thinking about Miraak in Apocrypha, realising after a while—weeks? months? years, maybe?—that Mora's promises were lies and that he was never going to set him free. thinking of how Mora intentionally undid the healing he'd performed on the wounds Miraak had sustained in his battle with Vahlok, how he would only agree to save him in return for some of Miraak's memories—trivial things, things you'll never miss.
thinking of how Mora never had any intention of taking just "trivial things", but in actuality, took everything besides the harshest memories of the dragons, the cult, Miraak's own cruelty. thinking of how he took his new champion's memories of his Atmoran homeland, his memories of Nirn as a whole, his memories of the mysterious horned-and-winged woman he'd loved in his dreams, his memories of his own face and the name he'd had before he was Miraak.
thinking of how Miraak was a worshipper of Kyne and Dibella, left without even the vaguest impression of how wind felt between his fingers, how soft grass and snow were beneath his feet, how many colours there were in a sunset. thinking of how he had no idea that he'd worshipped his most beloved gods at all.
thinking of how he was put in a situation where his only choices were, effectively, two different kinds of deaths.
thinking of Elentari, horned and winged in Dragon Aspect, and how her last-ditch attempt to stop their fight ended with her using Bend Will to literally will his memories back to him.
thinking of how, ultimately, she resurrected him twice, first in mind and then in body and soul.
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Black family character study snippet part two - just because im a liiiiitle obsessed actually <3
In January of 1925, an astronomical discovery was published in a catalogue by Vesto Slipher, who had managed to determine the radial velocities of a number of spiral nebulae from their redshifts. It was an important day, as his hypothesis found that several spirals were moving away from the Milky Way Galaxy at speeds too grand for them to be contained within it; this discovery was the birth of what would later be known as galaxies. It was on this day that Walburga Black was born.
She was a small of a child as she was an adult, born with coal-black hair and eyes that had a softer shade of blue than the silvery one that they quickly turned as she aged, shifting so rapidly that one should think you could have seen it happening in real time if you'd looked closely enough. Soon enough, they were as silvery as her mother's - and her father's. Silvery as stardust. Silvery as the galaxies that had not yet been discovered.
She was the first-born daughter of Pollux and Irma Black, both of whom were simultaneously her first cousins, and both of whom were born with pitch black curls, with aquiline noses and star-like eyes and cheekbones that grew prominent once they hit puberty, hollowing out their cheeks until shadows fell from the tall chandeliers of Grimmauld Place to slither below the curves of their skulls and gutter the meat of their faces until there was nothing but arched hollows of shade contouring their cheekbones.
An unmistakable lack of tone or tint in the skin of Walburga's ancestors was another distinguishable trait; they were as pale as corpses, all of them alike. Walburga had hardly even gained a flush as she gave birth to her first son.
Sirius had almost died at his birth, choked on the umbilical cord that had been connecting them since the early stages of his embryological development. Walburga had cried about it until her chest ached once she'd finally been alone, which wasn't until eight days later; she had been under the unbroken surveillance of her husband, who was of the belief that she might try to take the life of the infant, had she been left alone with him.
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today, I'm possessed with the Sudden Urge to ramble about my Miraak's Dibella worship.
I think the Moth would have been an important deity to the Atmorans—Queen of Heaven, goddess of beauty, art, music, pleasure, romantic love, and in my headcanon, language, prophecy to some extent, rebirth, and all that is lovely in creation. to them, and to many modern worshippers in Tamriel, she is the one who painted the sunsets, the one who made the afterlives beautiful, restful places, and the one who brings the land to life in spring.
imagine you're a young boy named Mimir, and wherever you go, you're surrounded by song. you were born in spring, when the land begins to thaw—Dibella's time, when the leanness of winter begins to ease. imagine you face death one day, falling into a frozen river, and you vaguely remember being saved by someone so lovely, it could only have been Dibella herself, or so you think. you wake up warm and dry at the outskirts of your village, and you live another day.
imagine you're a young man without a name. well, the cult stripped 'Mimir' away from you and address you only as yuvonhadrozaal sen (golden-braided one) or dovaar (dragonkind-servant or dragonkind-slave), and it'll be a few years yet before you're given a mask and named Miraak. you wear a veil that covers your face, and to show anybody that face would be to sentence the two of you to death.
so what do you do? not far from Bromjunaar, there's a hidden grove where Dibella's worshippers go to play and sing and pray and dance. you steal a lute, sneak out of the temple, and for a few hours by moonlight, you get to hear the sound of your own voice singing of things that aren't the might of the dragons. your fingers are quick to remember the songs your mother once taught you on her own lute. when dawn is close, you bury your stolen lute and sneak back, knowing that for a few brief hours, you were free.
when you're named Miraak, there's no time for singing. you belong to the dragons now, whole and entire, and can worship no other—but you're a rebel at heart, so you continue to braid your hair and have the belt of your robes fashioned into the shape of a moth.
a woman with the wings of a dragon saves you from death and visits you in your dreams. she looks a lot like the statue you've carved of Dibella, the one you keep in the breast pocket of your robes at all times, but the woman you call Kundruniik, light-bringer, is an ardent follower of Mara, the Wolf-Mother. nonetheless, in your dreams, the two of you sit beneath the heavens hung with a thousand stars, in a meadow that looks to be in eternal spring, and you wonder if your goddess had a hand in any of it.
four thousand years later, it's another spring. you die, because Hermaeus Mora wouldn't have allowed your story to end any other way—but the Last Dragonborn, Kundruniik, your light-bringer, Elentari, has different plans. it's spring, and you return to life just as Dibella is returning Nirn to life. the heavens you get to stand beneath are the realest thing you've seen in four ages of the world.
in short, I think Dibella means a lot to Miraak. more than Kyne, even. no wonder I call him Mothraak...
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