oh god I am so sorry for spamming the comms, guys. Who: Gale Kapur & Altair Laurent What: Someone didn't win a wine-tasting, so Altair decided to make it happen anyways. Conversation ensues. Where: A vineyard outside of Emillion. When: Backdated to the Saturday after the auction. Rating: Family-friendly, of course. Status: Completed.
While Gale was still not sold on this entire thing, she could admit she was finding certain aspects of being courted quite enjoyable. Although the evening of the auction was now but a memory and the Kapur daughter should have moved on gracefully from her losses, she was still smarting from the fact that she had wanted to go to that wine tasting, if only because she did love wine (even if she did not necessarily love the Bane family, dipping into the common pool as they did). But here was the upside mentioned to Altair’s wooing: this particular Saturday afternoon was spent at the beautiful vineyards she had thought she was going to miss out on, the air rich and musty with the smell of fermenting grapes, and several bottles of wine laid out on a wooden table, paired with various cheeses and meats.
Suffice to say, Gale was incredibly pleased with the entire thing, and in turn, Altair. The ride to the vineyard had been enjoyable and she had found herself receptive to conversation, rather than the cool, avoiding persona she often employed when dealing with him and others she didn’t particularly know well. In fact, one might have even detected a developing fondness towards him, though whether it was the atmosphere or the wine that was contributing to this, it was hard to tell.
Nonetheless, Gale, dressed in red (which she considered her best color), and Altair did look very good together as they sipped wine. The sommelier said as much, to which Gale could only laugh abruptly and turned to Altair once the wine steward’s back was turned.
“Really, this was quite the surprise, Altair,” she said, her cheeks high in color, “I am actually pretty impressed.”
Altair favored her with one of his cool, amused smiles and swirled the wine absently in his glass. He was tasting it, rather than drinking it, but he was enjoying himself quite as much as Gale seemed to be. In spite of his pale complexion and fear of freckling, he had always liked being outside. At home, he sated his desire to be outside by riding his chocobo and admiring the back garden. Still, there was nothing like being surrounded by miles of growing grapes. Even the wooden table and the oak barrels that held the fermenting wine added to the sort of rustic, outdoorsy air. It was a warm day, with a cool breeze that brought in the scent of the fertile earth and warm sun.
Gale, too, looked beautiful. Altair had told her as much in so many words, without the flowery language or lofty comparisons he sometimes used. The red clothing she wore flattered her skin tone and dark hair, though not nearly as much as the carefree, easy smile that lit up her face. For his part, Altair had his hair braided in a single braid down his back. He wore a hat, his main concession to the sun, as well as a loose linen shirt and tailored brown pants.
“Perhaps we ought to do this sort of thing more often,” he said, regarding Gale with an easy smile of his own. “The fresh air seems to agree with you.”
Gale caught the hint. “I suppose we might,” she said easily, though she had no intention of committing to it if it were to be brought up at a later time. But right now -- here, in the warm country air with relative privacy and the scent of sun-drenched grapes practically sending her into a swoon -- she could not find it within herself to object as she might were they somewhere else. “I like wine very much, though not when I first started drinking it. I think the first time I ever had it, I had to secretly spit it out at dinner without anyone even noticing. I thought it was vile.”
She reached for a slice of apple, biting into the fruit to cleanse her palate and try the Pinot Grigio that seemed to be singing a siren’s song to her. “To be quite honest,” she continued, “I do not often go outside of Emillion. We have no country estate, no relatives we care to visit outside the city walls. Do you?”
Altair laughed lightly. “I expect that very few like wine the first time one tries it. I was nine years old the first time I was allowed to stay up to dine with the guests at our estate. My mother allowed the help to pour me the tiniest sip of wine, and I felt very grown up—until I tried it. It was a dry red wine, perhaps a merlot, and I spat it out as well, although perhaps not as discreetly as you. My father definitely noticed.” He smiled at the memory, bringing his glass to his nose and inhaling its fragrance before taking a sip.
He hadn’t swallowed enough wine to feel even the slightest buzz, and yet, Altair was oddly relaxed, his guard down. Although he didn’t drink as a rule, he wasn’t such a teetotaler that he was afraid to even touch the stuff, and he did have a preference for which wines he liked. He found that, unlike his 9-year-old self, he preferred complex red wines. Sweet wines did nothing for him.
