faderift | open. you believe what you want to believe.

"Should I be?"

By Aenor's measure, this was a pleasant dinner: possibly the best food she's ever eaten, and in a warm room. If Thranduil's wife comes to dinner dressed casually, she's still dressed; the details hardly matter, and she's put more effort into her appearance than most of the Grey Wardens Aenor's known. If she's quiet, she still manages to make Aenor laugh at least once. With no internal sense of what a dinner in such a household should proceed, she takes what she's given and deems it acceptable.

(It is, however, good, she suspects, that her son didn't accompany her on this evening. Caric is a good boy, but in this setting, he might have sparked an argument.)

"His height, it impressed me," Aenor adds, after a moment or two of consideration. "But that shock, I think, ended before I met you."

Should I be? makes her laugh—not unkindly, and it seems like it would be easy for her sharp edges to be unkind. Not patronizing, either, just: Aenor has said something hilarious and it is therefore appropriate to laugh, because: “Fuck no, you've met him.”

Obviously. They just had dinner with him, it was a whole thing.

The height is substantial—she remembers, with a pang, greeting Asher Hardie I've met someone taller than you now and it's a fucking elf—and probably enough to startle most people, but it's also not precisely what she's thinking of. She remembers the way that Thranduil had attracted (mostly Dalish) elves to himself in Skyhold, and for a time in Kirkwall. An elf's elf. The concept of elf, but with all the dignity still intact, distilled.

She is not unaware that her own fine self has a fair amount to do with how that doesn't really happen any more. The ancient dignity of a forest god somewhat humbled by skirtchasing a wealthy human girl younger than his son; some of his influence there knowingly given up, in embracing the part of himself that likes fine wine and fine things and his sharp-tongued fine wife. It's interesting that she doesn't know yet if Aenor would have reacted differently to him, a few years ago, or if she always would have seemed to take him about as seriously as Gwenaëlle always has, which she would judiciously describe as only when appropriate.

He might dispute her definition of appropriate. It keeps their marriage interesting, it's fine.

“He used to attract a certain kind of elven attention,” she settles on. “My mother didn't seem to set much store by it, either. Or maybe disapproved, I don't know. I think she thought he was going to get himself killed the second he stepped foot in Orlais.”

Aenor, too, laughs--and though the smile doesn't disappear from her face, her brows knit slightly around the lines of her vallaslin at the mention of Orlais.

"Your mother, I think, is a sensible woman." She remembers talk turning to the Orlesians in the Anderfels, various Wardens spitting on the flagstones and inevitably muttering no offense, Jean or Liette or whatever conscript happened to be present. In an Orlesian home, however far from Orlais, she knows better than to assume that such a disclaimer is enough to allow for a curse against the invaders. "But your husband, he seems to have survived."

Presumably he has gone and returned. Riftwatch appears to visit Orlais frequently enough, from what she understands. And her interest, mostly, is in hearing more of this story, pinpointing more of Gwenaëlle Baudin's perspective on these matters.

“And she didn't, so who's winning?”

—is a bit fucking bleak for the first time she's ever spoken to this woman, but as is probably rapidly becoming clear, Gwenaëlle really only comes at one speed versus the world. (Full speed.)

She ruminates on it, for a moment, before adding: “He used to call her my lady and she didn't like it. Didn't think it was appropriate.” There's a brief pause, where she visibly recalls that she and Aenor aren't much acquainted and they are in an Orlesian home, far from Orlais—a very fine Orlesian home, overseen by Gwenaëlle's doting ducal grandfather. She says, “Mistress Baudin was my lady mother's handmaid when I was conceived. Chatelaine for the estate, after. Anyway, I don't know if that lesson ever took with himself.”

Not calling elven women 'my lady', she means, although offhand she isn't sure and there's a query in the expectant way she looks at Aenor. Did he do the thing.

Aenor shakes her head, torn between mild amusement and sympathy for the girl. (And while she's patently an adult, it's hard not to look at her face and think, she can't be older than my son. A girl, then, if a grown, self-assured one.) It takes this extra information to catch the possibilities Gwenaëlle hints at, perhaps without realizing; certainly, she speaks as if everyone might already know the basic facts of her parentage.

"He doesn't, I think, take lessons easily," is the response she settles, a moment later than she normally might. It's something she says easily enough, letting slyness color her answer. If Gwenaëlle can speak of her mother's passing without hesitation or tears, they needn't pause for condolences. "And myself, I have been called much worse. If I'm mistaken for a lady, that is nothing--but the Anderfels, they are different from Orlais."

An Orlesian maid, likely elven and obviously deferential, has an entirely different set of expectations to suffer.

