My name is sasha (@profanetools), and this is a collection of writing from 2018-present, largely about the dwemer + lesbian romance.
I'm most well known for Twelve Tones, a multi-chapter fic about Kagrenac and her wife, an original character, Bthemetz, clashing over the construction of numidium.
Since I have a number of pieces of writing on this blog now, I've decided to make a directory. These pieces are organised by date of posting (old -> new).
Bolded pieces are on Archive of Our Own.
Italicised pieces are personal favourites.
Dwemereth: Kagrenac & Bthemetz (Mostly 1st Era):
I - if she had the choice / II - the first memory would be of her wife
a thesis on dance
"Why do you let them call you that?" "Call you what?" "He."
and there's a lingering scent (Dumac/Nerevar)
‘The Jagged Tea Set’
#3: “to the heart of all things“
"I am not looking forward to this"
It is really only on the third day they begin to address the topic / Saviour
at first / there is the sense she could almost collapse
Hopesfire
Magic (femslash february 21 prompt)
Home (femslash february 21 prompt, NSFW)
A Thesis: On Twelve Tones plucked from a still-beating heart
After (Chapter 10 Twelve Tones Spoilers)
In The Shadow of The Missing God (Bthemetz/Boethiah, Early ME Chapter 8 Twelve Tones Spoilers)
Solaris / "Take my hand"
The Sword that Lies Between them (Kagrenac/Almalexia, NSFW)
A Thesis: On being submerged by fire (Twelve Tones spoilers)
mortar
She had been rumoured to be making a god-in-process
You had always loved her
From a lost missive, dated 1E165/4E160
ON NUMIDIUM'S BRASS ARCHITECT
Her wife sits in the parlour with freshly made tea
"Is everything alright?"
Beard care routine / [1E370. An evening party somewhere in the void]
From Dwemereth to Resadyn's Wilds: Vyra Rzarak Demnevanni (1st era):
“Right. Well, can’t say we’ve heard of him. Sure he’s not Morag Tong?”
After she had killed him with his own spear, she had checked every inch of his body for tattoos. Emptied his pack. Walked a mile east until she found his camp. Looked for any scrap of a clan banner, or heraldry, or braiding, or tartan-weave, or jewellery. Located, decoded, and read his letters. Found a name inscribed on a locket, which may or may not have even been his own. Hauled his purpled and stiffened body on her back up the nearest hill. Braided his beard. Buried him beneath an old oak tree before the sun set. It was not a proper clan burial. There were no songs. There were no mourners in white. There were no testaments from his clan, his people, his home.
“He is Dwemer,” she said, with no more qualification.
“Right. Erm. Well.” The man coughed. It was as if he was doing it on purpose.
“Have you seen any other Dwemer in the area?” Bthemetz prompted. “Especially armed ones?”
'Cut-throat Stan', who was supposedly the font of all knowledge regarding seedy comings and goings of this portion of the Colovian underground, blinked. He was looking at her as if she were something out of a novel rather than a client who was paying him rather handsomely for discreet information about a very unfortunate assassin who may or may not be on the Clan Coalition (Formerly Resadyn) payroll.
"’Cept you? None. Haven’t seen any of your lot about in the city.” He ran his fingers through his hair. Still thick, still there, threaded with grey. “Look, your folk don’t usually stray this far south. Stick to their own. Your best bet would be to head up north through the mountains and cross the border. Speak to Elk of Elthnir. He’s, well, half.”
To her credit, Bthemetz did not snap.
“You either belong to the Clans, or you don’t,” she said, only a little curtly. “There are no halves or in betweens.”
Stan gave a non-committal shrug – decidedly not cut-throat. “Don’t think he sees it quite that way. No business of mine, ‘course. But he keeps a close eye on those sorts of comings and goings up in the range. He’d be the man to ask.”
“I was rather hoping you’d confer with him on my behalf.”
Stan raised an eyebrow. “Don’t particularly fancy returning to the fold?”
“Not particularly. My wife is currently trying to kill me.”
“So is mine,” said the not-very-cut-throat Stan, without glancing up from the ledger. “You’ll get used to it.”
for @tes-summer-fest. Consider this a combination of Beloved, Mortal, & Profane prompts.
At the very end of time, two dwarves reunite. Follows the events of A Thesis: On Twelve Tones.
Thanks to @ervona for all her help with this.
--------
6E 2521, Sun's Dawn
Bthemetz, formerly, Esteemed Dwemer Architect, since turned Dashing Exile and Roguish Renegade – or at least, that was how she told it, when she was in a good mood – was enjoying the cloud-top view on the upper decks of her very own steam-powered airship – en route somewhere between the Sunk Halls of Colossus and the Anequinan Archipelago, she would have estimated – when she received the letter that turned her circuits inside out.
It arrived, magnificently, via bird. One who announced its triumphant arrival by pecking at her cranial plates.
Fine, the absurdity of it aside – it was an old-fashioned yet not entirely obsolete means of delivery, still common enough amongst the islanders north of the Niben Sea. Really though, what would they want with her, though? She stayed well clear of anything close to New Dwemereth. And why not a courier, or a tonal telegraph, or a direct apparition using the teleportation matrix, for that matter? This was before the painfully detailed instructions on what exactly to do in case the letter was not delivered to its intended recipient – which was herself, it turned out, someone had written this for her – were addressed. This crow whisperer and sendee had outlined no less than nine sub-divided steps on how the letter might be returned to Ghourrock Isle (which Bthemetz presumed was some far-flung Orcish settlement known for their overly familiar corvid population), or, if not possible, how to dispose of the letter (quite vigorously – this person presumed the recipient had some highly concentrated acid to hand) and what precisely to do with the bird that had been entrusted to deliver it (which had some quite peculiar care requirements, it turned out).
The first warning sign was that these same instructions were repeated on the reverse in four different dialects of Aldmeris, ranging from antiquated to simply baffling. Who on Tamriel was still writing in High Chimeris of all things?
(A Dwemer)
Bthemetz didn't particularly want to think about that – because if this message hadn’t slipped out from a scamp at the back-end of Oblivion (which Bthemetz wasn’t entirely discounting, she still kept a few contacts with troublemakers in the forbidden regions), it was almost definitely from another Dwemer.
(A very old Dwemer)
One who had refused to reckon with the changing state of reality since The Reappearance. One, whom, from the choice of and number of languages, was likely both a powerful and exceedingly well-educated individual, most likely from Western Morrowind or Vvardenfell – Bzanthzel or even Vvardenfell-Khoram, knowing her luck – appeared well-versed in both local politics and international affairs during the height of the First Council –
(A very old, very powerful Dwemer, yet to reappear–)
Her stomach was sinking already.
(But why would they send a bird?)
She unsealed the letter.
Fourteen pages. Careful Dwemeris, double-sided, black ink. Encoded three times over. She almost shut down, seeing it all. The exact set of ciphers she had difficulty recalling, it had been so long since she sat on the Architects Committee, but the codes themselves – unmistakable.
And oh! Oh so personal – it came flooding back, they’d used this set exclusively in their own correspondence, hadn't they? Bthemetz had all but inscribed these old codes over her stilled, dead heart and then burned them in there, burned them, along with the broken tea sets and the stolen bedsheets and the careful hands braiding her hair and the casual blasphemy and the principles of Anuic Disruption they had co-authored and their careful hands, again –
She couldn’t finish that thought. It would bury her.
She went back to the delivery instructions. Chose a language both of them had contempt for. That would be safe. Bthemetz couldn't even read High Nordic – she did not share the sender's gift for languages, and had torn their tongue out merely learning to speak Dwemeris improperly, let alone anything as useless as High Nordic, which was three millennia dead. She lurched forward, which made the bird – who she discovered was a crow named Gnorgi, could not eat carrots, and had since decided the piping of her external combustion engine was a very comfortable perch – very upset with her. Had their handwriting always been this meticulous? So carefully spaced? She remembered it being messier. She tried to picture it messier.
She tore open the letter.
Bthemetz,
I scarcely know how to begin.
She tore herself away.
She sat down. Stood up. Walked in a circle three times. Her legs did not fold beneath her and her body did not break and the motor engine where her heart should have been did not begin to roar and scream and hiss. The crow, Gnorgi, looked at her curiously. She went back to the letter. Rifled through the pages. Tore through them, at random, because she definitely wasn't trying to find something, anything, any kind of sign or direct confirmation, telling her this wasn’t exactly what it felt like –
—and I find myself so overwhelmed. The world has moved on without me. So many people I treasured are long dead. I could not begin to list what I mourn, who I mourn. My life's work and purpose, stolen, defaced, ridiculed. I am a parable for children, Bthemetz. 'Beware, the Dwemer, defeated by their own hubris! Hoisted by their own cutting bells!'