“I go out of the city from time to time,” he answered Gale’s question languidly, “but more for business than aught else. My family leases our lands to tenant farmers, and we remain at our estate in the city year-round. My mother has relatives in Ordalia, whom I’ve never met, and my father’s family has been in Emillion for generations.” He thought he would quite like having the ability to escape the city every so often, perhaps for a month or two in the summer. Ah, well, perhaps that was a dream for another day, once he had earned his independence.
While Altair talked of a fond childhood memory, Gale could feel her attention wavering, distracted instead by the absurdity of the entire situation. Why was she here? Why was she enjoying herself? -- Had she not promised herself that she wouldn’t entertain any of Altair’s attempts at wooing, that the entire thing went against her principles?
She swirled the burgundy liquid in her glass, silent.
Perhaps it was because she had chosen to drink rather than taste and sip. She had thought a bit of alcohol might help loosen her up, might make this entire thing go by quicker if she were to allow herself the pleasure of enjoyment, however small it may be. Unfortunately, she had not anticipated that the enjoyment would come from Altair’s conversation and company. This was precisely why she hated going out with young men like him and Redwald -- they always managed to turn her careful veneer on itself, leaving her defenseless and annoyed with all persons involved... including herself.
Gale tried to remember the reason why she was not interested in an arranged marriage, or a marriage at all, but failing that, took another sip of her wine, trying to smooth out the resentment that downturned her lips.
“The Kapurs are originally Ordalian,” she said and offered nothing else -- her sudden realization of what she was doing had her trying to scramble and reassemble the walls that had been up there but a few hours ago.
Altair observed the change in her demeanor with veiled amusement. He saw her withdraw, noticed the warring emotions cross her face. How very like her it was to notice that she was enjoying herself and seek immediately to put an end to it. It was a shame; he’d rather liked the woman he’d had a glimpse of behind those walls.
Still, he was undeterred. He’d only been courting her for about a month, and she’d already thawed a bit toward him. Slow progress was still progress, and Altair was a patient man when he had to be.
Pretending he hadn’t noticed the sudden cooling in her expression and voice, Altair poured a tiny amount of a tempting shiraz into his glass, then inhaled the bouquet. He enjoyed the smell of certain wines almost more than the taste, although he enjoyed the taste of wine as well.
“Have you been to Ordalia?” he asked her. Doubtless her family was from a different part of the continent from Altair’s mother. Altair himself had been to Ordalia, but only the desert, and only recently. It was a large continent. He was, however, genuinely interested in her answer. He’d discovered of late his own penchant for travel.
“Once or twice,” Gale said after a moment, speaking more to the liquid in her wineglass than to the red-haired man beside her. “Not very many of us are still there, as I mentioned. We do not travel often outside of Emillion. I think we have only done so for pleasure a number I can count on this hand.” Here she brandished her left, empty, wiggling the fingers for emphasis -- and then quickly it dropped to her side, as if showing the barest sign of emphasis or anything outside of her neat control was something of which she was ashamed.
She could remember these visits to Ordalia fondly -- the few relatives still left in the homeland, the most distant of branches; traditional, ancient, established. She could remember walking barefoot in cool hallways; she recalled the soft, beatific chanting of the monks nearby as she walked to temple with her grandparents; she even thought there might have been a moment when her father looked on her fondly (though she couldn’t remember the exact details of this occurrence). These were all days back when she was well-acquainted with sword and shield and had still thought she might be a warrior. They were days very far behind her.
Gale weighed the idea of saying more. “I did like it very much,” she admitted after a moment. “It was lovely. Very hot, but beautiful.”
“I found it beautiful too, what little I saw,” Altair agreed after a moment. “Granted, I’ve only been to the desert on the easternmost end of the continent, but there were some lovely rock formations, and the sky was so large and blue against the gold of the sand.” He didn’t want to mention Ari, who was from the same part of the continent as Altair’s own mother, but she had always spoken of her homeland’s beauty, as had Altair’s mother when he had been very small.
“Tell me,” he added, plucking a slice of cheese from the center of the table, “have you ever had the desire to travel outside of Emillion?” Altair himself had never thought much about the world beyond the city’s gates, until he’d teamed up with a friend and started to go on adventures-for-profit. Now that he’d acquired the taste for it, he found himself longing for the freedom of the open road, and the adrenaline rush of finding something long since forgotten. “If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you most like to go?”
He took a bite of the cheese, studying Gale across the table thoughtfully as he chewed. He knew there was more to her than she preferred to let on, and the more she slipped—the more she let him see, the more he found to like about her.
