closed. the number of hours we have together is actually not so large.

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle, Stephen, and special guests.
WHAT: Gwenaëlle and Stephen go to visit her family for First Day.
WHEN: First Day.
WHERE: A small cottage in the woods, the Free Marches.
NOTES: Content warnings for dealing with lyrium addiction and decline, family member dementia, end of life care, caregiver burnout, grief, loss. Potentially a huge downer of a time.

Comments

[portalling]

Stephen is once again, like in Val Royeaux, suddenly and mortifyingly hyper-aware of the fact that he never met any other girlfriend’s family and so still doesn’t really know how these things are supposed to go. But meeting Romain de Coucy for the first time had, in a way, been easier: thanks to Gwenaëlle’s careless ease and comfort around him, indulgent grandfather and favoured grandchild, that was an easier story to tell and to read than… this. Whatever in the world this is.

The older woman’s walk is slow, and so Stephen steals one last moment to tend to the horses: nose-bags affixed, filling them with some of the grain they’d purchased and brought along the way, the horses can graze and fill their bellies while the humans talk. The sparse winter ground here won’t do. For a moment he’s dreadfully tempted to stay out here like some stablehand (animals are easier than people—), but he eventually joins them at the entry, stomping the snow off his boots at the threshold to the cabin.

“I grew up on a farm,” Stephen offers; which was usually the piece of personal information that he buried, eradicating all trace of it, but now at this rustic cottage he finds that it’s the first thing he reaches for. Feels weird. Not sure he likes it.

“So I’m not above chopping firewood or hauling water or whatever other chores need doing.”

We’re useful. Use us.

[limier]

Fingers tug the edge of Gervais' sleeve, nail knocking skin. Brief, before she's gone, stumping through the little kitchen and away; tracking slush across the boards. It's a small home, there's nowhere very much to hide. She braces between the bedposts, just for a moment. Just until the world stops spinning, until she can catch her breath on now,

Not tomorrow. Not the next hour, or a decade gone. The thing in her veins coalesces without tense. When she is not careful, it forgets how to wear her shape. How to be a small thing, and singular, and singing its dirge on each beat, beat, beat,

Now. Palm thumps bedpost. She must have been at it a while, by the sting of red. Shit.

The bedroom creaks open. The doctor grew up on a farm. A non-sequitur, a bid to restore some control –

"The pigs are gone," Hasn't kept them since she grew up herself. "But we could use water. The well is frozen, help me break the ice."

Late in the day for that to go undone. Like as not Gervais has already, it only takes a minute to break the fragile skim. Still, something in her face suggests this isn't another slip. Conscious of the true comment, this is fucking awkward.

Less so, on the limb of a task.

"Catch up with your uncle. We will speak."

She and Strange. Coupe lingers before she turns aside, hunting for the bucket that hangs neat as any. There's a great dog by the fire. There's a rack above the mantle, without blade; there's a splinter of wall that suggests fists. She looks at them all. Sight without recognition.

The dog groans, and lifts eyes gone white and rheumy. A year ago, the mabari might have found it. Now,

"Ger?"

A question. Empty, anticipated: That he'll know what it is she meant to ask.

[elegiaque]

Anticipated: taking it from its hook when her gaze glossed past it, Gervais hands her the bucket he’s already holding, pressing it into her hand with a quiet, constant affection that allows the way he folds her fingers around its handle not to seem an unkindness.

(Between them, they have known enough unkindness.)

“I won’t tell you to be nice,” Gwenaëlle says, her eye falling on Stephen instead, but now would be a great time for you to demonstrate superhuman patience conveyed in the remaining bright amber. She busies herself, instead, with unfastening the bag she’s been carrying on her hip,

not all they brought, saddlebags still needing unpacked, but a start.

“We’ll catch up. The news, and all.”

[portalling]

There’s so much unspoken happening in this room, this little cottage, the feeling of familiar routine made predictable and rote to wear it into the grooves of their existence. Something known and expected and easier for the woman to remember. Easier, than change and chaos and all their routines being overturned by something new and unexpected like a long-distant niece coming to visit. Easier, than the Riftwatchers’ trip throwing it all into disarray.

(Is this what Stephen and Gwenaëlle might look like, given enough time? Is this what comfortable domesticity and leaning on each other looks like?)

“And all,” Stephen echoes, and he obediently follows Coupe back outside into the brisk winter air. Be nice, he thinks. He’s not very good at it, but he’ll try for her.

Outside and circling the cottage, heading towards the well, to the frozen water. Stephen’s own steps slow down as they approach that stone shape and his mouth firms, looking over the edge. (Hands battering themselves bloody against a frozen lake surface, cold frigid water dark underneath—)

“Do you have a chisel? A hammer?” he asks.