#so so so surreal for mara she feels like she's watching a ghost | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dunmerofskyrim · 5 years

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The kettle was caked in rust, battered with years of use. A round of thin worn grey iron, short spout tacked to one side with a knotty scar of joinery. Not a good kettle, Simra thought. Like something you’d buy from the single extortionate shop in a clapboard and mudbrick glass-rushers’ town, knowing full and well it won’t last. Not the town, not the tools you bought, and sure as sin not the promises of wealth that planted the place in the minds of those that built it. Temporary, all of it. Hoping your hopes will come good before the hope runs out and the seams run dry, and the ashwastes around you are just wastes again, and the rush-town turns ghost-town, all barren windows and doors chattering in the wind. Anycase, this kettle had been used and loved far longer than it was ever meant to be had. And it sat now on a warm flat hobstone, gurgling and shuddering geriatric as it boiled.

“Outside,” said Vedith, savouring the word. “Always best to be outside, if you can. Eat, sleep. Sit, stand. Light and air, the sound of things growing. Always feels cleaner, closer.”

“Closer to what?” said Llolamae. She’d listened intent to Vedith since he started talking. Wide eyes and questions. Talking back every chance she got. Between them they killed silence dead every time it crept in.

“Well, to everything! Out in it, eh? In what?” They said that together, then together they chuckled. One laugh like water, the other like rattling reeds. “In everything!” Vedith answered with a sigh, a nod, like he thought it was the sagest thing anyone ever said.

Time alone did this to a person, Simra knew. He’d seen that, been that. People are meant to talk. Map out their world in words and share what’s in their heads. And if there’s only their thoughts to listen as their thinking mutters out of their mouths, they’ll still talk just to talk, and listen just to hear a voice. Might be they’ll clam up in company, but just as often it goes like this. Get two people in one place, and both of them better used to being alone than not, they’ll talk about anything. Constant as cicadas, both of them used to holding up both sides of a conversation…

Simra held back. Hummed sometimes, nodded. Watched Vedith splash a last measure of water from a broad and dark-glazed teacup onto the hobstone. Watched it steam as the enchantment in it hissed to life and heat at the touch of water. A hobstone was an expensive way to do what fire could do far cheaper. Trust a Telvanni to have one, and only the world’s sorriest kettle to sit on it.

“Does it not ever get cold?” Llolamae asked. “Being out, I mean. Too cold for that, down here?”

“Oh no. Oh no no, oh no, I’ve seen to that. Things wouldn’t grow right, would they? Better for them to just keep things just so. Just the same. Much better.”

Vedith crumbled leaves between his grubby fingertips, out of a clay jar and into the simmering kettle. Green and indigo, curls and twists, shaped like insects in pain. Simra watched, wary, thinking of Bandrys and Galgas, poisoned, limblocked and staked out on the plains. Pull a trick once and all your life you’ll be wary it’s come back to bite you. But Simra only noticed the crescents of black under Vedith’s curt blunt nails. Felt his lip curl and his nose wrinkle, and tried to cover his revolt and his watching with talk. “And what’s good for the garden is good for the gardener…”

Vedith’s head jerked up. Rheumy sightless eyes, staring at nothing. He grinned straight through Simra, a grin all gaps and gums. “That’s right! Wise is what that is! Do you know, when you hear something said you’ve always thought but never thought it in words? Wise is what I call that!”

“I don’t know about that,” said Simra. It was a Temple platitude. An old holdout, so far as Simra knew, from the Imperial mission in newly opened Morrowind. An attempt to syncretise Niner doctrine into something easier for Dunmer to swallow. It didn’t work; not the way the mission wanted. Adopted by the Temple and preached out often as anything else, with no mention of Mother Mara, Steadfast Stendarr. It was nothing obscure, yet Vedith had never heard it. “Just a small thing I’ve often thought myself,” Simra lied.

“It’s good is what it is…” Vedith poured the tea into three mismatched cups, the colour different in each one against the red, the black, the pale grey lacquers. He inhaled a head full of steam and drank first, putting Simra a slight bit better at ease. “What was it you said you were, friend?”

“Oh any number of things,” said Simra. “Here, today, I’m just a messenger.”

“He’s got a letter!” said Llolamae. “It’s about the torquestone!”

“Seems everything is, around here…” Simra muttered.

“What’s that?” Vedith said.

“A letter,” said Simra.

“Well, well… Well. I don’t know who it is you’ve come from with your letter but they can’t know me. Even when my eyes were younger, I never was much of a one for reading.”

Simra felt the scratchy start of a flush at his hairline. The shaky waver of something beneath him, bending to break, to fall away. He laughed; tried to make it sound easy. “Simple mistake to make.”

But Vedith was tense now. “Really now…” Spoke like someone’s hand moving slow to their swordbelt. “Who was it?” A slow-moving hand wishing it could stay still. Less a threat and more a plea.

