[ open: all arise! ]

[vorbratta]

WHO: you. yes, you there. you're invited
WHAT: Sonia is throwing a big party, because everyone needs an excuse to get good and drunk together right now. And dancing. There is always dancing.
WHEN: Justinian, shortly after the return of the jungle crew
WHERE: The suite at the top of the mage tower
NOTES: ♫ have some party jams ♫

The month in the jungle was a long one, made longer by the total lack of any alcohol to mitigate the experience. Utterly unthinkable. Sonia is addressing a public need by throwing a grand party -- a public service, even. Besides, it's what she does. When was the last time she got to plan a party, anyway? Granted, this is not a Denerim soiree for the young nobility, but the venue doesn't matter. Only the people and the drinks, and Sonia is assuredly rich in both. It is also a fantastic excuse not to think about any of the bad things that have happened since she was last in Kirkwall.

The decoration in the residential suite at the top of the mage tower would be best classified as improvisational -- one of those drapes tacked along the wall for ambience may be a bedsheet -- but it's the spirit of the thing that counts. One makes do with what one has. In one corner are a few tables laden with spirits, some provided by Sonia, others by generous partygoers. There are a few Barra vineyard vintages in the mix, highlights of her personal collection, a testament to the celebration she considers tonight to be. There's a small selection of food nearby, mostly for snacking to go with the drinks, though guests are free to bring whatever they like to share.

And there is, of course, music. Someone here has brought a fiddle or a flute or a bunch of pots masquerading as a drum set. Maybe you've brought your very own a capella choir. Whatever the accompaniment, there's something to dance to. Sonia makes sure there is dancing.

Tonight is not for licking wounds or swapping grisly stories of terror and survival. Tonight is for feeling alive, getting properly and delightfully drunk, and having a good god damn time.

Comments

[cozen]

Bastien allows the hair-pulling with mournful dignity, turning his head against the cushion to look at her. "It was stolen from my room," he says, "like an infant from its cradle."

There's no defensiveness in his tone. He left it unattended, after all. He should have found a cello-sitter.

"I hope whoever has taken it knows how to tune it properly."

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie pouts for the show of it, but there's no energy behind it; the small frown that follows, however, is real.

"From the Gallows?" pronounced 'what sort of secure fortress is this'. The pull is replaced by the smoothing of the hair back to where she'd gotten it, the quality of the movement suffused with the sort of soft careless affection one only finds near the bottom of bottles.

"Surely someone saw this marauding miscreant. It is not as if a cello may be tucked discreetly into ones boot."

[cozen]

Bastien lifts his head just a bit and smiles once his hair has been restored to its correct position, grateful and petted, then hums.

"It is a very large fortress," he says, "and we left it very empty. If I were a thief—" Hypothetically. Of course. "—I think the nights would give me enough time to creep around those who were still here without being seen. You could store things in crates and sacks where they would be overlooked, then move them across the harbor at night while the ferrymen were at home in bed. Maybe on one of those nights where is seems like it wants to storm but cannot, so there would be no moonlight and enough wind to allow for noisy mistakes."

[coquettish_trees]

A considering hum as Alexandrie tilts her head back into her own cushion and spares a sidelong glance for the small remainder of her wine before judging it not worth the effort of lifting the bottle, and closing her eyes.

“It may surface again being sold by a less reputable creature than the luthier from which it was originally obtained,” she muses idly. “Unless the thief is a cellist, in which case we may be obliged to go to more dance halls in order to catch them at their playing.”

[cozen]

"We must do that regardless," Bastien says.

He does not say now that you have more free time, because the relatively more frequent absence of her husband and the relinquishment of her authority isn't the sort of thing she should be required to acknowledge out loud, regardless of whether she's able to actually forget them, while pleasantly drunk at a pleasant party.

"We have a lead," he adds, "and perhaps someone has a plan. I am not the only one missing things. But if this does not work I am afraid I will have to insist Riftwatch cease all other business until there are answers. We cannot work together if we do not know who among us might be a thief."

[coquettish_trees]

One of those reasons is cause for vastly less consternation than the other; in a more agreeable world the chaise would be occupied by two indolent loungers.

But here is Alexandrie, alone.

"Mais oui, the very idea of sharing the space with secret light-fingered miscreants chills me to the core." She opens her eyes just enough to look at him with mild amusement and then closes them again.

[cozen]

He smiles, while she’s looking at him, then settles lazily against the cushion again to watch the rest of the room. “Who do you think will be the most miserable in the morning?”

[coquettish_trees]

“I,” she says casually. A smile plays about her lips. She does not open her eyes. “Who do you think?”

[cozen]

Bastien hums, then settles on, “Lady Sonia, perhaps, or—Jenny Lou?”

He’s not very familiar with her. Maybe rifter stomachs are better equipped. But if he had to place a bet.

“Or you.”

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie hums back on the same pitch, sketches a brief wave of her fingers in thanks for his acknowledgement of her potential primacy.

“Did the both of them go to the jungle?”

[cozen]

“Yes. Next time you should join us—it was not so bad.”

[coquettish_trees]

“He asks me to get my slippers dirty?” She wrinkles her nose with exaggerated distaste. “I cannot charm a jungle into spilling its secrets, Bastien, and camping is wretched. Tell me when it is of the utmost importance to the war effort that we all go to the theatre.”

Alexandrie lets go of the bottle finally, setting it on the floor with the extreme precision of the inebriate.

“Are you not tired?” She asks, just above the brightness of the music and laughter. “I am tired. I wish to have a house near the sea and paint and never see blood or fear for those I love again.“

[cozen]

Bastien isn’t tired—not on the whole, not any more than when he was living above a shop in Val Royeaux, spending his mornings alone with coffee and his days frowning at ledgers or arranging letters on a tray and his evenings making counterfeit small talk with people who wouldn’t have related to a single true thing about him. But the question seems rhetorical.

“You could,” he says, adjusting the angle of his slump against the chaise to look at her more fully. “You could trade on your marriage and take your family north. Learn to be agreeable.”

[coquettish_trees]

Ah, yes. Trade on her marriage to the disguised adopted Saarebas son of a House that fights Corypheus’s control of the Magisterium, taking her father who will never abandon the land and people he is loyal to in his bones, her mother that is so to her father, her elder brother and sisters with their own families and lands to care for, and Geneviève...

No. When she takes her husband’s arm to cross the border, it will be only them. But in truth it has been only them since the moment they found each other. Alexandrie says none of this, scolds lightly instead.

“Bastien, when have you known me to be agreeable?” She waves a hand in airy dismissal. “Besides, Geneviève will leave her place by the side of the Empress only for her pyre. She has both our honours.” A pause, and then, to set that particularly difficult piece of truth at a remove, “In return, I have the bosoms.” She draws a particularly illustrative breath.