open | neither snow nor rain

[nadasharillen]

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! ]

Comments

[coquettish_trees]

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."

cw: elf racism.......

[heirring]

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."

cw elf racism into infinity siiiiiigh

[coquettish_trees]

"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?"

[heirring]

"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."

[coquettish_trees]

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.