#olivie lachansseau

[tea-and-conspiracy]

#Junelezen 2022 Day 4: History Repeating

“Mother taught me Sharlayan astromancy at great risk to herself; full many reasons were there for the Inquisition to suspect her of witchery, and they would not have necessarily been wrong. In truth when it comes to raw ability I am but a candle to her open flame, and I suspect I shall never be her equal. Nonetheless, I keep her many lessons close to heart. If I can achieve but a fraction of what she has, I’ll consider it a success.”

[tea-and-conspiracy]

Prompt 13: Confluence

How soon these halls had fallen into disarray. A few short years ago, when the Inquisition was yet in its prime, there wouldn’t be a spider web nor speck of dust to be found. Dried leaves blew in from across the Sea of Clouds to rattle over the stonework; they crunched and hissed under Alvere Renaud’s boots now as he passed. Skrhh, skrhh, skrhh. The sound simultaneously prickled his skin and resonated with him. He scratched his hands absently, then his neck, only then noticing the tension in his jaw. Relax, relax.

Many of the others here looked as he did: bowed shoulders, wild-eyed. A hollowness that hadn’t been there before. Technically they all still had their stations. Technically they were all still inquisitors. But DeBorel had come and prized out their teeth, and now they had nothing, nothing.

Winged shadows now passed free over the cobbles below. Malformed miscreants were returning to their homes. And that was supposed to be normal now, as if overnight the Fury had changed Her mind.

Doomed. Damned. All of them. Degeneracy ran free in Ishgard, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He wheeled into his chambers, bolted the heavy door, hurried to the special locked drawer in his desk. It took too many tries for his trembling hands to fit key to lock. But it was still in there. Of course it was. It always was. No one knew about the box, so no one could disturb it.

Carefully, Alvere brought it to his chest and pulled the lid open. Within were two separate locks of spun copper. The first, and longer, he’d taken from Olivie Dufresne that fateful day he’d pushed her too far; the second, he’d snuck from Eliane in church when she was deep in prayer beside him. His treasures. They’d meant to give them to him as a promise, only, well – they hadn’t realized that yet. It wasn’t their fault. Alvere simply took it upon himself to make that promise for them.

Only now. Now! Now Olivie had left. She’d departed Ishgard forever. It was for the best, perhaps, as Halone was surely due to smite this fallen city any sun; but deep down he also knew that it was because of him. He’d wronged her, oh how he’d wronged her so! His heart shrivelled as he remembered her cries.

No, my beloved. That was not how it was meant to be.

Alvere paused a moment, clutching his head as it swam. So much dust. Black dust, everywhere. He swore sometimes that it followed him.

He sighed softly, and returned Olivie’s hair to the box – but then found himself staring at Eliane’s. She was still here, after all. A witch her mother may have been, but Eliane’s blood ran Ishgardian blue. She would never leave this city. And she understood. She did. How often she spent time with him, long after the tragedy had passed!

Only now she was trapped. Chained by wedding ring to that heathen. That brute. Alvere couldn’t comprehend what in the world could have happened to allow Eliane Dufresne to wind up in the arms of a highlander, but surely it wasn’t by choice. It was a matter he doubted Lord Emmereaux was especially pleased about; once upon a time he surely would have found an ally in the man, except Emmereaux had sworn to strangle him the next time they saw one another. Only Eliane still spoke to him anymore. Only Eliane, yes. Only Eliane.

He could still make amends, couldn’t he?

But first he had to free her.

Alvere put the box down, began to pace, coughed as he accidentally inhaled a bit more dust. There had to be a weak link here somewhere – there always was. Perhaps there was an old law leftover from the Autumn War, forbidding Ala Mhigans from holding Ishgardian lands or titles. Perhaps the man himself had secrets he’d rather not have come to light. Those were always fun strings to pull. Yes, there were options, there were always options.

It’d require a careful confluence of misfortune, but Barengar could be removed. Alvere highly doubted that beast could survive for long in the Game. His folly, for thinking he had any place up here to begin with.

And so, Alvere began to pull books. Law, scripture, census records – no, he needed more. He needed the Ala Mhigan’s entire paper trail. Past employment. Criminal records. Any and all gory details.

And he began to read. And he began to think.

