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

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

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.

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There are countless ballads and fiddle ditties written about the kind of things sailors find irresistible: pretty women (the sea included metaphorically among their number), and liquor, and the natural appeal of leaving places behind, or maybe the bittersweetness of coming back to them. But that's all trumped up rubbish. At the very least, those things are hardly universal. No, if there's any passion which unites all sailors, it must be rubbernecking the tedious or touchy maneuvering of other people's vessels. There is no joy quite like being critical of another person's seamanship, particularly from the lengths afforded by a spyglass.

"Or for fuck's sake," Flint remarks once to no one in particular while watching La Souveraineté come creeping across the harbor under tow. That the crew hired to see it delivered from Kirkwall's docks to the empty slip on the Gallows' island doesn't see the whole ramshackle monstrosity swamped in the process seems, to an eye taking considerably pleasure in being highly skeptical of the whole ordeal, semi miraculous.

By the time the houseboat (if it really warrants either name, a point on which he privately may be in rare alignment with a Duke) is being puzzled into its slip, he's come down from his perch at the top of the ferry quay's stairs to supervise more directly. The comfort of the spyglass is traded for bawling orders at the Gallow-side hands—Fend off there, haul away stern, belay that you stupid cunt—and seeing to the tidy handling of the shambling vessel's lines.

Those, at least, are in reasonably good order.

Having been determinedly unmoved by all criticism thus far, Gwenaëlle is only delighted with the end result of La Souveraineté, secured— having spent most of the short journey from one side of the harbour to the other standing on its deck, at the top of the steps up to the house proper, and come down from there (cat and nug both shooed indoors and out of the way) to do her bit on her end.

Satisfactorily settled, she plants her hands on her hips and quirks an eyebrow at Flint,

“You can't say anything about my taste in women I don't know. Do you want a drink?”

Actually, he suspects there's plenty he could say and may in fact have a list detailing the finer points halfway composed in his head already,

says the look that slides inexorably to meet her from where Flint is whipping the tail end of a heavy spring line into a neat coil at the base of the cleat to which it's been hitched.

"All right."

Sounds like he may need one.

Julius didn't come to visit expressly, but he'ss returning from a visit to town when the activity catches his eye. When he approaches, it's with good humor (better humor, arguably, when he sees Hardie, who gets a hand to sniff as soon as Julius is close enough, with a murmured you remember me, don't you for good measure). Gwenaëlle is sitting close enough to Hardie he could hardly avoid greeting her if he wanted to, though he shows no sign of being sorry to see her. Instead, he says, "Are you thinking of commissioning any wards, or have you already done it and I should be jealous?"

Once all is secure—

Gwenaëlle leads the way inside, which aside from the eccentric shape of everything is nearly as different from the exterior as night and day, polished wood and plush velvet, reasonably spacious, in a minor state of chaos as most things are where they're intended but little is properly organised. Enough is done to bring him through to a space somewhere between sitting room and study, where at least the liquor cabinet has been unpacked and secured.

“If I'd known I was going to have my own wine cellar,” she remarks, “I'd have cleared out the High Quarter townhouse's when I had the chance.”

Not that she didn't clear out a good deal else on that discreet trip to Halamshiral.

“I should ask your scary boyfriend,” she drawls, “but no, I hadn't got so far. And I thought you'd probably be busy—”

Probably with his scary boyfriend, at that.

Hardie butts his head against Julius's thigh, affectionate where Gwenaëlle is just sly, but it's a peaceful moment amidst the continuing controlled chaos. “What do you think of her? You can lie.”

Her initial comment gets a small laugh; her following question gets him to consider the houseboat as a whole for a moment. "...I think it suggests you were ready for a change from Hightown." Which is diplomatic, but not a lie.

Just when Clarisse is starting to think she's getting used to shit here, something happens that changes her mind. First everybody went off somewhere to have a bunch of meetings, and she got used to hanging out pretty much by herself around the Gallows, which was fine with her. Then everybody came back, and she had to get used to that.

Now the weirdest boat she's ever seen is being towed right to the dock, where she's been sitting and staring out at the water. Can she even call it a boat, since it mostly just looks like a fucked up house and doesn't seem to be able to sail on its own? Something to consider.

