open | busy busy busy

[coquettish_trees]

WHO: Alexandrie, Benedict, Byerly, Gwenaëlle, yooou?
WHAT: lady about town
WHEN: wibbly wobbly mod plot
WHERE: Gallows, mostly
NOTES: will style match prose/brackets, lmk if you want a specific starter and one day it might appear



Alexandrie has not been this mobile— nor this tired— in a long time. In between stints sitting in the Diplomacy office taking minor meetings that don't require the Ambassador's attention and composing and compiling vast numbers of notes, missives, letters, she is delivering them by hand any time she can’t find someone else and make it their problem so she can take a moment to sit somewhere outside. Over the last days, since Byerly had taken over Yseult’s work as well, the white bell-shape with the red hair has become a fairly ubiquitous presence circulating around on the Gallows island, and one might run into her just about anywhere… and almost anywhen, as candles burn late into the night.


( Specific starters slowly appearing below~! )

Comments

for benedict - diplomacy office

[coquettish_trees]

“Where did we put the correspondence from Ostwick?” asks Alexandrie, in a weary tone that suggests she hopes her companion might say ‘the fireplace’. “Specifically that letter from Teryn Fernand.”

A brief pause, and then: “Specifically pages…” as she flips through a small stack of papers in front of her and then mutters something in quick and almost certainly unladylike Orlesian. “He did not even have the grace to number them. Whatever is between the second time he mentions knowing the Herald and…” Flip, flip, “one of the times he mentions Ostwick’s esteemed tradition of neutrality.”

[altusimperius]

With a cigarette hanging precariously from his pursed lips, Benedict sits with his back to Alexandrie, his desk piled high with all the things one might expect a diplomat's assistant to field, and then some.

Wordlessly, he flips through a few of them, produces one, and hands it backwards to Alexandrie without missing a beat.

[coquettish_trees]

She takes it with the same rhythm, an easy reach that speaks to how their days have settled in, and sets it between the two pages she'd mentioned to see if everything lines up now.

"Bordel de merde. There is another one." At least. "Do you have it?" Unspoken: Or am I going to have to get up and go looking.

[altusimperius]

This time he actually pauses, searching through his awareness of every piece of correspondence on the desk. He checks in one pile, then another, then angles his head back to sigh, "try the cabinets."

for byerly - gallows

[coquettish_trees]

[ One afternoon, much like any of the others— the days having become so indistinguishable in the last weeks as to seem like a single day— there is a knock on the doorframe of Yseult-cum-Byerly’s office.

Alexandrie’s presence has meant work more often than not. While she’s done her best to take on what she can she is not the Ambassador of Riftwatch, and in the end there are still debriefings, letters and documents to summarize so replies might be detailed to her and later signed and sealed.

While she’s somehow managed to be as fresh-faced and immaculate as usual— if with a little extra paint beneath her eyes to make up for the long nights— today she looks particularly bright when she leans her head and shoulders into the room. ]

Put down whatever it is you are doing, a miracle has passed upon our heads: there is a fine breeze today and it is making the garden fragrant.

[bouchonne]

[ From Byerly: there's not even the barest attempt to be presentable. Which is unusual for him; even in his rumpled, stinking, end-of-the-long-night disreputability, there's an artfulness to him, a deliberate sort of arrangement of his nastiness. Here, though, he just looks gaunt and exhausted, not even bothering with rouge or powder to compensate. No time for rouge or powder.

No time, either, for fine breezes or fragrant gardens. Which, it's clear, is what he's about to say when he starts to wince apologetically. ]

Lexie, I'm so sorry, but...

[coquettish_trees]

But you cannot, because there is so very much to do.

[ It may seem, perhaps, an oddity that she doesn't seem crestfallen in the slightest. She dims a bit, yes, but it's in sympathy rather than disappointment. ]

There will continue to be so very much to do, mon coeur, for we do not know how long. It is neverending, which means if you take a single candlemark to sit with me, when we are finished there will be precisely the same amount of work to do as there is now.

[ She walks in with what seems to be a rather laden white wicker basket carried in both hands. ]

But if you do not wish to go outside, we may have our picnic right here so that your work might stay safely within eyeshot.

