closed | all work and no play

[coquettish_trees]

WHO: Lady Alexandrie and her Lounge Brigade
WHAT: Irreverence and indolence for the sake of morale
WHEN: Now
WHERE: The Unofficial Tevinter Embassy (i.e. the Asgard estate in Hightown), and other places around Kirkwall
NOTES: Catch-all for closed starters; pm/plurk/discord/smoke signal me if you want to plan something. ♥

The undead walk the land, there's mountains of work to be done, ten tasks for every hand, so...

Champagne, anyone?

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Gwenaëlle and Kitty

[coquettish_trees]

One day, Alexandrie decides two things suddenly: that simply enough had happened to Kitty in the preceding weeks and she ought to be given a chance to escape it for a little while, and that since she can’t remember exactly what the Provost’s wife sounds like when upbraiding her for something it had been far too long since she’d seen Gwenaëlle.

To this end, a messenger is dispatched with little invitations to come and stay over with her in the garden cottage, during which absolutely no work—or even the bare mention of it—is to occur. Lightly scented parchment and dark rose ink rather than simply sending a crystal message of course means the would-be hostess is in deathly earnest.

Be there at five, expect tiny food, if you haven’t got a dressing gown one will be provided for you. (Kitty.)

The cottage itself is a charming affair at the end of the estate gardens, and Alexandrie is already in partial lounge upon their arrival, waist-length copper curls hanging loose over the thick fabric of her robe, sitting beside a table containing a number of little sandwiches and a selection of the last fresh fruits of fall cunningly cut into flowery shapes.

“Ah, bon! Come and sit.”

[rathercommon]

Kitty, as ever, feels a little breathlessly gawky at all this finery. She wonders, at times, whether Lexie forgets exactly where she came from - that she's just a commoner from Balham, the daughter of a clerk and a washerwoman. Being from Earth and not Thedas, the signals are different, of course - the things that marked Kitty as a poor girl back there aren't identical to the things that mark the poor people here - but it's not like Kitty is subtle about talking about it, or that she hides it.

No, it's probably just that Lexie chooses to ignore it. Kitty...Well, she's still not wholly certain how she feels about that. It's nice, but it's strange, too.

She sits, gingerly, resembling nothing so much as a cat unwilling to fully plant its haunches on the ground. "Thanks for inviting us," she says, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'd meant to bring some flowers, but the shops didn't have any." (An odd thing, one she isn't accustomed to - that here, in Thedas, there are things simply impossible to find at times of the year. Back home, the shops were stocked year-round with refrigerated greenery flown in from all corners of the globe, but here, everything is so seasonal.)

hi im bad and thought i'd tagged this already

[elegiaque]

As much as Gwenaëlle has, to some degree, streamlined her life in recent years—not so much that she doesn't have an assortment of dressing gowns to choose from and it isn't that difficult to arrange to be in Hightown at the right time. She visits her grandfather first—duly deferential—but presents herself and snakes a cushion to sit on, her hair hanging loose in its natural curl as she's rarely seen with.

“Nonsense,” she says, arch. “We're the flowers, just ask Lexie.”

*we’re* bad and thought that

[coquettish_trees]

“Just so,” Alexandrie replies as prompted, retrieving one of the cunningly carved flowery apples from its place among the others and making as if she means to tuck it into Kitty’s hair. She doesn’t, of course—although she’d not given her husband the same reprieve from sticky mess in the past—and instead leaves it in front of the young woman. “Besides, although I should have been most grateful for such thoughtfulness, flowers I have. It is your company I have lacked,” she reaches to pinch one of Gwenaëlle’s curls with cheeky affection. “The both of you.”

After a warm pause, to grant it the ring of truth rather than saccharine play-acting, Alexandrie fetches her own apple and begins to pluck its petals to nibble. “Now tell me something nice that I have missed. Or something irritating that we shall promptly gossip about.” She raises a finger in premature warning, her sternness patently feigned. “Nothing of real import.” The finger lowers, and she smiles. “Unless it is nice.”