And yet, for all their mockery, I am struck by the way we loom in those tales like giants while calling us ‘dwarves’. Menacing, unfathomable, foreign ‘dwarves’. How much we frightened them, Bthemetz! They coveted everything we had as much as they wanted to burn it. They built empires out of our ashes as soon as they turned our names into a curse. They sought to comprehend our ‘magics’ as distant ancients, yet none of them would dare imagine what it was like to be alive at that time, after war and occupation and constant patrols around our city borders, surrounded by god-fearing men and mer who all wanted to slit our throats. Did they realise that we raced towards discovery for fear that it would be seized from us again? I cannot think too long on this, for the thought burns inside of me like dragonfire, and I become torn with anger.
I would think of you often, then, as I read these ‘Tales’ the local witch lent me. About what you lost. What you endured and what you still, now, endure. I don't think I grasped it then - how could I possibly have? I understand something of loss, but you returned to Tamriel thousands of years after your death, to broken poems and pottery shards and a world that had moved on. And you looked at us, at our world, and decided immediately that it would be yours. That you were going to live again, live anew.
How did you even manage it? How could you bear it? How on earth could you decide to live, so easily?
I loved you for your courage, amongst your many other admirable qualities, but knowing what I do now, I don't think I loved you enough for it. I would be lucky to have even half as much—
Bthemetz folded the page crisply in half. She clutched her right wrist. Her right wrist contained a device that could incinerate paper and parchment in a matter of seconds. The page was folded crisply in half, and was not crumpled on the floor. She clutched her right wrist.
(She was back)
Years. Years of hopeless searching – from Morrowind to Elsweyr, from Tamriel to Akavir to beyond, to the darkest corners of Oblivion and the Void beyond it, before she had to give up, give up and move on, or else consume herself utterly in the maddening glimpses of what she had held so dear. Years. And Bthemetz had never once entertained the thought that Kagrenac would be the one to find her.
She did not know what to do with herself. She clutched her right wrist.
----------
6E 2521, Rain's Hand
They meet again, after so long, on the last island before Atmora. They wander out to northernmost cliffs, Kagrenac and Bthemetz, two old dwarves near the end of time, for a short walk before the rains come.
The world they know has vanished: gods have come and gone, cities have sunken beneath new oceans, and magic has almost vanished – now the sole purview of White-Gold tower, squabbled over by Imperial wizards and witch-pirates who traded in rare spells. Wrothgar is not an ancient mountain range that houses a great history of Orcish-Dwemeri relations, but a string of storm-swept isles where wreck-divers and scrap-riggers cobble together something skyworthy from whatever washes up from the Sea of Ghosts.
Kagrenac tells Bthemetz of this. Of Clan Marog and the Isle of Ghourrock. Of Grasha, a teenage crab-catcher who found her washed up dead in a cave while looking for lichens, and Witch-Wife Rikka, a former Weather-Witch who stitched her wounds and tended to her after she woke up, alive again, without explanation. Spin-Sister Shufti, who spins tales as much as she did Echatere yarn and brings fresh gossip with over-salted clam stew. Chief Moraga, a rugged old Ship-Rigger from the pirate clans, now settled down and more than happy to help Kagrenac string together an instrument from salvage, who finds it greatly amusing that they enjoy bawdy old Wrothgaran love songs quite so much. The rest, who herd goats and spin wool and while they wait for the clan-ships to return from the hunt. Of how life was both tedious and tightly-woven.
Bthemetz asks more on that than anything else. Was it a home? Was it a coffin, slowly rotting? Both, replied Kagrenac. Are you content out here? Yes. Oh, very much yes. Surprisingly, yes. Perhaps in another life, the winds would have kept her here. Bthemetz does not say much, after this, for a long time. Perhaps they are lying.
“Of what, precisely? Grey cliffs and 90% chance of rain?” She pauses. “The shipwreck engineers are quite resourceful – I do admit that much–”
“Ah. I see,” says Kagrenac. There is a slither of a smile, but not unkind. “You're envious.”
“Oh, you'd be bored beyond your greatest imagination, Bthemetz. Bouncing off the walls.”
Bthemetz scoffs. It is strange for Kagrenac to see her, a mess of wires and melted-down brass, ill-fitting parts cobbled together, make the exact same expressive gestures as she did as the Brass Architect, a living work of art.
“And yet, the fine company of Chief Moraga gra-Marug does not bore you, does it Kagrenac?”
Kagrenac offers a hint of a smile. It is a sad one. Not once has Bthemetz called them 'Rena', 'Renya', 'Kagrena', or anything but their full name since they began speaking.
“I am quite well acquainted,” Kagrenac adds. “With her witch and wife, Rikka, as well.”
Bthemetz throws her head back and laughs.
“Oh, you have been busy. What a productive fifteen months.”
“I was too ill to leave my bed for a great number of them, frankly,” Kagrenac says. “I didn't know how to send a message off the island before the lunar new year.”
Bthemetz halts.
“Is that an apology, Kagrenac?”
“An explanation.” She almost knits her hands together, as a girl might, before stopping herself. They rest awkwardly at her sides. “I was also... quite upset.”
Bthemetz looks out to the horizon. The sun is lingering at its edge.
“Are you still, in your own words, quite upset?”
Kagrenac shakes her head. “Dwemereth, as we knew it, is gone. It seems senseless to still seethe over a betrayal to what doesn't exist.”
“I asked how you feel. Not how you ought to feel.”
Kagrenac crumples her brow.
“I – I don’t know if I follow.”
“It has been a year. You cannot so easily bat away sheer rage with a puff of logic.” Bthemetz says. “Surely you know this. You spent almost your whole life fueled by it. You are perhaps the most resentful person I know. I almost wonder how you can even stand to speak to me.”
Kagrenac closes their eyes. Their hands still. Their takes a step forward. Their voice lowers.
“Would you feel better, Bthemetz, if I openly despised you?”
“It would feel more familiar.”
They step away.
“For that, I am sorry.”
Something clenches.
“I hurt you.” said Bthemetz. “Terribly.”
“I want to move past that.”
“I betrayed our people. Our home. I took our dearest secret and delivered it straight in to the hands of our worst enemies. I started the damned war–”
“I know,” they say, gravely. “Bthemetz, I have always known. I stand by my previous statement.”
Bthemetz stops. She flings her arms outwards.
“You tried to kill me!”
“I know.”
It is soft and it is tense and it is mournful. The way she says it. Almost a whisper.
“How.” There's rattling. Bthemetz's arms begin to shake. “I don't understand – I simply do not understand how you can–”
She seizes up. The lights flicker off and on.
“Bthemetz?”
There's a moment where nothing is said, and all that is heard is the rumbling of the ocean, the crashing of the waves. A bird cries in the distance. A light switches on suddenly.
The next words are cut with gritted teeth.
“I – I apologise,” says Bthemetz. “This iteration,” she gestures to her brass form, “it has its limitations. As you can very well see.”
“Would you rather I visit your realm?”
“No. No, I would rather you not.” She sighs. “I mean, not to be discourteous–”
“It is fine. No explanation is required.” Kagrenac says. “And we do not need to have all of this conversation now.”
Bthemetz looks at her carefully.
“You're sincere about this, aren't you?”
Kagrenac nods.
They continue walking as the cliffs give way to the coast. They climb their way down to the shore, rough rock and crashing waves, and here, at the edge of a world neither of them really understand, Bthemetz speaks again.
“You asked me how I could bear it.”
Kagrenac turns. The wind pulls sharply at the winter shawl they have borrowed from Shufti, at the braids Rikka had re-beaded only four nights before. Something in them wants to come loose.
“How I could bear...” Bthemetz pauses. “Living in a world that has left me behind, I believe you said. Broken poetry, something to that dramatic effect. I think, well—” and there's her laugh that twinkles and sounds like the smile Kagrenac could not touch, devastating to the ears, “—you still idealise her, a bit, don’t you? The Radical Rabble-Rouser that I was. The little priest who tried to set herself and The Priesthood ablaze in the fires of Revolution.”
It is such a Bthemetzian twist of rhetoric. A glib reference to her hated past, an unspoken accusation, and a gesture that circled entirely around the point, and yet Kagrenac can only respond as they always have:
“How could I not? I grew up on tales of you.”
Bthemetz, who has heard this a thousand times before, laughs.
“I think the dishonest answer would be that I moved on and became an Architect so readily because I hated my old life. It's half-true, but...”
She trails off. She's rattling in the wind. Kagrenac has to ask her, before it blows either of them away.
“What of the honest answer?”
Bthemetz does not and cannot smile. There's a metal mask bolted on in place of where a face sits. Kagrenac does not see the knowing smile in the breath where an answer should be, that quick uptick of her lips that liked to say things such as: there is so much pain in the world you don't even know. Kagrenac does not see anything in Bthemetz before she gives her answer.
“I had you, of course.”
It shouldn't have felt like a knife to the heart. To hear her say that.
“And when you disappeared,” continues Bthemetz. “When all of you disappeared. And I was alone. That was when I couldn't bear it. I... I couldn't bear it.”
“I am sorry,” they say softly.
