[open-ish] the lantern in the window

[coquettish_trees]

WHO: Lexie & You
WHAT: Catchall
WHEN: After the attack
WHERE: Kirkwall, various
NOTES: None yet!

[Placeholder for when brain exists! Specific starters in the comments. ♥]

Comments

➺ Loki

[coquettish_trees]

[ It had taken Alexandrie days to even find the place. Building after building tumbled together, mixed with cliff-face in the fall. Gilding and pillar, instrument and painting, dirt and rose, blood and wine. Bodies in livery. Bodies in silk.

When she had been able to think again, she had been so relieved that the Asgard estate was inhabited mostly by ghosts that she had wept. With both brothers gone, their mother gone, and no word from Odin, the sprawling ostentatious halls had become, de-facto, hers. And so, when she herself was gone, she'd ordered everything draped and shuttered. A housekeeper and a maid. A gardener and his apprentice.

The latter two had been on the other side of the estate, measuring spring growth. The maid at market. The housekeeper had been found and rescued, half a room away from the new edge, her leg trapped, broken by the painted coil of a dragon that had graced the ceiling. All shaken, but all living.

If, Alexandrie thinks, every time she sees a hand unmoving, covered in dust. If, if, if.

It is the rest of the dragon, eventually, that she finds. And only one man she can bear to ask softly, the night after she finds it, for help sifting through the remains of what had been another life with another man who bore his name.

Morning now: she is in hardy clothing filched years ago from Geneviève for a lark. For courage, perhaps. So it needn't be she alone in her body who confronts it all. And there is the dragon again, a cliffside away from its tail. Alexandrie stares at it for a moment, holding her arms to herself. ]

There are some books, [ she says, finally, calm and clear and not looking away from the paint and plaster. Loki will know by now what she sounds like when her calm clarity is three steps above calamity. ]

We should find his library, if we can. Before anyone else. And there are some paintings. And—

[ Two steps above calamity. ]

[icasm]

[ He hears it - the fracturing precipice of her emotions under her feet, about as stable as the new cliffside all around them - and Loki doesn't hesitate in stepping forward and putting his hands on Alexandrie's shoulders, trying to get her to tear her gaze from the rubble and look at him instead. ]

It's alright. We'll begin where we must and we'll find what we can. But first, my dear, you must breathe.

[ In, pause, out a little more slowly. Loki models it without really thinking; the reminder is for the both of them, not just her. ]

Finding specific rooms and items won't be easy. What of this; we start with the largest and most dangerous ones you can think of?

[coquettish_trees]

[ Husband or not, Loki has never hesitated to put his hands on her, and it has always stopped her spiral, her heart bobbing like a kite at the end of a string caught fast before the wind can snatch it away into the sky. Something inside her wonders, in these moments, if she is seeing something of the truth of any Loki grown on any branch of time's tree. If her body would know. If she belongs to them all.

Mostly she breathes along with him, the rising tide of her hysteria ebbing again before it has a chance to ravage the shore; drops her forehead to rest briefly on his chest for the space of another breath, a more fulsome release, and finally looks up at Loki again with clearer eyes. Then with a thoughtful frown, casting her gaze back over the rubble. ]

Most of them are small, but... what holds them. The bookcase, perhaps, we might find. A cabinet, deep enough for a false back. A chest.

[ Secrets, all of them, tumbled into an open space that is little ready for them. Perhaps there are things even she knows nothing of...

But she thinks not. ]

They will be dark, heavy wood. The bookcase is carved very finely, without gilding. The cabinet has gold and stone inlays in the front; geometric patterns, as much Tevene work contains. The chest is rather unassuming, save that it has an sheen to it that is different from any wood you have seen, but I think it most likely of all to have survived.

For the area where they are likely to be found... if you find aught of dark green walls, that is—

[ There is no accustomed gripping in her chest to warn her— the first that Alexandrie knows she's shed a tear is the feel of it dripping from chin to chest. She pauses, breathes again, then looks back at Loki with an odd surety in her eyes. ]

That is where we start.