And he was hounded, always hounded, by that damnable black dust.

[tea-and-conspiracy]

Prompt 10: Channel

(Drabbles in decreasing order of seriousness...)

~*~*~*~

Eliane exhaled softly as her feet drifted to the ground, toes-first. One of her shadows landed beside her to the left, his own impact far more heavy. His armor – forever his second skin – rattled from the impact.

Her second shadow made no sound as he landed, quiet as ever. His eyes were instantly on the arches high above, scanning for observers. The last time they’d come here they’d been given a rather frosty welcome, but Eliane suspected her pair of escorts would be enough to ward off all but the largest and most rancorous of foes.

After all, anything with even a fraction of aether-sense would be able to tell that both these men were wrong.

For now, however, Eliane secreted each of them a smile, and stepped from the ruins into the sunlight. Her curls floated gently in the breeze. From here she found herself embraced in amethyst, as the walls turned from stone to crystal. Would that it were actually anything so simple, so pure.

She hated visiting graves, but at least she was in the right company for that.

And so, Eliane reached out to lay a hand against the glassy surface, channeled aether into her heart and breath into her lungs, and began to sing.

~*~*~*~

Olivie lifted her hood just enough to peek out from underneath it. Their little boat had made it into the channel now, and it was almost concerning how much the narrowness of the passage sped up the water flow. The craft bumped restlessly – if not a little disconcertingly – against the alabaster walls. There were a few deliberate drops between them and Labyrinthos, and while the Gleaners thoroughly enjoyed their little water-ride, Olivie was herself less a fan of such cheap thrills.

“I’ll warn you when we’re coming up on the first drop, Auntie,” Odette said, eyes glued to the bow as she carefully pulled on the rudder. “I can’t get us very far in, though. Not until I graduate.”

“That’s alright, dear.” Olivie smiled. “I’d rather not involve you any more than necessary anyroad. If anyone gets in trouble for poking one’s nose where it doesn’t belong, it ought to be me and me alone.”

“Learning is always a good cause! And it’s not fair that they’re hoarding rare specimens down there. Although...” Odette squinted at her. “What were you looking for, again?”

“Oh, it’s simple,” Olivie said. “I need to see a man about a jellyfish.”

~*~*~*~

Red hummed softly, hands in her sash as she strolled casually down the streets. Midday markets were always the best time for shopping –it was just that she preferred to shop with, as Lark liked to put it, “the five-finger discount.” Small marks were not her bread and butter, of course, and she rather disliked stealing from people in the streets, but her latest big score hadn’t panned out the way she’d hoped and food had to wind up on the table somehow.

She supposed she could steal the food, but it was better to have priorities. Bakers, cooks, and servers were far more likely to suffer than wealthier merchants, and so to her it seemed obvious who to take from. A sudden brassy glimmer caught her greedy eye, and she turned to stare at the nearest stall. There, perched on the corner, was a handbag made from pearly fabric, adorned in beautiful golden clasps. It had an absolutely astronomical price tag. Who in the world would pay that much for a purse???

Well, that settled that. With fluid ease, Red made a casual pass by the stall, grabbed the handbag from the edge, and hid it beneath her billowing wrap in what may as well have been one single gesture. There was a good fence up on Pearl Lane; she, Lark, and Erion would certainly be eating like kings tonight.

Only, the fence was thoroughly disappointed when she brought him the bag. “Are you kidding me?” he asked. “Look at this maker’s label. This isn’t a Chachanel – that merchant was a bootlegger.”

Kara blinked and leaned in. Sure enough, an engraving on the front clasp red, in poorly-stamped words, “Channel”.

By the Crystal, she sure hated Ul’dah sometimes.

[tea-and-conspiracy]

Prompt 8: Tepid

When some gangly Ishgardian named Emmereaux Dufresne first showed up in the colony, Olivie Lachansseau thought he was hilarious.

He was clearly no magician. In fact, the boy probably wouldn’t know magic if scarves started blowing out one of his ears. But as out of place as he was, he clearly wasn’t of Ishgard’s upper crust, either; he had the arrogance, but lacked the narrow mind. So he was in the right place, as far as she could discern.

