Don't think about it.
The craggy cliffs. The gnashing sea. The sharp drop, forbade only by a wall made of ancient stones that Athenath leaned his spine against, the mere thought of the far distance to the waters below drawing sweat to his palms. The gulls above and their briney white wings cast long shadows as they brushed against the stars, the kinds of shadows that made his stomach drop and chest pound, and just when he would try to believe he had his heart rate under control, it would kick itself into a full sprint. A habit of flinching.
Don't think about it.
Being haunted by anything other than spirits wasn't new to him. Memory was his consistent companion and poltergeist, rattling walls and windows, tearing doors off their hinges, but dragons were a new story. A force enough to easily crush the entire house of his psyche underfoot. None of the trio had seen one since the battle at Whiterun, but to him, it was like every step out of Helgen served to reinforce the dread that pitted his gut. No sense of safety to be found, no way to escape the fire that he could still smell in his dreams as if they walked over and over again into the inferno of burning hair, bubbling fat, charred flesh and children wailing for their parents while the charcoal remains lay before them-
Don't think about it. A deeply familiar thought over the years as he stifled a gag at the imaginary stench and tried to shut out the sounds that only his mind produced. Even in his childhood, it was an instruction that got him through.
What was it that old priest in Bravil used to say? The lilting cant of his worn voice, the cold of his shoulder, mercy was only as powerful as one let it be? He'd lost a son to the Great War, it was no wonder the priest held Mara in such high regard. He'd paced the chapel and prayed with the young elf, much younger then, with short curls and tiny pickpocket hands. Stained glass windows poured light down on their face in the long afternoons, the young elf sweeping the chapel floors and reciting the prayers and songs with the priests and priestesses, candles lit and offerings given. The war had scarred the city and its people, and the remnants still ran through it like a gorge. The chapel still had some stones marked from combat in its walls, windows only fixed in the couple of years before the Altmer came to the town on a wooden carriage with no parents in sight, puffy-eyed and sniffling with a chaperone who did everything in his power to ease the weight on their little shoulders.
The war. The White-Gold Concordat. Issued a handful of years before his birth and before anyone would care to know the name Ulfric, before the Stormcloaks were even a thing worth calling a group, let alone a rebellion. Yet, a shade cast itself long in the way that Anvil's driftwood spectre bobbed through the stagnant waters of his mind. Sand kicked up by shoes, running through the streets and a kindly shopkeep offering his advice, the new figures come to town, the honey-warm words offset by black robes and strict orders...
He squeezed his eyes shut. Then, they drew in a shuddering breath, and did so again and again.
Flies buzzed noxiously at the drying pools left at the execution block every night, and he did not have to see the insects or hear their noise for him to know this. The rain hadn't come despite the towering clouds on the horizon, simultaneously closer and further than they'd ever been before, and no one had the stomach to wash it away with jugs of boiling water. Best to just ignore it, the consensus among every resident looked to be, the way no one could turn their neck that direction unless they had something to say about it, and he did hear them say it when in the inn. The weight of the sight he tried to block out every time he walked the direction of the Winking Skeever carried even into his dreams, the wrongness and the way that the insectoid symphonies of hunger drove the understanding. Iron and rot and the wrongness of coming into a city to be welcomed with death. Every night, he wrestled to wrench himself free of the waking world, trying to pin down sleep until he could rob the dreams from its purse. And every night, the luck of thieves betrayed him as Helgen washed ashore time and time again, or the Western Watchtower. Fort Hraggstad recently joined the march. Roggvir's head lolled, tongue on the stone, in the most recent ones.
So, now they stood, spine to a stone wall as if they had this wretched little hope that maybe the sea would rise to impossible heights to wrap around them, steal him from this and wash their mind out in the undertow, carrying his spirit with it.
