open | grief is the thing with feathers

[coquettish_trees]

WHO: Lexie, Thor, Colin, you?
WHAT: a collection of dramas
WHEN: after The News drops
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: (I'm not doing a general, but anyone who wants to come at her or have me write something, come touch me gently with a paw @ shaestorms or shae#7274 on discord) okay maybe I am doing general prompts, but you can still put a paw on me.

Day One: The Chantry Gardens

Alexandrie doesn't paint the living. It had made even the process of selecting canvas funereal. There are five leaning against her chair with an air of solemnity to them, bright and white in the sunlight, and one on her easel covered with a clamped down sketch, the lines of which she is tracing over with a stylus. A genial looking fellow with lively, interested eyes and an easy smile accentuated by the mustache above it, the slightly curling dark of his hair mussed in the way that always makes one appear as if they could not be anything but the most genuine of souls.

She straightens to regard it, her skirts ruffling in the breeze.


Day Two: Library

There is a quiet noise, somewhere amidst the shelves. A person noise, rather than the shuffling of books.

After a while, long enough to dismiss it, it repeats; a soft kind of gasping.

If one were to be curious enough, a search for the source would reveal Alexandrie sitting with her skirts pooled around her with her hand over her mouth to stifle the labored sob of her breath, the fingers of her other hand resting in the empty space where a book ought to be.


Day Three: Lowtown Market

Someone calls out that they have flowers, flowers that had come to full bloom this very morning, and Alexandrie's face twists with sudden incandescent rage at the immensity of the insult that things had continued to grow. That merchants had continued to sell. That down the row, someone is trying to decide which ribbon to quickly buy for their sweetheart before she notices that he's not moved on to the next stall with her.

The call again—Beautiful spring blossoms! Brighten your home! Charm your wife!—and Alexandrie rounds on the man with a snarl so quickly it sends apples bouncing from the basket she carries. He looks surprised.

Someone really ought to stop her.


[ or bring your own! :D ]

Comments

Thor

[coquettish_trees]

Half a breath after Loki's name issues from the crystal, there is the sharp crash of something heavy shattering from the direction of the foyer.

[thorndergod]

For the briefest of moments, Thor has hope. The crashing could be Loki. Somehow. It's all an elaborate trick, for not the first time, and Loki's home and breaking stuff in frustration because, because, Thor doesn't know the end of that. He rushes in to find it is not Loki and stops to stare at Alexandrie instead.

"He..." Words aren't working, just as much as thoughts aren't. "He has timing. A flair for it. But Kirkwall's roads are crowded at time. Give him a minute, or ten, perhaps he meant to get here right at the announcement and was delayed."

It's denial. He knows it is. Loki is vain and proud and would not give up any belongings, but they have something.

[coquettish_trees]

Although no other part of her moves, Alexandrie's pale face turns towards Thor's footfall as sharply as a startled creature's to cast her glazed and dilated eyes on him instead of continuing to stare at her still-raised hands as if she couldn't comprehend their nerveless betrayal.

It had been a cut-crystal vase. A fine one, the twin of the one already placed, proudly holding its wealth of lovingly arranged cuttings from the garden's first blooms. This one lies in wet shards at her feet, razor-edged islands among its scattered roses and the still spreading water that splashed her gown with its impact, now beginning to soak into the hem of the skirt where it rests on the floor.

Her lips part slightly and she takes a breath, says thinly: "Of course."

[thorndergod]

"Five more minutes." His voice cracks as he speaks. It's the sort of plea he'd make to his now-gone mother, five more minutes to play, five more minutes to sleep, and it's always been useless. He can't have lost someone else.

For that reason he turns to look at the doorway, waiting. Hoping. There have been times when he hasn't had enough faith in Loki before. Seconds pass, though, and there is no dramatic door-opening. There's no mocking laugh for them being so foolish as to call him dead. Slowly, slow enough that it might not be noticeable at first, Thor sags. Shortly thereafter he's leaning against the wall and sinking down it, gaze still on the door.

