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

[coquettish_trees]

She doesn't want to. Retreat means acknowledgement that there is something to retreat from, which there isn't. There isn't. What poor evidence do they have? Ashes? Bones? Artifacts? Nothing. It's nothing. Falsehood, to get the Watch to stop looking. Trickery, to get whoever had kidnapped them to stop looking as they made their way back.

He was too clever, too skillful, too elusive. Fools, all, to believe at least he'd not gotten away. At least he— but she still needs Thor's support to walk, still nods numbly and acquiesces, still follows.

[thorndergod]

Selfishly he's thankful that he has someone else to look after. If it was just him, he'd likely be curled up in the wine cellar drinking his way through the stores. The thought still appeals, frankly.

Gently he guides Lexi to one of the finely tooled leather chairs, and when the valet comes Thor takes the drinks and sets them down for the both of them, following that up with the order for more. The whole bottle, the whole cask. He, at least, does not intend to stay sober or upright or functioning for long. Tomorrow he can see to details, but tonight is for raw pain.

He sits down himself now and searches for words, finally coming up with "I hate the South" before resting his elbows on his knees and his forehead in his hands. It's not really accurate to how he's feeling, but there's nebulous hate and anger and it's easier to go there rather than break down further.

[coquettish_trees]

She says nothing to counter him, nor will she touch the wine, sure that the relaxation of it would let something terrible out. The awful, flattening, uprooting storm that she presses back with the desperate rigidity of her denial. If Thor curves over, Alexandrie sits even straighter. Finally after a long moment she speaks, tight through a clenched throat.

"You cannot kill the South." Fate, 'the South', whatever gods he believes in; swinging at those is swinging at wind. Slicing through water. No shock of flesh and bone to carry up your arms to satisfy. Corypheus, though. The Venatori. The most hospitable Baron Deshaies.

"Hate something that will bleed."