly. ) That's what drives men to drink. Happiness.

Ah, but you've the wrong end of it, my dear. Even if drinking grows out of unhappiness, it makes one happy. So I do not have any unhappiness any longer. What is your drink of choice?

[ He slips into the deflection easy as breathing. ]

Edited 2018-09-17 01:57 (UTC)

( her nose wrinkles—

he does, and it's not that he isn't good at it, it's just that it's so familiar. it's just that it would work a lot better if she liked talking about herself; if she weren't inclined to do exactly the same thing. )

This is like tennis if the aim were to hit each other in the face, ( she complains. )

Edited 2018-09-17 02:14 (UTC)

[ Innocently: ]

I have no such desire, my lady. All I wish is to serve your happiness.

[ Not a complete lie. ]

You're not going to get there being so boringly repetitive.

( the mimic of his accent is extremely bad, but she nails the cadence of his speech, the way he holds his head, the shift of his expressions and that very guileless look that isn't at all: ) What do you like, Gwenaëlle, what do you want, what are you interested in, you, you, you.

( all gracious orlesian ladies mime gagging, they just do it behind fans, probably. )

[ All right, now his voice goes a little dry. Again, a little less subtle than is his wont, but perhaps the situation does call for it. ]

My dear lady, I think you're perhaps the very first woman to complain of a man being over-solicitous of her wants. We could move past it with a bit of honesty.

I can honestly say I want absolutely nothing more in this moment than to not hear another fucking question about what I want.

( it's movingly sincere. her face just does that, sometimes; she has the doe-eyes of a much softer creature than she really is. )

Why don't we talk about something interesting, like literally anything else?

[ He purses his lips, and says, voice more than a bit scornful: ]

What weather we're having.

[ Which, in the Book of Byerly, is a nasty burn. It's tantamount to calling her boring, which is the worst thing he can call someone. (In his humble opinion.) ]

( gwenaëlle rolls her eyes, and then her shoulders; a twitch of the reins and the shift of her weight to bring the horse around, turning back up the path that they'd sedately ridden down— )

Try and remember how dull you found me next time you're drunk and bored, it'll save us both time.

Suggest a topic, my lady.

[ He drawls that. ]

I would welcome it.

Oh, I liked the weather one, it seemed exactly my speed.

( if he thinks she's boring, he loses interest and stops asking her questions, and that's annoying because she's curious about him, but maybe better because of the two of them, he is far more likely to find what he wants than she is. her immediate willingness to lean into that is, in itself, an answer to the question of what she likes about being dismissed—

it's the being dismissed part. people stop looking, if they think they've seen and if what they saw was so unimpressive. she likes little as much as she likes not being looked at. people can say anything they want about her, just so long as it isn't true. )

If you want someone to look elsewhere, take control of the conversation.

[ An honest tip from a lifelong liar. ]

Ask a question. Change the topic. Never let them get on steady ground. Ask me a question about something I seem interested in. Get your claws into my obsessions.

Why should I fucking have to?

( it's so immediately furious that it cannot have anything to do with byerly at all, and that's—of course it doesn't, he's not going to be surprised, whatever simmering things are under her skin have been there a long time. longer than she's called herself baudin and braided her own hair. )

I don't want control of the conversation, I do not want to do any of that, I just want to—

( the frustration is not even a word, just an angry little sound. it's like being savaged by a kitten, except that you'd fucking know about it if she actually turned savage. )

If that's what conversation has to be, I am quite happy not having it.

Then go off into the Frostback Mountains, my lady, and live as a hermit.

[ He pulls his horse to a stop, and leans forward in the saddle, wrists crossed across the horn in a position of ease. ]

But if you want to take part in society, then you must have conversations. And a conversation is the art of displaying oneself and one's wit. Either you ensure that your partner has ample chance to display himself, or you will be expected to display yourself.

[ Then - ]

The world is not shaped by desire alone, my lady. You'll need to go to the Fade for that.

Believe me, were I not chained here physically, I'd like nothing better.

( she might get bored—and quicker than she even thinks, though she is slowly coming to think that perhaps when she finally can retreat into a life with more solitude it might have to be a bit more flexible than she'd always imagined it being—but it's the most honest thing she's said about what she wants so far.

thranduil promised her a secluded home. promised. one day—if they live. )

None of this helped me the first time my mother said it, or the seventeenth, or when she was on her deathbed reminding me what a uniform disappointment I was, so I don't know why you think repeating it as if I've never heard it before will suddenly make it something I can do.

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