"He cannot be gone." What is life without his brother?

[coquettish_trees]

There is the high repetitive sound of glass being slowly pushed across marble, the muffled drag of petals, and then the light pressure of a steady hand on Thor's shoulder.

"It was behind the lines," Alexandrie says. Her voice is pitched higher than usual, comes with less force, but her tone is as conversational as it might be were she telling Thor about a nice cloud she'd seen. "Perhaps he has been forced to find a den to coil in to escape, and it has spoiled his timing." The hand squeezes once before releasing, as precise a gesture of encouragement as might be wanted, though it lacks any trace of genuine warmth.

[keenly]

There's a guest arriving at the Asgards' house. He doesn't break down until Alexandrie arrives to greet him, staggering forward into her arms.

[coquettish_trees]

There's nothing for it but to catch him, although it will not be in the pliant soft warmth of her usual embrace. She holds him woodenly, like an artist's manikin posed to allow them to practice the drawing of comfort.

[keenly]

His grip, in return, is needy, seeking comfort more than giving. But an embrace and a mutual cry are comforting for both parties, aren't they? In his abject grief, Colin doesn't notice that Alexandrie isn't crying. He's never going to see Anders again. That's the only thing he can think of right now, although it isn't thinking so much as a visceral cry of protest.

He pulls away eventually, wiping at his face, having absorbed her lack of reaction by now. There's no judging her for it. Everyone reacts in their own way, deals in their own way, but he still feels the need to apologize.

"I'm sorry," he chokes, as if he's being too much of a bummer.

[coquettish_trees]

"You need not be," she murmurs, "come in and have some tea."

It's like watching a music box. Her turn towards the downstairs parlor is graceful, as is her gesture to a waiting servant to begin preparations, the extension of her hand to Colin in invitation to take it; her walk is a court glide, straight and tall with her head held high. A perfect moving sculpture of Orlesian nobility, hollow of its spark.

Garden!

[bouchonne]

"Who's your subject?" Byerly's voice is soft. He leans against a nearby tree - rather too frail a thing to be leaned against, simple sapling that it is, so that it bows slightly under his weight. There's a small smile on his lips, but none in his eyes.

[coquettish_trees]

"You need not dissemble," she replies gently. Byerly and Bastien had been thick as thieves, then. Quite literal ones, she'd always suspected. She's sure, of the two of them, the man she now prepared to paint would have gone to his erstwhile compatriot first. If nothing else, Byerly hadn't been the one who'd ruined everything.

It's a moment before she turns to look, but she does. Alexandrie's face is pale and tired and too serene. She looks as if she might were she standing on a scaffold with a rope around her neck, resigned to her fate, choosing what she would like her last sight of the world to be. Treetops, perhaps. Sky.

"He came and found me whilst the island was afflicted with inconvenient truths." She smiles, small, confined to her lips; a match for Byerly's. "I admit, I was more fooled by his mustaches than I was yours."

Of course, she hadn't been looking—always looking—for Bastien.

[bouchonne]

"It took me a moment to recognize him as well, when he first showed his face." By pauses a moment, then says, "Perhaps I ought to have told you."

It's not an apology - not really. Just an observation. He isn't sorry, after all, for his lack of transparency; that had been during one of their low points, when Bastien had showed up. He had not, precisely, owed her the information. But still. Perhaps he ought to have told her.

"Did you have the opportunity to spend some time with him, at least?"

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie shakes her head slightly. "Only that." A pause follows, and she turns to consider her work again.

"How funny it is," she remarks softly. "When I fully expect to spend the rest of my life without ever seeing someone again, here they are. When I fully expect to see them again, they are gone forever." The breeze catches beneath the pinned sketch for a moment, lifting it a little like a sail. If it were larger, perhaps it would fly away.

"I hardly blame you for keeping him to yourself. It would have been a poor reunion were it not desired, and there are few things so discouraging as reacquainting yourself with an old friend and immediately learning your confidences shall not be kept.

