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bitchwhoreofastorm · 7 months

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sometimes i don't think through the things i'm doing (1st person pov; 10k words; read on ao3)

summary:

Those who would become Hands of Almalexia must undertake a pilgrimage: they must wander Morrowind as anonymous adventurers, aiding the Dunmer in secret, and alone. After the Akaviri war, a young woman and Hand-Aspirant does a bad job at this.

I saw you this morning. When I was leaving the cornerclub, I saw you for a moment behind the counter. There was a jug of expensive-looking sujamma in a mug polished to shining, and I saw your face slip across it. I should have known better but I turned around to look for you. You turned around, too. You weren't behind me. Nobody was behind me. I left in a hurry.

I'm in Gnisis today. I'm on my way to a kwama mine. There's a rumour that they're having some trouble with bandits, egg thieves. You know. The sort of job they like to give wandering adventures. That's what the publican said-- 'wandering adventures like you.' It's a noble tradition, in Vvardenfell, to wander and go searching for adventures. It seems to me that Vivec never deals with his problems because, if he did, the wandering adventurers would run out of things to do.

It's a long walk to the mine. That’s okay. There's nobody on the road, so I can talk to you.

All the Hands told me that travelling alone would be hard. They were really concerned by that. They made a big fuss over it, that I shouldn’t let the loneliness get to me. They told me that, should I ever feel forlorn, or abandoned, or just lonely, I should talk to Her. That if I had faith She was with me, I would never be lonely again. I thought it was funny that they gave me that advice. I did that a lot as a child. Do you remember? After you started to leave. I would tell Her about how mean you were and how much I hated you and how I missed you and how I wished you wouldn't ever go. It made me feel better back then, to talk to Her. I felt less alone.

I can't do that now. Not now that I've met her. I know she'd hear, and I know how she'd smile, or smirk, she does this knowing smirk and it makes me feel shy.

I can't talk to her like that now that I know Her. I feel like I'd rather talk to you.

At the kwama mine they ask who I am. I say I'm a wandering adventurer come to deal with their bandit problem. They ask me my name and I say, "Shona..." then I add, "Slonsi." And they stare at me strangely, so I add, "I'm a veteran of the Akaviri War," and they see my sword and I guess they decide that's fine.

I'm bad at coming up with fake names. All the Hands said that I should pick one or two, and make consistent fake identities out of them. Come up with a backstory. A new self. I tried, but every time I meet someone, they just go out of my brain. Fake identities are like a handful of comberries to me. I can’t keep them straight, and as soon as I have to pick out just one, they all fall out of my grasp.

But I guess I’m not really trying. Making up a fake identity just seems like a bad idea. This is your face too. What if someone were to meet you, and call you by my fake name? You'd have no idea. You wouldn't know to keep the lie.

I thought about using your name once, but I already look like you, and there might be someone who remembers you. Then I'd be in trouble.

I see you again when I stop to eat lunch. There's a low cliff jutting out over a smooth little lagoon, on a hill that overlooks the ocean. I sit down on the ledge and scoot over, scoot to the very edge of it, until I can look down into the still water and see you. You’re framed by strange Vvardenfell plants, frond-ish coils reach out to touch your face. This must displease you because you're frowning at me. You always frown at me. You always look so serious and so unhappy. I tilt my head to one side, then the other. So do you. You have your hair tied back-- you always hated having your hair tied back.

Sometimes, at times like this, I think that if I jumped into the water you'd really be there. I would jump in and wrestle you down to the bottom, and then you'd cast a water-breathing spell on yourself and lie there, arms crossed, cheeks puffed out, until I'd go gasping up for air. Then you'd come with me and drape yourself along my back and make me carry you to shore. At times like this, I can hear you cackling in my ear-- Onwards, noble steed!-- and I feel you clawing my shoulders as I drag you back to land. You were always so mean to me.

When I blink, there is someone beside you.

I start and turn around. A dunmer woman also starts, and she turns to me, a gentle smile on her lips.

"Pardon me, sera," she says to me, "I didn't mean to scare you."

I can't find the words to reply to that. I'm not a child any more, but sometimes, when I'm surprised, I lose my voice again. So I just stare at her and try to think of something to say.

"My name is Thelsa," she says. "Telvanni Thelsa."

"Shani," I say. "Shani Sholasa."

"May I sit, Shani?"

I slide over on my ledge, and she sits.

"Beautiful view you've got here," she says.

I look up. I was so busy looking at you that I didn't notice. Smoke has made the sky is the colour of old parchment here, fading to an unwell blue on the horizon where it touches the sea. The hills rise and fall abruptly, sandstone-coloured, tall pillars and cliffs and arches that all make no sense, and then there’s shrubs and flowers here. Green, yellow, blue, all making up too many shapes.

I don't like Vvardenfell-- it looks like it was created very thoughtlessly. It’s too chaotic. But when I turn my head Thelsa is staring with approval at the Inner Sea, and the slanted haggard trees that stand here and there.

"What are you doing so far from town, Shani?" Thelsa asks. She has a kind face that reminds me of a Temple acolyte, with round cheeks that are used to smiling and brown hair in a tidy little bun.

"I'm, uh, adventuring," I answer. "I'm an adventurer."

"Are you from Vvardenfell?"

"No. Selfora. It's in Deshaan."

Thelsa nods. "I'm not from around here either," she tells me. "Tell me, adventurer, where are you going?"

"North."

"Ah, so am I. Perhaps we could travel together? I'm a healer, I'm sure I could be of use to you on your adventuring. I would feel much safer, with a strong warrior like you to protect me."

I shrug. And pull out my scrib roll and eat it in a hurry. I can't see you any more.

I don't like this turn of events. I don't like Telvanni-- I haven't forgotten how they denied Almalexia the Ebonheart Pact. I don't like their wizardry, maybe because it reminds me too much of you. And, to tell you the truth, I don't like being around other women. Especially not pretty women close to my age, with soft lips and kind eyes and a silky deep voice that makes my stomach clench. After Idrenie, it just feels wrong. I don’t know why but I have no interest in it any more. Aside from you, I just want to be alone.

