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thanidiel · 4 months

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A Visit to Skaven

“What is this, Sai?” came out in a tight voice, her want to laugh only barely suppressed as the, at the time, young woman’s hand brushed over the strangely inefficient clothesline: tied to a second stake no less than five inches away from where the first line had already anchored around another post.

It was the sort of nonsensical, mundane, detail that a hundred people could walk by without a thought paid. Which then made it perfectly ‘Sayidra’, who always functioned even now it seems at a mundanely nonsensical level. Perhaps, terrifyingly, moreso now that she is completely non beholden to anyone, or any sort of communal responsibility.

And quite like the Redguard herself, so much so as to suddenly make this moment timeless, she responded by jutting her chin high in the air - not as though she had taken some offense to the remark and thus needed to draw herself up and fill her chest with air. But, rather, she simply did not see anything wrong with her innovation.

So, she jut up her chin and the Redguard proclaimed firmly, “The rope was too short.”

There was never much room to ‘debate’ Sayidra on these things; she used to chop down potatoes and yuca into logs because it was the most straightforward way to process the vegetable. And when the Tumnosh twins, exasperated, had dropped themselves to the floor and gone to show her how their hearthwife and sisters would scrape off the skin with a spoon than to discard so much food for scrap, she had harrumphed and said she was to wash the dishes after the tubers. So how could she procure her own spoon?

Verita had wondered vaguely in the back of her mind as she journeyed here, on if Sayidra had modified her uncompromising order of operations at all now that she was buying her own food, with her own coin.

Right now, the odds did not look good.

“You have rope lying all around, why not just swap it?” This was a foregone sort of exchange without much hope to its name. But there was a charm to this routine, regardless. It made her think to when her legs felt so foal-like, and her hair felt so frizzy, and her mind so flustered.

“It was already tied.” Ergo, she resolved the immediate problem at the time. If the rope is too short, simply add another stick. To her older comrade, there was often no preplanning or perfect item for the task. It was only the items in front of her eye that progressed her to the next step. This sort of conversation often wisped by her ears between Sayidra and the others of the Dunehound.

And in a way, that ambient sort of hardheadness and desire to think only on moving forward, made her friendship, the consideration Sayidra had always paid to her on virtue of nothing else than Verita’s breathing life, a deeply intimate and unforgettable affair.

“Fair enough,” conceded. Though as she bent to finally acknowledge the pup that had been trundling after her heels since she arrived, with flattened hands that pat and rubbed along the flanks of its body, the Imperial found she could not help but to add further, “...aren’t you worried about cluttering up the yard?”

“Ongo sen tukta?” questioned back as Sayidra had moved at this point across the stone walkway towards the door. “This is my home,” reverted back to Cyrodilic after that peppering that their crew was once so fond of. “I hope to entertain no one except you and perhaps my brother’s family from here on out.”

“Not Hakeesh or Sahiri?” Most of everyone got along. But if anyone else could call themselves a friend of the older woman, it was those two. There were many a night in those days where everyone would filter out of the galley with their dinners in hand, and Sayidra would creep and slow until the last souls had turned their backs. She would settle somewhere in that scant space and solitary Hakeesh, too, of Skaven would be heard. And it was an even more known, common, sight for the Alfiq to grow bored of her inventorying and make her way to Sayidra to chatter, and chatter, and chatter, while the Redguard worked as steadily as ever.

That made her friend laugh while she, herself, had eventually risen from the ground and made her way towards the aroma of rich meat roasting in spices now freed by the wide-open door. “Hakeesh has grandchildren to harry him in his kitchen now, and I don’t think Sahiri can bring herself to travel without the Dunehound.”

“Remember when that zhazza in Wayrest tried to pick her up?”

“...yes,” and though the other woman had not nearly the same humor as Verita, for once her smile opened in a broad display of those coffee-stained teeth, “His goat-shriek still warms this heart of mine.”

