Borrowing the Blorbeaux Gaubert and Lautilde from @monocytogenes for today's entry for @ockissweek! Pravin gets an honorable mention.
WC: 494
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Sunrise finds Thalia on the balcony of her cousin’s Val Chevin apartments, watching the rays of dawn peak over the rooftops. The morning is cool, but she can already feel the heat threatening to overtake the day. A teacup sits on the table beside her, and she picks it up, blowing on the surface to cool it.
“Ah, hello, hello,” she hears behind her in robust Orlesian. “Good morning to you, my dear.”
“Good morning to you too, Gaubert,” Thalia replies with a small smile.
“Cannot sleep?”
“Ah… a little, perhaps.” Thalia’s Orlesian is still rather rusty, her words coming in fits and starts. She ducks her head shyly. Pravin — “Denci” in the company of Gaubert and his lover-turned-caretaker Lautilde — is undoubtedly still dead to the world, and will remain so for quite some time. “I am excited to finally see the city.”
The cosmopolitan center of Orlais has been a destination of hers for quite some time. Not that she didn’t spend quite a lot of time here in official Inquisition capacity. But Val Royeaux was strictly business — or grief, she thinks, remembering the jail and Blackwall sitting inside it — and Halamshiral was the Game at its most cutthroat. She has never been to Val Chevin before, nor as she come to this country just for the pleasure of experiencing it.
“Ah, and we will be delighted to show you.” Gaubert is not a large man, but he commands the presence of someone a foot taller: rotund and perhaps in his sixtieth year, but still somehow handsome: the grey hair hangs to his shoulders and his mustache frames a perpetual charming smile. He swoops in and kisses Thalia on the crown of her head. “Where does Denci plan to bring you first?”
“Ah, something about a little corner bakery—” Thalia begins, but she is interrupted by a head of blond curly hair and pointed ears poking out onto the balcony.
“Good morning!” Lautilde announces brightly. “Darling, can I get you tea? Coffee? May I make you some eggs? I do manage an omelette quite nicely.”
“You could make me an omelette,” Gaubert comments.
Lautilde swats at his backside with the newly delivered broadsheet. “Make it yourself.”
Thalia stifles a giggle as Lautilde arranges the papers on the little patio table. “I have already made myself some tea, thank you, Lautilde.” That was one thing she learned to do in the field, at least. “I’ll wait for Fidencio to arise to take breakfast, I think.”
“Oh, you’ll be waiting some hours, I expect. He hates waking early when he is on holiday.” She narrows her eyes and wags a finger at Gaubert. “You have not been trying to seduce Lady Thalia, have you?”
“Me?” Gaubert’s thundering protestation echoes off the courtyard. “I have been but a perfect gentleman! Isn’t that right?”
Thalia nods, but Lautilde clucks her tongue and admonishes him some more. They truly are like an old married couple, Thalia thinks, amused.
GIVE ME THE BLORBEAUX. Cheeky chapter title prompts, "I’m Trying But They’re Hot"
HI FRIEND!! In honor of your birthday I bring you the Blorbeaux, combined with this prompt:
For @dadrunkwriting
WC: 1837
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The invitation to Pravin’s quarters stood prominently on Thalia’s desk, written on thick parchment and propped up like a little pyramid. Thalia snatched it up and read it — she was wanted in his tower room at the leisure of the Inquisitor. Which Thalia took to mean now.
She had not yet been to where Josephine had settled Pravin, but she knew to exit her own quarters, head down a couple of staircases, go past the hanging scaffolding where the birds squawked their hellos, and step into another corridor. Skyhold was labyrinthine at the best of times, and Thalia loved wandering its seemingly never-ending nooks and alcoves. It took her a little backtracking from the hall belonging to the servants, and she had to ask for directions once, but at last she followed a stone spiral staircase and found herself at the thick wooden door belonging to her favorite Antivan cousin Pravin. Or, the bard Fidencio Frye, his stage name and Inquisition paycheck declared.
Thalia was about to knock, but the commotion from the other side of the door was much too interesting to interrupt. She could hear her cousin talking in rapid-fire Orlesian with an older-sounding gentlemen, interspersed with comments from a woman whose Orlesian accent Thalia found wonderfully curious. Her own spoken Orlesian had atrophied during her years at the Ostwick Circle, but she could still pick out snippets of conversation: splendid place, warm welcome, and, mortifyingly, beautiful Inquisitor were among them.