[coquettish_trees]

Getting up will require the movement of her chair, which will require the movement of the meticulously stacked piles of papers and reference books beside her chair; truly this is a cursed endeavour.

Her nostrils flare in a put-upon sigh and even with her eyes fluttering closed Benedict will be able to tell she has cast them to the sky in a perfunctory useless plea for divine intercession in the matter of the Teyrn. One last check of her own desk, and then she gives up and moves the stacks that block her so that she can lever herself up and move to the set of cabinets.

While searching: "Do you think anyone would notice if I forged the missing page? I cannot remember there being anything of the slightest use to us on it save the single sentence where he mentioned being willing to speak to a representative if we were to send one." Which, of course, is the only part of the entire letter she needs.

[altusimperius]

"I'd bet money on it," comes the tired reply, but there's a modicum of sympathy in the glance Benedict sends her. Nobody has time for this shit, and yet,

"what goes up must come down, and all that." He flips the page he's on. "People have a way of discovering precisely the thing you don't want them to."

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie's low disgruntled hum is one of both agreement and irritation. For a while the only sounds are the shifting of pages, the increasingly emphatic opening and shutting of drawers, and a lengthy monologue soft enough (and Orlesian enough) that the words are inaudible. (And also unnecessary, the shifts in tonality are every bit as evocative as words by themselves.)

Then, suddenly, silence. A slower movement of paper. One might be forgiven for thinking she'd found what she was looking for, save that the next thing out of her mouth is

"What is so objectionable about fine hats?"

[altusimperius]

Too absorbed in what he's doing to pay attention to whether or not Lexie has found the document, so all he does is grunt around his cigarette in response to a question that otherwise doesn't make sense.

"Mm?"

[bouchonne]

Ah.

[ His face softens. Still, he protests guiltily - ]

You had plans.

[coquettish_trees]

"Why are you not to talk about hats," she repeats, perfunctorily, as she continues to scan down the page. Notes a significant trend. Adds: "With Byerly."

[altusimperius]

It takes him a moment. Then, with a sudden jolt as though poked by a pin, Benedict whirls around to try and snatch the list from her.

"It's--," he snaps, immediately realizing he doesn't have an answer that isn't insane, "--for the best."

[coquettish_trees]

By the time that moment is complete and the paper is whipped out of her hands she's gotten to most of it— or at least her eyes had found their way to the part most relevant to her.

"I am on there three times?" She sounds oddly pleased about it.

[coquettish_trees]

I still have them.

[ She pulls the cloth from the top of the basket, shoots him a mischievous look, then shakes it out with a flourish to cover the rug much as she would have the grass in the garden. ]

[altusimperius]

The walls are crumbling and Benedict is inside the house to catch them. He sinks down in his chair and pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Look," he says with a wince, "you probably know better than anyone how he can be. Especially if he thinks he's right."

[coquettish_trees]

She supposes she has her own list, in a way. Not of things they cannot speak of, but things she feels she must be careful in discussing.

"He is how he was shaped by life, as are we all." Until we trust ourselves enough to take up the paintbrush.

She does not think Byerly trusts himself. This seems like a sitting conversation, and so she pulls her chair over beside Benedict's and sits.

"And you have been shaped such that you should rather make a map that allows you to avoid difficult conversations than risk what might come from having them?" It's not asked unkindly; quite the opposite.

[altusimperius]

He doesn't want to look at her, now that she's closing in, even if part of him recognizes the gentleness of the motion. He folds his arms, tipping one hand up to rub at his temple; Maker, how long have they been at it? Twelve, thirteen hours?

"I don't like feeling stupid," he mutters wearily, ironically for lack of any more delicate way of putting it, both in explanation and rebuke; Alexandrie has made him feel stupid, may even be doing so now, and Byerly does it all the time by virtue of being Byerly. Why wouldn't a self-uncertain soul go out of his way to avoid it?

for gwenaëlle - crystal;

[coquettish_trees]

[ Long enough after that heated exchange with Astarion— including Thranduil's interference— that she thinks Gwenaëlle will be more likely to talk to her about it than to freeze her out, but not so long that she seems the sort of friend who's unconcerned about potentially earnest threats of violence from a man who moves with the lazy ease of a predator, Alexandrie calls to ask ]

Do you yet live?

