The Drow Queen of Glaley [Very NSFW]

[Claudia Emerison]

Beaming at her wife, Claudia nods quickly. "Yeah, that sounds great! Totally on board with that. Just, you know, wanted to, uh, head off any assumptions?  Right, I'll get a bath drawn up. Bubbles or no bubbles?"

[Coquette Blacquin]

"Bubbles." It's nice to have modesty when I'm allowed. 

[Claudia Emerison]

"Bubbles, check!" Flashing a grin, she scampers off to set up a nice, warm, soothing bubble bath for the two of them. And, just in case, she grabs a box of sugared fruit and beetles for them to snack on in the hopes that Coquette finds a little bit of appetite. 

[Coquette Blacquin]

And things are.... fine, for the next six months or so. Zevran is sent out on his mission and returns with a nondisclosure binding -- simpler than a geas that would stop speech, it will alert all parties if any of them share the details of a secret. So he can't tell her where he was sent, only that it was a mission he was happy to carry out, and that he wasn't harmed in any way. 

Tenachka eventually recovers. She's surely planning revenge. But just as surely, she's immortal. She has time to wait to carry out the perfect plan.

Coquette begins to fill out, mostly in the stomach area. She shows earlier than anticipated, but the doctors are able to confirm that's just because of her thinness and reluctance to fill her stomach, not because she's carrying a quicker race than drow. 

She takes a volunteer job at the knowledge repository, keeping track of what tomes are checked out and re-shelving them when they are returned. She takes on a project, too -- setting up a skit for Founding Day for the children about the history of where they come from as Drow and what makes them different. This gives her the perfect opportunity to start learning her people's real history and culture. 

And slowly, she learns to trust again. Her brain stops running on fight-or-flight fumes all the time. She stops jumping quite so hard at shadows. She continues talking to her mind healer, learning what she can about herself. She misses Cedric terribly. But mostly it keeps to Cindy and Noire, learning to get along as co-hosts, learning to be sisters instead of enemies. 

Alydra's day, and Coquette is planned to work most of the day. So it's not until evening, when the repository hands off to the Alydran staff who are going to hold an all-night vigil, that the family gets together to discuss the traditional topic: what they've learned, about themselves or the world around them, in the past year. 

[Claudia Emerison]

Claudia is very obviously nervous, the merikos gnome throwing herself into setting the scene with attention both meticulous and frantic. She doesn't seem upset or scared, thankfully, just filled with nervous energy, as if she were about to give a well prepared speech in front of far too many people. On the plus side, this also means that there are a plethora of food platters available for people to graze from.

[Zevran]

Something that Zevran is taking good advantage of by claiming a tray of heavily spiced chicken on a stick for himself. He's far more at peace than Claudia, though he's also exhausted. 

In the last couple of months since his return, he's been training with 'Shadow, Whisper, Shade and Thorn' or, as Zevran often calls them, 'Team Cliché' for eight to ten hours every day. Despite his griping about how pretentious and edgy they behave, he'll freely admit that they are all skilled and experienced in what they do. Which he can't tell anyone, even though it's blatantly obvious.

[Estelle Emerison]

Estelle, by contrast, is a puddle. An unusual puddle, admittedly, as said puddle has learned how to drink wine, but a puddle nevertheless. Evidently, two modest sized villages and a very successful merchant caravan have all decided to suddenly become receptive to stronger ties with the Enclave at the same time. Estelle is certain it's not a coordinated plan, merely that they all either learned about the Enclave's nullstone, or, in the case of one of the villages, discovered a very rich vein of iron in their mine that has greatly expanded their budgets. 

Which is great for the Enclave, but as also nearly tripled the amount of work Estelle has to handle on the day to day. If she hadn't mastered Teleportation recently, she'd have had to ask for help outside of normal channels, which would have been a serious blow to her reputation. Having very firmly taken the day off to spend with her family, the drow is indulging herself by being a puddle. A puddle that... "I don't suppose anyone would be willing to feed me?" she asks aimlessly. 

[Coquette Blacquin]

Coquette sits on the edge of her seat, clearly nervous. "May I... May I go first? Before we eat? Only, I'm going to drive myself mad with worry if I don't."

[Claudia Emerison]

Claudia, having been in the process of grabbing a tray of egg stuffed mushrooms to bring to Estelle, gives Coquette a pout. "Drat, I was gonna... you called crossbow, so yeah, I guess," she says dramatically. 

[Coquette Blacquin]

"Alright. So I learned, ah. I learned." Her courage deserts her, and she takes a sip of wine to steady herself. "I learned about an interesting mental disorder. It involves, well... when the mind is put through particular kinds of, of trauma, of painful situations, it can... sort of... duplicate itself. So that multiple, it's unclear if it's multiple souls but multiple minds, can inhabit the same body."

[Zevran]

Zevran, who had been listening this whole time, abruptly starts listening the instant he hears 'mental disorder.' Is she-- are they really going to tell everyone? With a grunt of effort, he pulls himself upright, ready to move to Coquette if she needs support.

[Estelle Emerison]

"Hmm. That sounds vaguely familiar actually," Estelle murmurs, paying attention but not really thinking past the surface of things. "I think I've read about a spell that does something similar, but it only lasts for minutes. It's to allow the caster to concentrate on one spell and still be able to cast a second?" 

[Coquette Blacquin]

"Yes, well, this disorder isn't quite... it's more like, there is a need to be one thing and another at the same time. For example, someone who is able to command household servants and someone who will submit to her wife's beatings without a fight. So she becomes... both. A strong person and a meek one."

[Claudia Emerison]

"She," Claudia repeats carefully, eyes growing wide and hand stilling a few inches from Estelle's lips. "Coquette..?"

[Coquette Blacquin]

"And... and I was talking to Bright Seline and... it seems it's normal. Well. Normal for people who have been... who have been horrifically abused. And. It's a thing that, you develop the capacity for in childhood, it's not the sort of thing that just happens out of the blue. But people can make new personalities their whole lives if they have the capacity. And personalities can vanish or merge together or... it's a whole thing. And the really scary thing is that someone with this disorder learns to, to pretend to be a single person. So there's like, a voice, that they can all put on, no matter who is actually controlling the body. And so outsiders can't tell at all, except that they behave... erratically, forgetting things or losing time or changing their mind frequently." Still she doesn't meet anyone's eyes, staring at her lap.