“Tel Branora!” Llolamae chipped in, bright and helpful as ever.

And then everything was in motion.

A flash of pain washed over Simra and he broke snarling through it. Limbs in a tangle, tugging, pushing. One reedy shriek, choked off into scarce and stolen breath, sour against Simra’s face. Then he was over Vedith, above him. Had slapped aside the teacup the old mer had thrown, its contents scalding against Simra’s arm and chest. Had tumbled across the hobstone and borne Vedith down with his weight, his speed, his youth, as he scrambled to get away. Now Simra hunched above him, stinging forearm bruising into his windpipe.

Vedith’s arm thrashed. His grubby fingertips turned the earth, the mulch, clawing for the kettle just out of his reach. But Simra saw. And things were slow now, almost still and surreal. The blood-thunder in his ears turned the world quiet. The tunnel-tight focus of his eyes made everything seem simple. Arm still trapping Vedith, Simra picked up the kettle. Emptied it into Vedith’s face in a spluttering of wet leaves, then swung it crushing down onto the old mer’s desperate fingers.

An airless squawk and Vedith’s hand curled up like a dying bug, and Simra grabbed the wrist and passed it to his other hand. Holding it fast, choking Vedith, both with the same arm, Simra felt himself reach now for his belt. Plumwood and cold iron, the tight-wrapping of leather, Simra’s fingers found the leaf-bladed knife his old spearhead had long ago become and drew it.

Vedith’s blind eyes bulged. Starved for air, or had he somehow heard the steel? Simra couldn’t hear a thing until the noise struck him.

A shrieking in Simra’s right ear and something knocked him sideways. Tumbled his shoulder into the ground, the dirt, toppling him halfway off Vedith. His vision bloomed blue and shocking white. Too narrow before, now it had split wide, like a breaking egg behind his eyes, and he scrabbled blind, crabbed sideways and backwards and up, thrashing ruinous through a plantbed till he could almost see again.

Just silhouettes at first. Shapes and colour, clotting together. Llolamae stood, face pale and drawn in shock, the kettle braced in her hands. She’d hit him. Cracked it into the side of his head.

“Fuck’d you do that for?” Simra yelped, and it came out hoarse and stupid.

“You were going to kill him!”

Was he? He’d felt himself hesitate. “I didn’t want you to come.”

“You lied! You lied!” Llolamae stamped her feet, shrieking.

“This is why! This is why I didn’t want you along but you didn’t give me any choice!”

“You lied! You didn’t want to give him anything! You didn’t want to find out anything! You just wanted him dead!”

“I don’t want anything! I don’t even want to be here! If I had any fucking choice—!”

Llolamae screamed and threw the kettle.

Simra ducked it, jerking out the way, hissing through his teeth. “It’s just a job! I can’t not! I can’t—”

Still screaming, Llolamae’s face was red in blotches, her eyes wild and hands clamped over her ears.

“—and now I’m screaming, pleading my fucking case at an unarmed child, while I’m the one with four knives and a sword and fucking magic! Fuck!” Simra stopped and stormed a few paces off, kicking through the planting bed. He lifted a hand to where his head hurt. Hot against his fingertips, but no blood when he looked. Just a child, after all, swinging a thin and ill-made kettle at him. “Fuck…” he repeated, a rasping sigh this time. Then his eyes fixed on Vedith. “You!”

The old Telvanni was curled onto his side. Body confused, he tried to face Simra even as his legs and good arm pushed him backwards and away. His mangled hand brushed vague at his throat.

“If I’m not killing you and fucking off home…” Home? When had Tammunei and Noor become that? “…You’re gonna tell me why someone wants me to. Right now!” Simra crashed a path through the flowering shoots and saplings to come closer. Made to kick at Vedith then stamped his boot into the dirt by his face, sending him flinching, whimpering, trying to speak. “Why’s Mistress Ulessen want you dead?”

“Msstrss…Lessen?” Vedith choked out, eyes balled shut then bulging open.

Simra’s head throbbed. Llolamae was still screaming, starting to form words again after long moments of wordless fury and terror. “Will you please shut up or I swear by bones and blood I will gut him right here and leave you to clean up what’s left!”

Silence after that. Splitting-loud with the ringing in his ears – leftover like the afterburn of looking too long at the sun – but Llolamae had gone quiet. Her lip shook, face all pinched and red and sour, and he didn’t blame her. Stopped looking at her so as not to blame himself.

“…I don’t know…Mistress…” Vedith managed when Simra went back to staring at him. “Only Felisa…”

“You don’t know—” Simra started, and then something fell into place. “When did you leave Tel Branora?”

“Red Mountain. It was before.” Every word still sounded like a gasp. “Mistress Therana! I served Mistress Therana! Same as here. Never knew…to do any different.” Vedith pulled himself onto hands and knees, grimacing, then sat himself on the ground, a heap of skinny grubby limbs around his potbellied body.

Simra walked round him, wary, circling the point of his dagger in the air. “Go on.”

