faderift | open | neither snow nor rain

Entry tags:

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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"Politeness," Alexandrie is saying, a cup of exceptionally rich drinking chocolate held lightly in one hand while her other gesticulates gracefully with a small puff of pastry filled with cream, "the which I know very well you have quite the talent for, Knight-Enchanter, is already a form of politic falsehood. Being as you are also well possessed of a sound and clever mind that has been further trained by a life of being needfully ever-wary of demonic manipulations, a sharp memory, and a rare ear for detail—" She gestures again. Despite the gentility of the movement, it dislodges a flake of pastry which is efficiently whisked off the fine white tablecloth by a young man in wait for just such an eventuality. "—I believe this shall go quite well."

"The third hoop is in the kitchen!" is Alexandrie's helpful call from around the corner and farther down the hall. From the same direction a moment afterwards there is a quiet thud, and a blue ball ensconced in a carefully crocheted cozy of the same color—it had been noted earlier on in her indoor croquet career that the marks on the walls the un-cushioned balls made during more energetic play went roundly unappreciated by the serving staff—comes rolling into view and stops neatly in the near-center of the arched entrance to the sitting room. It is followed shortly thereafter by its ebullient striker, who minces around it with great care that her skirts do not disturb it on her way to look for her other ball.

"Ah, miséricordieux Andraste."

Apparently she's remembered the black ball had gone what passes for 'offsides' and she had been forced to place it in the penalty position, which is to say, beneath one of the artfully carved chairs that had been moved—along with the rest of the furniture—from their usual arrangement to along the walls to allow for this particular bit of fun. Despite the oath, Alexandrie doesn't look put-out at all. Rather, she beams at Wysteria as if she might be able to dismiss the dour weather entirely with her good humor.

"Do not fear to give it a sturdy thump," she says brightly, leaning briefly on her mallet as she watches, "the apartments are rather larger than a standard court."

The moments they'd spent together surrounded by truly appalling creatures whose near every movement had made the back of her mouth taste bitter hadn't been all that long, but within them Alexandrie had found something she'd missed more than she'd thought. An artistic peer.

She'd kept up with her own work, of course. Had found several titled men and women who dabbled, or who patroned artists, but it would hardly do for her to take tea and sit for discussion with a lowborn civilian painter. It was the Inquisition alone that cut through those boundaries, and now, finally, another artist within its ranks. As soon as she'd gotten off the quite literally cursed island, she'd sent someone to find him with a little handwritten card inviting him to call on her at the apartments.

The large space attached to the roofed balcony of which she is in the midst of turning from sitting room to studio when he arrives. He'll be greeted by an austere fellow in his middle years who looks rather as if he has never deigned to have an expression in his life who will both gesture for a maid to come and take—and dry, and perhaps press—whatever outerwear Leander has entered in and to, with a slight formal bow, offer to usher him to where the Lady Alexandrie is expecting him.

She is frowning at the dark and dour sky as if it has caused her great injury, but lights up at his appearance.

"Ah! Trés bien! Perhaps the two of us together shall be able to convince the clouds to part so that I can remember which parts of the room have the best light."

After everything that occurred during those two awful days trapped in the Gallows, Alexandrie is not thinking about Byerly Rutyer. She is not thinking about Byerly Rutyer so entirely that she has invited Sidony to join her at the café in Hightown she favors most, determined to put the little tiff she'd started behind them in total, and will be sitting at what has become her favourite table when the other woman appears.

It is in a cozy corner. One can see the goings on in both café and street quite easily whilst not being forced to endure the dropped temperature near the windows and sacrificing little privacy of ones own. There is a small selection of tiny pastries already arrayed across it, but Alexandrie has apparently waited on Sidony's appearance before ordering anything to drink.

"Lady Venaras!" she exclaims in greeting, standing with a small sweep of skirts and a broad smile. "How good of you to make the trip in such weather. Do tell me you did not walk."

Nari isn't really good at this.

She's not good at her birthday, she's not good at thinking about the time that's passed without Sina, and she's not good at this. But one night she's waiting anyway, already home before Cade comes back—a rarity—sitting on the couch with her legs folded up and fidgeting with the cup of tea cradled carefully in her hands.

Despite expecting him she still manages to look a little startled when he comes in, chuckling through her nose in the windy way she has after it fades.

"Hi."

There's probably more where that came from.

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."

Sidony's understanding of the disagreement between the two of them is vague at best; it seems to her only that Madame Alexandrie is unable to take a jest in good humour and might have taken her crystal suggestions far too seriously, but it's not something that's worth investigating or demanding an answer for. Since the Provost's wedding they've had no reason to have any more kind of terse interaction - far better to imagine the two of them back on the pathway towards a good friendship and leave it at that.

The cafe is quiet enough that Sidony is able to make her way there dressed as beautifully as she likes, which she appreciates. Dressing down for surgery and her work in the infirmary is not so terrible a trial - it means she does get to do what she wishes, after all - but there are times where she longs for the silks of Nevarra, the sort of things her mother and father would buy her to try and quiet her pleas for more tutoring. It only worked sometimes.