The wind begins to roar. The seas surge inwards. The cold is sharp in the air. Kagrenac realises, despite themselves, that they would move the mountains to the stars to close the distance between them at that moment. That they would remake time and the world itself to lessen her pain, if they had such a power. The unspeakable things they would do, yet again, for Bthemetz! Those very same things that had torn them and the world apart. As if they had learned nothing at all from their utter obliteration. Where had that reckless impulse, to stand equal to the gods, left them, now? Here, thousands of years and miles away from her home, from the woman she called home, whose heart she so dearly wanted to cradle? A lone dwarf at the end of the world without choir or clan or acolytes or instruments or the echoes of the Twelve Tones they had once devoted their life to. Incapable of changing the course of their lives, held at the mercy of the whims of the winds and the tides, like any other that walk this soil. Like any mortal soul.
It is bitter, it is such a bitter thing, to reckon with.
Dumac, who is neither a magnificent king nor a decorated general nor even a particularly celebrated diplomat (yet), but is instead a twenty-four year old legal assistant who stands in shadow to his tedious cousin – as instructed – and slinks between soirées in Bzanth-Vvarden's high spires when he is not giving maverick legal advice – which is not as instructed though largely tolerated – has just been given a gift he cannot receive. It's an awkward position.
"I thought... but this was your gift, was it not?" He looks to the gift-giver, who stands upright like a tower but refuses to meet his gaze. "Was it not gifted to you?"
The gift-giver is resolute. "It is a pretty bauble. The sort you like. I have no need of such things."
The 'pretty bauble' in question is, in fact, an ornate geometric hairpiece spun from glass-woven-into-brass by a Bzanthan master crafter. He is almost certain that it was gifted by the Chief of Crafts themselves. It is intricate, stylish, and - yes, exactly the type of 'bauble' he would covet.
It also is inlaid with a ring of Lzrenti sapphires. The sort that would have been impossible to find during the War of the Mountains.
He sighs.
"This is supposed to be a peace offering. A symbol of harmony between our clans. Would you really turn that down?"
"I don't want peace," says the gift-giver. He is reminded, again, that they are just nineteen years old. "Do you believe the Nords care for our petty disputes? We are all just 'dwarves' in their eyes. They'll slaughter us without discrimination."
Dumac steps forward.
"I understand where you're coming from–"
"No, you do not."
Lzrent is now smouldering ash. Bzanth-Vvarden is not.
"You are right," he says, "but if I may – while 'petty' to you, this gesture means something to the elders here. They'll need help seeing your perspective. Play their game a little, and it will be easier to convince them."
They shake their head.
"I have spent six months playing their games, being placated by diplomats at their ridiculous little events. This city is an extravagant shambles. When the Nords come for us–"
They cut themselves off. They try again–
"When the Nords come for us–"
Their hands crunch into balls. Dumac considers reaching out – but thinks better of it.
"Kagrenac–" he begins–
"I almost think I'd be better off raising an army."
It is actually rather easy to imagine Kagrenac, the bold warrior queen, who unites the clans under a single fiery banner. Brazen and coarse and uncompromising, with all the blood on their hands. It is fanciful image, an almost impossible image, and it compels him as much as it makes him want to recoil. They have already been so many things. A refugee. A daughter of one of the Great Scrollkeepers in Clan Lzrent's Grand Library – reduced to ashes by the Nords less than a year ago. They arrived in Vvardenfell with nothing but rags on their back and pure hunger in their eyes. Sponsored by his grandmother in an act of unabashed self-interest, who seeks to apprentice them as an Architect. They are young and stubborn, they sulk during festivities and bicker with people five times their age. His cousin loathes them. Dumac, who has no younger siblings or relatives his age, for his part, well–
"You would be cut down in less than year," he says, simply. "You have no credentials, no family, and most Vvardenfell Clans have no great love for anyone in the Western Mountains. What little you would gather would be destroyed in a matter of minutes."
"It would be better," they snap, "than another year sitting and doing nothing."
"No, it would not." He wishes he could speak like an earthquake. That he could grasp them by the shoulders and shake them to their core. "It would be a year wasted. And what would that honestly achieve? Who would it serve, except your pride?"
They say nothing to this.
"Kagrena, don't waste your life on nothing. You're worth more than that."
They do not move.
Dumac sighs. "I'll take your bauble and even wear it, if it pleases you."
It takes a moment. Then, they shrug, suddenly, an awkward gesture that doesn't fit with their cutting words or their earlier poise. They place the bauble in his hand.
Send me a number and I’ll write a micro story using the word or phrase
(creator note: I recommend 3-10 sentences but go for a longer piece if you really feel it! Replace pronouns as needed for the character / point of view)
I'm surprised by your regards. I don't know what to think of your admiration either. I didn't think many people were looking, especially not on-looking. What does it mean, to be on-looking, I wonder, against looking? On what does one look?
I didn't think what I said to the court that bold, either. Even if the The Great Scarab disagrees. The Scarab – he tells me I no longer need to say 'Great', though his name feels strange and naked without it – talked plenty of change before I arrived. At least, that's what I'd heard, back in the silk caverns in the 'neath, before I ventured out to him. It was that talk – that we could someday transform – that brought me to his court. But maybe it was an open secret that I stumbled into. I wasn't to know then.
I am not a being made from light, not a light-spinner, so I am not sure what light I can shed on your rumours. I shed dust and misshapen tones, if that helps. I suppose I could collect a whisper and tune it into a truth or two in the tone-garden, with the right tools. I will think on it, and write again once I have results.
The Scarab has not directly told me the answer you seek. Maybe he is, as you say, 'fond' of me, but I am not his Architect (if you want light shed, I hear the Architect is a six-legged light-spinner). Though I would very much like to be an architect of some kind one day, I am not privy to the exact details. But what I do know is that change lies at the heart of his plans. That the world we know will transform into something we don't know. He has told me it will allow me and others like me to transform too.
You might ask why I want us to change. Aren't some people happy with who they are? Well, sometimes I think the world we're brought into is awfully unfair. You are brought in as you are: and that's good if you're a scale-bird up in the Dragon's pecking order, but most of us are just a louse or slip of a silk-moth or a burrower born into the dark and not a whit makes that any different.
I know when the Scarab has finished, that won't be the case. It feels so freeing to say that – will and won't! (Did you notice my will earlier? Will – just a bit of volition, something of my own, that pushes on with me). I think it will be very exciting. What kind of world will we wake up into? What will happen, in a world that will have a rhythm, where its heart beats to changing tones? I find it very exciting to think about.
There had been no resentment shown on his part, Rtheldren could say that much.
He had welcomed her on arrival. Had offered her tea – knowing she'd laugh and refuse, making that same old crack about 'her secret supply'. Had even offered her a tour of the facility - which she'd also refused, she'd seen it at least a dozen times, she'd seen all the research facilities a dozen times, as he knew well – and he had smiled – even laughed – while they reminisced about the 'good old years', all those fond tales of her madcap workshops where he and the rest of her apprentices would toss around earth-shattering ideas like they were weightless – the world still a puzzlebox to be cracked, the brassprints to rework the entire architectural academy something they'd hash out over supper. Halycon days. Before they knew what a storm really tasted like.
"Do you really still enjoy it out here, Rtheldren?" Bthemetez had asked him, with a particular stress on really.
It was a pointed question. Rather than questioning the logic behind it - a younger Rtheldren, more easily rattled, would have asked her: what did she mean, really? That out here, out in the Velothi mountains, in a small but uneventful research facility whose only claim to fame was that it had simply been ignored by the Nords, that could have been left to rust, was beneath him? - he instead had laughed gently - she had not changed one bit, had she?
He had said: "Yes, I do. Really."
It was an honest answer. His old mentor may not understand - she had never lost so much at the Grand Debate - but what he had here, his fellow engineers and him had managed to construct out of very little, by their own hands. He had come to value it. He had come to see meaning in the rhythm of a quieter life, away from the raucous debates, where he mostly fixed things of minor importance. What other Dwemer Architects would call utter tedium.
And so when Bthemetz, 'The Brass Architect', his old and still, despite everything, beloved mentor, then asked him for his support at the next Grand Debate, he had answered thus:
"No, I cannot."
It did not seem as if Bthemetz had anticipated this answer.
"Respectfully, why?"
Why? There were a dozen reasons. The fact that despite whatever old sentiment the Choir had towards either Bthemetz the Martyr, the old folk tales, or "The Brass Architect", the respected Tonal Architect, the debate that she was planning to stage – at the eleventh hour, while they were on the brink of a war, against Kagrenac, against her Numidium, concerning ethics – was academic suicide. The fact that it had only been twelve years since he last supported someone on such a venture. The fact that Bthemetz, an mer-construct of polished brass who wore violet plumes of flame around an engraved face-mask, who had arrived from Vvardenfell's Core via airship, such was her urgency, to a minor research facility in the Velothi mountains where nothing of interest had happened in a hundred years, and seemed to be unaware of the disparity of her presence in this place. Who still seemed to think she was an exiled scholar in rags, marching through the desert. Who seemed to think Rtheldren would make excellent primary support – who had previously rejected her, that she was now sincerely turning to him for help?
He did not say a word of this, though.
Instead, he said:
"Rzarak."