These sorts of moments always came soaring on pretty little wings, free and fluttering with its momentum, “Bogrum was fucking enraged even when we all got back.” But, of course, when the weight caught up to it - that fragile thing could never have held up. “...I was so glad Jhareem and Erissalie were there,” continued on with a sudden quietness that changed the words entirely to I miss them, do you miss them?

And that sobered the other as she wrested free mutton from the coals, and scraped off flatbread stuck to the inside of the oven. Which, as suddenly as Verita had lost her loud voice, suddenly made her feel very selfish, and very oafish. A tight and braided twist of feeling through feeling within her gut, and she wanted to be very small then. So she meekly found the table, sat down, and clasped her hands together.

Of course Sayidra misses them too. How could she not miss a lover and a friend? If anything, she probably longs for this man that will never make and share a home with her, will never grey and grow fat with her, will never be here with her, every day. She didn’t need it rubbed into her face by someone else that will never know that same grief.

It made her simply feel worse, and yet more loved than ever, that the Redguard was now brushing her hand through hair much looser than the multitudes of thin, wiry, coils of her own after the meal had been placed down in front of the Imperial.

“Eat, child,” moved right on, stepped right on, continued right on in that so-timeless way of Sayidra’s. Grief, was also a matter of moving forward for the Redguard. No time to dawdle and cry, no purpose to be found within. The motherly run of callused fingers, with fine sand and ash pocketed within the lines of dark skin and pink palms, brought her back just briefly to a time less wondrous. Though mostly that hand just dug up another conflicted lurch of frustration, then self-criticism.

She wanted the older woman to talk. Talk, in this context, being a broad and shapeless idea that held the conveniently transformative weight of an emotional tornado. Which meant that she actually wanted her to cry, which actually meant that she wanted more comfort, or actually she wanted to be frankly coddled, which all actually stood for I WANT YOU TO GRIEVE LIKE ME. Or rather, actually, for her. Please, grieve for her, too, Sayidra.

She wished that the world would stop and grieve for the days she still spent feeling just as top heavy as a tree about to snap in twain. That cursed weight of deep loss, of so many moving forces of her life all redirected in a shiver of fate, bearing down on her neck to where that, if nothing else, showed the distinctive identities of body and soul.

For how is it that her body could have mustered a breath at all, when everything else had sagged so sadly as to waste away?

“...I wanted to show you and Jhareem this for years, whipped garlic. It was always too troublesome before,” muttered on as Sayidra spooned into a squat vessel and generously dolloped several mouthfuls of the spread atop tender goat’s meat. And in the Redguard’s way, that meant I see you. I’m sad too. Come with me.

That was where things went inward again, the silent whispers of I’m stupid. How could I be so stupid? How else could she ever respond to a loved one’s concession? Pop, pop, pop-- there her thoughts sizzled in that lick of shame. You’re so selfish, when did you get so selfish? Mistakes simply loved to burn themselves out at the front of her belly.

Just be graceful, the churn of her guts told her.

So she tried a smile, there. It was tentative, and fake, and almost nervous to be here, but it was heartening too in its own way. The resolution to have made herself just smile, also came with the creaking momentum of wheels slowly starting to move again, and slough off the sticky muck that had snared it.

“Remember,” begins again. Quiet and almost rasping as she found her voice again, “When Erissalie first came, and she lost her mind at Hakeesh for serving garlic to the Khajiit?” That added a sprouting touch of sincerity to her smile; their dear friend was so foolishly outspoken with the way she let her heart lead so readily.

Her pack was still slung on her back, so she had freed it with a slump towards her hip that brought it gently thudding onto the seat next her. And then because the very sight of the plate afore her was too tempting, she saw about pinching off some of the flatbread and using it to pocket the delicate meat afore her. She’d meant to procure her usual offering to the Redguard— when did Sayidra’s skin start to thin and line like that? It shouldn’t have been long ago, but yet— but her own hunger always liked to tumble over itself all of a sudden. Inattentive until the compulsion ached ravenously through her belly and pushed up behind her ribs regardless of anything else rumbling in her blood.