The dorms stole the comfort he took in knowing other people were there, right at their side, and he missed it sorely; the stone-still sleep of Wyndrelis whose form never moved aside from his breathing, the occasional turn of Emeros whose eyes bore circles of lacking real respite but whose mind remained sharpened as a hunter's blade. The sound of laughter from under their feet and the songs carried deep into the night, now replaced with a silence as cold and brittle as tombs and so, so lonely. The more he pushed against the bulwark of memory, the more memory forced them aside, chest pounding against his best efforts and cold sweat dripping down the back of their neck and oh gods, was the tremor of his palms and the shake of their shoulders and the tightness in their lungs and the strangled tightening of their throat something more than nerves, was there a healer awake at this hour, was there someone who could fix it or were they to fall right here? Was Emeros awake? He didn't want to bother the Bosmer with his problems, didn't want to bring to attention the way a full mountain's weight pushed on them and couldn't stand the look in the other's eyes when he'd been woken from good sleep, he couldn't bear the idea of meeting that gaze in this state. Was there nothing they could do against the tidal waves that slammed into them as ragged breaths forced themselves in and out of his throat of his lungs that barely caught them that threw them right back to the air like a forceful fist, what if the ragged nature was death itself upon them, what if the fire prickling under their skin at every discomfort was Aetherius' call and claw and digging into his flesh to take his soul from it or what if it was a problem with his health, his organs, too much stress and too much done and too much-
A light, sweet and chiming, bloomed along their insides. For a moment, all he could do was freeze in place, unsure of what the caster's intentions were or who was even casting a spell upon them, until a warmth poured from his head and down his neck and through to his feet, heart slowing to a steady rhythm, cold sweat coming to an end to leave behind only the cold, thoughts halted in their tracks. Their jaw hurt like their teeth had been chattering, and they raised a hand to rub at their jaw. He darted his gaze around, wide-eyed, until he landed on the familiar figure of Wyndrelis, hand raised with the cool, blue swirls of magicka eminating from his palm.
As the Dunmer let the spell dismiss into fading clouds, he lowered his arm to his side, melodic chiming gone from the air to leave nothing but the winds above the sea and the footsteps of guards on patrol. "Calming spell." His voice became a grounding force, and the night bloomed again around the Altmer, with the bugs and the noise of laughter down the road, the wind and the way it whistled through stones.
"How did you...?" Athenath managed out, half-choking on the words.
"It's too warm a night for you to be shaking, especially like that."
The shivers had long subsided, but now, a dull ache remained. He had gone from rubbing their jaw to pressing a palm against their cheek which in turn began to warm, and their eyes could not bear to meet the others as he inwardly chastised himself for looking like such a coward in a space where someone could find him. All panic was swiftly swept away, replaced by shame, now.
"It happens." Wyndrelis' response wore on the simple shrug of his shoulders, like he had understood the other's inner frustrations without them having to say a word. Athenath watched him closely, carefully, confusion riddling their face before Wyndrelis, as if knowing their thoughts here, too, added, "you're not the only one whose been in such a state before."
"Oh."
"You should sit down for a moment. Bad nerves will tire you out faster than you think." He gestured to the worn stone pathway, which jutted down this alley and up to the wall, the earth beneath his feet tangible again as they wiggled their toes in their boots. The Altmer nodded like the words had to be hammered into place in his mind and the last letter had, at long last, been set above them. Slowly, they slid down to the ground and crossed their ankles, knees jutting outward, shoulders slack. The level of weariness that found him there was beyond anything he'd anticipated, his posture bearing no strength to remain upright and instead slumping forward. After several long moments of trying to break the spell of the lead-heaviness that made itself at home in their limbs, Athenath rested his sharp elbows atop his thighs and cupped their face and gave a long exhale, Wyndrelis coming to rest beside them, his own bright eyes focused on the street.
The birds crept the parapets of Castle Dour, feet fumbling for Kynareth's grace of a perfect gust of wind to drag the scent of salt and lavender through their wings. Somewhere, wolves prowled for prey, and horkers laid lazy on the shoreline. Anywhere else, deer trod through the woods, elk and moose as well, luna moths short-lived beauty in the glowing light of the moons. Animals without the same worries he bore, just to hunt or avoid being hunted. The pride of a sabre cat, or the fear of a fawn.
