open | and now that you don't have to be perfect,

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Baudin, et menagerie, and you?
WHAT: Baby got a houseboat, and it's move-in day. Find her at the Kirkwall docks as things are unpacked into it, or after that across the harbor at the Gallows slip where it'll be secured for the foreseeable future.
WHEN: Shortly after the return from Cumberland.
WHERE: Kirkwall harbour.
NOTES: Y'all I have coveted that houseboat since it went up on the rewards page.

Originally some manner of riverboat not intended for the purpose it presently serves, the houseboat that is for now moored perfectly in line with the anchored Walrus in the harbor is— something of a monstrosity, an eccentricity built up over time, not impossible to move under its own power but more commonly affixed to a more purposeful vessel and tugged along behind it. Having won it in a game of cards from a local who'd been tired of the lifestyle and tired of Kirkwall besides, it's taken some time for the Duke de Coucy to consider it sufficiently worthy to relinquish his granddaughter into—

which is to say, the interiors are now substantially finer, even if she'd put her foot down and insisted she didn't want anything done to the exterior that wasn't absolutely necessary. No need to turn it into obvious thief-bait, for a start, and besides: she rather likes the aesthetic. It's shabby and shambling but it was in otherwise good repair when it came into her hands, surprisingly sturdy and featuring beneath the water a wine-cellar kept cool by the ambient temperature around it where she's spent much of the morning while the rest of her belongings are brought in by de Coucy footmen and servants packing her stockpile of only slightly stolen Vauquelin wealth in the locked store-room behind the wineracks.

With only slightly stolen de Coucy wine, naturally.

Gwenaëlle emerges from below as trunks and furnishings are still being unloaded from carriages come down from Hightown, Small Yngvi the cat sleeping in a pinned up portion of the front of her skirts and Leviathan, the nug, doing laps of the exterior in an effort to understand his new environs. Hardie sits sentinel on the deck in front of the door, supervising the efforts of the de Coucy men (who are, in fact, being supervised by Guilfoyle—) and upon consideration Gwenaëlle sits down beside him, fingers in his fur, occasionally answering questions about where something needs to be put and if she would like it unpacked, also, or left to her (or Guilfoyle) to manage later.

Once everything's been securely stowed, a boat waits to haul it over to one of the empty slips surrounding the Gallows, where Gwenaëlle will finally have significantly less of a commute. The last thing to be done before that, of course—

“I have always wanted to do this,” Gwenaëlle says, and smashes a champagne bottle against the balustrade, just above the brand-new sign identifying the vessel as La Souveraineté.

Comments

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle shrugs— a mirror of that neutrality, acknowledgment of unavoidable facts. If it isn't as straightforward as it once was, if she isn't what she once was ... she still has the affection of a duke, and for now it still matters.

“I was the sole heiress of the Comte Vauquelin de Vauquelin,” she says, “until the Empress found out I emerged from the wrong cunt and my inheritance was stripped from me some years ago. Vauquelin assets all reverted to the crown, after Ghislain.” The battle of. Not every girl gets to rob her father's corpse. “L'Duc de Coucy is a stubborn old goat; the fact I'm not his granddaughter in truth doesn't mean I'm not still his favourite. But most of them are dead,”

matter of fact,

“my mothers and my lord and the Baudin sisters. I won't return to Orlais, when Raoul and Thomas do. That's their future.”

Not hers, any longer. She tilts her head, shrugs at the boat— “If I live, this is mine.”

[laruetheday]

Okay, that's... a lot. Both information, and names of people she's never heard of before, but she can follow on a basic level. It's a story as old as time, probably. People love a scandal.

"My grandfather also plays favorites." More often he plays un-favorites. Clarisse is mostly just happy that he's never paid her any attention, good or bad. She has zero desire to ever interact with Lord Zeus.

She sighs, climbing to her feet and stretching her arms over her head. "Well, there's worse things than having your own boat. You don't have to answer to anybody."

[elegiaque]

What world doesn't have rich men putting their dicks where they don't belong? Maybe one of those apocalyptic types, where most of them are dead anyway—

“Close enough, at any rate,” she agrees, still looking up at the towering monstrosity that is her new home with open fondness. “An ex of mine and I, we said once if her himself doesn't make it through the war, we'll get back together and run away and be pirates at the end of it. Absolutely we won't,”

it would be a terrible idea for any number of reasons, not least of which being Gwenaëlle is dear friends with Alistair and would prefer he live, all things being equal,

“but this is good, too.”

[laruetheday]

"You don't need to run away with anybody to become a pirate," is Clarisse's totally helpful advice. Though she's sure it would make the piracy more fun, having somebody else along.

"Besides." This is said with a knowing glance, though to be honest she knows very little about this woman and every story she's hearing has only added to the feeling of being in over her head. "If you're exes it's gotta be for a good reason."