To your arms;

Lasair had been busy these past few days, attending parties, hosting more than a few of them herself, returning to society in full force to gather support against Witchfinder Miriam. The sympathies for that demonic candidate was hopelessly overwhelming from the nonmages of Ivras, but when did that ever stop her?

Just for this afternoon, however, she was at home amidst a flurry of servants and contract workers. Her rooms had been in a state of chaotic neglect since she'd been rescued and were now thrown open, picked up, dusted, and torn apart to allow for windows at last. The sheets and torn drapes were replaced, the clawed walls replastered and covered in new wallpaper, and the destroyed wooden furniture was carted out by strong men and replaced, sparing no expense for quality and her own personal taste. Whether or not her servants questioned the damage that looked like a rampaging beast had gone through, they kept their mouths shut, choosing instead to compliment her returning mood and her good relationship with her fiance, patiently taking each contractor to see the Andraste 'healer' once they were done with their repairs and paying them handsomely once they left in confusion, their memories fuddled.

There was a tender, unspoken awareness in the room as Lasair oversaw the work. All her life, she was taught to hold herself higher than those of her household staff, as if they were furniture who should be grateful for the opportunity to be used. She'd scorned that mindset for a variety of reasons; shallow spite of her parents, selfish manipulation of her household's loyalty to elevate her own reputation, and for the simple logic that a well-tended household was more beneficial for her than a harsh one. Though she made every effort to sway their affection over her parents and assure her well-loved authority from an early age, she silently kept her trust from them, understanding that everyone had their selling price when it came to loyalty.

When she came back from her time with Apollyn, she'd stopped caring of what they saw or thought of her, unable to stand the looks of honest grief and heartbreak to see what she'd become. Many of them had known her since infancy, and they stood by her stubbornly, and she could read them as they passed her by like open books. They'd do anything for her, and they knew why she behaved the way she did. They protected her and the reputation she'd bled for, withstood her whirlwind insanity until she could stand on her own again, and they knew she realized that.

It was painful, really. Apollyn had never made her feel as weak as they did, knowing the weight they silently shouldered for her.

Another facet that waited beyond her wing of the estate was the frayed ruin of her parents' patience. In the midst of her madness, the house had simply stopped listening to the Lord and Lady of the house. They'd screamed for Lasair to be pulled out of her dark rooms where she fell apart, demanded that Lasair be taught a lesson for 'childishly disappearing,' as if what'd happened to her had been her fault, and the response had been stone-cold refusal. They tried firing the staff for insubordination (and admittedly so had Lasair to protect them from herself), but they completely refused. They tried turning to Basileios to 'clean up the mess' and boiled in rage when he was pulled into her rooms as well, and they were left to hush up their daughter's disappearance with lies they hadn't practiced in recent memory. They hadn't needed to, not with Lasair to manage things.

After a near decade of handing responsibility after responsibility to her, selfishly basking in her flawless performance in household management, seeing to the needs of the tenants on their land, income, business, and social duties, they came to realize that once Lasair had disappeared into her rooms, they neither had the authority nor the specific information necessary to pick up her slack. What deals she'd been in the process of bringing in for the house, what connections needed maintaining, what the names of their servants were that took care of the bare minimum while Lasair was otherwise indisposed. They didn't even recognize the steward she'd picked six years ago, pathetically enough.

She'd quietly reduced them to the role of wards of their own house, and Lasair knew their fury would appear sooner or later now that she was somewhat able to take on bits and pieces of her old life.

But in the meantime, as the early afternoon light shone through the bare holes in the walls, supported by coarse frames, she felt....alright. Not whole, not yet, but less haunted, certainly, as she smiled softly to her staff. Basileios was going to be back soon, and she wanted to surprise him with this.