"Lady de la Fontaine, surely we are at a first name basis now," she offers a curtsey, shaking her head as she rises. "How else would I get here? The Gallows has yet to afford me a carriage, so my feet must do."

Finel has been making himself very acquainted with the library since his arrival. There's something so wonderfully comforting about the quietness, the smell of the books that entices him to stay for hours nearly every day as he's able. It's something he's never really had access to before, but the sheer volume of knowledge that could be held just here in one place seems overwhelming.

He's on his way to return a book to its proper shelf when he's stopped by the young woman as he walks past her table. It takes him a moment to fully respond, distracted briefly by all of her finery.

"Ah - yes. Can I help you with something?"

"I do hope so," she replies, making a graceful gesture of invitation toward the seat open beside her.

"There is a continuing argument in the Venatori correspondence I have been translating and making note of about whether or not the artifact that seems to be greatly aiding, if not entirely enabling, our ultimate foe is of Tevene or elven origin. The argument against it being an elven artifact seems rather spuriously based on national pride and dismissal of your people," An opinion I certainly do not share, says her intonation, although whether it's to ingratiate herself or her true belief is negotiable. Of course her thoughts on elves are hardly relevant, "Thus, I am inclined to believe it indeed elven.

"The Dalish keep a good deal of old knowledge, do they not? Know you any tales of such an orb?"

"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."

Alexandrie looks genuinely taken aback to hear this. "Créateur ait pitié, cherie, do inform me the next time you mean to depart and I shall have one sent for you. It is simply awful out, and the Gallows is so very far away." She sits again, arranging her skirts as she does, and gestures to the chair across from her.

"How have your studies been progressing?"

"It was hardly that rough of a journey. I've fared far worse than the walk between the Gallows and Hightown." Such as the journey from Nevarra to here, which she did with just the clothes on her back (and in her bags) and her handmaiden to aid her. This seems like a rather nice spring jaunt in comparison to that - but perhaps it's unnecessary to make the comparison vocally.

Either way, she settles down comfortably, smoothing out her own dress carefully.

"Well enough, I think. I'm learning more here than I ever imagined might be possible."

Finel blinks a moment at the offered seat, now rather curious but already feeling a bit out of place as he sits and listens to what she has to say. It's already quite a significant question, one he certainly doesn't feel equipped answering or offering any sort of knowledge or advisement on specifically because of its significance - the artifact enabling their enemy.

He tilts his head, frowning slightly.

"The Dalish keep what we can, but much of it is disjointed and more of it either still hidden or lost for good. The knowledge of each clan is passed from Keeper to Keeper, but sharing knowledge between clans has always been much more difficult. I personally have never learned of such an artifact used by our People in the past, but I suppose it's possible someone else might know."

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.

He looks at her, considers her appearance. When last they'd talked, they'd quarreled. He can't trust the smile. Or the welcome, for that matter. But apparently she's back in his brother's life and it means she's not yet a liability to Loki. She could even perhaps be an asset. In truth, there'd been a moment or two when Thor had thought it possible for her to be a friend, but she plays games nearly as much as Loki does and he doesn't know that he has the energy for that.

Maybe an asset or ally, then.

"Of course," he says and returns the smile, settling in. "Do you have anything stronger than tea to drink?"

"It is no comment on your heartiness, I imagine you to be quite competent at enduring such things," Alexandrie agrees readily, making a small brief gesture for the waiting fellow to come and take their drink preferences, "However, there shall undoubtedly be a great many times in the coming months—years perhaps—in which we shall be obliged to endure hardship. Shall we not avoid what bits of it we can and save our fortitude for when it is needed? The rosehip, s'il vous plaît." The last, delivered in an aside to their waiter, is also somewhat of an illustration of this.

"Has the Inquisition attracted other mundane healers of note that you may study with, or are you largely earning your education through experience and literary theory?"

Edited 2019-02-14 16:50 (UTC)

"Ah, a shame," she sighs lightly and sets the letter aside, "but I am well aware I aim at a small and far off target in my asking. Perhaps a more likely one next: tea?"

There are a few unused cups by the pot in the case that she receives any visitors, and Marie looks surreptitiously up from her work to observe the answer.

Her smile and welcome are as genuine as anything that contains ulterior motivation can be. She's not quite forgiven him for his truly horrendous timing in requesting she undo the decorating she'd amused herself with, and they have not yet broached the subject of their dangerous mutual knowledge of Loki's true lineage, but Thor's is support they're going to need. And there had been one or two brief moments on in which she had thought that they could, indeed, be at the very least amicable acquaintances.

"The tea becomes stronger the longer one leaves it to sit, but I hardly think that is what you mean," Alexandrie's eyes twinkle with subdued amusement beneath the careful arch of her brows. "Alas, no, I am ill equipped to truly entertain. The librarians discourage it.

"What has brought you to the literary resources of the Inquisition?" The Asgards, she knows well enough, have a substantial library of their own. That, and she'd wager 'cracking a book' means something entirely different to Thor than the usual.

