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

arrives so late my starbucks is cold

[sarcophage]

An attempt to arrange his hair in an intentional-looking fashion was undone by the ferry ride over, so it's a bit of a wavy mess when he arrives, but at least the evidence of effort remains in his overall cleanliness, which he's worked down to the least detail, eyebrows and cuticles and all.

Once his mantle's off and his scarf is unwound (both could use some care, honestly), his collar's relaxed enough that it's probably considered vulgar by at least one of these people, or so he hopes. Alas, he's got no chest hair to let creep above a neckline, otherwise he'd have made a point of that too. There's only the top of a scar—a straight vertical line, centred, beginning just below his collarbones—and that will only peek if the angle's just right.

Anyway, enough about his attributes: Leander deliberately chooses not to emulate the help by greeting their mistress with a bow. Instead he crosses the room to meet her and, once he's near, raises his hands to request one or both of hers. "Darling Lady," he knows just how cheeky he's being, "just flash it a smile, that should do the trick."

[coquettish_trees]

Being a great fan of cheek, Alexandrie warmly takes both offered hands in her own.

"Ah, but I must paint, and brightening the room from behind the canvas will hardly give the desired effect. No," she says, releasing his hands to tap her chin with gloved finger and an excess of thoughtfulness, "you must do so, and then I shall take a turn in exchange when you wish to take a turn at the easel."

[sarcophage]

"There's an idea." It's not dismissive, only distracted, trailing off naturally as Lea's scrutiny begins a light circuit of the room. "My, this is a generous space, isn't it. How lovely." Even with the furniture hanging around and everything. But he's come to visit Alexandrie, not her house, and so flits his gaze back to her to deliver the attention to which she is naturally entitled.

(And which he expects she requires, not for any lack, but because.)

"All right—if the Lady would be so kind, I'm all primed for the grand tour."