"Had the two of you remained in some contact, or did I sunder us all?" The question holds none of her usual self-indulgent recrimination, only absent interest, as if Alexandrie cannot even summon the emotion necessary to feel guilty.

day two: jurassic park;

[sarcophage]

There are two unfortunate facts about the Lady's situation. The first: rather than wandering around with his thoughts, and his plans, and his futile impulses, Leander has decided to spend some time working today, which means he is in the library—or moving through it, at least, on his way in and out of his workroom. The second: Leander is always curious enough.

Or perhaps these facts are—in fact—fortunate. We'll see shortly.

And so will she, should she glimpse the shape of a foot in her periphery. Feet. Above them, legs, and above those, the rest of a man, familiar in shape, but uncommonly still. Leander has not sprung forth to greet her on sight, as he would normally do, but now takes the opportunity to watch her from a small distance while she crumbles in distress. The fine fabric surrounding her like icing; the shapes of her hair, gathered or cascading; her face crumpling exquisitely behind her hand.

How beautiful she is.

scree

[coquettish_trees]

But she doesn't glimpse the shape of the foot, the legs, the man. Alexandrie's formidable attention seems to be taken entirely by the space in front of her, her fingers now changing their shape from resting in it to the peculiar awkwardness that arises from pressing down against an unyielding surface in a vain attempt to drag towards you what will not be dragged with a hold that is desperate rather than strong.

The hand shape that comes in between having a good grip on the cliff's edge and finally letting go.

She's clamped the other one harder against her mouth now, uncareful. It will come away red.

[sarcophage]

The observing artist's gaze is drawn by the buckling in the creases of her gloved fingers, the way the fabric copes with the pressure of her grasp. The purest torment in the strain of her knuckles. He follows her arm up to her shoulder, her heaving posture, the way she gulps for air—and no tears. No tears at all. Look at her. This thing she feels, it must be powerful.

Leander knows something like it. From here it resembles the same maelstrom, impossibly bright and unfathomably deep, a storm of grief and gravity, of memory, of cyclic futility—huddled in the centre of it, savaging his own heart—desperate for the merest stillness—

Softly he comes to the corner of the shelf. There his thin body folds into an indulgent crouch, and with his forearms on his knees and his hands linked loosely between them, he tilts his head, leans to better see her face. Preparing to receive the full ferocity of her attention, he makes sure to wrinkle his brow in concern; he knows how gentle it makes him look, how large and soft his eyes.

"Lady de la Fontaine?"

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie looks up, but sees something that makes her flinch and turn her eyes back to the shelf quickly (not the space. Somewhere beside it.) Perhaps it is that very cultivated gentleness. If sympathy is accepted it means it's warranted, and if it is warranted it means they are dead.

(But not he, not yet. He is sealed up even farther beyond the rest, the thought of it a knife so sharp and exquisite that the mortal cut it renders barely bleeds. A flame so hot it sears the nerves before they have time to shrill their warning.)

"The book I need," she says numbly, managing to turn the next dry sob into only sharp inhale, "someone took it."

Lowtown Market

[altusimperius]

"Easy," comes the decidedly uneasy admonishment, accompanied by a hand on Lexie's forearm to stop her surging forward or killing anyone.
Of course, it leaves him wide open for whatever she might do with the other arm, but Benedict is trying to prevent a civilian murder and sacrifices must be made.

[coquettish_trees]

No-one in the history of all the world has ever gentled from a rage when commanded, least of all Alexandrie de la Fontaine.

What such a command does manage, nearly always, is to redirect the object of that rage. She's jerking her arm from the unexpected pressure with a indignantly ringing "Je t'interdis de me toucher!" before she even registers whose hand it is (there go the remaining apples), and her hand flickers past her skirts in her turn towards the interloper, coming away accompanied by the glint of steel.

There would likely have been blood on the streets shortly thereafter save for two things.

