the painted veil

historical oc multimuse

[lecerise]

[quixoticry]

Like for a PET-CENTRIC starter!

- Harwood has a white cat (naturally) - Ysabel has a little terrier - Jock has 2 deerhounds - Turetsky has a Basset Hound

[rpmindthinker]

If they stand behind you, give them protection.

If they stand beside you, give them respect.

If they stand if front of you, watch their back. And if they stand against you, show them no mercy.

[thejarlofwhiterun]

[soracities]

[ltwilliammowett]

Flintlock Pistol in detail

[aphrodeiti]

Do you ever become desensitized to your own trauma?? Like you’ve been dealing with it for so long that when you accidentally let it slip out in conversation and the persons like “um oh my god?” You’re like wow I forgot my life has been one unspeakable horror after another #noted

[tanadhal]

twocubes:

she knocked that smug look off my face but luckily i was wearing a second, smaller smug look underneath

[quixoticry]

glorixna:

Elizabeth took the man in and stopped her free movements. Curtsying her own respects she eyed him and kept her guard on as she had learned to do in the recent years of her life. She did not recognize him and she wondered how he found himself here with her. Nodding to those who joined her, she waved the crowd away as she moved closer to speak with him.

“I was not expecting anyone, we have few visitors here. Who are you, what brings you here?” She asks watching him closely.

This being a mutual first meeting, Danby was extra attentive as well— true even when making an acquaintance lower than princess. Anyone could prove useful in some way or another. Despite his ambition, however, use was not the only asset that recommended a person. It was not even his only personal advantage.

He let her make the final approach, reasoning that it was her prerogative. Rank conquered gender in his mind.  “My name is Giles Danby,” he began, “and I have come to meet you.” Honesty was not often the tactic he turned to first, but any else would seem what it was: a poor excuse. “I am going to court soon and thought to seek your blessing.”

[laclefdescoeurs]

Chat angora blanc guettant un papillon, Jean-Jacques Bachelier

[quixoticry]

therapardalis:

“Because they are not your toys!” Finally exasperation leaked through to her tone; that she must repeat a fact he would never countenance or understand, that he continued to ask … but at least he did, one small concession to the man that she banished angrily the second it occurred. The fact of the question did not translate to the reason. “If that is not plain enough, then we already know I waste my breath.”

Subversion, confrontation … not unlike those who found themselves at odds with the Crown, these were the tools to facilitate escape; if not her own, then that of others. Actual change taunted as an impossible dream, one never surrendered but far slower in the march of time. The rest - all considered, the invisibility of the first was always her preference, to be a shadow unseen.

Bouncing around anybody’s Royal Court made that close to impossible. “No, and nor would I. Even given the chance, there were enough women through those doors.”

At the sudden appearance of fire in place of mere heat— a question of manageability, mostly— Harwood sat straighter in his saddle. His gaze remained at embers, some energy finally emerging but not enough to consume. “Zounds, woman! Did not God grant us dominion over the earth and all its creatures?” A moment after this outburst it occurred to the shrewd minister that she could be said to skirt heresy. Not quite the instant capital sentence it used to be, but still might make for a useful tool.

But he did not come here to trip anyone into legal trouble, however much it was now a temptation. Such manipulation was reserved for the court now under discussion. A cool nod ensued; he could have respected it as an opinion shared if they were not already so at odds. “Wise, if this is common behavior for you. Is there anything else or may I ride on?” His tone was not quite malicious but certainly not friendly.

[simena]

[quixoticry]

                                     A peculiar thing it is indeed, to be bound to one who is no more familiar than a face glimpsed briefly in a crowd — but then, are not all first encounters defined by a feeling of foreignness, and do they not stand a chance to blossom into intimacy regardless of initial hardship?

     That, at the very least, has been Armando’s guiding hope over the course of the past few weeks, and he must admit that his anxieties have been quenched by whatever little opportunity of conversation he shared with his wife-to-be. She seems pleasant enough: the difference in age might be quite noticeable, but they appear to be sharing the same concerns. It is a similarity as good as any other when it comes to establishing a bond.

                                                             “ So it is — though I am confident that we might yet help each other leave the strangeness behind. Would you grant me permission to take you for a stroll across the gardens? ”

      ‘Biddable’ is not the word that would occur to the average person looking to describe Ginette Pontmercy. She is about as biddable as the wind— but neither is she as fickle. Loyalty also marks her nature, and that loyalty applied to family has brought her here. Her parents only want the best for her, she knows, even if she might disagree.

      So far her objection is more to the general principle than the specific specimen. She has found her potential husband to be honorable and honest if also overly endowed with seriousness and not enough with a sense of adventure. Still, it would give her father peace of mind— her mother’s acquiescence does surprise her, except the baroness does tend to agree with her spouse.