Thalia cleared her throat and knocked loudly. The chattered ceased, and a few seconds later the door thrown open. Before her stood a large man of perhaps sixty years, with a round face, rounder stomach, and grey hair on both his head and chin. “Ah! C’est l’Inquisitrice!” he announced in a booming voice, throwing his arms wide. Switching to a heavily accented Common, he added, “Lady Thalia! We have heard much! Come in, come in!”
Befuddled — and charmed by the exotic mispronunciation of her name as Tah-li-ya — Thalia followed the man inside.
The floor of the circular room was covered with haphazardly strewn traveling trunks. Amid them, Pravin was in his usual splendor. He wore a deep purple doublet slashed with silver, matching breeches that accentuated his legs, and a cavalier hat with an ornate blue-dyed ostrich feather set at a jaunty angle. He stood beside a small elven woman with curly honey-colored hair streaked with grey. She wore it in a bun at the nape of her neck and had on a brown kirtle over a loose white chemise. She looked closer to the large man’s age than Pravin’s. She bore no tribal markings on her face, meaning she could not be Dalish.
“There you are,” Pravin said, in Common, upon spotting Thalia. “Dear friends of mine have just arrived, and I thought an introduction was in order. Lady Thalia, this is Gaubert l’Incroyable, my longtime mentor.”
Gaubert the Incredible? The elderly gentleman gave her a deep bow. He was dressed in similar fashion to Pravin — though the colors were more muted, he bore a busy paisley pattern on his grey doublet.
“It is an honor, Monsieur,” Thalia said, feeling a touch underdressed. “You may rise.”
Gaubert stood to his full impressive height, and Pravin turned to the elven woman. “And this is his housekeeper — and the best seamstress from here to the Anderfels — Lautilde.”
Lautilde smiled with the slight hesitance of someone unfamiliar with the spoken language, but gave Thalia a polite curtsy all the same.
“The pleasure is mine,” Thalia said, switching to the woman’s native tongue.
Lautilde rose, looking impressed. “Ah, so she does speak Orlesian,” she said in her curious lilt.
“Not as much as I would like,” Thalia confessed. “When I was sent to the Circle, my language studies were…” She searched for a polite term. “Interrupted?”
“A shame,” Lautilde said, clicking her tongue. “You sound just like a young lady from Val Royeaux with that enunciation.”
“My tutor in Ostwick was from Val Royeaux.” Thalia smiled, delighted. “It’s good to hear I’ve not forgotten everything.”
“Ah, Denci has told us so much about you,” Gaubert cried, again in his struggling Common. He sidled up beside Thalia, beaming down at her from his towering height. “But he did not mention a thing about — your beauty!”
“Oh,” Thalia said, her face warming. Visiting dignitaries and envoys sometimes used her appearance as a cheap appeal to her vanity, but Gaubert spoke with such spirited enthusiasm, it was easy to believe he was being sincere. “You are too kind, Monsieur.”
“No, really. It is criminal this was not said. Your piles of red hair! Those big, blue eyes — why, I could write a song!”
“Is he flirting already?” Lautilde murmured in Orlesian to Pravin.
“It would appear so,” Pravin muttered back, and swept between his cousin and the overzealous bard. Drawing Gaubert away by the arm, he whispered, “Give it a rest, will you? You just got here.”
“I’m trying, Denci, but she’s hot. Are you blind? When she looks at you with those doe eyes — I just want to protect her from all the evils in this cruel world!”
Thalia stood awkwardly while this went on, sharing glances with Lautilde.
“You get used to it.” Lautilde waved a dismissive hand. “He does this with every woman with a pulse, regardless of age.”
“Does anyone take him up on it?” Thalia asked.
“Oh, loads. Damn him. Worked on me once too, once upon a time.”
Thalia stifled a startled laugh. “Well, I suppose… he does have a certain charm.” Although she knew Pravin would be livid if she deigned to take an interest. He hadn’t stopped grumbling since she’d become smitten with Warden Blackwall, and was quick to remind her the Grey Warden was old enough to be her father. Could Gaubert be her grandfather? Pravin would have an attack of apoplexy, she was sure.
“My lady!” Gaubert shouted, breaking away from his protégé. “I have a gift for you! All the way from Val Chevin. You must come see.”