He stared at Bthemetz. In the two hundred years since he had made her acquaintence, he had seen the flames that adorned her brass-face blaze in almost all the tones and subtones the ear could catch: brass-gold, violet, sharp turquoise, steady rose, rust, viridian. But he had never seen all those bright flames tipped with gold, bold and brash, completely vanish before.
They returned, a not a beat later, brighter, stronger.
"She goes by Vyra now," said Bthemetz. There was still the same mirth in her voice as before, though it has lost its warmth.
"She – you're still in contact?"
"Not precisely, no."
He tried to look at Bthemetz, to catch anything in between her features. It had always been difficult, in his experience, to read much emotion in that implacable brass-face, with its permanent half-smirk engraved in, at the head of her brass chassis. He had to imagine there was a piece missing. Something he couldn't quite unpick. Rzarak – Vyra – had been only half his age when he had offered his support, when he had watched Kagrenac tear her assidiously into tiny pieces of scrapnel.
"Bthemetz... do you regret what happened to her? To... Vyra?"
There was a short pause.
"No, I don't."
He did not have a moment to catch his breath before she continued:
"I suspect you may disagree with me – that is your prerogative, after all – but I do still hold that the architectural basis for Numidium is theoretically sound. I do acknowledge the debate Vyra spearheaded raised some extremely pressing concerns – which have since been addressed, quite thoroughly, I should add – but the architectural design of Numidium is not—"
"That's not my point."
She halted.
"The consequences Rz- Vyra faced for speaking out against Numidium were severe," said Rtheldren. "Stripping her of her chief status. Barring her from several roles near-permanently. Let alone the social ostracisation."
Bthemetz cocked her head to the side.
"You and I both recall that my former apprentice took a project made under oath of secrecy and made it a public affair. Do you simply not expect her to face any kind of consequence?"
"The Choir concurred that the matter had been kept secret amongst Kagrenac and the other Senior Architects for far too long. The exemptions for truth-ringers exist for that reason — that does not justify the severity of the punishment."
A valve released a slow, steady hiss of steam.
"The loss of her chief status was a decision her clan made independently of us. You know I – you know Kagrenac, even – had no say in that. Every decision made about what projects she could or could not work on was made by the respective Lead Architects in question – again, out of our hands. This was not a punishment, as you say, concocted in a backroom, we do not punish dissent—"
Rtheldren tried not to frown.
"I know you considered her a truth-ringer, Rtheldren," she continued. "Confronting a hostile Choir, with all those Architects' glares like daggers at her back. A lone voice in the din, trying to stop the slow march towards our self-inflicted end. At a young age, even. I understand that. I see the romance in it, even! But you, equally, must understand, to the Architects that have spent years, if not decades on projects that must – given the war on our heels, given the continuing hostility shown to our kind outside of Resdayn – must remain an absolute secret, trust is paramount. Many felt what Vyra did was a fundamental breach of trust. A breach of faith, even. That she would cast out details of the Numidium project – arguably the most dangerous and yet most vital project we have ever pursued, one that shall truly define what it means to be a dwemer – for all to see, it was, to them, heartbreaking."
Rtheldren shook his head.
"Why is it when you speak of her, I hear your voice and yet Kagrenac's words? Next you'll be telling me about her 'squandered talent' and 'waste of potential'."
A second valve released steam - a sharp hiss, this time.
"I am simply trying to explain their point of view. I suppose you think I abdicated all responsibility, don't you? Vyra can make her own decisions – and no, I would never chain her here if she felt it was not home, I don't care if others think her departure is regrettable – I am simply trying to explain– by the twelve–"
There was a sudden crack in her voice. She spat out a curse in an old, defunct dialect of Aldmeris he couldn't understand.
"She should have known the consequences. I do not even know what she was thinking. She could have spoken to me – before, before the Debate, before it was too late—"
There was a long, heavy silence.
"She trusted you," said Rtheldren. "She trusted you, perhaps more than anyone in the world."
Bthemetz stared at him.
"Tell me then. Tell me, what would you have had me do? What could I have possibly done?"
Rtheldren could think of a few things. She could have rallied behind her cause. Or she could have refused to denounce her. Or she could have stood up, in front of the Choir, regardless of her perspective, and decried the way they whispered of Vyra as a traitor and a threat, instead of a dissident unafraid of the truth, unafraid of what personal consequence it might bring, part of a long and proud Dwemeri tradition.
"You could have said no to Kagrenac," said Rtheldren.
At first, Bthemetz said nothing. Then she laughed. She laughed so bitterly, it almost sounded like sobbing.
"I pleaded with her for weeks. Don't do this. Don't destroy her. Let another speak, let another stand–" She shook her head. "Kagrenac turned around and nearly bit my head off for trying. 'She is like a daughter to me as well' I was told. 'Do you not think this is beyond difficult for me?' I was told. I didn't care. I did everything short of getting on my knees. I begged her to be merciful." She snorted. "Foolish. What value does mercy have for a Dwemer? Vyra herself would have had me hung if she'd known I'd tried to get Kagrenac to be gentle with her for even a moment in the Debate chamber. Do you know, when she realised I would be adding my voice to the Choir, she told me not to hold anything back." Bthemetz shook her head. "The pride that girl had. With that attitude, she could have almost been Kagrenac's own. Not that it would have made a whit of difference in the end, really."
She closed her eyes.
"We shall all be humbled by the Debate," said Rtheldren softly, quoting the old proverb. "Only ever humbled in its hall."
A piece of old religious scripture, part-forgotten, part-discarded.
"By its ears, by its lips, by its hands," finished Bthemetz.
From the diary of Knocks-on-Wood, Caravan Drover to Vyra Demnevanni:
Midnight. 14th, Last Seed. 1E 649.
Trade Job: Nine.
Route: Nchuleftingth -> Bamz-Amschend (via. Sadrith Mora). Progress: 26km. Wind: East, 96. Weather: Clear.
Lunch: Steamed ash yam and hackle-lo saltrice with crab.
Progress Report: Little to report. Steady progress. Calm weather. No sickness.
Miscellaneous Notes:
"What's your fondest memory?"
[TEAR IN PAGE. REST OF ENTRY MISSING]
"It's… well."
She looks distant. Like the world's going pale. There's nothing but grass under her knees and stars up dotting the sky and since the wind's stopped, all of a sudden, and it makes the quiet feel so loud.
It's late. You wonder whether maybe, maybe you both should've gotten flat-out drunk instead.
Dangerous territory, questions.
"It's my, ah." She speaks without warning. "My uma."
Before you can ask—
"Ma or pa, mum or dad, mama or papa—" She twists a hand, like she's the esteemed noble instead of the wild cast-off, as she says those words, "—or what have you. The chimer words for them always felt so wrong."
She takes a long sigh. Leans right back into the dirt. Doesn't look at you.
"My uma. I don't remember much about her. Suppose that's why it's so fucking fond." She hacks out a laugh. "Ironic. Half of what I remember isn't even mine. Her face, I only know what she looks like from the daguerrotypes my omas kept around. She's younger in those than I am by decades. Hadn't even gone on sabbatical yet—"
She shut her mouth, suddenly. And she's quiet for a while. She – damn, was this too far? You hadn't even expected an answer—
"I don't even know what she sounds like. You know, they say you'll mourn twice, the day you forget your uma's voice." There's a hasty laugh, tough, under her breath. "I mix hers up with my uncle's and some of my cousins'. Dawned on me a while back that I muddled them all up. I couldn't even tell you the day I forgot."
You can't see in the dark. You can't see her pull at the dirt beneath her fingers.
"The bits that I do remember, they're nothing much... but they're mine. Smell of her hands. Her favourite earrings – the ones I thought were ugly. The pattern of her, um, fuck – cutting-garment? Not a robe, sturdier, more practical, it's workshop-wear, but still long... smock, or frock, maybe?
"That was my favourite thing. It changed colour. I mean, they all did – they're made from brass weave and spidersilk, and brass – brass can be lots of colours, depends on the light and tone. I remember hers had pink in it, sometimes, if the light was right."
She breathes out, suddenly.
"And it had these..."
She gestures, tracing something you can't see in the air.
"These parallel lines, that would trail out of floating semi-circles, and those lines would criss-cross each other, cut above and below without ever touching..."
Her hands twist around each other, at something out of reach.
"... I don't know how to explain it, but they were almost... they looked almost exactly like these stringy little sea creatures that'd wash up on the shore near Kemel-Ze. Looked like baby netch jellies made of wire. Called it her jelly-fish-frock."
You can almost feel her smile.
"I could've spent hours tracing the pattern on that damn thing. How every circle seemed to interlock, but didn't. How close it all got to crashing into each other, but didn't. Used to jump with my fingers from fish-leg to fish-leg, until my uma got tired of it and told me I'd spent too long, gone and drowned in the sea. Glug-glug-glug."
She sits up, suddenly. Hands still stuck mid-air.
