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

[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."