He led Thalia by the elbow past the clutter and insisted she sit in front of Pravin’s dressing table. Bemused, Thalia complied, frowning at her appearance in the looking glass. Caught in the light from the window, she looked pale and a bit tired, making the dark Ostwick Circle tattoo even more prominent. She patted at the hair frizzing away from the braid she’d woven back from her temple that morning.
Gaubert and Lautilde made a show of rummaging through their many trunks, and Pravin slipped beside her while they worked, perching on the edge of the dressing table. “I asked them to bring it,” he murmured, stroking the whiskers on his chin. “I think you’ll thank me.”
Growing confused and a little nervous, Thalia waited while the two Orlesians went back and forth amid their things, prattling to each other in a foreign cadence the whole time.
“Ah! At last.” Gaubert stood and strode over, carrying a small rectangular box. He set it on the table before Thalia and beamed.
Thalia squinted at the Orlesian script. “Makeup?”
“Not just any makeup, my lady,” Gaubert thundered. “This is Comte Philémon’s, the official stage makeup of Her Majesty’s Royal Acting Company! There is none better.”
Thalia blinked at Gaubert, at a loss. “I am grateful, Monsieur, but I am not planning to grace the stage any time soon.”
“Nonsense!” Gaubert switched to Orlesian in his excitement. “Is not the entire Thedosian continent a stage? And you, my dear, its most important player? If all eyes are not already poised on you, they will be soon. Denci told me of your regretful plight, and the scoundrel who marked you. As soon as I heard, I knew what the solution must be.” He tapped the box with confidence.
Thalia was certain she hadn’t heard all of that correctly. She looked to Pravin, hoping for a translation. Pravin Cleared his throat and slid to his feet. He leaned over and opened the makeup case, withdrawing a small sponge. The case held a spread of pigments, and he dabbled in a few of them, coming up with a mix of pale rosy beige. “Let me see your face.”
Thalia turned to him, and he swiped and patted her cheek, smiling slowly. Over one shoulder, Gaubert looked down, grinning; over the other, Lautilde stood on her tip toes to see, and gave a nod of satisfaction.
Pravin drew away and nodded toward the mirror. “Have a look.”
Thalia turned; her eyes widened. “I— how did you—?”
Her fingers rose to her right cheek. The black spiky crescent that adorned her cheek had vanished. She angled her head this way and that; she could see the ends of the makeup, where the tattoo faded back into view on her temple and on her opposing brow.
She’d never known makeup like this existed. She’d tried once, when free from the Circle’s clutches in Haven, to use her existing cosmetics to cover the tattoo. But the ink was too dark, the lines too thick. She’d given up, unhappily, resigned to the inevitability that wherever she went, everyone would know she belonged to the Ostwick Circle, even if it no longer existed.
“It’s an excellent match for her skin tone,” Lautilde commented. “Good job, Denci.”
Pravin smirked. “Any actor worth his salt can apply stage makeup, even on a lady who is quite a bit lighter.”
“She is even more breathtaking when one can properly see her face,” Gaubert heralded.
Lautilde leaned in and took hold of Thalia’s chin, moving her face toward the light. “Do you think we can cover it all? This bit goes right through her eyebrow.”
Gaubert frowned in thought. “I think if we mix in some red, it will blend in with the rest of her brow.”
“What a snake — who mars a young lady’s face like this?”
“A templar,” Thalia muttered, though Pravin must have told them. She turned away, keeping her gaze resolutely on the surface of the dressing table. “He thought it a brilliant way to keep all the mages in line. I guess he thought himself an artist.” She swallowed.“The Knight-Commander was all too eager to let him do it. For years.”
Pravin and his guests fell into a somber silence. Lautilde gingerly put a hand on her shoulder. Thalia sniffled, but was afraid to wipe her eyes lest it smear the paint on her face.
“And I pray he is right now burning in the fires of the Black City,” Gaubert declared.
“That is right,” Lautilde added, in painstakingly hesitant Common. “How you say? Fuck him.”
Thalia let out a surprised laugh. “Can you teach me that in Orlesian? My tutor always said obscenities were not for a lady’s ears.”
While Gaubert and Lautilde tripped over themselves to teach her the curses of their native language, Thalia caught Pravin’s eye. Thank you, she mouthed. He gave her only a cryptic smile and doffed his hat, the blue ostrich feather rippling.
