therookery | crystal.

Entry tags:

crystal.

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Gwenaëlle Baudin
RECIPIENT: All y'all.
NOTES: There's a new junior dad in town. Tell her all about your sick magic weapons and how buff or noodly your little nerd arms might be. (Happy to do action spam here or in her inbox for any office threads!)

Alright, Riftwatch, I assume I don't need to introduce myself,

( possibly because she hasn't been paying strict attention to recent arrivals, but she is certainly not herself a new face, )

but if you have somehow mistaken my accent for Alexandrie, this is Gwenaëlle Baudin, and if you haven't noticed my taking up the office, I am now your acting Captain of the Watch. ( because they are still pretending that dad might come back (with smokes) and that rowntree's appointment might be temporary. she has already begun studying nevarran, but she isn't all that optimistic about when she's going to need to know it by. ) I've started with inventorying our armoury, and as such I have a couple of requests to make of, primarily, those of you not in Forces. If you are in Forces, I need to know if you possess any personal weaponry of note that we should be taking into account. You can provide details by crystal, book or at my office. If you are not in Forces, I would like to know that, but disclosure is voluntary unless your division head decides to make it mandatory.

( yes, she checked with rowntree before announcing it's mandatory for forces. )

Further, if you are not in Forces, I'd like to have an overview of the combat readiness of our ( nerds ) general non-combatants and what their, your needs are. If you'd like particular training, or if you specifically wouldn't. If you're going to be particularly vulnerable in the sort of emergency we recently experienced, or if it'd be useful for me to be aware that you won't. Again, we can have these conversations by whatever means suits you.

( there's a brief pause. )

And to be clear, I'm not assuming all diplomats and researchers need to be provided personal fainting couches, and you will not be considered clever for getting up in arms about having your toughness questioned. If you would like to be provided a personal fainting couch, ask the Seneschal.

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( huh, not something she'd considered; do templar abilities impact enchanted weapons? surely someone would have mentioned. )

Extremely. Do you want to tell me more about it here or...?

( like, she has an office now. and a houseboat clarisse is regularly allowed onto. )

[ Right, duh, maybe not the best thing to be yelling about in public. ]

Should I go to your office?

Ouais, I'm there now. It's not quite set yet, don't mind the mess.

Okay, I'll head over.

[ Sure enough, about ten minutes later, Clarisse approaches Gwen's office and knocks on the door. Then she lets herself in before getting an answer, because she's herself. She has the spear with her, as well as a short sword and a couple loose arrows. ]

Hey.

( on gwenaëlle's side of the office shared by captain of the guard and vice admiral (a position yet unfilled) is in a state of mild disarray; shelves emptied and not yet refilled, the desk pushed to one side, and drawers hanging open, papers in neat piles on the floor or the lowest shelf near where she's sitting, working on something on the floor— )

Hey, ( she echoes back, looking up from where she's a puddle of dark red skirts, her hair hanging over one shoulder in a braid. ) Come, sit.

[ Clarisse steps around a couple of the stacks of papers until she gets to a good spot and sinks down to sit next to Gwenaëlle on the floor. She sets the sword and arrows off to one side. Maimer gets a nice gentle spot on the desk, because it's her special baby. ]

What are you working on?

( maimer is beautiful and deserves it, obviously— )

Residency map, and my armoury notes, ( she says, leaning back onto her hands, happy enough to take a momentary reprieve from it to talk to clarisse instead. no one likes paperwork, even if it comes more naturally to her than might be expected. )

So when you say can affect weapons...?

Mm. [ Boring shit, in other words, but Clarisse doesn't say that part out loud. ]

I can only do it once a day and it only lasts a few minutes, but I can curse weapons. That's what the sword and arrows are for.

( the fun part of the job is that now, she's in charge of the bell that rowntree wouldn't let her keep after the last emergency drill. but that is not even as interesting as the prospect of cursing weapons and she leans forward, interested, her head tilting, )

Cursing them for the wielder or the,

( her nose wrinkles as she thinks of how to put this, )

...recipient?

( yeah, that's what we'll call people we stab. nailed it. )

Edited 2024-07-01 03:02 (UTC)

The wielder. [ Clarisse looks over at the weapons she brought. Arrows are always fun to mess with, but it's not a huge office and there's a lot of organizing still happening in here. As funny as it'd be to try to fire off a ranged weapon in here, she doesn't want to, you know, actively make Gwen's life harder. She decides on the sword. ]

Here, take this. [ She offers it to Gwen, pommel-first. ] Just, like... pretend you're about to chop my head off or something.

( gwenaëlle raises an eyebrow— )

This isn't going to fuck up my whole afternoon, is it? ( seems like the reasonable sort of due diligence question she ought to ask, even as she takes the sword, getting to her feet. there's something a little bit absurd about standing in the middle of her office, in costly couture, holding a sword,

but you know, she's going with it. she's done weirder. )

Because I've still got to finish deep cleaning this place.

It shouldn't.

[ Though Clarisse does have a tiny spark of concern light itself in the back of her mind, a brief acknowledgement that her powers have been unreliable since coming here. In some cases, completely gone.

