faderift | open | grief is the thing with feathers

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 ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

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.

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?"

Edited (a very important glove) 2019-05-29 02:24 (UTC)

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."

Ah.

Silence, then, while Leander considers. This is a puzzle he has encountered before, but rarely so close—and rarely so complicated, despite the simplicity of circumstance. His head inclines. His eyebrows relax into neutrality, only a mild wrinkle between them (and it does not linger for her sake).

Is it weakness that's brought her here, to this wretched state? Or is he not there with her for lack of some integral piece? Some tiny thread of humanity, perhaps, that came loose when he was made—a forgotten stitch—

Without emotion, but softly, "I know."

(His, too.)

Perhaps paradoxically, it's the lack of emotion that slowly turns Alexandrie's face back and lets her look at Leander. Insulation from the lightning trying to seek ground through her, the tense paralysis that comes from being filled by it. When his face had been worried, it had moved in her with a desire to leap, arcing, and make connection she didn't want, because if she knew nothing else, it was that her surface must remain unbroken. She avoided what touch she could. Avoided what gatherings she could. What sympathy she could. What kindness. All small holes and cracks breeding the fear of the force in her sensing escape and shattering its prison.

This she could look at. Blank canvas, colored only by mild curiosity that didn't truly seem directed to her, so much as at. She stares at the quiet of him until the crackling clench of grief brought on by finding something she'd so casually and entirely expected to see there gone recedes, and she can let go of the shelf.

Alexandrie's gaze returns to him, and he holds it with his own, and breathes in steady rhythm while he does it. He wonders, as the stillness drifts down around them like a veil, and settles gently, if her own breath will follow his example. Waits for some further sign of it.

The movement of her hand catches his eye; as he follows its loosening and release, a smile touches the shape of his lips. (And no other part of him.)

He studies her face a moment longer, then tries, "Would you like me to sit with you?"

By all rights it ought to be unsettling, but even that lack of smile in his eyes is comforting.

She thinks about the offer. Lets him watch her weigh it so that when she finally says, "No," it will be the result of taking stock of herself rather than him.

"No," repeated again, with a small shake of her head and the beginning of her rise from the floor. "I have been sitting here long enough." In truth, Alexandrie doesn't know how long she'd been sitting, but whatever the amount of time had been it had been 'long enough'. More softly, then, "And too much stillness has proven as sharp a blade as too little."

"Mm. I've been keeping busy, myself."

Smoothly he unfolds into a standing position, making no sudden movements, to preserve the quiet. Palm up, he offers to her his hand. It bears the pale thread of a scar, as from a blade resisted—three, perhaps four, years old. (She may glimpse another on the wrist beyond it, again on the side away from the thumb.)

Once she too has risen, Leander may be reluctant to release her hand after he has it—or, even if she refuses his help, to allow her the same polite distance he usually keeps.

Edited 2019-06-07 22:34 (UTC)

His help is accepted as an automatic matter of course. There is a little too much cloth there, the wrap of something extra around her palm beneath the glove.

And accompanying the unconscious clever delicacy of his hand, the hold that lingers, there plays the mellifluous sound of recognition— Ah, Lady Fontaine. —and her nostrils flare with her sudden inhale. I do believe I own a few of your paintings.

Alexandrie shakes her head minutely, shifting in place and looking for all the world like a discomfited white mare given human form, her hand tensing in Leander's. This has been happening, in fits and flashes, but nothing is strong as beginnings.

The unusual thickness is not lost on him; she is not, he suspects, wearing multiple pairs of gloves. It isn't a strong enough nudge to stir his curiosity into action. Either it was an accident, or it wasn't. It's all the same to him.

"Lady?"

Quiet, and close, treading directly on decorum's edge, under the thinnest veil of concern. (Not for her, for them.) His own hand remains just as it is, loose enough to tug free, but for one soft squeeze in reply. A search in the minute flicks of his eyes, too interested for sympathy.

"What is it?" What do you see?

open | grief is the thing with feathers

day two: jurassic park;

scree

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