So then it became another pinch, and another, and then all pretense to an already rude affair vanished entirely as the pinches soon changed to torn sections, flaked meat and garlic smeared like debris across a ship’s bow. She would have been more careful if this had occurred before someone less familiar (thankfully she, like most women, simply grew more elegant of hand as she aged from here). But Verita didn’t need to, so she ate just as she needed, chin tucked and eyes only occasionally tracking her taller comrade.

“She questioned me some months after that on if it hurt,” exchanged. Bluntly, exasperatedly, that sort of distaste rolling around her frank and heavy mouth that you reserve only for friends. That hurt again, like the faucet had to gush one more time even though the pipe was already closed up. Mostly because her lightness was already this wobbling little bird righting itself from the ground, and continuing the conversation felt like as if the young Imperial had righted the plumbing only to get called back and asked if she added any clay, if she examined the weakness proper, could she account for how long that would handle? Sometimes she felt stupid for other reasons than solely her tenderness. She started to feel stupid then because she was so quick to convince herself that she already fluttered up from the prior falter. Because she wanted to convince herself and like how those of only twenty-five summers do, she tried to convince herself in that moment with a chipper and false retelling of her feelings. A lie that was so dull it only lasted less than ten seconds.

Shame hissed in another lurching boil of her gut. If the last bout were like little licks tickling her skin, this felt like she was being held right over the flame. And before it’d leave her in peace to cook in it, it’d rip all the water out of her and make her curl up in this gristly little band of displeasing meat if shame had things its way.

Just be graceful. Just be graceful. Just be graceful. You can’t change that they’re dead. It doesn’t help. Just be graceful. Please just be graceful. You can be graceful, old girl. She doesn’t need this from you.

This part of this old story was going to be a scrabble. The tears were frogging up below her chin and she needed to fuss and putter in any sort of way she could, before they could push any higher. Thinking was slowing down her escape.

Stop thinking. Just be graceful.

Generic response (as earnest as her squished little sense of befuddlement was at this time): “...if what hurt?” questioned. Appetite evaporated away at this point, not as insulated from the fire like the rest of her; her hands still playing at this aimless act of repetitively swishing soaked bread and meat to remake the diagram of garlicky lines on her plate.

Proudly, her friend replied with absolutely no cushioning or fanfare to the coming impact,

“Me and Jhareem.”

That sent the fragile little thing of her heart shrieking and aflutter, shooed away from where it had landed with its wobbly and flapping wings. Mixed up as it was, laughter bubbled out as much as her diaphragm began to spasm and hiccup with the surge of tears springing fat, wet, and dark, down shaking cheeks.

“—S-Sai, that’s so gross—”

I don’t want to be graceful.

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thanidiel · 11 months

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Change

She was too old now to crawl up upon the great man’s legs and sit there when she sought out his words, his eye. This wasn’t something ever told to her— truth be told, she could have strung it out another year or two. But she knew she was getting there, and self-consciousness had a new habit at this point in her young life of beginning to swell and wane like the moon’s breath.

And so she didn’t clamper, and she didn’t make herself known in that handsy way of young children that tells you hello, it is I. Rather, it was a jerky sort of swing, interruption to an old habit, that brought her to settle upon the crate nearby tall Na’jhareem and his work. And because interruptions are always known, and always seen, one could feel the jarred sort of pause that had gone through both bodies.

It was so inelegant. Many adults that had tread these decks, and many more novels, of children for whom greater things were destined, passed to her hands by Sayidra’s market trips - they had all spoke of these defining little changes in the pass between ages in which it had been as though the smallest strikes of independence, maturity, had been like shouting from the top of mountains. Like some conquest in which every corner of Tamriel was suddenly illuminated to them.

Instead, it was only awkward.

It was a little sad, too.