Too late to back out now. She waits until Gwen is in position, and then she speaks. It's a language Gwenaëlle doesn't know, one she's never heard before. A phrase maybe four seconds long, five at most, and then—

The sword feels too heavy, all at once, like the blade is lead rather than steel. The grip is all wrong. And then even more, until the weight of it strains Gwen's fingers and wrists and the thought of simply lifting it to use against another person feels as impossible as holding up a mountain. ]

( it's disorientingly familiar in a way she isn't at all braced for and gwenaëlle laughs, the kind of laugh that usually follows making a terrible joke about one's own trauma, which

in a way

is sort of exactly what just happened. she lowers the sword, slowly, and it seems deliberate; like she has to consciously make herself do it that way, and not just drop it. maybe she could have just dropped it, considering the grip, considering the nature of the curse. maybe there's a reason she doesn't. )

—that must be useful.

[ Clarisse drags the back of one hand across her forehead, wiping sweat away, but she grins. ]

I haven't done much with it here. [ Not really at all, actually. Part of it's that it hasn't seemed worth it to dredge up some minor power she can only use once in a day, part of it's that she likes to win on her own talent, and using magic feels unsatisfying for that. But— ]

It could come in handy if the timing was right.

[ One big push at the right moment? It could save someone's life, or fuck up some critical enemy plans. ]

( shaking out her hands — there's a little shudder down her spine, like she's shaking off something else — gwenaëlle grins back, lopsided but not false,

it's always easy to tell when it's false. she's got a face with subtitles. )

You get one shot at it in a fight, you said, but that is a very good shot. I'd love to see it used on a Red Templar, just for irony's sake.

( sure, magic is cheating, but using magic to fuck up a templar's ability to hold a sword is conceptually hilarious, so right away that's worth it. funnier still on an ordinary templar, but they come up against them on the battlefield less often.

well, for now. )

Maybe you will someday.

[ Look, Clarisse has come to appreciate ranged fighting a lot more since she joined up. Riding a griffon in battle some of the time has only made it worse. Better? Whatever. The thought of cheating with magic doesn't seem like such a shitty idea when she's a hundred feet up in the air, is all.

She gives Gwen a little bit of a more searching look, a sort of rare acknowledgement that she's a lot more observant than people assume. ]

You okay?

I am—

( she breathes out through her nose. maybe it's nearly a laugh, the sound she makes. or something else. her fingers flex at her thighs, twist in her summer-weight skirts, and she settles on: )

I'm having sort of an odd day.

( for someone who'd probably say I'm fine with a sucking chest wound, )

And I haven't felt like that holding a sword in— a while. Years. But I'm alright, ( she decides, and it sort of sounds like she's deciding to be, but maybe like she has a sturdy enough place to stand that she can. )

[ "An odd day" is super vague, but also the fact that Gwen is even alluding to dealing with something not normal is kind of shocking. She always seems so fucking confident and composed. Clarisse is instantly caught in between not wanting to pry for information and wanting to deal with someone else's problems so she doesn't have to think about her own, but she manages to settle on something sort of in the middle. ]

Well... if you ever want to talk about it. I'm around.

( even when she'd sort of rather open a vein than her mouth about her feelings, it's easier than it once was to accept the sentiment, even to be grateful for it. easier to believe that it's exactly what it sounds like, not a trap, not an implication about how she's just too weak to handle it by herself, just—

it's not nothing. )

Merci. It's just,

( honestly, sort of dogshit timing to be taken off-guard by a rifter's return. )

I wasn't expecting the first person who answered me, today, and I think it's going to be awkward as all hell. But it'll be fine, I think.

( and no need to examine the way she'd still rather talk about that than the knife thing, at least immediately. )

The guy asking about fainting couches?

[ Clarisse didn't recognize his voice, but she doesn't always pay attention to chatter over the crystals, especially when multiple people are using them at the same time. Besides, even though she has a general idea of who most of Riftwatch are, there are people who sometimes pass through and then leave again, doing work elsewhere. Not a big organization, but just big enough that she doesn't feel weird about not knowing absolutely everybody. ]

Why awkward?

( given the timing—

but there's limited time, she knows that. if she says nothing, to him, to anyone else: thranduil left a history behind him. she isn't the only person in kirkwall who remembers him. not the only person who remembers their history. it will come up. and maybe to thranduil she could say, you don't know me so it's not your history so I didn't have to share it with you, and that doesn't sound totally unreasonable. she isn't as sure about what clarisse might think, if she evaded her, and she found out later.

or at least, is more sure that it matters. he's a clean slate; what that will mean remains to be seen. clarisse is her friend, now, in front of her.

it takes her long enough, this train of thought, for the extended silence to have become awkward. )

The first time that Thranduil Oropherion was here, ( echoing her own phrasing, ) the time he doesn't remember. He was, that's—

That is my ex-husband, that I mentioned. There's paperwork with his married name on it, he was a very. Large part of my twenties and everything I did, early on, with Riftwatch. We were separated when the Fade took him back and it hadn't ended well.

( large. yeah, he's fucking six foot six, he was a huge part of her twenties. )

[ The prolonged silence is awkward, yes, but as soon as Gwen begins talking again Clarisse understands why she hesitated for so long.

Ah. Fuck.

It feels a little bit like slipping under icy water without warning. No chance to take a breath, just sudden cold washing over her. Inside, it hurts, her heart pounding and her stomach rolling, but on the outside it just feels like she's frozen. ]

Oh, [ she says, because she doesn't trust herself to say anything else.

Clarisse's rifter girlfriend, gone without warning. Gwenaëlle's rifter ex-husband, back less than a month later. It's not anybody's fault, she tries to tell herself. It's not like he's... the replacement. That's not how it works.

(But that's how it feels.)

Say something. She must look angry sitting here in silence, and this isn't Gwen's fault, say something. ]

I'm—sorry. That must... feel so weird.

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