When Gale was very young, she had always secluded herself in the family library when she wanted to be alone, which was often. The library was not much for those interested in magic, admittedly, most of the volumes contained therein being ones recanting knightly epics and courtly tales of chivalry; historic tomes detailing the dry and uninteresting records of kings past (though some more sordid than young Gale Kapur could have really understood at the time); or lacy, overwrought first-editions brought back with the intent of entertaining her but only made her turn up her nose. What she had liked the most was a volume that her father had initially brought for Storm (of course), but the gift-receiver, being too young, had to be read to by none other than his older sister. And in it, Gale had been transported out of the high walls of the Kapur home, past the gilded windows and the courtyards and into a mysterious unknown.
She loved that book, read it over and over until the pages were tattered and some missing, the binding broken. When she ran away, she stuffed it in her bag; Storm had received more than enough, he would hardly miss one book.
The word anywhere but here springs to mind, but Gale’s face remains neutral as she carefully sorts through ideas, each vividly described to her in that book and remembered so well that she felt she might as well have been there already.
“There is a coastal town I once heard of,” Gale started carefully, “where the sand is as white as snow. I think I might like to go there one day. Secluded, quiet. It sounds like a paradise.”
Altair studied the sunlight-flecked, ruby-colored liquid as he swirled it around in his glass. “What’s stopping you from going?” he asked thoughtfully. It was a genuine question. He knew that the guild types—not the “Bards Guild”, of course; that was mostly filled with opportunists and self-promoters, but the Fighters Guild and the Mages Guild certainly—tended to place a high emphasis on duty and always being available to serve the guild and the people of the city. Still, Gale was an adult. She could leave for a week, and surely no one would think it remiss.
“I know you don’t trust me,” Altair said, “and I understand where you’re coming from completely.” He wasn’t a trustworthy person. Even those who knew him well were wary of his words and motivations. Gale had more reason to distrust him than most, given her family and her situation and the role Altair currently played in their attempts to manipulate her. “What I am about to suggest would certainly be improper for an unmarried man and woman of our station,” he went on, “but as I am sure you know, I am acquainted with quite a few corsairs. I am in a partnership with one in particular, and I feel confident in saying he would likely be receptive to what I am thinking.” He took a sip of water to moisten his lips, and then studied Gale carefully across the table. “I would like nothing more than to help you find your white sand beach.”
It was a risk, he knew, and it was terribly forward, but as he waited for her reaction, he couldn’t help hoping that she wouldn’t dismiss the suggestion out of hand.
“That would be very improper,” she agreed, but she couldn’t resist entertaining it briefly in her head. It was not necessarily the company that was so seducing, but the idea of shucking off all her responsibility and self-imposed duty in favor of chasing after those beautiful white sands... She imagined feeling the salt breeze on her face, the ocean spray; the sun dipping down into orange water as it set, the feel of the sand in between her toes... It was all very well and good to be in Emillion as she was, born of rank and wealth and legacy, never knowing want except for -- want to do as she pleased.
Someone once told her that it was as simple as just doing, but Gale strongly disagreed with that. No, one could never simply just not do what they were supposed to do. Those that did were stupid and thoughtless, for their actions more often than not had repercussions they paid for tenfold in time. Severed family ties, left without a reliable safety net. Walked out penniless, with no method to provide for themselves. Pursued selfish interests, only to look behind -- and find no one there. To find opportunities gone, disappeared in a blink of an eye -- things one could easily take for granted, suddenly made apparent by their glaring absence.
It was why Gale stayed. It had been difficult enough to be the Kapur mage, treated as a pedantic traitor, someone with no appreciation for her family, but at least she retained that small tie to her family. She was not so idealistic and foolish to think that she could float along on talent and virtue alone. How many virtuous peasants there must be out there, with a multitude of talents, feeding on the crumbs tossed from her own table -- all on the basis of to whom they had been borne? Unable to scrape together the time and gil to pursue proper magic learning or to be a squire, to apprentice oneself to a famous bard, to take any steps forward, knowing that the time spent on this would not pay until much later -- and they were hungry now.
And yet, she couldn’t help pushing against her restraints, could not help resenting her name because they refused to make her heir, despite all her qualifications, because she had been unlucky enough to be born a woman. White sands drifted in her mind.
(She thought of her younger brother for a brief moment, his resounding disappointment and the abandonment he carried with him like a shield.)
“Very improper,” she repeated.
There was a moment of silence.
“You must really try this one, Altair,” she murmured, lifting her glass. “It’s quite good.”