faderift | SATINALIA 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO.

WHO: All
WHAT: A second crack at celebrating Satinalia, because we deserve nice things.
WHEN: Mid-Firstfall
WHERE: The Gallows, in the gardens.
NOTES: n/a

It's twilight when Second Satinalia is in its fullest swing. The weather is unseasonably warm, and so they've made use of the gardens as the site for partying. Carefully placed lanterns shine through the odd tree or hover over bushes that have since lost their flowers.

However, decoration makes up for the lack of springtime flora. The space is decorated in shining garlands of gold and silver ribbons, paper flowers, and hanging ornamentations that flip between moons and suns. (If they look a little used, it's because these are second-hand decorations from slightly more affluent Satinalia parties been and gone, borrowed or donated.) There is also a firepit, providing a source of warmth and light.

In the invitations that went out, everyone was encouraged to come in costume as they'd intended to, but noted that for those whom their costumes were ruined or they would simply like to wear something different, there will be masks available, along with some costume pieces—fake jewelry, big hats, faux-velvet and harlequin coats, and so on, though they must be given back, s'il vous plaît. Florent will also offer his abilities in face painting and makeup prior to the party beginning, and will talk you into going spooky in case more skeletons come and they need to blend in to throw them off. (He can be found with his own stylish paintwork, a skeletal design in silver and white and grey.)

Everyone has also been invited to bring along some food and drink if they have it, as their budget is run a bit thin, but there will definitely be enough wine to go around, and some fruits and sweet pastries purchased from the market that day all offered on a table.

There is some music, a few local musicians (who have been promised, variously, tickets to shows, or work opportunities with certain prominent Orlesian playhouses, which may or may not be legitimate) set up with a fiddle, some percussion instruments, something that resembles a very elaborate xylophone, all playing a diverse array of up tempo tunes that allow for a bit of dancing in the more open area of the garden, but otherwise suffuses the shadows and fractured conversations with pleasant noise.

Drink, be merry, don't kill anyone.

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“So you survived after all.” Spoken from just over her shoulder, standing a few steps back (owing to the glimmering stretch of that enchanted chandelier, extravagant and guarding as it is), Astarion’s hovering with one hip cocked at an angle, glass of wine in hand, snared high within a perfectly poised grasp.

“I must say, you do look the very picture of health.”

Wink wink, nudge nudge, etcetera.

Gwenaëlle discernibly bristles at the sound of his voice, and it couldn't be called warm, how she responds—certainly it's a choice not to bother turning around, but he didn't bother coming into view, so she feels perfectly within her rights to remain as she is in answering him.

And she does answer him, so there's that.

“I think the corset's holding my stitches in,” is dry, and you know, it's probably not hurting. That, anyway; the tight, unforgiving clasp of metal and the sheer weight of the thing is bound to bruise. It had done, the last time she wore it, but then the last time she'd worn it suffering for fashion was about as far as she was prepared to exert herself on the Inquisition's behalf.

He’s measuring it carefully, her response in the wake of their talk. There was an opportunity for further cut ties. The absolution of everything they’d tentatively held between them for a time. It doesn’t slip his notice that she doesn’t take it.

Even so, he keeps his distance. The way of wilder creatures like them.

“What about him?”

Is she with you— he’d asked, knowing what the answer would be, but Thranduil isn’t here now, and Gwenaëlle isn’t grieving: he must’ve survived the ordeal somehow, in whatever form it took.

Either that or she killed him herself.

Which, yes all right. Probably fair.

Because the question does prompt her to look back at him, frowning, Astarion can see the precise moments and shifts of expression as incomprehension becomes realization, becomes irritation.

“I'm not his fucking maid,” she says, shortly, “so what about him.”

“Wouldn’t dream of saying you were. Just curious if you’d heard anything, is all.” Reaching out with care, he pinches two fingers around the flickering glow of a candle’s enchanted flame, all idle interest.

“People often go missing around here even when there's no concurrent assassination attempts, and it’s been a nasty couple of days.”