In order to figure out why, Olivie began to station herself in the same lobby after her classes ended, and studied there – or occasionally “studied” there -- all afternoon. Inevitably Emmereaux would pass, allowing her to heckle him. That hadn’t been part of the plan, but for whatever reason as she saw him appear, the first words out of her mouth were:

“Is that the only outfit you own?”

It turned out that it was. Oops.

But that did open the floodgates to conversation. He was a goldsmith’s son, who had grown fascinated with his father’s watchmaking. Unfortunately his sire had perished in a recent Dravanian attack and, as that was the only family that Emmereaux had left, he had come to Sharlayan to learn clockwork from their mammet masters instead. He’d had to sell everything he owned, including his father’s little shoppe, in order to afford the tuition.

“But this is just a temporary setback,” Emmereaux said, with ironclad confidence and eyes as cold and bright as Ishgard’s winter sky. “When I return home I will open a factory, and then I’ll be rich enough to live up in the Pillars. I’m going to make it so that my children never know hunger and cold the way I have.”

Perhaps a wiser woman would have found that laughable – the empty boasting of a cocksure youth, who’d yet to be body-checked by reality. But there was something different to Emmereaux’s brand of confidence. It was less arrogance and moreso roaring defiance: a bold-faced challenge to the hand fate had dealt him. As a student of astrology, Olivie couldn’t help but to find herself intrigued.

And as it turned out, the unique combination of his single-minded determination and her celestial guidance achieved just that. Emmeraux got his factory and his fortune. Olivie never would have pictured herself living atop a high tower in distant, snowy Ishgard, but somehow she fell in love and became a baroness in the process. Now here she sat almost thirty years later, long hair blowing out the window as though she were some fairytale princess, watching fresh powder drift onto the rooftops far below. She watched it fall and fall, and found her heart had frozen over as much as the land outside.

She hadn’t been awake for that. No, she was the only person in Eorzea to have slept through Dalamud’s fall, at least in the metaphorical sense. Ishgard had only ever seen a witch when she walked through its gates in Emmeraux’s arms, and neither was it wrong. The Inquisition had cost her her sanity for a full decade of her life. And while she was eternally grateful for Eliane and Barengar’s efforts in fishing her back to reality, those were ten years she would never get back.

A lot had changed in those ten years. She knew she certainly had.

So had Emmereaux.

It wasn’t the accident. She would have loved him regardless of how able-bodied he was or wasn’t. But it was harder to ignore what was within. Emmereaux had always been sharp and calculating before – had always had something of an ego – but he’d also been an honest, honorable man. Pillars life had eroded that away, warping him into a cunning patriarch. He’d absorbed many of Ishgard’s less-endearing traits in a bid to survive and fit in up here in the Pillars, and they were traits she noticed in Eliane now as well. Despite Olivie’s best efforts, Eliane was very much her father’s daughter. As House Dufresne-now-Requingris continued to grow in power and wealth, she could tell which way the winds were blowing.

No, too much had changed. The longer Olivie haunted these halls – whether with or without her mind – the more she felt adrift. She could feel the sea calling to her again, found herself longing for the foggy shores of home. She’d never even seen Old Sharlayan before, but her family had secured passage for her there.

She could live with them, maybe finally earn her Archon’s mark...

And...

A rugged knight rode up on his chocobo far below. Even if the bird hadn’t been the only purple one in the yard, the man stuck out from his sheer beastly size alone. Olivie had to smile, warmth blooming in her chest to see him safely returned home.

If he could come with her, selfish though the thought was, her new life would be complete.

But now came a rap at her door. Olivie turned to open it; Emmereaux was waiting on the other end, as golden and regal as ever. Once upon a time she would have blushed at such a sight; it saddened her somewhat to feel so tepid towards him now.

He’d worked so hard to save her, and now here they were.

“Is it time?” she asked.

He nodded. Emmereaux understood, of course. This had been his decision as much as it had been hers. How could one hope to rekindle a romance ten years dead?

“All the papers are in order. We need but sign them,” he said. “I’ve made certain you’ll have enough to live off of comfortably.”

She smiled a little. “And your peers? Are you not worried?”

For just a moment his eyes sparkled, and a coy smile stretched across his lips, and he looked his younger self again. “Oh, don’t worry about our reputation, my dear,” he said. “Eliane will have us covered.”