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]

Most of the stairs spiral, for the sake of conserving usable space — and she's certainly made the most of that space, some of the rooms that various doors and stairs lead off to quite generously appointed. She touches the lamp he gestures to with the kind of absent fondness that she has usually applied, previously, to horses and dogs.

“Like veilfire,” she offers, after he's groped around his explanation sufficiently that she's more or less confident of having ascertained the shape of what he's grabbing at. “I've seen mages light veilfire torches, in elvhen ruins usually. And I've a dress that uses enchantments that look like candles— true fire would be a catastrophe waiting to happen.”

It's more of a wearable chandelier, and she's worn it both with and without an appropriate under-dress. Considerate of her to so expertly light the angles of her arse if it's going to be on display of an evening.

“These lamps are throughout, anyway, I rather fancied them.”

[grindset]

It's not like a torch, he wants to say, and almost says, and doesn't, though he wouldn't feel bad about circling back for a correction specifically because of the dress she's just described. That's a growing streak of bitterness, relatively new, and regrettably enhanced by his transplantation to Thedas: even here, worlds away, people are using miracles to make their evening wear a little fancier while the undercity suffers below.

But that's a footnote of its own, just a sour tickle somewhere in the periphery of this otherwise promising visit, so he can bite his tongue about it for a second and lean on this instead:

"You've seen veilfire," and that is interesting as hell. "Torches only? Or... did they discover any runes?"

And did they light it, and did it trigger an ancient spell, and did you feel it, and what was it like—

[elegiaque]

“Only in torches, although if you could make lamps with something that sounds like veilfire I don't see why it couldn't be done here, with these ones— except you'd really need a mage, more or less all of the time.”

Not a deal-breaker, necessarily, although it's like to put anyone in mind of Tevinter, the wide streets of Minrathous, and the rest of Thedas is still afraid of all the wrong parts of that nation.

In her view, at least.

“I don't recall seeing it other than on a torch, though, but we're constantly falling arse-first into complex ancient magics, so it may be that a veilfire rune just didn't stand out amongst whatever unhinged bullshit was happening around it at the time.”

[grindset]

It's almost too bad this conversation isn't happening after Arlathan—they could share a grim laugh, then. Or at least a laugh-adjacent acknowledgement of the concept of humour. But as all his fondest memories are yet intact, and she doesn't yet have a striking golden eye for him to try not to stare at,

"Whatever it was must have been truly unhinged. I can't think of much that would distract me from unanticipated ancient magics."

He's now clutching his crutch under his arm to hold it, releasing the grip to lift his hand—the left one, with the strange crease in the palm.

"I've been wondering if there isn't some way to store the energy produced by these anchors. It goes without saying a lamp wouldn't be the objective, but... perhaps a convenient side benefit."

[elegiaque]

“You'd need to find someone prepared to risk accelerating the deterioration around the anchor-shard in order to experiment enough to find it out,” Gwenaëlle notes, which is an incredibly casual way to refer to that, “which is not to say that such a person doesn't exist.”

Brave idiots are not in short supply, generally, and even besides someone who might just be game—

well, any benefit they can turn these things to before they kill them.

[grindset]

Viktor will take incredibly casual over knee-jerk concern any day—but then, he's his own first and only choice for such an experiment. As to an early, agony-laden demise, the anchor will have to compete with the rest of his body for that privilege.

But he's just here to check out her house.

"I suspect most people might consider it extreme to weigh one's own mortality against inventing a new lamp."

Then again, that's pretty much how he and Jayce met—

"Let's put that one on the back burner for now."

[elegiaque]

New rifters are ideal test subjects, because no one's really had time to get attached to them yet and they still might dissipate back into the Fade before anyone does— it's a practical allocation of resources, if someone were to ask Gwenaëlle, which is almost certainly a large part of why no one does.

“It isn't urgent. And the behaviour of the anchor-shards over time is less predictable than I think we all expected it to be, anyway.”

Unnecessarily messing with that probably needs a more compelling motivation than sick new lamp if it might involve trying to hustle some of Stark's budget.

[grindset]

"So I've heard."

Read. He'd have been forced out of his shell much earlier were there not so many writings in which to conveniently bury himself.

"Actually, I'm... I'm looking forward to tracking its development." He opens his palm, works the big joint of his thumb to watch the meat of it bulge and the skin bunch up around that strange greenish crease. "Should it decide to develop."