The word nasty— or maybe missing(?)— seems to prompt a subtle upwards curve to one edge of his mouth.

“But I’m glad to see you pulled through.”

Gwenaëlle thinks, fleetingly, of what her grandfather had said to her — so delicately — for her grandfather anyway — when she had first confided in him about what had then been a secret marriage. About the propensity of rifters to just vanish. Here one moment, gone the next—

“Romantic injuries are the only sort we expect the weapon to fix,” she says, straightening her gaze ahead again as his fingers pass through wavering, illusory flame. Close enough to touch what's not really there at all, there's no heat; no true warmth. “And none of them ever have before. I thought it was a good point you made, expecting him to—”

Something. To provide some kind of satisfaction. Well, when has that ever happened? She might as well go to Markham and bang on Alexander's door for an explanation.

“I'm not going to get anywhere I'm interested in being,” each word precise, “hanging about wanting to hear things. No, fuck that.”

Truthfully, it resonates with him. Astarion, who’d made himself the butt of his own joke, siting around waiting for something he knew would never come. 'People will only disappoint you', he’d said. 'Never trust in it. Never be so stupid to think you mean a damn thing to them.'

It’d all be very funny if it weren’t so bloody depressing.

And here, in contrast to all prior conversation, here Gwenaëlle Baudin stands complimenting him. Openly. Or— at the very least, not criticizing what he’d said to her before.

It’s a damned shame, how much he likes her.

Had things gone differently....

“Couldn’t be more proud of you. Even if you are upstaging my own efforts tonight with this very ostentatious display.”

That, in Astarion’s own way, is a compliment too.

“Provided your stitches won’t come loose if we share a drink, dance a little, brutally criticize the rest of the gathered ensemble for how much they wish they were us.”

“They don't.”

It's the carelessness of it that makes it unkind; how off-the-cuff it is, a blade all the more sharp for the ease with which she reaches for it. How matter of fact. She isn't trying to be cruel. It just seems—

obvious.

More thoughtful is the way she tilts her eyebrows, only partly visible through her filigreed mask: “I will absolutely burst stitches if I try to dance in this, it was very specifically designed not to be danced in and it weighs a fucking ton.”

Ouch, darling.

Even so, Astarion doesn't flinch at that assertion, brushing past it to the very next topic at hand:

"So take it off, my love. Gods know that thing's far too heavy to strut about in for hours, let alone a fraction of that amount."

My love scrapes across her like salt in a wound, a reaction perceptible in the tense shift of her shoulders and set of her mouth — she doesn't need to object to it out loud, every inch of her objects to it, but it is easy to ignore what she doesn't speak, she knows.

“You are not on the list of people I'd make an exception for,” she informs him, dryly, “as far as the entire purpose of this fucking dress being that I don't want to dance with anyone goes.”

Here's a good question: who is on that list? It was never long, but it has certainly got shorter. Always been mercifully populated mostly by people who also don't want to dance, probably—

“Please don't mistake this conversation for good-will.”

"You know me. I don't mistake anything for good will." Said over the lip of his own wine glass, one long, blond curl managing to curl against its edge via proximity alone. He flicks it aside once he's done drinking.

"Do me the favor of not patronizing me for my good sense."

There's no barb, no bite; tired as he is of playing games at everyone else's whim, this is quite possibly the most earnest they've ever been with one another, all drawn lines in the sand. No pity. No softness.

"Anyway I only suggested it because I imagine you're going to get bored at some point, surrounded by all this nothingness."

Gwenaëlle curbs what she might have said to the first part of that — which certainly wasn't going to be kind — in favour of, “I'm aware it's a foreign concept to you, but coming out to support a friend isn't actually nothing to me. If I didn't want to be here, I wouldn't be.”

Her gaze travels across the assembled performers and softens, with a sigh, “Maker, I'm going to have to buy so many theatre tickets.”

One pale eyebrow arches, climbing high enough to kiss the underside of his gilded circlet.

Theatre tickets?

"...what in the Realms for?"

SATINALIA 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO.

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