Even worse, while this Thelsa is walking next to me, I can't talk to you. Not out loud. Even talking in my head to you is risky, because I can't do that and also focus on what she's saying, and I hate to seem rude.

So I shut up. I don’t talk to you. As we walk together, Thelsa talks to me instead.

She talks about her recent trip to Gnisis. She says her father is a wizard of House Telvanni and he wants to set up a new trading line through the north flank of Red Mountain. She says the dreugh that live in West Gash produce the best dreugh wax, which is very valuable to Telvanni wizards. She says her father sent her to Gnisis as punishment, because she'd displeased him, somehow, but she doesn't say what it is she did to so displease him. She talks a lot, and she really does have a beautiful voice. It’s a soft voice and deep, and it sounds the way a silk handkerchief feels, when you pull it across your skin. Smooth, overly indulgent. The nice dresses Father got us, the one I ripped within a day.

"You're a very good listener," Thelsa says after a while, "But why don't you tell me about yourself?"

I hate this part of conversations. "I was a soldier," I say, because at least that's not entirely a lie. "I fought in the Akaviri invasion. Now I'm just trying to make ends meet."

"Who did you fight under?"

"Uh, Mournhold's army. The Duke's army."

"Mournhold." Thelsa appears only mildly interested. "I thought you were from Selfora. Why fight for Duke Ra'athim?"

She has an intense gaze, fiery red eyes, like the red of that dress I ripped, and the red of Father’s eyes as he yelled at me. My unforgivable carelessness. Why did she have to say Ra’athim?

So I just shrug. “My superiors thought I’d be a better fit there."

You were the one who told me that my lies should include a little bit of truth.

"What is your quest?" Thelsa asks me.

I hesitate. I say, with reluctance, that I'm hunting the bandits who have holed up on the nearby mountain, the ones who have been poaching from the kwama mine. She asks me how I plan to get there and I say that I'm just going to walk up the mountain.

"I know of them," Thelsa frowns at me. "And I know the road you speak of. There are powerful wizards among them. The road to their hideout is full of traps. You'll surely perish if you try and attack them head-on."

“Then I'll perish." I keep walking.

Thelsa takes my arm. The touch is a light one, and it’s embarrassing that I flinch. "There's a back way," Thelsa says. "It's a little longer, but if we go around, we can levitate up the cliffs. They won't be expecting it. It will be safer."

"I don't use magic," I say.

"I do," she says. "I can levitate you up."

I hate the idea of it. You're the only one who's ever made me levitate. I hate the thought of this stranger doing that to me. If someone else were to do it, it might cover up the memories of how it felt when it was you. What if I was to lose those memories? I could never get them back. We're not children any more. I'm never going to see you again.

She mistakes my hesitation for something else. "I am not offering out of charity," Thelsa says. "If my father is to open a trade route here, these thugs will place it in danger. By dealing with them, I will earn the favour of my House." She smiles a little. "And I'll expect half of the spoils, of course. Do we have a deal?"

How could I possibly explain to her the violation she’s committing? I can never put my thoughts in over. It would look weird if I were to refuse.

"Fine," I hear myself say. "We have a deal."

Thelsa holds up her hand, palm facing me, in the universal Dunmeri gesture of honour. I mirror the gesture without thinking about it. The Ordinators do it all the time. And maybe it is because in that moment I hate her for trying to come between you and me, and I’m looking for reasons to be suspicious of her, but I think she is staring intently, far too intently, at my hand.

Near the evening we come to a place where a river has incised a slot into the yellow rock of the landscape. I jump across the chasm with ease but Thelsa falters. I see her look down at the gap-- no wider than the distance between the roof of our childhood manor and that tree you always liked to perch in-- I see her staring down at the dark, rushing water. She looks like you used to look like when you were afraid.

"It's not that far!" I shout at her.

Maybe she doesn't hear me-- she doesn't reply. She's looking at that abyss like it's going to swallow her.

"Why don't you float across?" I call.

"I don't want to waste my magika!" she replies.

I barely hear it; her voice is like a dropped amulet, a shiny trill lost in the churn.

She steps to the chasm's edge. "Won't you help me across, Shani?" she calls, then, swaying in the mist.

I reach my hand across the gap and she takes it.

I am strong-- she is light-- she leaps, and I pull her towards me. We stumble backwards together, one step, two.

I expect her to let go of my hands then and she doesn't.

She is standing so close to me. I try to let go of her hands but she clasps mine tightly. She is so close and suddenly I feel her thumbs press so hard into my palms, pressing hard, insistent, like they’re searching something under my skin-- and, oh God, it’s so awful, but she pushes her thumbs up , the pads of her fingers so hot with friction over the tender part of the inside of my hands, pressing, wanting, it’s like she’s seeking something, I don’t know what, seeking, down to the very top of my wrists. She is standing so close to me and her fingers find the frantic heartbeat in my veins and then in that same horrible moment her eyes find mine.

She lets go. She steps away.

I turn away from her, shuddering. My face feels as hot as the red of her eyes, the intensity of her is crawling over my skin, my stomach is doing something weird that is perilously approaching nausea. I hear her make a little sound, something between a gasp and the panting of a wounded animal, and I feel her move away from me the way I've felt bandages pulled off of wounds. She leaves an absence that feels cold and sore.

A terrible silence falls between us.

"... Thank you, Shani," says Thelsa. Her voice is a little thick, as if she's choking back something. "You are... ah. Stronger than I expected."

I almost don't hear her. I can't bear to hear her. I'm fighting my own mind. I'm trying to think of you-- the coldness of your face, your passionless expression, the ambivalence with which you watched Father denounce me. I need that coldness and the careless ice in your voice when you called me broken and offered to replace me as the more adequate sibling. I'm desperate! I cannot be feeling the thing I’m feeling right now, it’s unbearable! I'm picturing your disgust like I'm picturing the pain of Father dragging me by my hair and the hardness of the street when he drove me down outside and the scrape I got on my hand and how you never answered any of my letters, not one, except for the one where you told me that I should've known better than to go and do something without your permission, idiot that I am.