     Now Ginette gamely takes the arm already proffered— her impression is of hope rather than assumption, though the man’s confidence does not seem lacking. “Granted, and gladly. I did mention that I love gardens.” She glances up at him through her lashes, giving him opportunity to take credit if it had been deliberate.

[midnight-summerx]

John William Waterhouse

[quixoticry]

livingsouloflove:

How scandalous, how improper it was for Elizabeth’s heart to flutter so at Ginette’s touch. She could imagine the whispers of scandal on the lips of every person within a five mile radius - how indecent. Oh, Decency! That accursed god Elizabeth had been slave to for so long. Now, here she was, without husband or elders to dictate her every move. Her only living relative - a cousin, more like a son than anything - was grown and tending to a farm and using his inheritance to cultivate the land and a life with a pretty young wife and a child on the way. Decency no longer held dominion over Elizabeth’s life who was, by her uncle and father’s deaths, a landowning widow in both Switzerland and Italy. She could have been a wealthy woman; she could have been of high value on the marriage market. Instead, Elizabeth contented herself with simpler pleasures - opening her homes to travelers, making ready friends with strangers and animals and children, writing a little and reading a lot. She paid her tithe to Decency every time she donated to a cause or checked in on her uncle’s aging friends when their own children would not do so. Was that not only decent, but kind?

She had no need for Decency, certainly not nearly as much as she had need for Ginette’s lips upon her knuckles and enthusiasm for a Valentine’s Day celebrated together. Elizabeth bit her lower lip to keep her smile from growing too eagerly, too widely. It would be foolish to expect Ginette to stay or that one person could ameliorate all the loss Elizabeth had endured, but for the moment, she could forget her private sorrows, if only to focus on the brightness of Ginette’s voice and the thrill of her eyes. 

“I confess, I do not gamble,” Elizabeth said, withdrawing her hand from Ginette’s only to put her palm against the other woman’s cheek. “Life is too precious and rare to take anything but a calculated risk.”

And on that note, as her eyes traced Ginette’s lips, Elizabeth took a calculated risk and pressed a gentle kiss to her friend’s lips. (Friend was the only word she could use and now as her stomach tied in knots, she hoped that even if such a “calculated risk” as a kiss was not welcome, that she could rely on that friendship for absolution.)

In all her travels Ginette had not tended to seek out companionship— not quite an indictment on the whole species, but near enough. Lush greenery and craggy mountaintops held more allure for her than the inner wilds of the human heart. In Elizabeth’s company however she’d found that both were worth exploring. Both could be rife with strength and pitfalls; not all the ways were broad sunny lanes with no sense of depth. While she had been forging new paths through undergrowth in the Americas, Elizabeth had already endured marriage (Ginette’s wording, an adventure in its own right) and subsequent loss. She’d never cared much for romantic tales but through Elizabeth had come to see their appeal, if not exactly share it.

She did know her gaze of late had been catching on Elizabeth’s a fraction too long with a boldness that if one of them were a man they might both have translated more quickly and with more surety. But then if that were true, perhaps the end result would not be so happy. Decency rarely if ever entered Ginette’s calculations, such as they were. In the roughest terrain she would even eschew skirts for trousers. No, she did not care what anyone said about her. If she had hesitated at all to bring it up, it had been from consideration of Elizabeth’s reputation.

Ginette trusted her though to make her own choice on that front. And if that choice also aligned with her own selfish interests, she saw no need to contest it. Thoughtlessly she was about to mention some card game she’d learned once when her own gamble paid off. Perhaps she’d better stick to piquet, and for no stakes.

But if this was what it meant to lose... She let her lips linger pressed against Elizabeth’s before she drew back, eyes bright. “How true. With gambles, one side must lose.” The fingers of one hand laced through her friend’s as slowly the other hand reached up to ghost her cheek.

[quixoticry]

100 days of headcanons

Parents

Like may residents of the Lower East Side at the time, both Jacob and his future wife Sarah were immigrants. They arrived in America as children and grew up there, but always a thin veil seemed to separate them from their country even as they never questioned which country merited the label. His family came from the Ukraine while hers emerged from the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire via Germany. Her family was slightly better off, but not so much so that they didn’t have to work hard, or that anyone looked askance when she became interested in leftist politics. That was where they met and fell in love: at a rally, a meeting, a march— their stories differ in the way they do with a story where the ending is already laid out. The details matter but they don’t matter. It ends the same way, with three beautiful children who improved on their parents’ condition and a life that didn’t live up to their youthful ideology but was nonetheless satisfying.

[therapardalis]

rpxmusings:

             if you’re gonna hit me, hit me  ʜᴀʀᴅᴇʀ                         cause you better  knock me out  the  𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚜𝚝  time