"My uma – I remember this time. I'd gotten really upset about something – no idea what, I just remember being so upset and just... running and clinging to my uma. Clinging to that smock... and I think about how it smelled of her, her and fresh soap my omas made, and sometimes soot and hot metal and sometimes a little of the sea, because the soap couldn't always get rid of that smell. I didn't really give a damn. It was my uma. My uma. I'd just hold on to her, my uma, and try to bury myself in her clothes and cling on for dear life."
Her voice goes soft.
"Guess I thought I might drown too, if I let go, huh."
She puts her hands on her knees. She doesn't look at you for the longest while.
"... it was a really nice texture," She mumbles under her breath. "Just... really smooth."
From the diary of Knocks-on-Wood, Caravan Drover to Vyra Demnevanni:
Midnight. 20th, First Seed. 1E 655.
Trade Job: Seventy-Two. Route: Tel Enora -> Kemel-Ze. Progress: 34km. Wind: North-West, 309°. Weather: light ash.
Lunch: Jellied nix-eels and mushroom assortment (Kemel-Ze style), with shalk egg.
Progress Report: Conditions calm. No sickness. Decent spirits amongst the crew – all gotten paid on time. Caravan made good progress despite ash. Cargo all accounted for. Vyra did not yell at Drels, or any of the crew today. Ahead of schedule for once.
[Scrawled in the margin: She's not as green as she was once. Almost competent now.]
Miscellaneous Notes: Breakthrough. Finally, Vyra's talking again.
Had thought I'd fucked it thoroughly. Vyra, being Vyra, the former pride of Kemel-Ze, hadn’t even given me a sideways glance for weeks since she found out.
[Scrawled in the margin: Can't blame her much. What kind of fucked excuse for a father does she have, employing some schmuck to spy on his favourite bastard?]
Had expected I’d have to talk sense into her, but she approached me first. Sat with me at the start of the night watch. I'd told her to get some shut-eye. It would be her turn in four hours, she needed all the sleep she could get.
“You’re on Sydras Demnevanni’s payroll,” she had said in response. First words to me in weeks.
Told her then, bluntly, that she wouldn’t like what she was going to hear.
“This isn’t about what I’d like, Knox—” [Scrawled up in the corner of the page: But she’d end up getting her way in the end, wouldn’t she?] “—You've been on Sydras' payroll. Since the beginning.”
“Vyra,” I’d told her. “Don’t.”
“Don’t you fucking ‘don’t’ me, Knox. You owe me some fucking answers.”
[Scrawled in the margin: Don’t owe her anything asides from what’s on the dotted line.]
“Demnevanni,” she continued. "Does he know about the Tel Mora shitshow from last year?”
Put my head in my hands. [She's like a battering ram when she gets riled up.]
“Answer the question, Knox. Does he know what really happened up en route from Tel Mora? What really happened with that job? Does he or doesn’t he?”
“Vyra, I'm his damned spy, you know the answer—”
“Don’t fuck with me. Does he know about that job? Does he know about Trade Job Fifty-Nine?”
[Should have lied. Should have just fucking lied.]
“No.” It came out so quiet. You could barely hear. “No, Vyra, he doesn’t.”
And she hadn’t expected that. She’d stepped backwards. She looked at me like I was something new.
“You didn't... so does he also know, then, that I now know—?”
“No, Vyra. He also doesn’t know that you now know about…”
“The fact you’re spying on me. That I know you have been spying on me for years. He truly doesn't know? I-- Why?”
Couldn’t bring myself to squeeze out a lie to that one. Couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Vyra might be a half-dwarf heretic who hadn't tried to even like the chimer she now lived among, having left her brass castle, and still, couldn't think of anyone except her damn self – [Scrawled in the margin: Who are you trying to kid, Knox?] – but she'd been wronged, well enough. And when you travel with someone for years, you also learn their tells. And Vyra – she saw straight through mine.
“So… what, Knox, you don't care? You don't fucking care?”
That, I just shrugged. What was left to say?
"I don't. I don't actually give a damn about Sydras Demnevanni."
And that was when she laughed – threw back her head and cackled. Laughed like the whole world had gone mad except her, echoed through the crags.
[Scrawled in the margin: Girl's fucked in the head.]
[Scrawled in the margin, directly underneath: No more than you, Knox.]
“Fuck me, Knox,” she’d told me. “I'd spent the past hundred days wondering if you were somehow loyal to him.”
“Loyal to Demnevanni?”
What had he ever done to deserve loyalty? That old wizard-lord wouldn't dare stand within five feet of a guar, not for his life.
[A note scrawled in the margin: He pays damn well. It’s the easiest damn coin you've made since you left the Marsh. You send a packet of coins home every month, don't you forget it.]
“Don't say it like it's fucking implausible," said Vyra. “I know he's a cunt, but—” Hist be damned, should have seen the grin on her then – Vyra was beaming. “Knox, you should have said. Would have made trusting you a damn sight easier.”
“Didn't know you trusted me one bit, Vee.”
Vyra huffed and crossed her arms.
“Knox, has it ever occurred to you that I have to trust you? The rest of the crew can go back singing up with the tones for all I care but this – this right here? Doesn't work without you. Besides—”
[Scrawled in the margin, somewhere: Think that was a compliment.]
[Scrawled in the margin, somewhere: She's called everyone but you incompetent. Keep your guar steady.]
"Besides what? Where's this going?"
"I want to do more jobs like Fifty-Nine again."
[Scrawled in the margin: Trade Job Fifty Fucking Nine]
“Vyra.”
“Which means I really have to trust you.”
“Vee.”
[Scrawled all along the margin, in rough strokes: Why, in the name of all the damned gods and beasts and things unholy, does Vyra, a bastard merchant who's never given a shit about tearing anyone else down to get what she wants, give a damn about what happens to Telvanni slaves? Is it guilt? Is it something personal? It couldn't be out of a sense of justice – she knows how this world works, she's too damn smart for that. Can't figure it out.]
“Knox, I've thought things through. I think we can minimise the risks—”
“There's no playing safe with that kind of cargo. Telvanni—”
“You think I don't know what the Telvanni do to them?”
[Scrawled, in larger and larger letters: Why does she care? Why does she care so much? What does this mean to you, Vyra?]
“Not so loud,” I snapped.
She dropped her voice to a fierce whisper.
“By all the fucking tones on this fucking plane of existence – Knox – Knox, please—”
“Please what?”
[Scrawled in the margin, somewhere: First or second time Vyra had ever said please in her life, I reckon.]
“Think about it. Just think about it. I – I can't just do the same-in same-out for another five years, pretending like nothing is wrong with this damn world. I'll actually kill someone.”
“Vyra, you can't—”
“Shut up. This will be more fucking important than anything we've ever fucking done in our sorry lives.”
I’d given her a hard look.
[Scrawled up in the corner of the page: What the in the four corners happened, Vyra? What happened in that little clan of yours, that raised you and fed you, where you never wanted for much, that you'd toss yourself out with the nix-hounds?]
[Scrawled up in the corner, directly underneath: Hate it when she's right]
Then I’d sighed.
“Shit, Vyra. You've really thought about the risks of taking on wanted folk as travellers?”
“I know the risks.”
“And when we get caught?”
“I know the risks.”
“And you’ve thought about the rest of us? What getting caught might mean for the likes of us? A Marsh exile, two Ashlander vagabonds, and a half-deaf sewer rat you've made out to be a stableboy—"
“Lyr isn't—”
“—I know she isn't – Let me finish.”
She halted.
“Jade's already got a price on his head out in Hammerfell. I can’t step foot in half the kingdoms of Argonia else they’ll have my head. You know what will happen to us?”
“I’ll take the fall—”
“But they’ll blame us. We're the leftover scraps, the dregs, the scum they've raked off the bottom—”
“You're not scum—”
“—But we're scum to them. And they're the ones that matter. They're the ones with the noose, Vee. Think about that.”
Vyra looked at me like she wanted to tear me apart. But didn't say anything.
Things got real quiet, after that. Didn't have much else to say. Vyra, reckon by the way her hands twitched, she started counting the stars. New moons, plenty of them out.
[Scrawled up in the corner: Know it's her favourite sky. Know she's sentimental for it, despite the fact that she pretends she couldn't give a damn. My theory's that she likes to count to keep it all in check. Always stock-keeping.]
It got comfortable after a while.
[Scrawled all along the margin: If I close my eyes, it’s not too far from the cornerclub days again. Trading stories about old jobs gone wrong and things gone sour like we could have been friends. Back when Demnevanni was still bank-rolling his favourite bastard daughter’s scheme to fleece all the other wizard-lords to Oblivion and back when we spent every coin of his dirty money after pay day on Flin and Wildgrass. We’d pour our hearts and guts out, then head out of town, gaze up at the stars, and smoke in a ditch somewhere. She’d count them, tell me shit about magnetic fields and constellations. Always surprised me that. On the worst days, I forget she’s anything other than a Caravan Master. The damn thing she refuses to call herself. Vyra, call me Vyra, she says— gets short with you otherwise. Like a Caravan Master might.]
She stood up suddenly. Held my gaze.
“I won't go ahead with it unless you’re on board, Knox."
