#i'm working on another fill for that nsfw-ish (gorgeous) art you did too cinn!!!

[feynites]

Some Fen’Sulahn/General Lavellan crossover courtship! Tagging @justanartsysideblog

June is not pleased with Lavellan’s apparent interest in Fen’Sulahn.

He takes a passive-aggressive approach to his displeasure. Lavellan is not quite sure why he bothers with the ‘passive’ part – she can clearly tell what’s bothering him – but maybe it’s just because he can’t really justify being angry without seeming petty. Because, of course, it is petty.

“You do not even like these elves,” June mutters, the next day, as they meet in the joined foyer of their rooms to get ready to leave. Mythal has invited them to join her family for breakfast. A messenger stopped by before June was even awake, carrying the invitation.

“I like one of them,” Lavellan replies, honestly not in the mood to ease his bruised ego right now. She didn’t sleep at all last night. She was too afraid of what she might dream about. And now the sun is up, and reality still is what it is. History and all. She feels impatient, and she’s not even sure if it’s nerves or regret or excitement at the prospect of seeing Olwyn again.

June lets out an aggravated sigh.

“You barely laid eyes on her before you were all but pouncing,” he notes, as they set out into the hall. “Do not pretend that it is such a simple matter. Are you really so jealous of my own courtship, that you had to upstage me and fling yourself at Sylaise’s sister?”

Lavellan tries to resist the urge to reach up and flick his ear in rebuke. But the gesture would be too casual for the setting of the open, public corridor. Filled with the followers of Mythal and Elgar’nan’s burgeoning empire. She settles for rolling her eyes instead.

“Yes, June, you have caught me,” she drawls. “That is exactly what is going on. I am jealous of all the attention you have been getting, and I decided to use my sexual wiles to steal it for myself.”

June scowls, but at least he also lets the matter drop.

Once again, her brother is dressed in the finery that seems typical of important persons among these imperial elves. Lavellan has donned one of her better tunics, and, though she pointedly did not think too hard about her motivations for doing so, a pair of her tightest leggings. Her attire turns out to be fairly in-keeping with the mood of the morning’s breakfast, as Mythal’s available family have gathered around an amber table in outfits that range from Elgar’nan and Dirthamen’s simple robes, to Sylaise’s fluttering silver morning dress, to Mythal’s own gauzy tunic and moonlight leggings.

Olwyn is wearing a pink robe, with bangles on her wrists, and some golden paint across her eyelids. Her hair is loose, and wild in the way it always tended to get whenever she hadn’t had time to try and properly see to it.

She looks surprised to see June and Lavellan arrive. The sentiment flares around her for just a moment, before she tugs it back in.

Mythal rises to greet them.

“June, Lavellan,” she says, with a smile. It is strange to see her out of her usual, striking gowns and armour. Reaching out, she gestures towards the table. “Thank you for accepting my invitation. Please, do sit anywhere you would like.”

June immediately moves for the chair beside Sylaise, of course. There is one left open on his other side, and another available between Olwyn and Elgar’nan.

Lavellan knows a trap when she sees one.

She sits down next to her brother. Which still puts her opposite of Olwyn, and of Dirthamen, too. Mythal is on her other side, but Lavellan’s interest in the woman’s possible motives and intentions has only redoubled since the other night’s events. Mythal, it seems, holds Olwyn’s future and quite probably June’s in her hands as well.

But where she is driving all of this, that remains impossible to say.

“I hope you enjoyed last night’s festivities,” Mythal says, as they set about availing themselves of the breakfast spread.

“They were splendid,” June offers.

“I found the evening picked up very well as it went along,” Lavellan cannot resist declaring, herself. Olwyn smiles, just a little; her mother glances towards her, but smoothly inclines her head.

So, Mythal heard about their dancing, then. And most likely the flirting, too.

June is courting Sylaise. Lavellan wonders how Mythal would feel about having her elder daughter pursued by his younger sister. But, she does not seem to have made quite the same impression that June has upon the lauded general. The concept of an ‘advantageous match’ had been loose at best among the clans. Sometimes, when two clans met, and two elves hit it off, people would discuss the benefits of a close tie like that. But she is not certain how the advent of an empire might change such attitudes.

