I'll toss a tag aaaat... @mythals-whore and @basedonconjecture? should you want to do it! But also if you're reading this and want to be tagged, you're it!
So I decided to start a pre-VG piece for Irini this morning centered around the mission that gets her in trouble. Planning on it being for the DA100 prompt 61: Hope
Fire, blood, and blight fill her senses as she pushes the haft of her axe forward. The group of ghouls struggling against it screech as Irini's strength forces them back. The light of Antoine's flaming arrows sailing overhead provide just enough light. Enough to see what their blighted senses already told them. Masses of shadowy forms beginning to flood the tunnel beyond; maggots swarming in the wounds of the world.
This incursion was bigger than they thought.
They could not hold here.
"Irini!" Evka's voice calls from somewhere to her side, punctuated with the crunch of hammer meeting skull. Irini swings her axe through the space she made pushing the ghouls back, feeling in her arms more than seeing the blade cutting through the darkspawn.
"I know! Back to the surface—"
"More trouble coming!" The orlesian warden's warning came seconds before Irini and Evka felt what the more sensitive warden experienced first. A ripple across their shared senses. Something bigger emerging from the deep.
“My dear, I must have misheard you,” Vivienne said, as she tried to keep as still as possible in her lounge seat, the last of the day’s sunlight streaming into her balcony. The Inquisitor sat across from her, with sketchbook and charcoal in hand. “You said Cendrillon’s shoes were made of what in Nevarra?”
“Dragon scales, no kidding,” Opal Adaar said, looking up just briefly, eyes intensely focused before going back to the sketchbook, “I’d sing the ballad there and the kids would be all ‘No, not gold, dragon scales!’ I’d sing it Antiva and they’d say ‘No, not fur, gold!’”
“Would it be correct to guess that the slippers are made of fur in Ferelden?”
Opal chuckled. “Yep.”
“Of course.” Vivienne sighed, allowing the slightest adjustment in her pose to make herself more comfortable. If Opal minded, she did not make it known.
“And then,” Opal continued, looking Vivienne in the eye with a smirk, “They’re glass in Orlais. I think I like that one best.” She put the charcoal down, squinting at the sketchbook. “Alright, done.”
“That’s because you don’t entirely lack taste.” Vivienne stretched her legs out, like a cat after a afternoon nap, and brought them forward. Opal handed her the sketchbook, and on the page was Vivienne’s likeness, head held high and regal, the sun’s lighting defining her features.
“You are improving.” Vivienne nodded.
Opal sat back in her seat, slouching and crossing her legs. “Thanks.”
“Back straight, my dear, we still have tea to practice.”
“Shit, right.” She sat back up again, her size far more obvious than her usual, defensive slouch would let on.
Their tea sat on the table between them, having long gone cold, by now a tradition of their sessions together. They each took their cup and saucers, delicate and decorated with dainty swirls and gold trimming, and in their hands steam began to rise from their cups. They sipped, each of them quiet.
“Do they have those in Orlais, though?”
Vivienne raised an eyebrow, “You have to be more specific, Opal.”
“Glass shoes.” She looked at Vivienne in an almost sheepish way, “It just...sounds like something people’d wear there, is all.”
Vivienne thought back to her time in court, the many trends that went and gone, sometimes in the span of a week. The ostentatious, the vulgar, the so-horrendously-ugly-it-was-brave, the so-horrendously-ugly-it-was-just-ugly, and sometimes, rarely, the truly beautiful.
“I have seen them,” Vivienne placed her cup on it’s saucer without the slightest sound, “That one could afford to replace a fitted glass slipper whenever it shattered was meant to be a sign of wealth, of course. The shattering only a small price to pay.” She remembered that Satinalia many years ago, the golden ballroom floor covered in shards of glass and stained with deep red footprints.
“Guess having shoes you could walk in would ruin the point.” Opal sipped her tea again, her eyes lowered but unimpressed.
Vivienne shook her head. “In the Grand Game, many will try to hurt you. To do it to yourself is foolish. You simply give your enemies more ammunition. You may well do better to commission enchanted slippers, which get the point across just the same.”
“Enchanted slippers,” Opal hummed, a thoughtful look across her face, “Those might be nice.”
“I highly recommend them.” Vivienne looked down into her tea, but didn’t take a sip. “I acquired my first pair when I started playing The Game, and I haven’t owned an ordinary pair since.” She smiled at the memory in the fading light of the balcony, but it shadows weren’t enough to hide her expression. Opal looked at her, her own expression clear and interested, so Vivienne continued.
“After the Duke and I first met, he sent me gifts, and a letter.” She still had the letter, a fact the Inquisitor didn’t need to know. “I sent him a letter back, of course. Of how much I enjoyed the ball, and how my feet ached from all of our dancing. I was not yet...fully polished in the art of the game. But after that letter, he sent me a package. A pair of red slippers, with a delicate heel and small ruby brooches. I could have been barefoot and it would not have felt as comfortable.”
She still had those slippers as well, back at Bastien’s estate, even though they were now horribly out of style.
When Vivienne looked Opal in the eye, she was smiling, in a way that Vivienne did not like at all.
“Now, then,” Vivienne finished her tea with a last, quiet sip, “If you will excuse me, Inquisitor, I’m reminded of some letters I must attend to.”
Opal gulped down the last of her tea. When Vivienne gave her the appropriate judging stare, Opal stood, back straight, and politely bowed her head. “Thank you, Madame De Fer, for your time.”
Not long after Halamshiral, Vivienne sat on the balcony again, reading alchemy books from Skyhold’s library. So engrossed in their ancient recipes, she almost did not hear the messenger approaching. Almost.
“First Enchanter, there is a package for you from the Inquisitor.” The young woman said, holding a parcel in her hands.
“Thank you, my dear.” Vivienne sat upright in her seat as she took the package from the messenger, who gave a respectful bow of her head before hurrying off. Vivienne waited, the quiet tapping of the girl’s shoes slowly fading until she could no longer be heard or seen, before she opened the package.
Inside, wrapped in silks, was a pair of glass shoes. But unlike the ones she remembered from that Satinalia, shining and smooth but often plain and molded perfectly to the wearer’s feet, these slippers had glass built onto the surface, geometric shaped pieces of mirror-like glass in various shades of blue with lines of black bordering each piece, like a Serrault stained-glass window. At the throat of each shoe was a small brooch, it’s frame surrounded by triangular, icicle-like silver points and their centers, not jewels, but smooth, crystal-blue rune stones.
She slipped her into them, the soft black soles comfortable on her feet. Where the slippers had been was a small, folded piece of parchment. She picked it up and began to read it as she walked across the balcony, testing the shoes.
Vivienne,
Hope you don’t mind that I asked your shoemaker for your measurements. I wanted to thank you for all your help. Don’t know if I would’ve survived Halamshiral without your guidance. Maybe when I’m back at Skyhold, and when the Duke recovers from his illness, we could go see him together. Bet you’d knock him out in those shoes.
-Opal
Vivienne beamed, first at the letter, its sentiment, and its atrocious handwriting, and then down at the slippers, as they caught the sun’s light and made refracted patterns across the balcony. She looked around, left, then right, until she was sure no one was around to see her, and spun on the balls of her feet, feeling as light as she did when she met Bastien for the first time.
She looked back at her alchemy books, and nodded with a renewed determination, knowing she only needed one more ingredient. When the Inquisitor returned, she would ask, and maybe...
Maybe Bastien and I will dance again.
DA100 #15: Dancing
Happy @vivienneappreciationweek! This was technically supposed to be for day 5 (Vivienne and Fashion) but Things Happened, sorry! 😅