"That's bullshit, Vee."
"No. No it's not." She looked me dead in the eye. “And you're not scum to me, Knox.”
Didn't say anything to that. [Scrawled at the bottom of the page: Hate it when she's right.]. Simply watched her walk off, shrinking from big to small as she moved up towards the horizon, up towards the smoke still billowing from the campfire. Still smouldering. Tried to look away. Looked up instead.
[Scrawled in the margin: Burnt silver, that colour – she'd say the tone, wouldn't she? – where she'd been looking, her patch of stars up in the sky. Pretty. But not much else to note.]
@thefangsharpener I wanted to make this make sense in-world, and the best context I could think for it was... honestly, shameless flirting.
please enjoy 1k words of gay banter and POV: you're a cocky butch who's trying to shoot his shot with a hot older lesbian couple. And you're all dwarves. Fade to black.
[1E370. An evening party somewhere in the void]
Mthana, professional precision engineer (boring), celebrated amateur brass sculptor (exciting), of Ncharundzel Clan (boring), a cultivated ‘sluttish boydyke’ in the Vvardenfell artist circuit (as the Alessians might have called him, if they had any say in it), but definite outsider in this particular equation of architects (exciting), leans in. It's a classic opening shot – beard-care, beard-grooming, anything that brings a butch close enough to admire what they've braided into their beard, to remark how it flatters their eyes or lips – that's being volleyed in a game of glances between the two of them, Bthemetz and Kagrenac.
First shot: Bthemetz, who now in the flesh somehow makes reclining back on a sofa with a dram of whiskey look lascivious, glances up to Kagrenac with a certain look, smiling in her eyes. Mthana imagines this something like a dare. Second shot: Kagrenac – who, now a few drinks down in this late night soirée and looks much looser than Mthana had previously imagined, that tightly-poised architect of reknown – is currently perched on Bthemetz's lap, with Bthemetz's arm wrapped firmly around their waist, and is glaring back at their devoted with such a... well, it's an inscrutable look, really, and Mthana hasn't the faintest what those handsome eyes could be saying. Third, fourth, and fifth shot: Mthana spends several moments looking at Kagrenac looking to Bthemetz who looks to Kagrenac who looks to Bthemetz for several fierce, studded moments, before Kagrenac pivots round suddenly, gives the least subtle once-over Mthana has seen – which honestly, Mthana thinks, with those kind of eyes, he might just allow – before they pin their gaze on his eyes so directly that Mthana thinks he might just snap—
and then a coy smile.
“Since it is you who is asking,” says Kagrenac, “I think we could be persuaded to divulge a few details.”
“Oh, I can do more than persuade.”
Kagrenac laughs.
“Isn't he something? Oh no – don't mistake me, I don't doubt your ability. Though really,” they continue, glancing at their partner. “It should be no surprise that Bthemetz is far more cultivated in this area than I.”
“So you're finally admitting the merits of a seven-step routine, Rena?"
“You and your seven-step routine.” They roll their eyes and glance back to Mthana. “To answer your question: I maintain that simplicity has its merits. Once a week: wash, condition gently, rinse, comb, air dry, re-braid.”
“Beading?" Mthana asks.
“Brass-gold and ebony.”
“A classic combination. Quite elegant.”
“Oh, very much so – though you used to be quite fond of amethyst, didn't you, darling?”
“Please, Bthemetz—”
“Amethyst?” This, Mthana had to hear.
“Oh, you should have seen her in the early two-hundreds – practically went braided the entire rainbow through her beard over the span of a decade. I still miss your jade phase, darling. Suited you deliciously.”
“Hm, I could picture them quite handsomely in jade.”
Kagrenac rolls their eyes. “You and your ravenous obsession with shades of green.”
“Turquoise, darling.”
“Oh, by the twelve and one tones.”
Bthemetz grins. It's more than cocky. She looks at Mthana, then, with that same dare on her face from before. It's suddenly quite difficult not to imagine what that looks like from underneath—
“Oh, don't be deceived by the aura of gravitas, Mthana. They quite enjoy a bit of teasing about their shameful youth.”
“Incorrigible as ever, darling.”
“But yes, before you ask – turquoise when I braid. Though it does put a lot of pressure on the follicles—"
She looks almost scathingly at Kagrenac but does not comment.
“—which should be avoided, when possible, to ensure maximum density and to prevent thinning. Which is the actual reason why I don't typically braid mine — though I'm sure you've heard of rumours saying otherwise — though it does require more maintenance as a result.”
“Rumours?”
Bthemetz meets Mthana's gaze directly. "Of a crude nature."
"She is actually rather proud of that reputation."
“Oh, Kagrena, please." Bthemetz then turns back to Mthana: "Whatever hearsay the rumour-smith has forged, there is, in fact, negligible evidence suggesting that beard length or decoration has any impact on performance in that regard—”
"Sexually, she means."
“Kagrena!” The mock-offence is accompanied by a generous squeeze of their hip. Mthana takes a note of the size and shape of her hands. Of their reach. “You know there's truly an astonishing amount misinformation on the topic, even amongst our lot. Honestly, Mthana, you'd be astounded about the amount of nonsense you overhear in public baths —” she pauses, shakes her head, as Kagrenac continues to watch Mthana with a smile growing on their lips. “Regardless, it has little to do with the reasons I keep mine unbraided.”
“Because you do love to go against the grain,” Kagrenac adds.
“Because I love a luxuriant, well-maintained beard more, darling.”
“Luxuriant?”
The word escapes Mthana’s mouth before he can really help himself.
“Oh, truly,” says Kagrenac. They’re only half-joking.
“Really, it’s why I’m such a stickler for moisturising – yes, Rena, I am going there – daily, if possible. I live and die for a good, well-made beard oil – no, quite seriously, it does make the difference—”
“Would you believe, she has about as many types of beard oils and conditioning creams as she does varieties of tea.”
“Don’t listen to them, Mthana. They can’t keep their hands off mine when we’re not in public.”
Kagrenac pauses, takes the edge of her little finger, and strokes it along her chin.
“I can’t argue with the results.”
Bthemetz laughs then, big and bright, and turns Kagrenac’s head to hers, kissing them quickly, with a mumble of a word like shameless sticky on her lips. Mthana watches them catch their breath. Their fingers in each other’s hair, in each other's beards. If he didn't have any restraint, he'd be biting his lip right now.
“She’s rather fond of the one with rosemary notes, Mthana. Have you tried it before?” They turn towards him now, Bthemetz’s smile wide and welcoming and easy, Kagrenac’s almost teasing him to speak. “You strike me as somewhat of a connoisseur.”
Something catches in his throat at the sight of them both. Well. It’s been a while since he’s been anything close to tongue-tied.
“I – truthfully, I haven’t yet had the opportunity—” he tries. Kagrenac and Bthemetz both have their eyes on him. Over him. All over him, actually. It’s quite the luxury, being feasted on, just by looks. It's also rather distracting.
“Not yet?”
“Not yet. Though I’d be more than eager to try,” he manages.
They both chuckle.
“More than eager?”
“Um, yes,” he says. “More than.”
“Good – I'm so rather fond of the eager ones.”
Another laugh between them.
“I think you’ll relish the sensation, especially if you're eager – though first,” Kagrenac’s smile is now against his ear, Bthemetz has pulled him close enough to touch, and both architects now have their hands on him: one tightly squeezing his arm, getting a sense of the feel of his bicep, while the other gently strokes his beard, her fingertips pulling his jawline upwards. “You must tell us more about your preferences. We’d hate to be unaccommodating.”
When you come to, it's after four thousand years of being stuck while the whole world's been spinning around you, and you barely recognise a thing. They don't recognise you, either. You're not the half-wild dwemer bastard daughter of some Telvanni wizard-lord, nor are you the architect formerly known as Rzarak, fallen from grace. You don't know if you can go back to being Vyra Rzarak Demnevanni. Maybe some clans can continue on like nothing happened, go back to their workshops where the tones stopped singing so long ago, but you -- you were determined to go your own way, to make something of yourself without the choirs and the clans chiefs trying to figure out what to do with you, without the acolytes who wanted to rip out your throat and the bell towers ringing your name and the half-dozen mentors who scratched their heads because you, Vyra, you could be something brilliant -- when you weren't being difficult, which was all the damn time. You'd taken one good, long look at that world -- and you'd left it all behind.
But not without having it all first. It was the Brass Architect herself who'd gotten through to you, after all, who'd seen you as more than 'trouble', and whipped you into shape. She'd taken one look at the engine in your big old brain, fed it the nuts and bolts of tonal theory, and got it to work, got you to work, got you to love, got you to hunger, and you grew. You grew until you towered over everyone else, one of the brightest minds of your generation, right until you were shining at the top of the spire. Introduced you to the big names, to the players and shakers, to Chief Architect themselves, who picked as one of their favourites - and they did pick favourites among acolytes, that was no secret. Yes, you were good. And once you realised exactly what you were reaching for, you wanted none of it.
The Numidium Project would ruin you all.