"I still think about that man." Fill the silence, don't let it sit inside him, a weight in his stomach and up his sternum, solid and sour-flavored, Athenath couldn't handle it any longer. It shamed them that they couldn't remember the man's name, try as they might, scrunching his nose and knitting his brow before relaxing, making weary half-hearted gestures while their fingertips grazed the stone. "The one back at Helgen."
Wyndrelis sat quiet for a long while. Athenath wondered if the other even heard them until he rubbed at the bridge of his nose with pinched fingers under his spectacles and admitted, "I think we all do."
"I mean, and Roggvir, but it's not like we knew either of them, so why... Ughh," they groaned, dragging a palm down their face as they shook their head. "It makes no sense. No fucking sense."
"It makes perfect fucking sense," Wyndrelis stumbled out, "a few weeks ago, that could have been us."
"I guess."
The moons grimaced half-circles in the sky, reflecting cursed quartets in Wyndrelis' glasses. The Dunmer, all silver and raven-dark hair and a life long lived before, settled into the silence with the Altmer and seemed to be at rest, in a sense of the word. Wyndrelis' own sleep hadn't been as deep or as comfortable as of late, based on the fact that he liked to take his walks at odd hours of the night, but then again, so did they. Had this been a habit formed many years ago, or a new adaptation to traveling with people? The one time a day where solitude could be found? And, did Wyndrelis prefer to be alone under the stars, or were there silent invitations to join him on these walks that the other two had simply missed? Athenath often speculated on the histories of their companions, his mind reading into each crease and curl of the lip or the twitch of the eye, every little laugh of the men he called his friends. The familiar visages in the daylight as comfortable and as known as their expressions in bouts of fitful sleep. Emeros, so often well-spoken, confidently poised, his tender laughter coaxing easy moods in the right crowd. Wyndrelis, a Mer carved from soul gems and gleams of magic and the silence he seemed to permeate the air with, simultaneously warm as summer's heat and cold as a bone-carved comb.
Where did that leave the bard, then?
Shadowing them, he supposed. A cat in pursuit, arched shoulders, wide pupils. A loud, whispy, twirling phantom. Not quite of this land, not entirely outside of it. The fragrant scent of rosemary traipsed through his clothes, only the faintest note of it, earth to ground them from the wanderings of clouds above. The things they lived in, lived outside of. The songs he sang, the silvery ring of his tambourine, the capering of their feet on stone, wood, or dirt paths. The lightness of their voice. The weight of the world. Did the others see them as the jovial performer he was? Did they see them for something he did not yet know of themself? Or some combination of the two, the idea swam through the mire of their tired mind. Something not quite here or there, too young and too old.
The waves sloshed at the rocks so far below the city that their sounds may as well come from another world. The guards patroled the stone pathways, metal of their boots landing thickly as they paced through the night. Athenath watched them and tracked the movements, old habits, keep an eye out for who would and who would not notice him. It took some time for him to decide to speak again, and as they did so, they set their gaze on the mage beside himself. "How did you know where I was, anyways?" They asked, cocking a brow at the Dunmer. Wyndrelis let out a small, breathy laugh, as light as the wings of a bird.
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"You know that you're not the only one who walks at night?" He raked his fingers through his dark hair, the gold half-moon fastens of his capelet illuminated every time a guard's torchlight passed over them. "I happened to see you, and realized you weren't..."
They dreaded what would be said next, Athenath holding their breath. Graciously, he trailed off, dancing his fingers like a harpsichord player in the air for a moment, before waving the thought he'd dismissed high and away.
"Is Emeros on a walk, too, then?" Athenath watched a pair of guards talk among one another. A few glances their way, and his heart jolted again, dread ice-like and driven through their chest. He mentally recorded their appearances. All guards, unfortunately for his old habits, looked the same here in Haafingar Hold with those heavy helmets.