"Shani?"

"It's fine," I reply, and my voice sounds so hoarse in my ears, as hoarse as yours sounded when-- "Let's go. It's getting dark."

I try not to look at her.

I miss you so badly.

It's awkward between me and Thelsa when we make camp.

That's good. Things are always awkward for me. I can deal with awkward.

I don't look at her; she makes me dinner. Steamed saltrice and a mushroom sauce from a powder in a satchel. She places it next to me; I don't touch it. I pretend to be maintaining my sword, which doesn't at all need maintaining. She urges me to eat, while I incorrectly use a whetstone to pretend to sharpen the blade. I act like I’m busy. She doesn't press. She announces that she's going to go bathe in a spring that's nearby, and she waits, standing near me, but when I reply only with a grunt, she disappears. I'm finally alone.

The dinner she made for me is delicious.

When I lay down that night I only want to talk to you. I want to close my eyes and lie very still in my sleeping roll and transport myself back to when we were kids staying up late to gossip in bed. I pull my blanket up to my chin and hug my cloak to my chest and settle in to catch up with you, since I've barely gotten to speak to you all day.

But I must have made a mistake-- I must have fallen asleep-- suddenly, She is here.

In my dream I know it's Her before I open my eyes. She's always boiling hot, like a bath that's been heated up too much and is too warm to really be comfortable. Sometimes I think that's why she seems to glow even through my eyelids. But I keep my eyes closed, thinking that if I ignore her, maybe she'll go away and leave me to talk to you instead.

She does not go away. "My servant," she says gently. Her furnace-hot lily-rancid breath. Then, "Il--"

I press my thumb to her lips. "Don't call me that."

I knew it-- when I open my eyes, Almalexia's lips beneath my thumb are curled into her damn knowing little smirk.

"Ah," says Almalexia. "What are you called now?"

"Shani. Shani Shlosi."

"That doesn't sound like a name."

I cross my arms high over my chest, burrowing my hands into my neck, burrowing my mouth into my arms. "Why are you here?" I ask. "I thought it was forbidden. I'm supposed to do this alone."

"I'm not here," says Almalexia reassuringly. "I am a desperate figment of your imagination, and rest assured you are violating nothing."

"I don't believe you."

"The insolence of the Ra'athim! Dare you defy the word of a God?"

"You aren't a God, you're a figment of my imagination."

I'm not proud of myself, but it pleases me when she smiles at that. "Good girl," she says warmly. "Obedient even when you're disobeying me. Tell me, child, what are the rules of this quest you're on?"

"I am to abandon my identity," I say. I say it sullenly, as if my sacred quest is just the correct response to a familiar lecture. "I am to go out in Morrowind in secret, devoid of the glory of your patronage. By my own skill and determination I am to aid your children, and improve the lives of all your people. I am to do this without the aid of the Temple, and without orders."

"And why do I make all those who would be my Hands do this?"

"To show that we are strong, and resourceful, and powerful warriors."

"Ah-ah," she shakes her head, spilling her red hair across my pillow. "Wrong. If I wanted to test your strength, I could throw you into Oblivion and have you fight your way through a horde of Dremora. Why send you into Morrowind?"

"To aid your children, who you love, Goddess."

"Wrong again. Do you not know?"

"If you can tell me, I know. Since you're part of my imagination. Which is in my brain."

Her hand burns where it touches my cheek.

"It's so that you may know them," Almalexia informs me, with divine patience. "By being among my children, I wish for you to know them, and by knowing them, love them. Only those who love them as I do may serve me as Hand."

I stare at her blankly. I'm too tired. I want the scolding to be over with. Beneath the wonderful heat, her palm is calloused.

"I am not scolding you," she says. Because she's a goddess, of course, she can read my mind. "I intervene because I fear for you. You are travelling a path of grave danger. Once I would have believed this no challenge for you, but now… I am not sure. You have changed, and I fear that I will lose you. You are not the woman who helped me defeat the Akaviri."

"Of course I'm not," I say through my teeth, "I'm Shani Shpansey. I’ve changed because you ordered me to. I did as you bid. I've always done as you bid. If that is not enough!-- If that is not enough-- then strike me down!” I draw in a breath. “I beseech you, Goddess. For my insolence just strike me down."

And then I roll over and curl up with my legs against my chest, and I hug myself and press my palms into my eyes, until I see stars. I search for you in the fizzing lights; I try to blind myself with you just so I can’t see Her.

There is silence, and then there is her breath again, warm, tickling my ear as she says:

"She is gone to you, Iyahi . This ghost you speak to is not her. You cannot speak to her, any more than you could save her. Let her go."

She's wrong. She's wrong. It's your voice who tells her to leave us alone.

Sometimes I want to pretend it’s all a bad dream. I mean, you leaving, and me leaving. Sometimes I pretend it’s not real. Speaking of those Buoyant Armigers, who I never understood-- I think my time in Vvardenfell is letting me understand why they like Vivec so much. Someone told me once that Vivec thinks everything’s a dream. I don’t think everything’s a dream, but sometimes, I kind of wish it was.

Do you feel the same way? Are you thinking about this too, wherever you are?

I keep thinking I’ll wake up in my bed and I’ll be a little kid again. I’ll be curled up around you like the shell of a beetle, and your hair will be in my nose, and I’ll be drooling on the fancy pillow-cases that Father always complains about me ruining. I keep thinking that Kneads-Dough is about to shake us awake. The same thing that happens every single morning will happen. You’ll wake up first, and I’ll be sleeping too hard, and you’ll order Kneads not to wake me, but you’ll do it so loud that I wake up anyway. But I’ll pretend to be asleep, because I’m shy around Kneads. And you’ll tell Kneads that I’ll want pancakes-- only I hate pancakes, and you love pancakes, but you think liking pancakes is childish, so you never tell Kneads you want pancakes. You’ll say it’s me who wants pancakes. And I’ll pretend to be asleep. And when Kneads leaves, you’ll say-- “I know you’re awake, you know, you’re such a bad liar!”-- and I’ll keep pretending to be asleep, cause it’s a good excuse to hold onto you, and you always let me.

