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

[malavhenan]

The smile he gives her is a careful, pleasant surprise edged with the smallest bit of hesitation and something else slightly more painful beneath the surface.

"Forgive me, I've found most humans don't seem to care about such things." It's only a partial reason for his initial reticence, however. "I was First of clan Ravennan. We usually wandered the western Free Marches."

[coquettish_trees]

"Most do not," she agrees.

But as long as she's to be working with the Dalish in the Inquisition, Alexandrie has considered that it may be useful to be thought of as a notable exception to the rule. Besides, she'd already shown up to a highly publicized wedding on Merrill's arm. She can hardly do more damage to her reputation in this particular arena.

(The flash of something painful, she keeps. Imagines it connects to 'was', that they perhaps no longer wandered.)

"But the Inquisition is a diplomatic organization as well, and I believe my mind still has room for one or two more titles." She smiles and sets the letter aside definitively in order to sip her own tea. "Are you newly arrived? I admit, I am on this dreary island as rarely as I am able, but I do not believe I have set eyes upon you until now."

[malavhenan]

"I am," he says, setting the cup down gently on its saucer with a soft clink. "I arrived only a few days before the haunting." His smile falters for a moment at the memory - it...had not exactly been the best 'welcome', so to speak. "I'm afraid I've spent quite a lot of my time here since then."

Finel settles his hands lightly on the table, fingers twined together. "Have you been with the Inquisition long, Lady Alexandrie?"

[coquettish_trees]

"Only since after the Grand Tourney at Wycome. I came originally to join my sister, but she has since returned to Val Royeaux with a very prestigious appointment; one she has hoped for all her life." She misses Geneviève terribly, but she is too proud to mind as much as she might. A Chevalier of the Empress's personal guard, serving as she most wished to, and terribly honorable for their family besides.

"I am... sorry to hear of the timing of your arrival, Finel," Alexandrie says with some gravity. "Hardly a fine introduction to our company."