"No, he's back at the college. Asleep, I think."
"Good. He needs it."
The pair let themselves breathe in the silence a little while longer, the guards long off on their ways, before Athenath pressed their palms to the ground to steady himself. Slowly, he rose, Wyndrelis following. "Come on, I think there's a temple nearby," he stated as they dusted their palms off on the knees of their trousers.
"You want to go to a temple at this hour?" Wyndrelis' half-amused grin spread over his thin mouth, and Athenath rolled their eyes, a smirk touching their previously grave expression.
"Eh, why not. The gods don't sleep. Besides, you might wanna talk with yours, y'know."
He said nothing in return, but the Dunmer's face visibly fell, and Athenath's nerves again set on edge with the idea that he'd done something wrong. Didn't Wyndrelis mention worshiping Julianos, once, long ago? The god of logic and knowledge, the one so many wizards claimed? He didn't have the ability to ask as Wyndrelis kept his pace even and steady, despite the mage avoiding eye contact the entire march through the streets and up the hill which lead past Castle Dour and to the temple's closed doors. As they stood outside, Wyndrelis paused, tightening his shoulders, his mouth, his features.
"Go on in," he told the Altmer, as if his words were hard to get out, "I'll be out here."
Athenath's confusion wove itself into their features, but they didn't say a word about it, settling on a look that he figured conveyed the dozens of questions he now had. There were, of course, obvious reasons why someone might decide not to go into a temple - the hour of night being a particularly relevant one - but the tight-wound discomfort that riddled itself all over the Dunmer's body like a massive and jagged scar left Athenath with less and less answers by the moment.
He turned at last from his friend and to the temple. He pushed the door open, ignoring the noise it made, the light of the moons disappearing, replaced instead by a sweet-smelling darkness. The long echoes of the hinges filled the room. The priests and priestesses must be asleep, he surmised as he passed down the rows of empty wooden benches, not another soul in sight. The few candles that were still alight spluttered and spat with the wicks coming to their ends, melted wax pools surrounding them. The more Athenath's vision adjusted to the dim light, the more they found himself squinting at the dying flames, as though they were bright as bonfires. The thought of replacing the candles came to mind, and soon, it turned to action, the elf creeping quiet through the dark. He'd spent enough time in a chapel as a child to know to check if the spaces under the altars were hollow, and when that turned up empty, he set his sights on a cupboard close to the benches. Groping around blindly inside for a time, he soon found a bundle of beeswax candles wrapped in cord, and retrieved them with great care not to make a sound, shutting the cupboard.
It was easy and familiar work, the kind they'd done as a child, humming hymns to Mara while the sunlight poured over them with the gold of afternoon. They thought on the motions that he'd taken as a child, like the smaller elf were at his side in the night-shrouded temple, holding the fresh wick over the flames until they caught light and the first beads of hot wax began to drip, setting them down on the altars and moving from one to the other. The empty alcove only escaped notice for a moment, but as he drank in the sight, they paused to take it in. Maybe he could ask about it later, but for now, this needed doing, and they were the only one awake to do it. He moved to the next alcove without another note.
When the room bathed in a warm, orange glow and they'd cleared the old wax off the altars and moved it to one of the long benches for lack of better space to put the remains, Athenath let the large space fill them with something close to comfort. They moved over to Mara's altar, and ran their fingers over the surface, and shut their eyes, trying to still their breaths as he ruminated on the events of the past few weeks, and the situations all at hand, and the compassion she offered which he prayed was still there for him. The fires and battles and the long stretches of walks across Skyrim's landscape, and the amulet which rested against their chest, up and down with each breath. A heaviness, no matter his good efforts, leered over him. Its terrible weight did not shift, but merely lilted and rippled as stagnant waters over them. An Altmer drowning on dry land, shadows dizzy and unfortunate, shroud of worry thick enough to cloud his thoughts. He swallowed and made attempts to remember his childhood prayers to the Divines, the many ones he later learned specifically for Mara, but he dredged up the bucket of recollection to find it empty. He scavenged every inch of his mind, scoured through their body for hint of wording or fragment of old song, but tongue left faltering, they found no choice left but to stare at the altar and do their best with what they had.