Maybe it’s not a dream. Could it not be a dream? It feels so real. Isn’t it strange-- I can’t even remember how it felt to hold Idrenie, but the sensation of your hair in my mouth is more real than reality itself?

Do you feel this way too? Are you off somewhere, also sleeping in, feeling this way? Or maybe you’re really here in my arms. It’s possible, isn’t it? That I’m tucked into your bed and everything else has been a bad dream.

I could open my eyes and see you. I’m going to do it. You’re going to be there.

I stir, I mumble your name, I pretend to wipe the sleep from my eyes and do a big fake yawn, pretending that I slept through you pointing out I wasn’t sleeping. You’re going to be here. I’m in your bed. I open my eyes--

Thelsa’s face pulls away from mine the same moment I sit up. We’ve startled each other; she makes a pitiful little yelp, like a kicked dog, while I only yank my blanket to my chin.

Was she watching me sleep? She’s blushing, her face is plum-blue, a pretty colour against the bashful pink dawn behind her. Why was she so close to me? My mouth is hanging open, I’m staring at her with nothing to say.

“I’m sorry,” she stammers. “Sorry.”

She looks so pathetically embarrassed that I apologise too. “I’m sorry,” I mimic dumbly, “I mean, it’s okay. I mean. Um. What?”

“You were talking in your sleep,” she rushes to explain. “Call me a fool, but I was worried about you. I worried you were having a nightmare.”

I’m just staring at her. And then I realise why she is looking at me so strangely-- my heart sinks-- I must have said your name.

We make breakfast in silence. Thelsa makes saltrice and mushroom sauce again, hearty travel food; I use the last of my own provisions to make scrib rolls for me and her. Old saltrice kneaded with copious amounts of greasy scuttle, wrapped untidily in hackle-lo leaves. It’s food even an idiot could make. I’m an awful cook; this has been most of my diet since I set out on my quest. My scrib rolls are always misshapen and threatening to fall apart.

When we were little, Kneads would put comberries in one end, meant as scrib eyes, a little bug in a blanket that we could take with us while playing. I dare not try my luck with embellishments. It’s by blind fortune that I haven’t somehow made one explode.

Thelsa and I share a log by the fire when we sit down to eat. The dainty sunrise has given way to a smoggy cool day-- in West Gash, Red Mountain’s smoke looks yellow, so the landscape seems like an old tapestry that’s been hanging in a tomb for too long. Flat grey hills and washed-out stringy clouds against a yellow sky. We stare at this ugly landscape like it’s the most verdant rolling hills of Deshaan, and then Thelsa asks me, very softly: “Do you have a family, Shani?”

“Everyone does,” I answer without thinking, “Babies have to come from somewhere.”

“That’s not what I meant. Where are your parents?”

This takes thought. “Dead,” I tell her honestly.

“I see,” she says. “That’s a pity. How did they die?”

“My mother died in childbirth. My father died during the war.”

“Any siblings?”

I’d just taken a bite of saltrice, but suddenly it tastes like mud. I almost choke on it. I swallow, and turn my head away, and stare with fierce determination at the dirt at our feet, as if willing a plausible excuse to crawl out of the ground.

“I was disowned,” I say. I say it very carefully, in a very flat voice, willing nothing to emerge from it. I try to find your face in the random pinprick shadows thrown by the grains of dirt near my feet. “So. Not by law, no.”

“Ah,” says Thelsa, as if this comes as no surprise to her. Then, “I’m sorry.”

I'm sorry. It sounds so trite when she says it, and this relieves me. Like she was offering her condolences on stubbing my toe.

But then she says, "Did your father also fight under Duke Ra'athim?"

And this catches me so off guard that I'm confused for a moment. "He was--" I start, and then I blink, realising I don't understand the question. "What?"

"You said you fought under Duke Ra'athim," Thelsa reminds me gently.

I can't understand the expression on her face. Is she suspicious? She looks so kind, with her big eyes. I feel my cheeks get hot-- I'm flustered.

"No," I say, "He fought with House In-- um, House Hlaalu, I mean. He was an... accountant. So not really fighting, but-- he got caught in an explosion, some of their weird magic, the Kamal’s magic, I mean, they attacked his camp--" And then I clamp my teeth down on my tongue.

I hear your voice in my head so clearly: Idiot .

I am an awful liar.

Thelsa looks into my eyes for a long time. Her soft mouth is curved into a little frown, her small eyebrows sit high in her forehead and slump slightly to the outside, as if she's sad. I force myself to meet her gaze and then the discomfort overwhelms me and I look away. I pretend to be focused on the scrib roll I'm failing at putting together, hunching over, putting my face near it, until she finally sits back.

"I'm sorry, Shani," she says again. "I've upset you, haven't I? That wasn't my intention."

"It's fine," I mumble. "Just-- don't like talking about it."

"I was almost exiled too," she says.

I look up at her in surprise. She's still facing me, with that soft open face and the gentle long-lashed eyes. A healer's saintly face.

"I displeased my father," she reminds me. "I... I made a mistake, and it was a grave one. There were some in my family who wanted me exiled. I convinced father not to exile me. I was lucky. I'm still lucky-- he could change his mind any day now."

"What did you do?" I ask hoarsely.

"Does it matter?" She sighs. "There are many ways you can digress against House Telvanni. Outsiders don't know that, they think we allow anything. But the moment we stop being an asset to our wizard..."

And she looks down at her hands.

(Your hand, lightly steaming under Father's iron.)

"That's why you want to kill these bandits," I say.

"What?" Thelsa looks up at me, brow raised. Then, "Oh, yes. That's why. I..." She sighs again, looks away. "I need to prove I'm still useful to him."

