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

[crawls through] i'm still alive!!

[coquettish_trees]

So. She is used to direction.

Alexandrie's arm sweeps invitingly toward one of the chairs across from her as she rises from her place behind the desk to resettle herself in the other as is her wont under less official circumstances.

"And what has brought you to Riftwatch, Laura?"

[justashotaway]

Laura moves toward the chair and perches stiffly at the very edge, her hands on her legs. Until she knows what this woman is about, besides flowery scents and powdery cheeks, she dislikes the idea of getting too comfortable.

"I can fight." It's what she's said to just about everyone who's asked, her recruiter--so to speak--included. As no one has given her grief over the answer, she plans to use it for the foreseeable future.

[coquettish_trees]

"Ah, but one may fight anywhere."

The Lady Alexandrie Asgard is generous with what she has to give, including grief.

"You should have been as well received by the Inquisition proper, by any number of mercenary guilds, town or private guards, cells of assassins—should your skills run best in the shadows. You might have become a terribly successful highwayman!" Her affect is light and breezy for such words, the blue of her gaze amiable as a cloudless summer sky. Amiable, and for those practiced at spotting such things, calculating. Watching as she makes this list for changes that might betray from whence her new compatriot had come by her skills.

"But!" she continues, "You are sitting here with me, your skill at combat pledged to Riftwatch. Unless I am much mistaken regarding our recruitment protocols, this means you made a choice; and a choice made is a want had, cherie, whether or not it is known.

"So." Alexandrie smiles, nearly forgetting the heat and her irritation in favor of considering the puzzle that knocked on her door. "What has brought you to Riftwatch?"

[justashotaway]

These options did not occur to her--or rather, they seemed like impossible choices. Difficult to find, dangerous to penetrate, unlikely to be trustworthy...and very, very likely to assume a kind of control over her that she does not like to imagine. (And frankly, she didn't know mercenary guilds existed. They all seemed like separate men--and she only met the men--who answered to no one.)

The word cherie makes her bristle a little, having never been anyone's dear thing, but she makes nothing of it. It seems like something this woman might say to everyone; she knew a girl like that, whose every move was made to make others feel at home around her, provided they were paying for the privilege. So it is nothing, even if it feels possessive.

"Riftwatch has power," is the only way she can think to explain her reasoning. It was the only thing I knew in the Marches would reveal a level of naivete that even Laura recognizes might be a problem. They punish murderers in Cumberland is worse.

[coquettish_trees]

'Power' tells Alexandrie little save that what diminished power the organization has Laura sees as more than she had access to before (a thought given credence by the tiny stiffening caused by her affectionate diminutive. Possible someone had once had power over her, and she had chafed beneath it.) It is a popular desire to state, certainly, but, like 'fighting', it reveals little about ones true aims.

Perhaps Laura has never had the luxury of her own aims.

"Not as much as once we had, certainly," Alexandrie stops fanning herself briefly to cock her wrist such that the fan conveys a courtier's shrug, "but more than some.

"Power, like the ability to fight, is only a means. Buying a knife will give you a measure of power, but it is why you bought the knife that will tell you something of what might answer the question of what you want. Was it purchased to threaten, to protect yourself or another, to accomplish a goal?"

[justashotaway]

"Yes. I know." She's still disappointed by the Inquisition's absence, but she has been told more than once that the change is a good one. Ultimately, it does not matter; they can still shield her.

The movement of the woman's fan means nothing to her, only that it is very hot. Which it is. What does mean something is the metaphor set before her, not unlike a knife in its own right. Is she here to learn something or to tell something? Laura would prefer Lady Alexandrie to divine her purpose with a minimum of speech on her own part. She is not, however, sure how that would occur.

"I do not need knives," she says, because she does not know what else to say, and lets the two claws in her right hand appear. (Fortunately, they stop short of the other woman's skirts, two ghostly glowing blades pointing straight forward.) After another moment, they disappear, and she adds, "But Riftwatch does."

And she does not want to say I need protection.

[coquettish_trees]

This Alexandrie had not been expecting, and her eyes widen briefly with surprise, respect for the display, new interest. Laura is young to be a Knight-Enchanter, and she had not struck Alexandrie as a mage, let alone one with the dispensation previously required by the Chantry to practice such spells. Perhaps the student of one gone apostate after the Circles fell? But then, the spell to summon the blades cast without a hilt as focus for it...

Suddenly there are significantly more questions.

"It does indeed," she replies, asking none of them for the moment, "but those are the wants of Riftwatch, not your own, and you have come to me asking after discernment of the latter, no?"

Alexandrie's smile softens. "I imagine one desire is that I might simply tell you."

[justashotaway]

The back of her neck prickles, suddenly warm. She is not sure why it is happening, but her claws are itching in her hands, and she suddenly wishes they were sitting at a table she could hide her hands beneath.

She would have preferred, she realizes, for that fact to remain unseen--or at least unspoken. I might simply tell you. That is the only thing she wants: to know, without preamble, what it is she should do.

"Yes," is her only response, a reluctant one. Admitting it is not pleasant, but it is her only real option; she does not know what else to say.

[coquettish_trees]

There was a time when Alexandrie would have seized upon the opportunity to mold the girl. To take what she'd gathered of Laura in these brief moments and use it to gently suggest a shape that would be of some benefit to her own designs. To foster dependency with her willingness to provide the outside structure Laura now feels the absence of. To call it caring, nurturing—which it would be, in a way—as she slowly turned a weapon to her weapon.

As Emile had her.

And perhaps that would be best, for a time; to provide a trellis for the new delicate growth that comes after the sweeping and absolute change she surmises has occurred in Laura's life to bring her to Riftwatch. Even so, there's something that won't let her. At least, not with an aim to any end but the one Laura decides for herself. Alexandrie breathes out through her nose.

"Well. There are things we all want, yes? Those things that must needs be had to even begin to discern any greater direction." She gestures elegantly with her fan, forgets for a moment about the oppressive heat of the room, the sweat beginning to win the fight against the powder on her face. "To be safe, to be secure. To know we shall have a next meal, and one after that. To have a place.

"I cannot yet tell you what greater direction you may have, but I can tell you that those needs that must be met before searching for it shall be. That you shall be as safe and secure here as one can be in wartime such as this—we are fiercely protective of those who serve with us, as you might have gathered by the splintering from the Inquisition once it was again folded under the wing of the Chantry. That there is food, and shelter," the corner of her mouth twitches with mirth, "despite the often dubious quality thereof. That do you serve as you are able, you shall have a place, and that if nothing else, what you do here is in defense of these things for all of Thedas, and that is a fine beginning."