He placed his hands on the base of the alcove and closed their eyes, and when - despite the ever-present nature of the past few weeks - they again returned without words, they looked down the aisles and knew he would leave without the warmth he so desparately sought for tonight. She had not abandoned him, he hoped, but he had simply fallen, and would need to get back up again.
When he exited the temple, shoulders weary with the concerns that now held them, he found that he had to search for Wyndrelis. He was not in the guarded courtyard, not in any of the benches or behind them in the temple, and not outside of Castle Dour. They kept moving until he at last spotted the Dunmer with his back against the stone railing, near the blacksmith's workshop, the embers of a fine fire reduced to ash. In this light, Wyndrelis looked far more exhausted than the Altmer previously thought. Under the moons and stars, the other's gaze traveled past the stone and past the city into places that Athenath knew they could not follow, or even begin to think they could follow.
"Can I ask you something?" The bard's words carried a level of discomfort that they made some attempt to subdue, to no avail. Maybe the quiet of their own mind in the temple had prickled the hair on the back of his neck and rose their unease to a new height. Despite all that they had shared with the mage, from the moment they met to this very second, it was as if he still thought the other could ever find the smallest fragments of their curiosity to be nothing but a chore at best to endure. When Wyndrelis moved his attentions to them, he took it as a sign to speak. "Why necromancy?"
The Dunmer turned his eyes to the sky, all the dozens of hundreds of millions of stars blinking in and out against the indigo depths, silvery like jewels in the ballgown of an Aldmeri noble. Wyndrelis' face shifted through what Athenath could best describe as several warring emotions before it could settle on something akin to resignation, his posture slumped as he stood there before them. "I was good at it."
The simple nature of the answer managed to whittle mystery further into their thoughts, the words like an incomplete melody of a fragment dug from Ayleid ruins. There had to be other steps before one found themselves using the dead like weapons, and even more before one was good at it, and all of these conclusions flooded bright and sun-cold into the ideas he'd formed about Wyndrelis before these past few days. Prying would not be the wisest idea, but had they ever been a wise man?
"Yeah, but- y'know, necromancy isn't something I hear people getting into because they're just, well, good at it. There's skills before that one, right? So what..."
Wyndrelis massaged the bridge of his nose, shoulders hiking as though he were trying to slink back into himself. "I have always been talented in Conjuration. When I began my formal studies, I caught the eye of an instructor who offered to mentor me. As it would turn out, I'm decent at what I do, basics of Conjuration and... otherwise. Some people have natural inclinations such as that, I suppose, and as it would turn out, mine is... What it is."
Athenath went quiet for a while. He hadn't really given it much thought, the notion that someone could be great at necromancy like they could be great at Restoration, Destruction, or Alteration. Then again, it's not like he gave magic much thought, either. It had only been a part of their life in the way it was a part of many Imperial's lives, the best example he could reach for, considering his family had no tendency to pursue it. Their grandfather was the closest Athenath had been to a true mage in his early childhood, the old elf using his skill to entertain his family, Illusion magic turned friendly and gentle, bright and sparkling in the earliest pieces of his life. They looked to Wyndrelis in the torchlight, inwardly rumbling with the possibilities of who their friend was before this, and vague concepts of who he would be after. He didn't even know if there would be an after, at this point. Who's to say the trio wouldn't die on the road to the hands of bandits, be mauled by animals, or be eaten by dragons? Who could say that their bones wouldn't be sucked clean by the Sea of Ghosts? Poisoned in the college at a dinner, or eaten alive by skeevers? Mara surely couldn't show compassion for this long, for the things he knew that any person was capable of doing, which had been done, and would be, of the shedding of blood.