You had told people - you'd yelled your damn lungs out - that it was all no good, that it was all was rotten to the core, years before anyone else did. You brought it to the Grand Debate, where you were scolded like a child, and got ousted from Grand Chamber by the Chief Architect herself, who'd carved you up into little pieces and served them up to applause - but by the grace of the very same Chief Architect, you had not fallen fully from your previous stature. No, you'd been offered some write-off tonal engineer position in a minor outpost where you couldn't cause any more 'upsets' nor rouse any other 'upstarts'.
'She didn't want this to happen, Zakya. She's already overcome with grief,' you were told, by the woman you'd considered more than a mother, like you were already dead.
So you left.
You left the only world you knew and you spent forty years being raw and furious with the open skies and roads before you. You cut your hair and shaved your beard, threw out every precise instrument you'd ever touched for netch leather and a well-oiled crossbow. You cut yout hair and ran a caravan from Nchumzel to Tel Enora to half-way across Tamriel that you stashed with knock-off brass implements and any runaway who could pull their weight on your pathetic, wretched father's guilt money and you hated everything and everyone you saw along the way. You cut your hair and it always grew back long and thick and curly, no matter how savagely you cut it. You cut your hair and rode out your rage, tear up the road and everything on it, until the end--
-- until the Call came --
And 'I was right,' turns out to be no comfort at all, not even a bitter one, when the world's rolled on past you, and you haven't changed a bit.
Except that your hair's grown back.
You've realised you miss your grandparents. Even though they died fifty -- four thousand and fifty -- years ago. And you'll never see your cunt of a father again -- more's the fucking pity -- nor your half-brother, unless you waste half a funeral at an ancestral -- shit, what's the word for those things? Shrine?
Your hair's long past that feeling of fresh-cut grass and is beginning to curl around your ears. It itches.
You on keep counting their names. Lyr, the stable kid sweetheart who liked your guar -- you'd let her name them, Mistymuck and Needle and Calamity, that last one you both had a soft spot for -- she'd liked them far more than she ever liked you. She's gone. So is Knocks-on-Wood, the drover your father hired to spy on you, the only person you'd ever considered taking an arrow for. You'll never catch sight of Melyn Drels and his dimwit brother again, nor Shady Jade, nor the Alessian nuns, nor the Tel Enora cornerclub crew nor ---
Kagrenac would never speak to you again.
Kagrenac is still missing. You half-wonder whether she'd thrown herself into Red Mountain in spite.
But Bthemetz might. Bthemetz--
You learn that Red Mountain still smokes in the distance in Ald Resdayn, but the trees are now younger than you are. You only recognise half the road signs in Ald Cyrod. The traders on the high road gawk at you. The route is the same.
You miss them. You've always missed them. You'll always miss them. Your life will always be missing something, and you think you'll have to live with that. You're not happy, but you're no longer so furious you don't know what to do with yourself. The old world you wanted to tear up with you is missing. And you're what's left, Vyra--
When you get enough coin together to get a good look at yourself in a looking glass and not a muddy lake, rough stubble's coming through along the length of your jaw. You decide not to touch it. You pull your hand through your hair. Strange, how its length feels like a comfort now, when it had felt like a wound before.
When you raise a knife to your scalp--
When you raise a knife to your scalp, you think better of it. You finish your tea. It's the fourth era of some empire you've never heard of. Dynasties, what are they good for? You sign the guestlist with VYRA. You give no family name.
when her mother scolded her, it was for being a restless soul, for climbing up through the crevices she shouldn't have fit, for wriggling out of place, out of the stone-cut mould of a diligent worker and wife with rough hands and needs roughly met, she was stone-caste, couldn't she see? she wasn't meant to hunger. she wasn't meant to be anything more than the earth from which she came.
the sky is full of smoke, but the fire's all burnt out.
"I have this recurring dream. But I don't think it's a dream, actually."
you're in bed together. it's funny – neither of you needed to sleep. she's made of wires and salvage and you're made of ash and light glued together all wrong. but you liked the facade, on occasion.
"What happens?"
"Well... I meet her again."
you try not to tense up. all you know is scraps and what she's told you, in moments like this, but you've told her before - you can only imagine Kagrenac as someone truly giant. a colossus of a woman, a tower of her own making (even though, as Bthemetz has told you before, she was no taller than 165cm).
"And...?"
she squeezes your hand. stay with me.
"It... um, well it's a bit of a disaster, actually." there's a laugh. there's little humour in it. "You'd call it - what, a right old shitshow? A clusterfuck. A flaming shitheap."
"Wouldn't say 'right old'. But go on. Big fan of shitshows."
"Oh, you're such an ass," and she kicks you in the knee. but it's a game - you can't feel that kind of pain anymore (like, literally. your pain threshold is totally shot. thank you head trauma) and you're not about to let go now, so you hold her loose as she breathes into you, tries to open the cavity where her heart should be but instead there's an empty drum, and takes a deep breath.
"I mean – it's like nothing happened. Nothing at all. Nothing. It's the same damn argument, Kas. Ugh." she slumps back against your chest. "She's still trying to take me down like there's a fully-fledged choir watching her, demolish me, dismantle me, brick by brick, until I'm rubble, and then she'll grind me down into dust, and then put me in a smelter to make a knife out of, because she just doesn't know when to stop." she takes a weary, weary breath. "And you know, it used to - I mean, I was never scared, you know, Rena was... well, Rena until right up at the end and she wasn't my... I guess I saw what she was to others. And I used to find that... disquieting? Overwhelming? Like my chest was going to cave in, which doesn't even make sense, Kas, it's... am I making sense?"
"You're making sense, Bthem. It's alright."
"Okay. Okay.... well. It was... that, but it's... now... now, you won't fucking believe this, but it's just tiring. I'm just tired of it. I've grown bored of the same damn argument. It gets tedious – traitorous, treasonous, treacherous, all those darling ts she just loves to tick off as she tears into me, grinds me up to pieces, again and again, all the while, I'm standing there just thinking... can you please tell me something I don't know? Really, where's the novelty?" there's a laugh, that could be a cry that's been strangled. "And the thing is, the thing that gets me, is that I've tried pushing past that, I've tried... I've tried saying, Kagrena, open your damn ears, put your head to the audioscope, by the hearing-brass, just listen to where the world is! It's still live and kicking! It hasn't ended just because you're gone. Everything has changed and gone and it's still changing and going and.... and she's stuck in that moment. She's stuck there."
you think of Kagrenac, the colossus, entombed in her throne of singing metal. it's a false image.
"And it's... not as if she doesn't know. That's the thing. She's..."
she points to where there's a space.
where she told you, once, how the scholar-priests, sapiarchs, who thought their secrets the domain of their selected few, decided to carve a false god out of a woman's body. where the beat comes from.
you still struggled to get your head around that.
"She knows what year it is. She knows who's a candidate for the contested spot of High King and who's a puppet for the Empire. She knows... the Grandmaster of the Tong, she knows her name. She knows all of this." a deep breath. "And it does not matter to her in the slightest. Insignificant, in comparison. It pales." Her fingers curl slightly. "To what? To our arguments? To our impassioned debates over a dead machine. It's all dust, Kas. Dead pages. And even what's left of her, still caught up in the beat, it's... I'm talking to a relic. She's stuck. And she can't move on."
and she's rattling. closest she can get to the shakes, in this body.
"Bthem," you say, steady.
"I'm scared for her. Does that make any sense? Does that make any sense at all?"
you don't think you know the answer to that question. you never knew this woman. putting aside - as you've learnt to do with everything Bthem - all those nasty children's tales you were fed about the dwemer, faithless heretics who spun their own demise, you've pieced her together through wistful stories about her demolishing her opponents that Bthemetz finds funny for reasons lost in time and then late night crying fits Bthem refused to talk about for the first ten, twenty years. you know it can't be the whole picture. you know Bthem loved her once, loved her utterly. even if you can't fathom how.
"It sounds complicated."
"It... yeah, it is. I'm really worried."
you have to word the next question carefully.
"You think something's bad going to happen there... wherever she is?"
"That she's at the root of? No. She's too gone for that." something breaks in her voice. "But... Kas, she's trapped there."
you feel something in you tighten.
"She's trapped there of her own volition," you say evenly.
"She was backed into a corner," said Bthemetz. "You know this."
you did know this. you have put to memory every bitter detail of the account she gave of the most important event in Morrowind's history. you remember how much it hurt for her to tell.
"I know. But then she chose not to move on. She was pushed, sure. But you say she's still there, still stuck, still lashing out. But she doesn't have to be like that, you know?"
"Kasmei, she lost everything."
"So did you."
you moved on, you don't say. you lost thousands of years. twice. and you still find reasons to live.
"For what it's worth," you add. "I don't wish her eternal torment. Nobody deserves that. I just..." you scratch your head. "This is hurting you, you realise that, yeah?"
"Of course I do."