One: The shape she turns toward registers somewhere as Benedict's, and Benedict as someone she has hurt enough already, and two: In a single sliver of a moment she is fiercely proud of how quick and effortless her reflexive draw has gotten, cannot wait to relay this to her tutor—for she loves dearly the face Loki makes when he is proud of both her and himself—and remembers.

And she stops.

[altusimperius]

Maker, since when did fancy women start carrying daggers?

One would think he'd have learned the signs from enough interactions with Loki, but Benedict still manages to be surprised when Alexandrie whirls on him, and he stumbles a little in his haste to step back away from her, hands raised and eyes wide.

He has the good sense not to speak right away, instead letting her react how she will, his eyes never leaving that blade.

[coquettish_trees]

It doesn't move any further. Neither does Alexandrie, save to slowly wilt as the cut flowers that caused such anger might if they were pulled from the water and left there to curl in on themselves. Left to become limp, then brittle, then crumble to nothing at all.

It won't be long before the market goes on around them, the collective concern fading. The many are unkind that way.

for Yseult; a little time after the rescue goes out

[coquettish_trees]

[ The Gallows had been substantially lighter in personnel after the contingent had gone out to the Baron's estates. It hadn't been difficult to put together why it might have become lighter still after the pervasive ringing silence issuing from the crystals.

Her crystal.

Something had happened, something that had at the very least prevented those on the mission from contacting home. And it was something that had apparently warranted the mobilization of a second—and sizable—party to go in pursuit.

An hour after this information reaches her, Alexandrie is in the Scoutmaster's office with her hands folded in her lap. Every hair is in place, every jewel polished, the red edge of her lips is clean and sharp. Her skirts are unwrinkled, their white pristine, but even so there is something in the air hanging around her like light perfume that whispers of fraying. Of tiny threads being teased from the weave of her one by one. ]

May I ask the reason I am here rather than on the road at this juncture?

[ It is courteous enough, dulcet enough, unconcerned enough, to put most at ease. Yseult is not most; she will have no difficulty hearing the warning-rattle of the lady's tail tucked beneath her calm. ]

[hassaran]

[ Yseult is at her desk, piled high with pages in ruthlessly-neat piles. The map table along the opposite wall is the same, a half-dozen mission diagrams laid out, marked with tokens.

She sets her pen down in its trough when Alexandrie enters, careful not to trail drips of ink across the blotter, just as she's been careful to ensure any ash ends up in the dish at her elbow, currently half-full but cold. She folds her hands in front of her and lets the question hang a moment, as if it might answer itself. ]

Your skills were not best-suited to the needs of the mission. We think it likely to involve tracking the missing through country patrolled by enemy soldiers and darkspawn.

[coquettish_trees]

Through my country [ and Isaac's, and you know Byerly to be familiar—the whisper of a traitor mind, ] and then perhaps through one in whose language I am near-fluent [ which has largely ceased to be spoken outside the upper classes and Venatori—again, ] perhaps at the behest of one of my peers [ who you are only passingly familiar with, Deshaies was inconsequential, but— this time Alexandrie goes so far as to shake her head perceptibly and her lips thin a hair; she knows she's reaching, and it angers her. ]

This is not of use? Nor the resources of my family, in our newly sundered state?

[ More emptiness. Her ability to deliver such things is reduced by both Geneviève's departure of the organization and by the eyes of the peerage that keep watch to see how well Val Fontaine will support its unapologetically wayward daughter. The ever more wayward-seeming Riftwatch. But she is driven by a slowly building inexorable fear that presses like wind behind her and bids her continue to grasp for reasons to make the Scoutmaster rectify this and send her now. (How far have they gone? Not too far. One change of horse, perhaps, and she would catch them up, and surely, if she were there, surely—) ]

[hassaran]

[ Yseult's head tilts to one side, incrementally further with each argument raised, each flimsier than the last. From this vantage she simply looks at Alexandrie for a long moment, and then says, quite plainly: ]

No. And I believe you're intelligent enough to know that already, so I will not waste your time explaining. What is the actual reason that you wish to go?