( occasionally — especially on the less and less rare occasions she finds herself in the underdark, and more often when speaking with people who give but one name — athénaïs considers discarding her family name. she can barely remember the faces of the people who gave it to her, knows so little about what it might tell someone about them. is there a house tavarys somewhere in menzoberranzan missing a handful of daughters? did her mother make it up, some defiant act of exile, a new life, a new house. it has been so long,

but she just sort of likes the way it sounds. likes to imagine that somewhere in some mushroom druid enclave, her sister might still be introducing herself guenievre tavarys, a loose ribbon tied between them across decades and distance. it strikes her that they are further apart now than they have ever been before.

in a great many ways that matter, maybe they aren't. she is not a part of the life that her sister built, wherever she wanders. here or there. )

Mmm, ( on that note, and settling in: ) I've taken a look at mine. The shutters are a nice touch.

( what with her drow eyes, and all. the opal she'd landed here with is a cuff-bracelet for now, which had seemed fitting, and she runs a thumb over it, thoughtful. not a new gesture, perhaps, but with new and different weight. the way she looks back at him, even half-hidden by her ragged veil, seems

less than his gaze. an openness not commonly associated with her kind, an ease in the way she carries herself and the way she stays relaxed under such scrutiny— perhaps its own sort of tell that she can. that she does, when for most people it certainly must be a deliberate choice to do so in the face of the kind of fine focus he applies, not unkind on its face but certainly unsettling for those not accustomed to being studied so. )

I've rarely been one for staying put, but it seems worth learning the lay of the land. Hum along.

( get the melody, learn the tune. understand what the fuck they've got into. )