I don't know why I do the thing I do next. I put the scrib roll on my lap, and then I reach out and take her hands in mine. I slip my fingers flat beneath hers, upturning her palms, and then I press my thumbs, as gentle as I can, to the centre of hers. The very place where they branded you.

I press down, feeling the cup-shape of them, the slight inward curl, the gentle articulation of the tiny bones within, knit together with fishing-line tendons. The parchment-tender thinness of the skin there. Her skin is magician's skin, like yours was, nothing like the leathery callous of my own. She's looking at me, now, her eyes a little wider, and she’s holding her breath.

I want to say something reassuring but I can't. I never said anything to you when you were exiled. I hold her hands, I make myself look at her face. And then I take a breath and release her, rising to my feet with a quick exhale.

"Well," I say, in my most casual voice. "We'd better go kill some bandits, then."

I think I see Thelsa's cheeks darken. She looks up at me, her owlish eyes wide, her breast lifting slightly as she takes in her own deep breath. And then her eyes trail down my body, to my feet.

"You dropped your scrib roll," she points out, looking at the snack that'd fallen off my lap when I stood. But she's smiling. I think I'm smiling, too.

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, but I forget to talk to you. I don't know how I forget this-- I don't know how you stop being in my head for a second, and I hate myself for it, so please don't yell at me. Every time I realise I've forgotten to talk to you, I vow to catch you up later, the moment I get a chance. And then I forget. And then I remember and vow again. I'm sorry. You know how dumb I am-- I can't help it, please don’t be mad at me.

Thelsa and I had decided to camp close to the mountain where the bandits lay, just far enough away that they wouldn't spot us. We wanted to be fresh and well-rested for the assault, and Thelsa said that, if we attacked during the day, most of them would be away on a raid, and we would have an easier time taking out the remainders. Then we could lay in wait for the raiding party and deal with them when they returned exhausted with their guard down. She's a good strategist, for a wizard. I told her so and I think this made her happy. She even asked for my feedback, but I had nothing to contribute. Her plan was a good one, and I'm not worried about a few bandits, with or without strategy.

The sun is gone that day, covered by a high layer of flat dull cloud that must have rolled in from the north. The air is chilly, but relatively clear, only slightly ashy; we stop at one point to pull out shawls and wraps from our packs, to keep our necks warm. Thelsa shows me how to tie mine in the Telvanni fashion, with the arms of the triangle braided into a sort of diamond shape, which she tucks into my neck near the top of my chest. I've already put on my bonemold travel-cuirass for the day, so she has to push her fingers under the armour; her touch is very careful and her fingers are warm.

We come to the mountain a little before noon.

In Skyrim I climbed Throat-of-the-World. That is the tallest mountain in Tamriel, apparently-- a shitty three days of up, up, uphill, getting sick on the thin air, numb from the cold. I’d stared at Almalexia’s back the entire way, desperate to impress her by not complaining or stopping for rest. I am not scared of climbing big mountains.

This mountain is not nearly as tall as Throat-of-the-World-- more of a hill, really, because there’s no true mountains in West Gash. But it’s tall enough, a yellow triangle rising against the grey of the sky. An ill-used path wound up the flank of it, growing gradually steeper, until it turned into a rockfall halfway up, and the top third of the mountain was a steep cliff. The kwama miners had told me that the bandits are encamped in a cave near the very peak of it, because that’s where bandits love being camped the most, in caves at the very top of the mountain. I don’t know if you know this, but trolls in Skyrim work the same way.

(In my head I see you roll your eyes and ask, what do I care about trolls? Or-- more likely-- you’d just correct me, because you’ve probably read some book about the biology of animals in Skyrim, and I’m sure you’d say that trolls actually prefer relatively elevated vantage points with sufficient taiga cover, or something smart like that.)

While you’re scolding me in my own head, Thelsa comes up to stand by my side. “Steep climb, right?” she asks. And then she touches my back very gently. “Are you ready, Shara?”

“Yes,” I say. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

I know I shouldn’t but I turn and I look at her face. She looks back at me, frowning, her eyebrows drawn very slightly together.

I’m about to do something I haven’t thought through very well.

“When we get up there,” I say, “Only levitate me up. You should stay here, out of the way. I’ll come tell you when the fighting’s done.”

Thelsa’s eyes widen. “You want to go in alone?”

“I’m a good warrior. I’ll be okay.” And then, because the good lies always have a bit of truth, “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Or you don’t want me taking the treasure,” Thelsa says, frowning still.

“I don’t care about treasure,” I insist. “I just think I should do this alone.”

“You’re sweet,” Thelsa says, but her voice doesn’t sound like she means it. Then she starts towards the mountain, “Let’s go.”

“Wait!” I lurch off after her. “Promise you’ll wait outside until I kill them?”

“Absolutely not. What if you get injured? I’m a healer, you’ll need me.”

“I won’t get injured. Thelsa, come on! Please--”

I don’t know what’s come over me, but I grab her wrist, as gently as I can, and stop her. She lets me. She’s turned and she’s looking at me again, her hand hanging in my own.

“Are you really worried about me running away with the treasure?” I ask her.

“Please don’t take it personally,” Thelsa isn’t pulling her arm away from me. “You’re lovely, but you know how it is, out here…”

“I know, I know. But what if I prove I won’t?”

“How?”

“I could give you something important of mine. And then you give it back to me when I come back. Here, how about my sword? It’s super important to me, I wouldn’t leave without it.” And my hand goes to the pommel at my hip.

Thelsa just stares at me for a few moments. “If you give me your sword,” she says slowly, “How are you going to fight the bandits?”

“Oh. Right.” I hear your voice in my head: idiot .

“Enough of this,” Thelsa shakes her head. “Just-- come on.”

“Wait, I do have something.” I pull my pack from my shoulders, and I push my hand into a side pocket, until I feel something warm amongst the chilly contents.

Does ebony ever feel warm to you? Ebony always feels warm to me. Maybe it runs in our blood. The ring I pull out of my bag has a tiny bit of heat to it, like holding someone’s hand, nice and comforting. It’s so worn-down that it’s not black any more, but looks dusky and purple from the blueness of my palm.