“I hear you danced with my sister, Lavellan,” Sylaise notes, raising an eyebrow from the other side of June. Elgar’nan, in the meanwhile, seems mostly intent upon his meal. While Dirthamen is… sitting there. Staring at the wall, it would seem.

“I am fond of dancing,” Lavellan confirms. “Your sister is an excellent partner. Very graceful.”

Olwyn smiles at her again.

“You danced very well also,” she extends. “If you are still here for the summer festival, it will be a delight.”

Lavellan cannot help but soften at the suggestion.

But still, she is not quite sure she wants to play strong a hand with the other evanuris so close. On some level, it is deeply surreal to sit at a table surrounded by figures who were once gods. But then, she has had one such person as a brother for centuries, now. In another lifetime, she had taken one for a lover.

Perhaps it is more surreal to sit like this with people who were once monsters she fought against.

Might still fight against.

The dead resurrected. If she does nothing, she thinks, history may well move itself in a circle. An unending spiral of death and rebirth, the world ending and beginning anew. Locked in an eternal, stagnant tragedy. One group of conquerors replacing another, and on and on until the firmament of the earth breaks beneath egotism and bloodshed.

And she has her part in that. As she sits and breaks bread with people who, she knows, are sending their prisoners of war to fixed camps, in a ‘temporary’ measure which seems set to become a permanent one.

Still, there is also nothing Lavellan can do if she is dead. Or if she makes the wrong choice, plays the wrong game, and simply lets things continue upon their track.

The conversation at the table carries on. Light and casual. Mythal begins addressing June more, after a time. Elgar’nan leaves to go and see to some battlefield reports. Sylaise asks Lavellan questions about dancing, and flirts with her a little, and seems quite pleased with the way it makes June tense and purse his lips, and glare at her from the corner of his eye.

Lavellan resists the urge to roll hers back at him for the thousandth time, and does not rise to the offerings. Tempting though it might be to torment him a little.

Breakfast ends, and she cannot help but feel as if it has given away more than she would like anyway. Olwyn excuses herself, and takes her brother with her, but Lavellan finds herself leaving the table without June, as Mythal requests to speak to him. She is escorted gracefully away by Sylaise instead, who flirts with her until they reach the palace gardens, and then exchanges it for a more ordinary sort of conversation on the city’s construction projects, and her own plans for the day.

Sylaise likes schedules. Or, at the very least, she thinks they are impressive.

The more time they spend together, the more Lavellan is beginning to see why she and June are apparently on the same strange wavelength.

“I have another sister, you know,” Sylaise mentions, before they part. “Andruil. She should be returning before the summer festival too. Will you flirt with her as well?”

Lavellan shakes her head.

“Is Andruil lovely?” she asks, though. It makes Sylaise laugh.

“She is!” the other woman confirms. “Though some prefer to call her ‘striking’. I, of course, inherited mother’s beauty. And Fen’Sulahn has always been of a charming disposition – if you like her look, you should know that even our brothers do not share it. Or, well, Dirthamen does some of the time. Falon’Din takes after Father, though.”

Lavellan contemplates the conversation for a moment, and the implications of everything going forward.

But in the end, she supposes that subterfuge has never been her strong suit. It would be better to play to her strengths – she has had time to cultivate them, at least.

“I struggle to imagine any figure more captivating than Fen’Sulahn,” she admits.

Sylaise’s expression goes unreadable, for a moment. And then she laughs, and shakes her head.

“What queer tastes you have,” she notes.

Lavellan lets out a long breath.

“They are certainly specific,” she concedes.

Sylaise leaves her, then. Begging off to attend to her duties. Lavellan looks around the gardens for a moment, and stills as she catches sight of a familiar figure. Standing near some of the statues of dragons, that seem to have been carved from shrine stones. Sacrilegious, in fact, though talking to the empire’s elves has revealed their belief that it is a gesture of respect instead.

She makes her way over. Pulled, like gravity. Olwyn is wearing bronze, now. Just a little darker than her skin tone, in strips of fabric that form a very loose dress. Her legs are bared up to the tops of her thighs. Golden anklets swirl up her calves, and medallion earrings hang from hair she has managed to tame since leaving the breakfast table.

