persephone sits in a courtroom dress as green as summer trees her lipstick red as blood

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Baudin, Thranduil, assorted guests.
WHAT: It's a nice day for a white wedding.
WHEN: Haring 30th / Wintermarch 1st
WHERE: The de Coucy residence, Hightown.
NOTES: The OOC post. Your character wasn't in the chapel unless you play Romain, Coupe or Legolas. Post co-authored with rowancrowned. Questions section of the OOC post still open! This is a mingle log; top level, tag amongst yourselves, hit us up if you have particular needs or desires.

Despite the events of the previous month, the winter's afternoon wedding of Gwenaëlle Baudin and Provost Thranduil proceeds as planned—or at least, close enough that any last minute discrepancies are invisible to the eye of oblivious guests (and indeed the bride, having taken approximately zero interest in the planning). In the ongoing absence of a suitable Chantry, the ceremony itself takes place in the modest chapel within the home to a select few witnesses hand-selected—chosen mainly to avoid any untoward rumours that it might not have been done properly, including the acting Viscount, the Gallows Forces commander, and a handful of others whose stature within Kirkwall lends them the sort of credibility this wedding is in dire need of being lent.

With the ballroom ripped out and redesigned for another purpose, the estate doesn’t possess the space to host the number of guests invited to the post-ceremony fete, instead making use of the courtyard in its center. Guests are shepherded there, and are not entirely left out of the wedding itself when they are joined by the happy couple to publicly sign the legal documents some who've not previously attended weddings between people with money may never have seen before. To ward off the midwinter cold—to varying degrees of success, based on one’s proximity to them—braziers have been set up at intervals throughout the garden everywhere but the space cleared for those moved to dance, and servants in de Coucy colors bring round trays of small, hot food and enough drinks to stave off the worst of the chill.

The decorations betray the groom’s tastes over the bride's. Holly and juniper and other such evergreens make up the majority of the arrangements, bright red berries a better ornament than the inexcusable expense of hothouse flowers. There is the underlying reminder that both halves of the couple are Inquisition members, in the smart dress uniforms that half the guests wear as they mingle with the better part of Kirkwall society.

This is a pageant, the diplomatic arm of the Inquisition flexing the agreement made with the Rifters and also the normalcy it seeks to restore. But it is a pretty pageant, and an easy excuse to wear something stunning and dance and eat food purchased with Orlesian coin—and, perhaps, to enquire about making a donation to the Inquisition in support.

Comments

threadjacking grooms also accepted here

[coquettish_trees]

One such intermittent goblet of wine is delivered by Alexandrie, her other hand curled around a similarly filled—if not as ornate—cup of her own.

"To have wed to you twice!" It is light, gay, and spoken softly for only the two of them by a woman seemingly as remote from the crumpled creature last seen forlornly occupying her rooms as she has become from the feckless thing blithely waving a corkscrew in Wycome. "It is enough to make one almost believe he is actually aware of the worth of the treasure he has."

She leans to gently tap her head against Gwenaëlle's as she offers her ferried prize.

"It looks well on you, cross as you may be made by the fuss."

[elegiaque]

“He's a peacock, he likes the attention,” she grumbles, tilting her head very slightly (and indeed most expertly) to avoid the dangling jewels of her headdress tangling in Alexandrie's hair or mask. The goblet functions as a barrier over which she might regard this glittering assemblage.

Crossly.

And then, “Do you think it's an ill-omen to have worn my mother's headpiece?”

The Vauquelin marriage was many things, aspirational not among them. (Mother is a protean word; there are so many things she might mean by it. In this case, it seems unlikely that she speaks of Guenievre Baudin.)

[coquettish_trees]

"Hardly," is the reply. Alexandrie turns to look out over it all—well, most of it, she skips her gaze over an entire section—and sips her wine companionably. "If it is, you have already started your marriage and I imagine any ill omens for it should have had to occur then to be effective, although I am no witch and hardly know of how such things work. I think it perhaps more a statement of how you came here. At such moments it is difficult to not see how one has been formed and thus brought to this moment, no? Can you see it occurring in any other way?" A tilt of her head, the rest of her elbow in her free hand. "And are you not happy with it?"