“Here,” I say, offering it out to Thelsa. “This is really important to me, I wouldn’t run away without it. You can look closely, it’s okay. And even if I do run away-- it’s three-thousand year old ebony, so nothing we find in that cave is more expensive than that.”

Thelsa’s eyes are wide again. She looks at my face, and then she looks at the ring, and then she takes the ring. She holds it very close to her eyes, and then lets her hand fall, fist closing around it.

“Why are you doing this?” she asks, bewildered. “I don’t get it. Why are you doing this?”

“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” I tell her. “I want to protect people.”

I don’t know what the expression on her face means; she is looking at me with so much intensity that it becomes unbearable, and I want to look away, but something compels me to keep looking. I think of you, how you once called me a holy fool; I think of Almalexia’s all-knowing divine smirk; I think of the way Idrenie looked the last time I saw her. For someone who wants to protect people, I haven’t done a very good job so far.

Thelsa lowers her hand. “Fine,” she says, but she seems upset. “Fine, if you insist. I promise I’ll let you deal with them.”

I let my own shoulders fall in relief. “Good. That’s good.”

She nods, and she starts heading towards the mountain.

“Wait!” I call out to her. “You promised--”

“I know,” Thelsa replies. “But I need to levitate you up there, don’t I?”

“Oh,” I say.

Idiot! I hear your voice in my head again. It’s one of those times where you sound so real that I swear I could turn around and see you there. So I look over my shoulder-- I see yellow hills and scraggy trees and a gloomy grey sky and empty wilderness. I see Vvardenfell in all its smoggy ruin. I see the world but I cannot see you.

When I turn around again, Thelsa is already far ahead. I look forwards once more and run to catch up.

We are standing at the base of the cliff and I am trying to hard not to let Thelsa see how terrified I am. I’m standing stiff as a tin soldier, I’m sweating despite the cold of the day, I think I might start crying if I’m really unlucky, which is weird, because I haven’t cried in years and years. But the ash is making my eyes prickle-- it’s smoggy with ash up on the mountain-- and I’m standing too close to the cliff and for some reason I’m scared that I’m going to cry. Maybe I could climb it, I’m saying to myself-- I’m good at climbing, do you remember when I climbed the whole side of the Temple? You had to float up there, but I climbed up like a gecko, and I startled you when I poked my head up over the edge. But you were upset with me, and I thought it was because I startled you, but now that I’m grown up I realise it’s because you realised then that I didn’t need you any more, that I could get anywhere I wanted to go without your help. I’m sorry I didn’t know why you were so sad then. If I could go back and do everything again, I would have thrown myself off of that roof, and you would have caught me, and I would have told you I’d slipped, that I was scared to be so high, that I needed you to keep me from falling. Would things have turned out differently, if I’d told you how much I needed you?

“Are you ready?” asks Thelsa.

In my head I am saying sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry , but I nod, and aloud I say, “Ready.” And then, “Don’t worry. And just wait here, okay?”

Thelsa’s brow is drawn in concentration. “Got it.”

“I’ll call down when I’m done,” I say.

“Shani,” she says.

“If someone attacks you, come up and find me--”

“I’m going to lift you up now,” says Thelsa, and she casts her spell.

Immediately I don’t know why I was so worried. Her magic feels nothing like yours! Your magic feels like it could be my magic; it feels natural, buoyant, just a part of me that I only know about when you’re around. When you make me float I’m like a stick that fell into a pond.

Thelsa’s spell, on the other hand, plucks me up by the scruff and yanks me upwards with no grace at all. Like I’m a bug scooped up in a cup. It happens in an instant and it alarms me, so I scramble for the cliff-face even as I’m speeding through the air. My hands find purchase on the rocks just as the stranger’s magic flings me over the edge.

I’m glad Thelsa’s all the way down there. That way, she doesn’t see me land on my face. I’m dumped ungracefully onto the ground face-down. I skid a little bit, and then my Ordinator’s training kicks in and I vault to my feet. I draw my sword, take my off-hand knife from my belt, and drop into a fighting stance before I’ve even blinked the dust from my eyes.

The first thing I notice is a weird feeling in the air. I can’t explain it, but it feels like I’m in your bedroom: there’s this kind of humming all around me, like the air is pressing down on my skin just a little bit. Tension with no source.

The second thing I notice is that there’s no cave. I’m on a plateau that extends forwards about the length of a large dining room, then ends in another steep cliff. The mountain drops precipitously away on either side of me.

The third thing I notice is the corpses.

Okay, most of them are more like skeletons, but there’s enough desiccated flesh on their naked forms that I make the mistake anyways. There’s about ten or twelve of them, lied out in two neat rows on either side of the plateau, stretching forwards towards the second cliff-face, where the lines join at the base, at the foot of a ghastly altar.

You would be able to tell me what I’m looking at, wouldn’t you.

I feel my heart quicken; I take a half-step back. “Thelsa,” I call, “I was wrong. There’s no bandits. This is some sort of…” I have no words for what sort of this that this is.

I take a full step forwards, to the nearest body. Up close, I see that its chest has been opened, there’s a desiccated ashy hole where its heart ought to have once been, its arms are crumpled up behind its back, as if it they were bound there once. The humming feeling I noticed is getting more insistent, the air is angrier and pressing into me, trying to repulse me, or is that just my own revulsion? I’m thinking of you again and I hate that.

“Thelsa,” I call again, and I turn around--

She is suspended in midair before me and I am finally forced to admit that Telvanni Thelsa is beautiful.

“Don’t try to raise them,” Thelsa tells me. Her robes are rippling around her, her mousy hair is slipping free of its bun and fluttering around her lovely round face. “I’ve warded this place to the hilt. Here you can raise nor summon nothing. Not even a mere fireball will answer your call. If you wish to flee from me, you are welcome to jump to your death.”

I step backwards from her. I keep my sword raised.

“Still have nothing to say?” Thelsa asks. “How annoying. Can we not drop this farce, already? You know who I am.”