It's such a strange sight that Clarisse doesn't even notice Gwenaëlle until they're close enough to either have to acknowledge each other or very obviously pretend not to see each other. She considers doing the latter, for a second, but it's not really her style. Instead she makes eye contact with the woman, raises her eyebrows, and says "You have a... boat."

“Rutyer should give you a raise,” she says, laughing. “Whatever you're being paid, it can't possibly be enough.”

“Ouais.”

The last time they saw each other, Gwenaëlle had been dressed to work — all slim-fitting leather and openly carried weapons, her bladed coat and tightly braided hair. Now, standing on the deck (porch?) of La Souveraineté, her curls besides those pulled back from her face occupy nearly as much space as the rest of her and she looks nearly harmless in a light-weight, tightly-laced summer dress of green and grey, the skirts pinned up around her knees for ease of motion and the bishop sleeves pushed up to her elbows and tied in place with black velvet ribbons. No obvious weapons in evidence, deceptively petite.

A sleepy cat rolls over in the apron pocket created by her pinned skirts, casts one yellow eye over Clarisse, and goes back to sleep. It is, in its mostly-hairless state, almost more alarming than the nug.

“A houseboat,” after a moment, mild enough, “she's a new acquisition. Some work still needs doing.”

If the splinter laden exterior of the who vessel pains him to some degree, discovering the contrast between it and the velvet upholstered interior seems to actively offend some closely held sensibility or another. It's one thing to have acquired a floating pile of worm eaten sticks. It's apparently another thing entirely to redress only its insides.

Stepping over or around some manner of not-quite-in-its-place article, it's clear that Flint's practically itching for a distraction to keep his mortification at a distance. He raises a hand to inspect the varnished surface of the overhead timbers.

"We all make mistakes,"

suggests he may be considering a few of his own at this very moment.

How did Ellis end up on the deck of Gwenaëlle's house boat?

Likely simply by being in the right place at the right moment to be made specifically aware that there was manual labor to be done.

In fairness, the deck itself is more or less splinters. Ellis had underestimated the condition of it, had paused to sweep a considering gaze across the deck once he'd set boots properly onboard. All splinters, all in need of sanding down and a proper finish. (Has this deck ever been finished? Perhaps in another age, maybe.) It might be daunting, but Ellis had simply taken a deep breath, rolled up his sleeves, and begun his work at the bow.

By midday, there are patches of sweat soaked through the loose drape of his unlaced tunic. At the sound of footsteps, Ellis sits back on his heels, looking briefly over his work before considering the appearance of another soul aboard. He has a ways to go.

And that's not considering the jut of the cabin itself—

"It's very ugly," Byerly comments, arms crossed, looking up at it thoughtfully. "Did you choose it despite its ugliness, or because of it?"

Clarisse looks the same as last time, in her combat boots and camo (she obviously hasn't been making an effort to look more like she belongs in Thedas), but today she's got her spear strapped to her back. She takes in the skirts, the cat, the dog, the nug, and then looks up at the houseboat again.

"You going to live in there?" She sounds skeptical. The thing doesn't look exactly steady, from the outside.

“I know what it looks like,” she says, serene, looking up at the highest point, “and no one is asking you and the rest of everyone to appreciate my vessel. I think she's beautiful.”

It is not, as it might be in someone else, contrarian irony. It's not obliviousness to the extent of how deeply alarming the houseboat is, this floating sacrilege. It's just: she really, truly, genuinely finds it utterly lovely and sincerely pleasing.

This thing has too many balconies. What does any building or vessel need with even half so many as this thing boasts? They provide a dangerously good angle for—

“If I threw this water over you, I think certain elements of Riftwatch would give me a medal,” speculatively, which is a joke (this time) (from Gwenaëlle, anyway), “but do you want something cool down there? You look like I'm going to regret getting close enough to smell.”

It's affable, though, and with the obvious intent to do just that.

Some rifters adapt fast; others, in time. In Gwenaëlle's experience, eventually having only one outfit and one set of shoes makes that a self-solving problem sooner or later, especially given the frequency with which one might be sent to a fucking swamp—

Stark had been stubborn for long enough to start looking feral, but that man likes to be an outlier. And then there are those that dissipate back into whatever Fade stuff they were made from before it matters,

so it goes.