He swallowed hard and blinked back against these images. This earned him a concerned flick of the brow from Wyndrelis, but he pretended to ignore it. He managed to think of one more question to ask, because for better or worse, a bard must know the truth, understand a whole story, be the one to retell it one day. "Who was your instructor? The one who taught you...?"
The obvious nature of it lingered. Wyndrelis drew in a long, tired breath, the kind only uttered by old soldiers who'd seen far too much, or Mer hundreds of years their seniors. His body was a diagram of defeat, and the Altmer didn't want to push any further, now. They swallowed hard again and looked away and tried to find something else, some way to change the subject, but nothing came up.
"He was just another mage. Older, more experienced. He was also very good at necromancy."
The option to pry died in Athenath's fingers. The Dunmer, so tired in the light and moreso by the moment, would not be open to answer anything further. For all the times he'd asked and asked and prodded and poked at others until he was left yelping at the raise of their voices, now he could not fumble into the curiosity required. Biting at their lip as something akin to shame overwhelmed them, they looked to the ground. "Well, come on. It's late. We should, y'know, try to sleep."
The humming of insects and the thick sloshes of seawater against cliffs below the city draped their way through the air around the two, who in contrast, carried only silence. The walk back to the Bard's College wasn't a long one from the temple, and while Athenath could feel every inch of his skin bristling with the chance to learn more about the mage who kept so much hidden, he didn't try. Wyndrelis was not the least bit ready to talk about it, after all, and if the Altmer kept pushing... Well, he didn't want to think about that. If Wyndrelis had used a calming spell on him, who's to say he wouldn't do the opposite?
He shook the thought away. A friend wouldn't do that, but how could he be so sure?
When the pair crept into the dorms from the basement entrance, they told one another goodnight and split into their separate dorms. Athenath watched the other disappear into his dorm and shut the door, staring for a moment where the Dunmer had been. He half entertained the idea of waking Emeros and telling him about everything they'd talked over with Wyndrelis, but there was no point in dealing with the other's scorn at being stirred so unceremoniously and without real reason. So, they retreated to their room, shut and locked the entry, and breathed in the perfumed air, aided by the strewing herbs along the floors of the hall, replaced every week to keep the scent fresh and light. He let the earthy smell cover them like a mist as they tugged off his dayclothes and pulled on his large, thin tunic and stretched out in the bed, the linens all the more comfortable after the torrential downpour of his worry had subsided. The warm, woolen blanket atop the linens added to the warmth and weighed him down comfortably, the mattress soft underneath their form.
He spent a long while staring at the ceiling in the dark, vision making shapes out of the shadows and his hands folded behind his head. How much did they know about their friends? How much would he ever know? As every piece unraveled of their own personal histories and the Altmer struggled to gather the threads into his arms, he half-lingered on the idea that he, too, was an enigma to the other elves. After all, what had he told them about himself? That they were a bard and from Cyrodiil and traveled a lot? How much information was that at the end of the day, really? The more he thought about it, the more he saw them as strangers, adrift on a strange-fated sea, storm to pull them apart.
Perhaps that's all the three would ever be, bonded through some Nord legend and half-burnt portraits of places and people the others would never meet. Maybe the other two would leave after this term at the Bard's College, reducing them to nothing but bittersweet memories of a late-summer as the Altmer would travel, performing always for a glimpse of them one day, never to be anything more. He wouldn't be satisfied with this, couldn't be, but they had to find some way to admit that this was the truth of the matter. It's not like they could reach into the other two's minds and tug at every thought and examine them in the light for intent to stay, to be at one another's sides, for any idea that the other two truly were here for the same bond that he saw as tying them together. Instead, they had to wait and see, and it would be laughable to say Athenath had ever been known for their patience.
He turned over and watched the dim of the hall's light trickle in, giving enough of its bright orange hue to the floors to cast shades on the bumps of stone and straw. He wanted more than strangers. Maybe all he would ever be able to do was want.