“You’re a necromancer,” I say softly.

Thelsa’s eyes narrow. “Stop playing stupid.”

“I’m not playing.” I take another step back, towards the centre of the plateau, where it’s wider. I’m paying attention to the corpses to either side of me, their spacing and proximity, but mostly I’m focused on her.

As I retreat, Thelsa drifts forwards. “Then stop assuming that I am stupid. Do you seriously think I didn’t recognise you?” Her hands are by her sides, palms upturned, fingers curled like claws. “I mean, really! You couldn’t even keep that fake name straight. Shani? Is that so? I called you Shara at least twice, didn’t you notice?”

My heart is beating too loudly for me to hear you say idiot .

“You gave a different name to everyone in Gnisis,” Thelsa says. “Oh, yes, I’ve been following you for a while. I couldn’t believe my luck when I first saw you. I guess even the blessed must fall, but this… this disguise is truly pathetic. I don’t know who healed those brands for you, but they should’ve rendered you mute, it would’ve served you better. You’re a pathetic liar.”

The clouds feel lower, up here, there’s electricity in the air.

“Now,” says Thelsa. “Can we please drop this ridiculous farce? I know who you are, and you know who I am. Before I kill you, I want the pleasure of making you admit your sins. Now drop that sword you don’t know how to use and admit it. Acknowledge me!”

I look at her face very closely. I struggle to think. I say nothing.

Thelsa’s expression turns incredulous. “You don’t know?” she asks, but even she doesn’t sound certain. “That’s impossible. Unless… you’ve forgotten?”

“I have no idea who you are,” I confess.

She replies, “ Karnalta Ra’athim, you bitch!”

Your name hits me harder than her fist. I guess she’s so mad she’s forgotten to use magic, because she quite literally flies at me, and her hand collides with my cheek before I can react. I step back and raise my sword to knock her away, but she’s already retreated to cast a spell, this time, a proper spell-- I twist to the side, her hand discharges lightning into nothing, and all around us, I hear the groan of the dead start to rise.

“Wait!” I gasp-- my head is ringing a little--

“How dare you!” Thelsa yells. “You arrogant whore! You narcissistic jerk! Everything you’ve done to me and you don’t even remember me?”

“I’m not Karnalta!”

“You liar, you coward! Bad enough you stole my place, now face me like an honest necromancer!”

“I’m not--”

But the dead are rising now, the first zombie is stumbling towards me. Sloppy resurrections, slow-moving and uncoordinated. I take a leg off of first one with a wide cleave of my sword, then use the motion to turn and jab the tip of my weapon into the abdomen of the second one, robbing it of its momentum. My mind is reeling with shock but my body acts of its own accord.

The rest of the zombies are beginning to rise, groaning in that terrible, tacky way that necromancers always make their zombies groan, and I want to find room for myself to fight in, but Thelsa is hanging in front of me, blocking my way, sparking with fury.

“It should have been me,” declares Thelsa. “ I should have gone to Cyrodiil! I should have joined Mannimarco’s side! It should have been me! Not you, you stupid child of nepotism!”

“She’s in Cyrodiil?” I try to ask, though it’s more of an incredulous yell. Another zombie is raising in the corner of my vision.

“It should have been me!” Thelsa sends more fire at me, I barely step out of its range. “They should have taken me! Not you! You rotten exile! You cheat!”

“Please listen! I’m--”

The zombie gets too close to me before I catch it with the off-hand dagger-- I’ve never wanted so badly for a shield-- there’s two more on my other side and I push the zombie on my dagger into its companions, unbalancing all three, leaving them open to a few quick cuts with my sword.

“I’m not Karnalta!” I shout, my voice strangled from exertion, “I’m her sister! I’m Karnalta’s twin!”

Thelsa barks out a laugh. “ That is your new excuse? Even now you persist on lying to me? You’re bad at this, s’wit!”

“It’s not a lie!” One of the zombies on the ground almost grabs my ankle; I crush its wrist with my foot, an awful crunch, like I’ve stepped on a cockroach.

The fighting has pushed me forwards; Thelsa has retreated slightly, so that she now hangs over the side of the cliff, she looks like an apparition of wrath against the cold sky beyond.

“Stop trying to deceive me!” Thelsa’s hands are moving again, I hear more zombies moving, I see fire forming in her hands. “Stop lying about who you are!”

“Wait-- I’m Iliah!” I can hear the rest of the zombies shuffling into animation, the oppressive stench of conjuration is everywhere.

“No lie can spare you now!”

“My name is Iliah!” My voice is breaking. How long has it been since I’ve said these words? “I am Iliah Ra’athim! Iliah Ra’athim! Karnalta is my sister!”

Thelsa’s hands become wreathes of flame. “This is the end of you--”

Karnalta, you were right about me. I am an idiot. I do things that I haven’t thought through first.

Once I had you to tell me what to do, and when you weren’t telling me what to do, you were telling me why the thing I was about to do was dumb, and then I wouldn’t do it. But I don’t have you any more.

But if we’re being honest, I haven’t had you since I was a child. I never listened when you told me not to do stupid things. I’d do them anyways and I’d have to live with it. This is all, entirely me, doing things without knowing why I do them, living alone with the consequences.

You’ll never even know about any of this. These stupid thoughts are all my own.

So I do something I haven’t really thought through.

I run. I leap from the cliff. I wrap my arms as tightly around Thelsa as I can.

I drive my dagger into her as we fall.

A child perches high in a tree, a book resting in her lap. It is a beautiful spring day in Mournhold, and the Moril tree in which she sits is thick with fragrant blush-pink blooms. Bees dodder around her, a cliff-darter perches on a branch nearby. Clock-crickets hum their eerily mechanical melodies all around her; the child, completely engrossed in her book as she is, pays them no attention. So enraptured is she by the story she reads that she does not even notice that someone is climbing the tree. She does not hear the rustling below her, the creaking of branches, the occasional clatter of bark scraped from the trunk by a careless foot. She does not hear the cliff-darter croak in alarm and take flight. She notices nothing, until a head drops down from above and proclaims:

“Found you, Kar!”

