open: lol never mind.

[cozen]

WHO: Open!
WHAT: A memorial that doesn’t go as planned.
WHEN: Justinian 1
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Nah.

The ceremony takes place in one of the side courtyards that’s been converted into a garden, where the oppressive architecture is offset with flowers and trees. There’s a small pyre, for those whose traditions call for pyres, but no bodies to burn. Instead there are tokens, flowers, favorite foods, treasured possessions—not yet lit.

(For the others, the Dalish and Nevarrans and anyone else with a different wish, their friends and family will have made different arrangements alongside the pyre, probably, if they aren’t universally reviled.)

Anyone who wants to speak, whether it’s a prepared speech or a single spontaneous sentence, can do so. The tone is respectful but only so solemn. It’s been more than a week. For many, the worst of the shock has passed, and the sun has continued to rise and set, and there’s room between bouts of misery for fond memories and occasionally laughter. The memorial is a door that’s closing—slowly, kindly—and tomorrow, on the other side of it, the war will continue.

Today, on this side, the only people judging anyone else for crying are the assholes.

***

Across the harbor, more than a dozen filthy and tired people come to a stop on the docks, and the loitering ferryman pauses to take stock of them, then starts laughing. There isn’t even any local mythology about ferrymen and the dead. It’s just that funny to him on its own, that he’s been rowing miserable people around all week, and here’s the source of all that misery, dirty and tired but significantly less dead than believed.

When he stops laughing, he offers to dunk everyone in the harbor before rowing them over. For the smell, you know. No one is going to be happy to see them if their eyes are watering too much to actually see them. Then he laughs some more at his hilarious joke.

But he does eventually load up his boat—and maybe there isn’t room for everyone all at once, maybe some dramatic reunions will be delayed, maybe some people will be even more fashionably late to their funeral than the others—and carries everyone across the bay, still chuckling intermittently.

***

In the courtyard, the speeches and anecdotes (and singing, perhaps) wind down to long silences peppered with murmurs or sniffling. Someone is preparing to light the pyre. And then the gate creaks open.

Comments

[rowancrowned]

How wonderful, to have family willing and able to support you. He thinks her at first referring to the healer, and is about to insist on otherwise, but no, she means the boys, whom Thranduil has seen only at a distance so far, so he keeps quiet and focuses mostly on getting her safely into the boat—a process that involves putting her down, shuffling bag and kitten and nug into the boat, and then offering her his arm to help her step down.

“Is Guilfoyle already on the city?” he asks Romain. He didn’t see him pass by, but that means nothing at all.

[toujoursdroit]

"He hasn't left yet." He'd had uses for Guilfoyle, if Guilfoyle was inclined to be put to them, outside of Kirkwall; those can wait, for now, and he knows exactly where the valet's loyalty resides regardless.

He settles himself in the boat once Thranduil has arranged the menagerie accordingly. "He was disinclined to attend the memorial. Assuming my message found him promptly, he'll have everything arranged by the time we arrive, I've no doubt."

For all his antipathy for Emeric didn't die when the comte did, Guilfoyle is undeniably capable.

[elegiaque]

Once she's settled in between husband and grandfather and assortment of small and less small animals, Gwenaëlle briefly contemplates Guilfoyle in a world without any Vauquelins left, and—dislikes it. She thinks, he shouldn't have to outlive me in much the same way she might think of a parent losing a child, and ignores the several different ways in which that's mildly to extremely troubling.

(Orlais.)

“I told you,” she murmurs, managing to be somewhat self-satisfied, “what's mine is yours and yours is mine.”

Thranduil may or may not actually remember his steadfast refusal to consider any of her inheritance from her father theirs, including Guilfoyle, but Gwenaëlle is smug in the face of being proven correct in how easily he fits his niche. The more for surviving to see it.

[rowancrowned]

“Beloved,” Thranduil murmurs, glad once the ferryman starts to row, “—a man is not your jewelry collection.”

Of which they likely share and share alike. She has some particularly nice hair ornaments. With her back against his chest, he relaxes, strokes his fingers down the curve of her cheek. Her weight in his lap is comforting for a variety of reasons, the beat of her pulse through her neck even better. He does not restrain himself in his open affection. There is nothing he wants to do that Romain could not witness and besides, he is too glad to have her back.

“He would be more useful,” he does admit.

[toujoursdroit]

"If there is one thing that can be said about Guilfoyle," Romain observes, arch, of his usefulness. While Thranduil's open affection might concern him in other circumstances, Romain is indeed inclined to let it pass in these. They've both reacted in ways they might otherwise not. It was a strange time.

After a moment, he says, "You did give us a fright," to Gwen. Considering the source, it is quite an admission. He's gone back to inscrutability, behind his mask in the opposite corner of the boat, but... the words themselves are telling.