Not that she would be willing to admit this to herself of that longing for uncomplicated, unbound, adolescence she had felt in that moment. She wouldn’t do that for many years, not until it had struck her, truly so and in that sort of delayed way that grief sifts up new insights periodically from its sands, that she was realized and grown - and most of them were gone.

Jhareem was more honest with it, though. Through his feelings, there was nothing to prove to anyone, most certainly not a whelp like her, except for the reality of them at all; this is how I feel. And it was evident then across the ripples of his broad snout, and the sink of the fur that sprouted so wildly from his jaws, that he, himself, found a certain sadness in that impact of realization.

It was suddenly a little weird now.

And though many, when provided this look upon the lives of others, would lift their chin and proclaim that family is family, and angrily snort about on the evils of allowing society to modulate one’s actions; the simple truth to the matter is that context brews a quiet nuance, and the known patterns that spring and root are natural all unto their own.

So, from here-on-out, the relationship would change. For when what was inside of her began to shed a coat of her own and share to her that same lunar influence as pulled him and his kind, she was no longer the little girl that had once pulled on his pant leg and asked for life anew. Now a certain type of humanity, personhood, was implied to her existence.

In other words, she was now Verita; I, and not Verita; of the Dunehound’s charity. And to continue to father her would be to continue to look past this newborn identity of she unto her own. In one fell swoop, he was now a vague ground between ‘friend’ and ‘uncle’. So when she were to grow old, and perhaps bring to him lovers or babies or great friends, he now knew that the pride rightful to him would be of an older companion, mentor, than the one as tender, as intimate, as he had possessed the privilege of in these last five years.

That is, after all, the way of these found sorts of relationships.

All that and more is felt and known in this miniscule sliver of a moment.

To call the world an ocean was, at first, a cheesy and tongue-in-cheek remark of romanticism in livelihood. Later for the young Colovian it became an observation of rhyme and flow. She would see how conversations were like these invisible currents twisting past one another, and all those silent decisions, and feelings, and despairs, and insights, and other components that all laid within like mineral composition— they liked to make the meat of everything even if you never thought about it. They liked to weigh, and to change the very laws of the water they themselves reside in. So some conversations were light, and free, and uncomplex in their flavor. And others liked to brood and sink, and they moved so little at a time with all the different things that filled them up. But all conversations had the capacity to find these little porous, empty, seconds in the world, and gush forth in this burst of everything, only to recede and leave the nothing there between words once again.

What had happened there?

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

She breathed, then, and spoke. And as she spoke, her mind boggled at the new light in which her friend came to her eye; his largeness now much more real than it had ever been before, to sit near him now as a young peer.

“...what are you doing?”

His eyes never left the work at his hands, finished with pawing oil along the long length of the rope and then moving onto to wiping himself clean on a nearby cloth. A cake of wax was fingered after that, now to be rubbed along the fibers in the oil’s aftermath.

“What does it look like this one is doing?”

“You’re conditioning it.”

“Na’jhareem is glad this one has not suddenly lost her eyesight.” Another pause, though this one is no shock of revelation. Instead, in the way of one teaching, “What is M’Kreenya really asking?”

Her mouth felt claylike sometimes. And the demand of her to elucidate her language only refreshed the feeling as her mind slowly swished her thoughts about to dissolve the thickness on her tongue.

“I… don’t know why you’re oiling it,” settled after some steps were retraced. “You’re already waxing it before you heat it.” Instruction is a subtle thing, but this was a lesson walked before; to say what she meant. “...WHY…” began in that juvenile clumsiness, “...are you doing that first?”

“Because one should.”

“—No. Selim, Jhareem!” Of course, clumsiness and irritation played together hand-in-hand in these early years like a sapling struggling to keep itself rooted. “Explain it to me! What does the oil do? Why does it go first?”

He laughed at that; his laughter, she remembered, was this baritone chuffing that scratched and snorted, almost enough to make one’s blood and skin spring high with how akin he sounded to something so predatory.

He laughed at her spitting and her hissing, and then she had taken his tankard and struck him square on the kneecap.

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