She observes Gwen's slightly narrowed eyes and the set of her mouth behind her drink and her lips curl in a little smile. "Generally speaking."

[elegiaque]

“Am I not happy with it.”

But there is no witch, and—

She presses her lips together against the impulse to let them fall into some childish pout, to look in some direction and imagine that Morrigan might be that way. She's a woman grown and twice-married to the same man; she doesn't need her hand held. She isn't going to fall apart just because Morrigan isn't here to watch it happen, even if she'd wished otherwise.

It had been time for them to go. She can't grudge that. She misses them both, and terribly, but she writes her letters dutifully and it will do.

It will do.

“It had better serve its fucking purpose,” is what she settles on, taking a drink.

[coquettish_trees]

"If it does not, we may both go to the Chantry and complain, the which you know me to be quite competent and overwhelmingly belligerent at." Alexandrie raises her eyebrows archly at herself, and rests her lips against the mug to breathe in the curling steam for a moment.

"I think it shall, however. You both look breathtaking, you have a great many influential witnesses who are being expertly plied by the hospitality of your grand-père, Knight-Enchanter Shivana is placed perfectly to be the startlingly tenacious advocate for love in the faith that he is, and your lord husband is charming his way through everyone in attendance more quickly than I am attempting to drink through your wine." Said as though she means she is barreling towards drunkenness, although that is more a fond wish than any truth.

"And, soon enough, it shall run its course and you shall find out how the surprise we have labored on so serves its fucking purpose." She smiles mischievously and bats her eyelashes.

(And hurts. And excises that hurt quickly and mercilessly to stuff it away.)

[elegiaque]

“I don't know if his hip actually needed all of this recovery time, or if he's just been thinking I might behave better for the incentive.”


Does Alexandrie have any idea how long it's been since Gwenaëlle's been fucked.

(She might. It seems they have fewer secrets between them every day.)

She tilts her wine around her cup, and then—

“I thought it'd be worse for you if I had him barred.”

They aren't speaking of Thranduil any more.

[coquettish_trees]

She's opened her mouth to say something sly about Thranduil's 'incentive', and what manner of behavior might be considered good for such a thing. Shuts it again.

"But of course!" She exclaims lightly, knowing very well that Gwenaelle will know it for a construction. (How few of those they have between them now.) "If you had had the Lord Provost barred, we should not be having such an lively event, and I should be ever so bored."

Don't.

It would have been worse. She doesn't want to see him, but nor would she want him kept from anything. He is alone now everywhere, perhaps even in his own home. Thor knows, certainly, but she can't imagine the elder Asgard (the only? No. Loki is as much Frigga's son as he had been) has any greater love for the Qunari than his brother. Is there as much silence between them as there had been after Minrathous? What is it, to be a shapeshifter with such control and to find yourself changed without your say-so?

She left her rooms and is here, masked and painted and smiling. Let that be enough.

"I am being good, Gigi," says Alexandrie, quiet now; speaking to the cold air, the clear sky, the barren waiting trees. "Let me be good."

[elegiaque]

Enough, she thinks. Enough.

It had mattered—does matter—that Alexandrie not see callousness in his presence. Gwenaëlle has taken so little interest in what is apparently ought to be the most important day of her life that it wouldn't have been an unfair assumption, that she hadn't thought; that she had gone on taking no interest. And for her own sake, she had, but she had thought to rescind his invitation as she'd (flatly and unhappily, pointing the name out with a letter-opener she held a little too threateningly) rescinded Lakshmi's. Thranduil would have obliged, she's sure; neither of the Asgards are essential to this endeavor and did their attendance matter much, it'd be the elder brother and not the spare.

...but she is Orlesian, still, for all her mouth might have found a happier home elsewhere. Kindness is a knife, where they were forged. This kindness would wound far more than cauterization. So she gives the cool, clean kind that they know better—

“Dance with me, then, good girl.”

With feet as light as heavy hearts.