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

[rowancrowned]

Thranduil smiles by reflex, pleased by the easy way Myrobalan makes himself comfortable: lights the fire, chooses what would be a precarious seat without his sight.

“Thank you for your well-wishes,” he demurs. Myrobalan is correct. It did go well—exactly as Thranduil hoped. Bland, even, would have been acceptable. The circumstances themselves were all that would have been needed to make the event memorable.

“And you?” he asks. “You have been well? I regret that I have not seen you as often as I would have liked, between Ghislain and preparations for this.”

[faithlikeaseed]

"I've been well," Myr affirms, smiling a little wider to say it as something more than politesse. To realize in that moment he has been well at last, after the abbey and Ghislain and all; glad to be here and see two friends wed and evidence of the world moving forward just a little.

Ah, hope. That's what having it back felt like. The stars are still shining; His Light remains. "And I share your regret; I've missed our talks. I'd hoped my new duties would leave me a little more time than they have," but, but. He tips out a hand to let that thought go; they're here now. "I am sorry they've taken me from Research almost entire."

[rowancrowned]

“You have been,” he says, delicately, “adjusting well?”

He has easily spent the same amount of time that he has been in Thedas without seeing a human—without leaving his Halls—in the last century. He has adjusted (all around him, proof that he has adapted) but for Myrobalan, time has been different. Disruptive. Strange. There is no way to have the whole of this conversation here, now, but they might start it, Thranduil might at least offer a chance to have the whole of the thing by insinuation now—

“We might take supper together,” he offers carelessly. “With or without my wife—” how he savors that, like a cat that’s got the cream, “—as you please. I will speak with whomever has stolen you away, if they might protest.”

He no longer has quite the same lure, now that Myrobalan is restored.