faderift | open | neither snow nor rain

WHO: Nari, Lexie, you~
WHAT: Guardian catch-all for some ladies. (Well, one Lady and one elf.)
WHEN: The Present!
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: prompts I have promised people will be appearing below as I get to them!

Nari

I.

With the sleet keeping everything near-constantly coated with ice, Guardian is hardly the right month to be jaunting about between the Gallows towers and the towers that hold the massive machinery designed to raise and lower Kirkwall's immense chain net. The massive machinery that hasn't been used in two decades, ever since Viscount Threnhold had used it to strangle Orlesian trade and the Divine had ordered the city's Templars to 'convince' him to lower it. Threnhold's successors had been loathe to use it with such a tangle in the recent past, and so its mechanism is full of two decades of largely untended metal shifting, weathering, rusting in places.

The winter seas are rough enough that an assault by sea isn't likely, but the thin dark Dalish woman had shrugged and said that the Archon's Palace raising into the sky above Minrathous hadn't been all that likely either, and so here she is, on her way to the Chain tower, a pack of tools slung over her back. A pack that has been repaired several times, and by the look of it is about to need one more: something heavy looking is inching its way out of the back of it with every step she takes. Won't be long before that's lost. Hope it's not important.

II.

What Guardian is the right month for is being here near the hearth in the Hanged Man's taproom with a hot mug of mulled wine and a mallet, tapping chairs back together and listening with quiet amusement to a harper on one side and two tipsy men one-upping each other outrageously in order to try to take the same woman home on the other.

The important thing, really, is that the weather is outside, but the entertainment isn't unwelcome.

“Are you listening to this?” she asks, looking up briefly with a crooked grin spreading across her face, “The taller one has gone from fisherman to ship's captain in the space of five minutes.”

[ or something else! ]

Alexandrie

Winter here has not brought the lovely romantic fluffy pristine snow she'd dreamed of. It's desperately horrible in Kirkwall, and what work she can do from home she does from home with great relief. Unfortunately there are still meetings to be had, new correspondence to discuss, and every so often new books, scraps, and sheafs of paper arrive for the Inquisition that are in need of translation. All these things are in the Gallows, and so, begrudgingly, is Alexandrie.

She can be found now, looking far less disgruntled than she actually is, sitting at a table in the library with a letter in one hand—at which she is frowning with extreme delicacy—and a painted porcelain cup of tea in the other, her maid doing a spot of embroidery close enough at hand to refresh it when that becomes necessary.

“Ah!” she exclaims quietly, her glance warm and pleased over her painstakingly painted smile, “C'est parfait. Have you a moment to spare?”

[ ...or something else! ]

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A sturdy thump indeed follows, the resounding WHUCK pleasantly muffled by the red ball's crocheted second skin. It goes hurtling across the parlor, narrowly skirts the black ball in the doorway and lands with a mute bump against the carpet edge there. Straightening, Wysteria hooks her mallet cheerily over her shoulder.

"I expect the knitting takes something out of the swing as well. When summer comes and we can play outdoors, we should use them as a handicap. We'll be well practiced hands by then and no one will want to play against us otherwise."

The afternoon finds her in good enough temper that she doesn't think, Though maybe that's for the better. But that is, of course, reliably the case on any afternoon spent in the De la Fontaine house. There is such a easiness to the house and its denizens that she finds it quite easy indeed to forget entirely about the troubles outside it. A war? That can be a tomorrow worry. Bickering over the sending crystals with pig headed men? As if it occured to someone else entirely. Hitting a dead end with her research? A mere complication.

"Now, you promised you'd tell me something of Madame-- oh, you know, I don't know that I know what Gwenaëlle's proper name is now, actually. But in any case, you must describe everything so it can be as if I was there myself."

"Oh, we shall be the scourge of Hightown. Let us come up with a properly fierce team name," Alexandrie positions herself the sort of twisted stretch necessary to retrieve her other ball from beneath the chair. Such fanciful planning is rather like spitting in Corypheus's face, she's decided. As long as leisurely pursuits and airy gossip don't take the place of knifework, lessons in first aid for the battlefield, and her other work for the Inquisition, there's hardly a reason to give them up and plenty of reason to continue them.

Besides, she's happy again.

