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! ]

Threaded | Flat

"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.

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?"

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?"

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?"

Finding Byerly's door wasn't terribly difficult.

Only slightly moreso was lying in wait for him to return just far enough along the curvature of the hallway to remain unseen.

(And only slightly moreso had been convincing Geneviève to leave behind her old broken-in riding boots that could be reliably quiet.)

Once he does return, once the latch clicks, she moves. Even in the old boots with new skills he'll hear the sound of quick footfalls just before the full-force shove, granting him a moment to look, or prepare. Alexandrie can hardly overpower him, but she doesn't intend to. All she needs is a small slice of space for her slender form, clad in leggings rather than her regular preponderance of skirts, to slip through so she can take up a defensive position in the room beyond.

Edited 2019-02-17 19:49 (UTC)

The apartments are filled, upon Colin's return, with the unmistakable smell of baking bread. This, followed to its source, will reveal a simply clad Alexandrie with her hair twisted into a low braid, staring into the flame of the small oven. Flour still covers the hand that holds her wine glass.

Her eyes are tired and dull when she looks over her shoulder before turning her face back to the rising loaf.

"Do you know," she asks it, "why I kept your acquaintance then?"

There's a delighted giggle from Merrill, who had come to the Hanged Man out of habit - even without Varric and Hawke and the others, the Hanged Man was the Hanged Man, and they knew her here - and been pleased to find Nari there. She has a cup of mulled wine herself and is mostly perching on the furniture rather than sitting on it, but she does point out the chairs with the oddest wobbles, so perhaps it works out.

"I suppose if he's the only one in the boat, he's technically the captain..."

It's punctuated with another giggle and a swing of her feet.

The knock on the door is precise despite the slightly muted quality lent by the cloth covering the hand that delivers it. It is followed, after a moment, by a quiet inquiry.

"Lady Alexandrie, my Lord Provost. Might I have a word?"

Following her outburst, their sinking to the floor to weep jaggedly together, even after the time she'd spent calm and leaning against Colin's shoulder, Alexandrie is brittle and erratic and moves about like a stormcloud at high wind. She goes out.

The next morning, it's calm. And the next morning. And the next. She comes and goes at her regular hours. She says hello, and goodbye, and smiles, and laughs, and kisses Colin's forehead. She will go to market if he asks. She marshals the extra servants she's hired to move the remainder of her personal belongings across Hightown to the Asgard estate. She meets with a friend of her father's to discuss the planned renovations. She does her work and welcomes his interruptions warmly, although she gently directs the conversation to lighter things.

One early evening, he will discern the faint smell of burning paper. And following it, music. Melody. Quiet low repeated chords. Carefully counted measures of silence entire. Melody again.

Threaded | Flat

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

Alexandrie

Lexie

Off Again On Forever-- Loki

Byerly-- His life ♪ Ain't gonna be nothing like our lives ♫