“Minded the Tel. Kept the spires strong, steady. Tried to at least, after she sent away Kurani, but she’d always made the plans and I kept it all growing right, kept everyone fed. I only ever wanted to serve the House. Serve the Mistress. And I never did mind her turns. I was faithful! Useful!”

“So what happened?”

“One of her turns…” Vedith chuckled without humour. “This one turned on me. Mistress Therana called me up to her. She never was much of a one for the proper ways any more. Not by then. Never speaking through Felisa like she ought to have. So she called me up and face to face, she said to me, ‘Dalvur, you’ll be here about the yams of course.’ And I said yes, I was, not knowing what she was talking about, but you don’t say as much to a magister, do you? I’ve seen what happens when you do. ‘As you’ll know, they’ve always irked me. Always! Can’t stand them! Never could.’ Said it was the smell, something like that. And I said I’d see what I could do about that. And she said, ‘Would you?’ All smiling. And cursed me.”

“What was the curse?”

“Nothing she uttered out loud. I don’t know the particulars…”

Simra crouched down next to Dalvur Vedith and met his eyes. “So tell me what you do know.” Quiet and coaxing.

“Nothing grew. Wasn’t like everything died all at once, mind, but nothing new came in. Nothing planted would shoot. The seeds stayed put in the ground like stones. The spires wouldn’t answer the spells. No growth, no repairs. There was no life in anything anymore. No fruit, no rice, no fungus. No yams — the mistress made sure of that!”

“And they cast you out.”

“Aye. I don’t blame them.”

“It didn’t help. Branoris is still barren.” And now it all made sense. “As long as you live, is that it? Is that why the new mistress sent me? To fix the old one’s mess?”

A hoarse moan and Vedith jerked away, shuffling across the ground, fraction by fraction further from Simra. “Please, ser…” His head shook, hanging, like a heavy gourd on a stem too thin to bear it. A tendon bobbed and trembled in his neck.

“They’re starving. I’ve seen it. Everyone. Both islands.” For what? The caprice of one mad wizard. Simra was sick with it. His voice ran cold and flat, almost bored with it. “It’s slow. They buy food in when they can. Mainland grain. They fish too. Course they do. But it’s never enough.”

“Ser, please…” Vedith lifted his broken hand and laid it on Simra’s arm.

Simra flinched. Twisted to throw off the hand and grip its wrist in his fingers, not tight, but holding firm. “D’you know what hunger does to someone when it never goes fully away? What it does to children born into it, growing up in it?”

Vedith’s mouth was still moving. Shaping the words, but only breath came out.

“They don’t grow right. You ought to know something about that. Two hundred years,” said Simra. “How many more left in you, I wonder?”

Fat silent tears rolled down Vedith’s lined cheeks.

One push of the knife and then he could run, Simra thought. One gentle push in the right place and he could be gone. Use the last scroll in his bookbag and be back in Tel Branora, all of this done and dealt with. He’d done worse. Some of them had even begged worse too. So why was he wavering? Something felt uncertain, unsettled. “Tell me. Think carefully,” said Simra. He spoke and kept speaking, not knowing where the words might lead. Just playing for time. Looking for a reason. “Did your old mistress say anything? Anything, when she laid the curse on you?”

“She said…” Vedith’s forehead wrinkled further. Deep creases and bunched eyes. “It was my duty. I’d still be doing my duty by the House. By her. Just a new way of doing it, she said. She…patted me. On my head?”

Sitting back on his haunches, Simra let Vedith’s wrist go. He faced out at the warm stillness of the air, the green stillness of the leaves and blossoms all round him, and saw none of it. Open eyes but they were good as closed. Every breath tasted of turned earth, dark and impersonal, and somewhere the wings of insects droned a spiraling song from flower to flower. Dim and distant, he came aware that he was furious with it. This place, this work, his place in it. And it exhausted him.

Maybe it was the mess of it all. The careless tangle the Telvanni had made of all this, blunder built on blunder. Like the song of the old mother who swallowed a spider because she’d swallowed a fly, and never stopped swallowing after. Rats, cats, dogs, bears, her hunter husband; the whole world going down her throat to fix one petty problem that got bigger with every fix. Maybe it was seeing them all rolled under it, that problem, and only a whim at the root of it all. Vedith, all of Branoris, Llolamae, him, all of them struggling to breathe in its long cold shadow.

But most of all he was tired. Disgusted with himself already. With the cling and brittleness of sweat on his skin, dried and gone damp again, drying under his clothes. With the scald on his arm and chest that was starting by now to sting, and the warm sharp smell that cut over the scent of soil and made him wonder if Vedith had wet himself in the struggle. He was too tired for it. Needed something to cling to; something solid and something solved.

“Llolamae?” he called out. “What d’you know about laying curses?”

#TES #Morrowind #Dunmer #Simra Hishkari #SH Forth and Back #SH New Canon

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