"I've learned the hard way, I'm afraid, which is something some might imagine." Sidony makes herself comfortable, smoothing out her skirts. She knows how she appears to most people - perhaps even to Lexie as well. Noble, stern, well dressed and equally well mannered, simple and soft around the edges. She waves her hand at the waiter, asking for the same as her friend, before she breathes out.

It's been almost too long since she has enjoyed the company of a noble woman; her mother would find her shameful.

"I've only been able to speak with those with magical talent, unfortunately." And it's obvious how displeased she is with that. "I seem to be one of the few, other than Monsieur Etienne Guerinet Beaumanoir."

That is an entirely rude assumption on Lexie's part... and also a rather accurate one. He'll gladly read a spellbook, but other books really aren't his things except when there's some pressing need to know a thing and there are no scholars available to explain matters.

He settles down with a snort about the librarians. Of course people with no lives other than books have no taste in drinks. "Then I will have some tea," he half-asks the maid. She's not his maid, but she's still a servant and he's part of the house Lexie wishes to join.

"I was passing through. I make sure to take the staircases of the towers at least three times a day." Being in rather hostile territory means he can't let himself slip. "You do not seem fond of your reading."

"Translating Venatori correspondence rarely lifts the spirits," she replies, setting the letter aside with a sigh. Marie puts aside her embroidery and moves to pour a cup of tea for Thor, setting it carefully within his reach with the handle turned just so toward him and refreshing Alexandrie's own before re-settling to her task.

"And this set in particular..." She pauses, takes up her cup and lets the warmth seep into her fingers, her tone level. Carefully respectful, having witnessed Thor's response to the civillian peoples of Tevinter under threat. "They speak of the Templar becoming restless, as the red lyrium supply by mine has been disrupted by our operations. And of other ways it might be gotten. Of growing it in living hosts." Alexandrie looks slightly ill; it's not something she has to feign. "Your countrymen and mine, I would imagine. Prisoners. The poor. When I am done, it shall go directly to the Scoutmistress and Commander."

He takes his cup of tea and tastes it. It, well. It isn't bad, as far as tea goes, but he isn't much of a tea drinker. He also isn't much of a fan of socializing without a drink in hand, so tea it is.

The amiable-enough expression fades to grimness as she narrates what she's working on. It's a messy business, and he loathes the Venatori more than the Nevarrans, which is new. He'd never thought he'd hate anyone quite to that level.

"I would like a copy." He doesn't say please; it's still a request. A quartermaster didn't get given those sorts of reports normally, but this is his home they're talking about. His people. Even prisoners and the poor deserved better than to have red lyrium grown in them, as did the slaves. "I am not positioned to help yet, but I will be."

How could he do otherwise? He's Tevinter, heir to a leading, powerful house. They're his people to guide and to protect no matter Odin's status, living or not. "And I would care to know the names of those who should be killed very slowly."

"I wish fervently I had names to furnish you. They address each other only by initial, and I hardly know if it stands for name or code name or nothing at all." It's infuriating, like chasing smoke. "As to the copies, I shall make them for you in the original Tevene." What else would they write in? They who are proud enough of their history to sell their souls to a murderer to re-live its glories. "Perhaps you shall catch some meaning I have not."

"Have you had word from Lord Asgard?" Despite the distinct likelihood that there will be as little love between her and the House's patriarch as there is between Odin and Loki, Alexandrie manages actual concern. At the very least, for Frigga's memory. She had loved him, and she had not been a woman who would do so without cause.

There is a very certain kind of light in the library today; the kind that Alexandrie always wants to touch with paint. Bright, but made soft and diffuse by the ice that still coats the windows.

He is looking at whatever it is he'd come to the Gallows archives to leaf through. She, with her cheek leaning on the curl of her hand, her own book forgotten in her lap, is looking at him with a small smile as soft as the light. With the kind of warm absorbed attentiveness which would be uninterrupted even should someone drop one of the heavy reference volumes directly behind her. The kind of attentiveness that means she can time her rise and movement behind him to lean forward and set her cheek against his to allow her to reach to turn the page for him.

"You," she murmurs in Tevene, "are very handsome when you read." and then, returning to Trade, "Have you learned anything terribly interesting?"

Loki, for all his adoration of the woman beside him, had fallen into old habits and allowed himself to be consumed by the tome before him. He had been embroiled in research and, until she leaned over him and set her cheek alongside his, he hadn't even noticed her move. He starts, just so as she purrs over his shoulder. Out of the side of his eyes he can make out the curve of her cheek and her long lashes.

He, still unsettled, answers in Tevene.

"Am I?" He preens a bit and sighs. "Is being handsome not enough, now I must learn interesting things?"

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open | neither snow nor rain

Myr-- It's a Banana :(

Wysteria-- Right of Croq-way (thread-jackable by Lea, I do believe?)

Leander-- Happy Accidents

Sidony-- Café au Lady

Cade-- in daylights, in sunsets, in midnights

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Alexandrie

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Lexie

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Off Again On Forever-- Loki

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