open | it's hot up here

[coquettish_trees]

WHO: Lexie, Colin, Leander, you
WHAT: Catch-all for Lexie including paint, rage, and a generally terrible day at the office made worse.
WHEN: Presently
WHERE: Hightown and the Gallows
NOTES: She may try to get into a fight with every single person here

I. Colin

There is an odd noise, from the studio. A dull repetitive thudding. It's broken every so often by silence, but it always resumes again.

Searching it out yields Alexandrie, kneeling on a raw unstretched canvas that would fit her body should she lie on it and stretch, pounding her paint-covered fist over and over onto it, her breathing labored as she fills the space fist by fist with something vast and dark. The pause comes when she reaches to cover her hand again with pigment.

There is a second pause, to reach for the bottle beside her.


II. Leander

There are rooftops now, of a sort, and buildings beneath them, rendering the vast darkness on her canvas a yet starless sky. She flinches sometimes, when some thought darkens her brow and her hand comes down a little harder, but she makes no attempt to lessen her own force. There is paint on her face, where she's scrubbed at the sweat born from exertion and relentless heat, and the curls that have loosened themselves at the sides of her face swing with her movement. Stick. Are dislodged again. Swing.

Alexandrie had instructed Marceau to not allow visitors, but Leander isn't a visitor. Leander is both her second in command and she'd long ago given him the run of the studio, and thus he was given no challenge at the door.


III. Jeshavis Office (Open)

There is, just before your entrance, a gasp and then a sharp oath. An odd one; the country of origin of the phrase is Antiva, but the words start in Tevene. It doesn't translate well.

Inside, the Lady Alexandrie persists in her dogged determination to look at least moderately finished. The result is a woman even paler than usual and quite obviously due to what one might argue is the over-application of cosmetics rather than the infinite care she takes to stay shielded from the sun. The amount of powder required to stop herself from melting is frankly absurd. Despite the care she's taken, and the unceasing movement of the fan wielded with as much ferocity as any weapon, the sweat is slowly beginning its march again on the sides of her face.

The source of the oath: the condensation from the glass on her desk, unchecked, has made it into the base of her stack of papers and has begun to lift the ink.

"Qu'Est-ce que c'est," she says, sharp and irritable. A pause. And then, without looking up from where she's trying to blot the water from the page, "What."


IV. Wildcard!

Comments

[keenly]

Colin’s eyes widen briefly at her frankness, very nearly Fereldan in its honesty. So often he is left to guess what she needs, but now, she is telling him. And he thinks about it for a minute. She’s not a violent woman, but she might get a little more satisfaction out of this little art project if her fists had more to connect with than the floor.

“Just a minute,” he says, carefully getting to his feet and wiping them before leaving the room. When he comes back, it’s with a large flour sack the staff uses to store a lot of smaller sacks in. There being a relatively low rate of reuse for sacks in this house, it’s quite full. Colin holds it up.

“Maybe having something to punch? We could pin the canvas on. You could even pretend it’s him.”

[coquettish_trees]

It’s delightful enough in its earnest simplicity that Alexandrie actually laughs quietly as she shakes her head, stirring herself to go and kiss Colin’s cheek with the gentle affection she reserves for him.

“So thoughtful, mon chou,” she murmurs, resting her head on his shoulder. “But it is a different sort of anger, I think, than can be addressed by beating a poppet of any one man, no matter how inconsiderate. I am angry with him, yes, but...” she sighs and shifts her head, looks at the weave of Colin’s tunic, then past it to her work. “Even more, I am angry at the whole of our acquaintance. I am angry with whoever has written it to be as it is.”