The child cries out in fright, and looks up. The mirror image of herself is lying across the branches above her, head dangling just in front of her face.

“Iliah!” the child shouts. “You scared me!”

“Sorry,” says her twin, with a gawky grin. “Hi.”

“How did you get up here?”

“I climbed.”

“All the way up?”

“Yeah.”

“Iliah, you idiot, you could’ve fallen!” Karnalta puts her book down, wearing a frown as big and unabashed as her sister’s grin. “You would’ve gotten hurt!”

Iliah shakes her head. “Kneads-Dough says kids our age bounce.”

“She didn’t mean it literally, moron.”

“ You’re up here. You didn’t fall.”

“I can levitate! You can’t! Only a complete idiot would climb up here! And stop dangling upside-down, it’s bad for your brain, you don’t have a lot of brain to start with!”

Iliah flips herself right-side up, then drops onto the branch Karnalta sits on. She straddles it and faces her sister, no longer smiling. “You shouldn’t call me names,” she says.

“You deserve it,” says Karnalta briskly. “You risked your life in a stupid way by coming up here! Really, what if you’d fallen?”

“You’d have known,” Iliah says, matter-of-fact. “You’d catch me.”

“I’m not a mind-reader. You don’t even have a mind to read.”

Iliah kicks out at the tree. “It’s not my fault,” she protests. “You didn’t tell me where you went.”

“That’s your big reason to die? That you couldn’t find me?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You’re such an idiot!” Karnalta reaches out and gives Iliah a gentle hit on the leg. “You could’ve just waited. I would’ve come back.”

“But I don’t want to wait. I miss you.”

“Why?”

“Cause you weren’t there.”

“I mean, why do you miss me?”

“... Because I like being around you?”

“Iliah,” says Karnalta, crossing her arms and speaking very sternly, “To ‘miss’ something suggests you don’t have it. But we are twins. We have the same blood and the same bones and the same meat. We are identical on a cellular level. It is irrational to miss me, because there is nothing I have that you don’t.”

“You have a brain,” Iliah points out. Then she grins another gawky grin. “You smiled!”

“No I didn’t,” says Karnalta, smiling. “Just…”

“... Just what?”

“I would miss you if you died. So stop doing dumb stuff like climbing.”

Iliah rolls her eyes. “I already told you,” she said. “I’m not going to fall to my death. You’d catch me.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Yes I do. Watch--”

And Karnalta watches as her mirror image slips sideways off of the branch, disappearing into the blush-coloured foliage of a beautiful Mournhold spring.

I’m on my back. A cliff reaches up above me, and above that, an awful, grey, gloomy Vvardenfell sky.

I kept my eyes open as I was falling, and that’s the only reason I see it. It’s only there for a moment-- the grey of a spectre against the grey of the sky. Its bony arms cradle me, alighting me on the ground, and then it’s gone, quiet, without fanfare, as if it had only been a speck of dust in my watery eyes.

Still, I lie there for a while, trying to convince myself that I haven’t just fallen to my death. I feel unharmed aside from a bit of singing around my forearms. My dagger is no longer in my hand, nor is my sword. If any of my bones are broken, I can’t feel it yet.

I turn my head to one side. Thelsa is lying a little ways away from me, also on her back, also staring up at the sky, though she is not blinking. Her face is already paler than it was when we travelled together, her lovely round cheeks sallowing. At her breast, driven through the beautiful Telvanni shawl I’d helped her wrap around her neck, the hilt of my dagger sits at a strange angle.

Carefully, I raise myself off of the ground, then stand on my knees by her side. I’m a little dizzy, but truly unharmed; I look over Thelsa, though I think I already know what I’ll find if I search her. Still, I search.

One of her hands is open, its palm burned black with the back-discharge of a fireball. The other is clasped tightly around a plain but enchanted ebony ring.

I wrest the ring from her clenched hand. It feels perhaps a little cooler than it did before, but I cradle it all the same. When we were children, Karnalta and I used to play in the long-abandoned Ra’athim tombs that lay below Mournhold, and, being badly disciplined, we would occasionally take souvenirs, one of which was this ring. Karnalta used to ridicule the ‘mere’ spell of summon ancestral ghost that had been imbued upon it, but I was always too aware of the fact that it would probably summon our ancestors, our family, so I kept it my whole life, out of some sense of obligation. I even took it on this quest with me.

And then I understand two things:

One of them is that I am still Iliah.

The other is that I will never speak to Karnalta again.

I pull my dagger from Thelsa's breast, wipe it clean on her shirt, put it back in my belt. I pull her scarf over her face. Then I rise, turn away, embrace myself, check my ribs for breakages. When I'm confident that I'm unharmed, I push the ring into my trouser pocket. Where did I leave my pack? Ah, right, there by the cliff's base.

It’ll be a long walk back to anywhere inhabited. I don’t have a very good sense of direction, and to be honest, I was a bit distracted when Thelsa was leading me here, so I’m not fully certain where I’ve ended up. I know we’ve come far north, much further than the bandit camp I’d been aiming for, but I’m not sure if it would make sense to aim all the way for the coast. I try to think back to the map of Vvardenfell: Ald Velothi lies north of Gnisis, doesn’t it? Or was it Khuul? At any rate, Idrenie told me that ashlanders live along the north coast, and maybe I’ll run into them. I can probably find some good things to barter from Thelsa’s corpse, and she left her travel-pack behind as well.

It’s going to be a long, lonely journey, and I’m not yet a year into my quest. Somehow, I find that I don’t mind. It will be good to have some time alone so that I can get my thoughts in order. Besides, I owe Almalexia a long conversation, and there’s a lot of Ordinator-ly meditation and prayer that I’ve been slacking off on.

Maybe I’ll meet someone interesting on the road.

#i highly recommend ao3 for this one it is very long #i know literally nobody was asking for a 10k 1st person pov iliah fic. not sure what came over me here #iliah #fic

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