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]

[ The battle between dogged desire to be present and see things done with her own hands, to know she had not been idle in this moment where there is almost certainly need, and the galling knowledge that Yseult is right, and she would almost certainly take risks now that she never would in another situation plays out in miniature on Alexandrie's face, in her body. A hawk with head lowering, wings partly raised, trying to decide whether or not she will mantle.

In the end, aided by the slight change in the Scoutmaster's voice, the latter wins out (marginally), and her shoulders drop slightly. A half-hearted twist of her hand: fine.

With a quiet intensity, then, an edge of helpless desperation that she doesn't manage to blunt all the way: ]

I cannot sit on my hands. Tell me there is something I might do.

[hassaran]

Of course.

[ She's not about to turn effusive now, but there is a hint of approval--no fainter than everything else--in Yseult's nod. She casts a look about her desk, and then sets a hand on a stack of papers a couple inches thick. ]

You read Tevene, I believe? These are copies of intercepted communications from Tevinters living abroad that we suspect could have enemy ties, primarily in Orlais and here in Kirkwall. Most are in Trade, but not all, and some mix in Tevinter or Orlesian idiom. They need a careful review for anything useful or irregular, and there are more than I can quickly handle myself. Look for anything that might suggest enemy ties, or that the message is actually encoded, and of course anything that might hint at a planned attack on our people.

[ Another agent she might take the time to explain further--the signs that a message may be encoded, common types of ciphers, subtler signals that someone might be under enemy influence or vulnerable to it--but her file suggests Lexie requires no such guidance. ]

Translate anything not in Trade for our files, and bring me anything you think worth discussion or a second look.