The practise it has taken, to say it like it's not the open wound it still is—but she can't let it alone or never speak of her, and can't bear the condolences. She is better at it, now, because everything she says has an edge; it blends.

And the impression she does of her husband is uncanny in the mannerisms and the way she holds her head, even if she makes absolutely no attempt to reproduce his voice— “Oh, I'm like a thousand years old, I learned everything there is to learn and now I drink wine and put my dick all over politics,”

probably it tells Aenor some things about Thranduil, too, that this is the woman in Thedas he looked at and thought: I'm going to marry this one.

Aenor doesn't hesitate to laugh at this, hands clapping together. She might not know Thranduil well, but they've just eaten dinner together--and before that, she has the long, strange dream-trip spent in the presence of a man who seemed certain he knew what was best for both of them. The tilt of Gwenaëlle's head becomes unmistakeable.

"A thousand years old," she repeats. After an age roaming the earth, any man might be so delighted by a woman with such a direct wit. "This, he didn't mention. And you, how old are you?"

If there's judgment in there, it's hidden well by a warm curiosity that says tell me more about yourself.

“Twenty-seven,” she says, promptly; old enough to raise fewer eyebrows than it might, but they've clearly been entwined long enough that that almost certainly wasn't always the case. “He's older than that, I think,” than a thousand years, “but when the numbers get that ridiculous, who's still counting.”

Thranduil, quite possibly, but the point is he's old as dirt.

“His son was some absurd age, too, though he seemed more like my own, and when there were still other elves from the same place, they were all—”

She makes a gesture. Like that.

(It seems more habitual than pointed, that she diverts automatically away from that curiosity; that the things she shares are things she assumes to be common knowledge and that she's more at ease discussing someone else.)

It's fascinating, to hear of this entire coterie of ancient, enormous elves from beyond the known world. Less because they're elves, more because they're elves made strange: stretched-out, sun-bleached, occasionally condescending in their kindness. (That last quality, perhaps less strange.)

The human rifters she's met have all been much more recognizable as human, by comparison. One wouldn't be able to pick them out in a crowd.

"These stories, they didn't travel to the Anderfels." Which is to say please continue. Specifically: "And you, how did you come to Riftwatch? Not by falling from a rift, I think."

Gwenaëlle grimaces—

“We're too sober for that story,” she says, but it is not accompanied by anything like getting more alcohol for it, just shaking it off like a wet dog.

(Hardie, sleeping in front of the fireplace, is perfectly dry. And probably not completely asleep, never far from forgetting that he is first and foremost a guard dog.)

She says, instead, “They weren't the only strange elves you wouldn't have heard about in the Anderfels—well, they're not, apparently that one Vanadi ages like the old elves supposedly did, too, but there was Iorveth who came through the rifts from a different place entirely. Not as tall but tall for a human, even. He'd probably menace my mouth with soap for making the comparison. He taught me a little bit of his old tongue, but I know about as much of that as has survived of elvhen.”

Roughly dick all, then. She could recognise elder speech if she heard it again, but she has a few phrases, not a fluency in the tongue.

Lacking alcohol, they'll talk of elves from other lands. Aenor's unperturbed--she has stories she'd rather not bring out at dinner parties, either, or after. To run into one of her host's tender spots isn't ideal, but moving past is the easiest way to soothe any touched nerves. Gwenaëlle may set the tone of the conversation for now, and she'll follow.

"We missed much, I think." Tall elves, elves whose elvhen is ancient and unintelligible, elves with names like Iorveth. (It sounds suitable for plenty of the human Wardens she's known, or the dwarves, but less so for the elves of the Anderfels, to her ear.) "These strange elves of yours--ah! Too bad they've gone."

The name Vanadi, she tucks away; it means nothing to her, but Gwenaëlle speaks of the elf it belongs to in the present tense. Someone to be aware of, surely. "The Rifters, they have been many friends of yours. And the Thedosians?"

“Oh, I've given you the wrong impression entirely,” comes with a laugh, but doesn't seem like a joke. In that she's not joking when she says: “I couldn't fucking stand most of them. Still true,” thoughtfully, of rifters and Thedosians.

Most, not all; she's only spoken to Vanadi all of once and hasn't much of an opinion, but Iorveth must have inspired some warmth in order to be close enough to her to have both wanted to teach her any of his tongue and to have succeeded.

She makes a wobbly gesture with her hand— “Personally, most rifters aren't nearly grateful enough for being housed, fed, and not killed on sight when they get farted out of a demon hole with no obligations on their part. Who else in Thedas can say that? Obviously it'd be wrong to force them to work, but taking advantage of that and whining about it is intolerable.”

A little shrug.

“People who make an effort are interesting. Doesn't particularly matter where they came from.”

open. you believe what you want to believe.

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