Is it because has he not seen you or because he is also a hot-tempered creature?

[ The tone implies she knows well enough that she's part of that also. ]

for loki - end of quarantine~

[coquettish_trees]

[ The morning Loki is free Alexandrie wakes early, filled with an odd nervous excitement because his world is now the same size as her own.

It had not been easy— none of it had been easy— but she had reached a tenuous equilibrium of a sort within the state of things, and now change had come again. Her restiveness is, however, overshadowed by how much she wishes to be the one who gets to watch him discover things... and if she is going to do that, she is going to need to catch him before he disappears off the island as immediately as he is able to.

The only way she can think of to manage this with any surety is to wake him up herself, trusting to kisses and the fresh early morning pastries of Hightown's cafés to salve the grievous injury of being obliged to be awake at sunrise. And so here she is, amidst the bustle and chatter of the room that had distressed him so much, ignoring any suddenly hushed murmurs and sidelong glances as she looks for a head of dark hair alongside what she guesses will be a long-limbed sprawl so she can touch his shoulder and offer to be guide to that wider world. ]

[icasm]

[ There is definitely a long-limbed sprawl, situated in a bed as far from the door as possible (it's clearly been moved at some point, to create a little separation between him and the other residents). Loki is dead asleep, face down into the pillows, one arm dangling off the edge of the just-this-much too short mattress, legs tucked in near the rest of his body.

When Alexandrie touches his shoulder there's a displeased sort of grunt; Loki turns over and reaches with his arm, one eye half-open, towards a made bed behind her. The pillow, on that bed? Goes flying towards the back of her head, smacking into her upper back, and Loki turns over once again to go back to sleep.

It hasn't even occurred to him who he's hit, honestly. He just wants to be left alone to sleep in, in peace. ]

[coquettish_trees]

[ There is a high pitched yip of surprise directly following the thump of the pillow, the hand settling a little heavier on his shoulder as she catches her balance. It retracts quickly enough, and soon after there is a rustling of cloth and then quiet throaty laughter. A moment of preparatory silence, and then ]

Réveilles toi!

[ rings out of her like a cheerful bellchime, followed by an enthusiastic return volley of pillow swung to thump against his upper back. Alexandrie is no longer concerned with a gentler awakening process. ]

We are going to breakfast.

[ Announcement, rather than invitation. This, and everything else, may perhaps be illuminated by her bending down to whisper the addendum: ]

In Hightown.

[ A kiss for his head and then she straightens up again, looking far too pleased with herself for this hour. ]

[icasm]

[ The yelp and the Orlesian don't properly rouse him, but the pillow hitting him back? Definitely does. He makes a highly undignified noise at her kiss, limbs scrambling for purchase as he almost startle-rolls himself right off of the small mattress and onto the floor.

He sits up, once the threat of falling has passed, pushing his hair out of his face by tossing his head a little bit, before he attempts at rubbing the sleep crust from the corner of his eyes. ]

In Hightown? [ He repeats, a little dumbly before his brain catches up to the implications. ] Ah-ha. Alright. Let me...

[ Loki gestures in the direction of the water basin in the middle of the room. He'd slept in the shirt from yesterday but his pants are draped over the edge of the bed; at some point he's going to either have to break down and ask Alexandrie for clothes or spend what little coin he has on something other than two shirts and a pair of pants.

At least he fell out of a rift with his fighting leathers on.

He stands, stretches, and kisses Alexandrie on the cheek. ]

Thank you.

[coquettish_trees]

[ Her delighted giggles at having surprised him so have calmed a bit by the time Loki has recovered enough to understand what's happening. They are entirely quieted by her admiration of his stretch— the which she doesn't bother to disguise— and replaced by a pleased hum for both it and kiss. ]

Of course.

[ She reaches to catch his hand for the sole purpose of being loathe to let go as she steps backwards, giving a little squeeze before she releases him so she can turn to walk towards the door.

Over her shoulder: ]

I shall wait for you by the ferry.