“That's right,” she says, rolling her shoulders in a shrug. “She needs a little work still doing, on the outside, but the previous owner was living in her before any of the refurbishment work done on the inside.”

Gwenaëlle offers him a cup, and after a moment, head tipped to one side—

“Go on, then,” more off his expression than anything he's manfully refrained from saying thus far, “before you do yourself an injury refraining.” Can't be good for his health at his age, etcetera, etcetera. “It's not all done, the outside's to be refinished.”

(At least in part because she intends to clamber up and down it like a feral goblin, is why.)

“My grandfather would have taken the whole thing apart and remade her, but I like her shape.”

It makes him laugh again, franker. "I'll tell him you said so. Are you happy with it?"

A flicker of humor, but the initial comment is allowed to pass without comment. It's not the sort of sentiment Ellis entertains.

"I'll dunk myself in the harbor before I go up to the Gallows proper," he says, good natured. Sweat is beading at his temples, the nape of his neck. There is a burn in his arms from the work, but it's a good kind of discomfort. Not so terrible that he feels the need to break for the day.

Which leads him to, "If you've something to spare, I'd appreciate it."

What exactly Gwen might have on tap in this floating monstrosity is anyone's guess.

The clear momentum spooling up for the delivery of what can only be a series of qualms is hacked short at the mention of her grandfather. Evidently, Flint finds the prospect of sharing an opinion with the man objectionable enough to rethink the extensive nature of his sentiments.

So he instead drops his hand away from the ceiling beams to accept the cup, drinking as he picks his way through the not-quite-all-to-rights layout of the room to the not inconsiderable window. If he angles his head right, he can see a patch of the deck from it. After a moment's further reconsideration from that vantage—

"There's nothing wrong with the shape unless you're planning to float out onto the open sea." That's sarcasm and she absolutely shouldn't take that as a suggestion, says the look he passes in her direction. "But I'm fucking amazed you haven't fallen straight through that decking. You had best seal and paint the whole exterior before it rots off."

The cup rises again, though before he actually helps himself to it he does add, "It doesn't have to be a pleasant color."

Florent does not need a formal tour. Before Gwenaëlle can summon the energy to show him around, he is already ahead of her, out of sight, excitable elf-feet pattering thrumming through the wooden bones of the house that is a boat. There are so many little rooms and crooked staircases and ladders, and he has certainly lived in a place like this before, you recall, perhaps, did I ever show you it, that apartment on Rosecourt—

But it was not seaworthy, obviously. Not like La Souveraineté. Which definitely is, because it is currently in the sea.

He ducks through one of the steep staircases. Tall, for an elf, his 5'8" having always been something of a point of pride, opened many doors, and he doesn't allow it to work against him too badly now as he hangs off a railing so he can peer down at her. "Are you going to live here now?"

It is only her great love for Flint, clearly, that prompts Gwenaëlle to pretend not to notice him visibly change tack mid-thought. It's also not very convincing, but he's known her for a few years at this point; he's unlikely to be under the impression that there's a world in which Gwenaëlle trying to make her face do something unnatural doesn't look like she's done it on purpose.

“Houseboat,” she says, mildly, of the prospect of floating it out into the sea. “Don't worry, it's on track for all of that. It's no good to me if I have eighteen splinters in my hands, knees and arse at any given time of the day, either, you know.”

It's fucking hot, for a start, so at some point she does want to be able to lay out in the harbour air for relief, and then there's the fact that she's almost certain she could, once the exterior is finished with, climb from top to bottom. And has every intention of figuring out how fast she can do it and carrying what.

“Not all black,” a bit regretfully, “it'll heat up like no one's business, I assume.”

“I like it very much,” she admits, which is an easy admission, and not likely to come as a great surprise to him. “And it's surprisingly sizeable, once you're in it. Space enough for the things I need of it.”

“Ale or wine?” she asks, setting down the bucket. (There's probably a reason why she has a bucket of water on a balcony in the first place, but nevermind it.) “There's more selection of the latter. I know you Wardens aren't picky after the things you've got to drink, so brace yourself: it's not swill.”

Fun fact: Gwenaëlle knows significantly more about Wardens than most people who haven't been through a Joining. It's Alistair's fault. Don't worry about it.

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