"So, forgive me, but I find it hard to sympathise with the person who's causing you hurt."
she's quiet, for a moment. you suspect she doesn't agree - that she brought this on herself, that this was deserved, somehow, and would bristle, if you pushed the point further - but you've given her something to consider.
and you almost - you almost draw her in tighter than you should. you want to hold her tight to her chese even though her heat tank is still half-functioning and she's hot and cold in all the wrong places.
if you were a normal person, you'd have scalded. if you were a normal person, it'd have left a mark.
but you remember, at the last moment, that she needs space to breathe.
"Hey, Kas?" she says, after a moment. "I'm not a complete relic yet, am I?"
"No," you say, without hesitation. "You're still kicking, aren't you?"
"I guess, yeah." her voice isn't as heavy. "I'm still kicking."
I love you, you'll tell her later, after you've brewed a pot of her favourite tea. you'll nip out, when the sun's still orange and she's still trying to catch some not-actually-necessary sleep, and pick the dark stemmed leaves you know she likes, from the highest point of the mountain where the air thins, gets herself giddy over. it takes a lot out of you to visit her in person these days - you feel layers of you shedding every time you have to phase somewhere, like the world wants to yoink you back to the void like a naughty child. stay here says the universe. no, you shout back. you suspect there might come a day where you can't do this, anymore. where you'll actually be dead. wouldn't that be funny, you've told Bthem, and she always tells you to shut your trap, because it's better that you're here. it's better, so you'll keep on struggling. you'll keep on swimming, until they tear you down.
"Good," you say to her. "It's a good thing, you're still here. A really good thing."
Send me a number and I’ll write a micro story using the word or phrase
(creator note: I recommend 3-10 sentences but go for a longer piece if you really feel it! Replace pronouns as needed for the character / point of view)
There's a stuttering silence. The machines whir and hiss and turn and clatter behind you. Dozen of stunned faces – architects and academics in tall hats, aghast – turn towards you, and they stare. (Despite your efforts, it has proven impossible to find her alone, unaccompanied by a whirl of acolytes and experts and engineers and entourages orbiting around her, who follow no matter where she goes.)
She, however, does not mirror the horror dripping off every colleague’s face – she looks at you intently, keenly, but beyond that, there's barely any recognition of the gravity of your question at all. As she watches you, you feel this faint, almost clawing sensation behind your eyes, and you can't help but wonder if she will snap them out like a tired hawk – but it's just a feeling. One, you think you'll question later, and wonder if it was her reputation speaking for her that made you assume she’d do any such thing.
She answers, finally, while you're lost in your pondering.
"I am fine. Is that all?"
You snap your head up. And feel something constrict in your throat, just looking at her stare. And you feel yourself nod, deferentially, and then shake your head, shamefully, and then spin around and out the door before someone can wave you out.
It's not like she looks any different. If anything, she looks more polished, rather than less. You're well aware that the grand gilded Kagrenac of the Debate Chamber is half-fiction, a romance of academes. In the heat of the workshop, in front of the forge, in the midsts of a lecture for her most dedicated acolytes where passion is fire, you'll catch hairs flying out of place, sweat on her brow, dirt on her cheek, rumples, mistakes, folds. It wasn't too long ago, when you were still an apprentice-in-training yourself, that the running joke was that you couldn't single Kagrenac, Chief of Tones, out from sight alone in the workshop din, you'd tap the wrong person's shoulder twice before you'd find a small, simply dressed dwemer with tired eyes and an even more weary tone, and tell yourself: ah, this is Kagrenac.
Kagrenac, now, however? There is nothing out of place. Not a single strand. It's exactly the thing that tells you something is wrong. You’re not close enough, though, to be within reach of the answer. You wonder if anyone truly is.
fic request: bthemetz and kagrenac having a silly argument
disclaimer that despite owning a proper teapot and strainer I’m a ruffian who just drinks builder’s brew + yorkshire tea bags by the gallon and I am always talking out of my arse about tea.
also some humorous (I hope) sexual references but absolutely nothing explicit, with a clear fade to black.
Her wife sits in the parlour with her freshly made tea – a fragrant variety that veers on the right edge of sweet, selected and measured and poured to the exact degree by Bthemetz’s own hand, one must add – wearing a smooth, unrumpled look beneath the moonrise on the edge of the known universe that should have been absolutely spellbinding.
“You are looking at me,” says her wife, as she sips – almost daintily, it feels like it's mocking. “Like I have said something utterly preposterous.”
At this exact moment, Bthemetz raises her hands. They are about to explode bombastically with fifteen or sixteen different fiery gesticulations of varying shapes and forms that one could probably chart into an avant-garde interpretive dance routine worthy of the Resonant Opera, were one bloody-minded enough, and her wife, well – like so many things, she had practically defined the term. Perhaps she was planning the steps.
“Preposterous doesn’t even cut it! I could think of half a dozen ways – no, half a thousand ways – of describing this act of culinary barbarism. This is diabolical. Obscene, even!”
An eyebrow raises.
“Obscene?”
If one was paying rapt attention to the curvature of her wife’s lips between those delicate sips, one would have noticed the slightest lapse – the smirk curling upwards at the end of each drink. Yes. Definitely planning out all the steps.
“Obscene! Utterly obscene.”
“Hmm.” Another sip. “I had thought you were quite a fan of obscenities.”
Bthemetz leans forwards.
“Not,” and the words come through a grin of gritted teeth, “When you insult my best tea.”
To the passive observer, it might appear this little kerfuffle was surely going to end in blood splatters on the antique carpets or, more scandalously, a broken bedframe. Her wife's expression reveals nothing either way. Perhaps she is considering the salicious details of each outcome.
“You do so love to exaggerate,” she says, finally. Her tone is flat, almost curt, but her words linger just a little longer than usual. Tasting of sweet tea. “Do you really think,” she begins, before she takes one, long, purposeful sip. “That I would dare insult something so dear to you? Really, Bthemetz?”
“I would think you were more than bold enough, and some.” She practically hisses the s. She also – carefully, one should note – places her fingers, with a soft, practiced touch, along her wife's bare forearm. "Or – please do tell me, I would hate to assume arrogance – am I so wrong about the monumental Kagrenac? The brilliant architect, the spectacular trail-blazer, the once-in-a-thousand-generations genius shit-stirrer extraordinaire?"
A roll of the eyes.
”Do remember that I merely expressed a simple preference, Bthemetz.”
“Any comparison to him is an insult.”
A long, elegant hand, ringed in gold, drapes over Bthemetz's, and begins to trace the outline of her fingers.
“I understand that you might not agree with Yagrum's methodology, but–”
“Oh, don't you dare complete that sentence–”
“–his infusions are innovative in their own right, with a number of associates have attested personally to me of their good quality–”
“But Kagrena, the flavour is completely wrong! The earthen notes are simply overpowered by the fragrance and what's left is just bracing, just disgustingly sweet– one would be better off drinking lukewarm dishwater than that saccharine, soppy, mess–”
Kagrenac places her tea cup down, and pushes it to the side.
"I like it.”
Bthemetz stands up, suddenly. She puffs herself up as much as a dwemer of five feet and two inches possibly can.
“I like it,” Kagrenac repeats. “I like what you term, so eloquently, a soppy, disgusting, sweet mess–”
“You’re incorrigible. Utterly incorrigible!”
Kagrenac stands up, suddenly. She is exactly two and a half inches taller than her wife. The half an inch counts.
“Far me it from me to tar your spotless reputation as a firebrand, but you're so steeped in your backwards, single-minded neo-tea-traditionalism that you haven't even given it a worthy chance–”
“Forgive me for having a functioning set of taste buds!”
“You’re being absurd!”
“Absurd? For having standards? No, you've just denigrated my finest dragonpearl tea through comparison to some – some hack's backyard alchemy–”
“I like it.” She repeats. Firmer, this time. “I like it more than–”
“Don’t even say it!” Bthemetz snaps. “What will be next? Next, you’ll tell me that you're going to defend our good friend Dumac's flavourless swill?"
Her wife throws back her head and laughs. “Oh, don't be gauche. Even his own attendants know his tea is undrinkable. Do you think me that mad? Truly?”
“Perhaps! I don’t know! I might not even know how to trust you again, after this – this betrayal – this treachery – I had thought you were a dwemer of excellent taste – what has happened to that? What has happened to that, Kagrena?”
They are stood exactly breaths apart. Toe to toe. Close enough to snatch the words straight from the tongue.
She can still smell tea: sweet, fragrant, almost overpowering.
“Don’t place words in my mouth,” says Kagrenac. She places a gold-tipped thumb firmly on Bthemetz’s chin, as to tilt it upwards. Just by the slightest fraction. “I might not be so kind as to spit them out next time.”
What could one possibly say to that?
Bthemetz – well. Bthemetz, who is shaking and grinning with fury and something else she can’t describe, she lunges at her wife.
Kagrenac appears a little incredulous, a little rumpled (finally) to be pinned to the wall.
“Go ahead,” says Bthemetz, to her wife, grinning. “Bite, then.”
---
(In the end, after all that fuss and kerfuffle over spilt tea, heavy duty carpet cleaner and a new and, yes, much sturdier bedframe are both, in fact, required. Well. Would you believe it.)