Her back is to Lavellan. The water’s reflective surface makes her think of mirrors. Makes her think of a woman in armour, standing before the frame of an eluvian.

“Were you listening?” she wonders.

Olwyn turns, and has the grace to not deny it. She looks only slightly abashed.

“You should know that everyone listens in on conversations in the gardens,” she says. “It is a prime source of gossip. Nothing said here can be considered private.”

Lavellan inclines her head.

“My thanks for the warning, in that case,” she replies, and then ventures up towards the statues as well. She gazes at the curved necks of the dragons. They do not look quite like the statues of Mythal which might survive into the future. But the initial concept is obviously there. Veins of green swirl through the carved rock, and put her in mind of lyrium as well.

And… of Ireth. Without fail. Her concept of a ‘dragon mother’ has changed much since Olwyn sent her back.

So many elements to balance.

“If you are trying to make Sylaise jealous, you are taking exactly the right approach,” Olwyn tells her, after a while.

Lavellan glances towards her. She looks so beautiful, but also very… different. And the sashes of her gown bear an uncomfortable resemblance to chains.

“I have gathered that one rarely needs to try to make Sylaise jealous,” she says. “It is the same with June. They might actually be well-matched for one another. Or they are the most terrible of combinations possible.”

Olwyn snorts in amusement, but then lifts a hand and covers her mouth.

“That was unkind,” she notes.

“I can be that, at times,” Lavellan murmurs. There is a deep well of bitterness in her, she knows. It has been soothed and stilled, and at times, it has scarcely seemed to still be there at all. But it is, and sometimes the waters of it lap against her tongue, and colour her words.

After a moment more of observing the statues, though, the presence at her side seems to further ease and comfort the disquiet within her.

She remembers a spell. Ireth used to cast it for Haninan, often enough. It has been years since she tried it. Not for any particular reason; but only because had not thought to or had reason to in that long. June had attempted it, once, while they had Ireth captive in the mountains. The lack of magic in the region had made the spell fizzle and break, though.

Her fingers twitch.

And after a moment, the thoughts take root enough that she lifts them, and twirls them. Drawing up shards of air that harden, glittering, moment by moment. Until they settle into something quite like spun glass. She balls her fist, and the bottom rounds and firms, and the little conjuring takes on the look of a piece of frozen fire. Reflecting green and blue from the stonework in front of them.

Olwyn makes a soft sound of wonder.

“Beautiful!” she exclaims.

Lavellan hands the bauble to her.

“It usually only lasts a few days,” she admits. “Like cut flowers. And it is easy to break.”

Like hearts young and old.

Olwyn traces a finger across it, and looks quite taken by the gift.

“So many clans know so many beautiful things,” she says. “So many great skills and crafts. Innovations and inventions. My mother wants to bring us all together, you know. To where we can all learn and appreciate the wonders of the People. And keep one another safe.”

Silence descends between them, for a moment. Mythal’s sincerity may be in doubt – and perhaps it is only her bias speaking. But she does not think Olwyn has an ulterior motive, in all of this.

The garden has ears.

“And what of those uninterested in sharing what is theirs?” she nevertheless wonders.

Olwyn blinks, and looks at her again.

“Well, so long as they are peaceful, they are welcome to live outside the empire,” she reasons.

Lavellan lets the matter lie, with an inclination of her head. She should go, she thinks. But she finds herself incapable of moving. She wants to argue. To warn Olwyn. To explain that this is not the way that conquest works. But perhaps, here and for now, it can be. Perhaps enough effort can yield better results.

Perhaps she can save something of Elvhenan.

“That would be nice. At any rate, I have been shown around the city, but I have not seen it all of it,” she declares, instead. “Perhaps you could show me some of the more interesting sights?”

Olwyn hesitates. Hands still wrapped around the frozen flame.

“I fear I have some duties to attend,” she admits. “Perhaps another time?”

“Another time,” Lavellan readily agress.

And tries not to feel disappointed, as the other woman turns, and hurriedly takes her leave.