( open* ) for all i know, maybe everyone is screaming as they go through life,

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Baudin + &c
WHAT: A catch-all for pre-planned threads. * open for BUSINESS by ARRANGEMENT.
WHEN: September.
WHERE: Various.
NOTES: Content warnings TBA if necessary! Feel free to hit me up if you want to do something here; I am notoriously terrible at creating open posts but I'm always happy to brainstorm something bespoke.

starters in the comments.

Comments

[elegiaque]

Caterina Perrino isn't exactly a new face—Gwenaëlle is sure that she's seen her around the Gallows, less sure that they've ever met before. Frankly, it always seems strange how the sparse population of their island manages to separate into its disparate pieces. The benefit of the Gallows themselves, she supposes: they don't really live in one another's pockets, if they don't wish to. Work clusters, but lives unspool.

“Who are you avoiding?”

—is only going to be a surprise if Ket thought Gwenaëlle needed a second pair of hands in Hightown because she isn't clever. (It isn't that.) The question is posed as Caterina is being posed by an attendant adjusting a measurement, over the top of a glass of champagne, head tilted, quizzical.

“In Hightown.”

Because why else would Gwenaëlle need Margaery to tiptoe through salons and ballrooms with, when she's right here, and clearly able?

[sohighandwild]

"Preemptively, today," she says, conversational. "A nonzero number of young, rich locals like to play cards in Lowtown in expensive clothes they've dirtied up a bit. They only ever expect to lose to one another, it makes them easy to bluff. Funds my actual games against people who know what they're doing."

In other words, if someone does make the connection between Caterina and Ket, it will be an inconvenience, not a disaster. Still ... she'd rather avoid the inconvenience.

"More broadly, I'd like to save my anonymity for something big." This might be it, but it seems indiscreet to say so in front of the attendant. "It's only a card I'll be able to play once, since I can't leave Kirkwall for another city immediately after. And, before today, I didn't have the wardrobe or the resources to effectively back up a Hightown play regardless."

She's aware that, Loxley's recommendation aside, she's here on Gwenaëlle's sufferance. There's no point in being hard to work with.