"As to Gwenaëlle, her surname remains Baudin. I believe the Lord Provost to have taken her name as both show of further binding to Thedas. In addition," She finally finds the angle she wants and swings her mallet with a ladylike noise of effort to neatly free the ball and send it swiftly on its way toward the entrance to the kitchen, "I am not entirely sure he possessed one to begin with.

"As to the wedding itself, they had a very small ceremony the which I was not privy to—I am not displeased on that account, the formal joining of houses is deathly boring," she remarks, a brief aside as she gives her mallet a twirl and retreats to the edge of the room so as to not be in Wysteria's way, "and then a lovely party in the estate gardens. As lovely as one may have in this season, in any case. All decorated with evergreen and holly with bright red berries. I was fortunate enough to be privy to the plan and able to pattern dresses for both myself and Merrill after it."

For her part, she would gladly take the distraction of spring croquet matches above nearly anything else. To be sure, she has an impressive stack of books at her bedside in her rooms at the Gallows, but one can hardly study every hour of the day. A bit of recreation is rather good for the soul.

"Merrill?" Wysteria prompts, shifting around to line up her next strike. "I don't believe I know her. Is she an Orlesian lady as well?"

With a second wallop of the mallet, the ball follows Alexandrie's into the hall beyond. There. Now they can finally quit this room-- She nearly does, only to swing back to first fetch her wine glass from the mantle ledge.

Alexandrie laughs musically, trailing behind the other woman to retrieve her own glass and move it to one of the thin ornamental side tables in the hallway.

"Quite the opposite! A Dalish woman. Do you know of them? Elves, but from the wilderness," she lowers her mallet and looks back and forth to line up her shot. "Rather striking facial tattoos? There are one or two others wandering about." Wood hits yarn with a smart, if slightly muffled, noise. While it does bounce cunningly off the wall to redirect it closer to the propped open door to the kitchen, she catches the table on her backswing and knocks both her wine glass and the carefully arranged vase of holly branches to the floor. Luckily, nothing breaks. Unluckily, the wine is lost.

"Merde. Marie!" And then with a smile at the appearance of the maid (and fresh glass of wine) who, for a reason soon to be illuminated, looks more amused than put out while cleaning the mess, she whispers loudly: "Worry not, they all receive a bonus on croquet days."

Edited 2019-02-15 17:28 (UTC)

Let no one say that Lady Alexandrie de la Fontaine is not deeply considerate of her staff.

The brief spark of controlled chaos is enough to mitigate Wysteria's immediate urge to exclaim something along the lines of, gasp, 'A Dalish woman!' in response, though it does absolutely nothing to temper her curiosity. And so as they make their way into the carpeted hallway in pursuit of the kitchen's open door, she does say, "I know of them certainly, but I'm afraid I've yet to meet one. I've done a considerable amount of reading on the topic, of course. They play an important role in Thedas's history, don't they? Is she -- your friend Merrill, I mean -- quite wild? I would be very curious to meet her."

"You must meet her!" Alexandrie exclaims, sipping from her new glass and finding a place that might be considered safely out of the way to wait for Wysteria to take her perhaps less disastrous turn. "She does have some quite wild ways, but they are quite tempered by her sparkling personality and surprising cleverness for both fashion and society."

She frowns thoughtfully at the placement of the balls, considering what her next move might be, and then continues brightly. "You know, I asked her to consider what she might like for her gown and she brought what amounted to an entire folio of ideas?"

"Really? You must describe them in their entirety. I want to know every stitch. Hold this for a moment, won't you?" This in reference to the glass she passes to Alexanderie as she unhooks the mallet from where its jauntily set over her shoulder.

A swing, a muffled thwack. The ball meanders up to the doorway, but is halted by the lip of the lip of the flooring there.

"Damn. --But really, I would be delighted to meet her. She sounds fascinating. You must have her over the next time I visit. I'd have all kinds of questions for her."

The idea of Merrill and Wysteria conversing is so honestly perfect that Alexandrie entirely forgets it's her strike in favor of standing with the accepted glass in hand and considering the sheer amount of buoyant energy that would be produced with a delighted smile on her face.

"I would absolutely relish the opportunity to acquaint the two of you," she affirms.

open | neither snow nor rain

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cw: elf racism.......

cw elf racism into infinity siiiiiigh

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