#aelfgyve

[unmaskingthedivine]

Hi! Please may I ask a question? When starting out with shadow work, is it normal to get the feeling of "well that's done then, nothing else to analyse, you're all better now" after every small breakthrough, even if you intellectually know there is a whole lot more and you're nowhere near done? Is this the Shadow's early attempts to defend itself and keep you from prying?

Based on personal experience, I can only assume that that is a common feeling. Indeed, it could be a preliminary defense tactic. Many times a defensive reaction is merely out of agitation and aversion, especially when you’re starting off. You’re stirring things up and feeling around in the dark, so naturally there is going to be some resistance and you’ll have to learn how to identify and persevere that.

But I feel like I should point out that sometimes a defensive reaction is a legitimate act of self preservation– not preservation of the shadow itself, but of you as an integral being. We have these subconscious barriers for a reason and sometimes we just have to know when it’s best not to break one down, to leave it up for the time being until we strengthen ourselves a little more internally, so we can prepare ourselves for what might be revealed beyond that barrier.

It could also be a cue to give yourself some time to assimilate the small breakthrough(s) you have had. Shadow work is an ongoing process, it’s never really “finished”. With this in mind, it is perfectly okay to make some degree of progress on an issue and then “put it on a shelf” as I like to say– meaning, take time to absorb what you’ve learned and apply it to your life in whatever ways you can, but set aside the issue itself for further evaluation. You can always come back to it later.

Many things are multifaceted and run deep in the psyche, so it is not likely you will resolve many things with much immediacy. While there is undoubtedly a certain extent of prying and discomfort that is necessary to make headway, there is also a great degree of patience required– I don’t think this is stressed enough. 

So sometimes it’s okay to submit to that feeling, just don’t be fooled by the sentiment. Don’t trick yourself into believing that something is “done” and will never need consideration again, because all that will do is help push it further into the subconscious.

[shadows-of-almsivi]

Aruvem, what do you want to do when you grow up? Are you going to be an ordinator like your older brothers and your brother-sister?

Be a pirate! Or a hunter, maybe! Or a soldier like Mother was, I’d be really good at being a soldier, except Mother says you have to be good at following orders and I don’t like that. I wanna be a soldier but the sort of soldier where I don’t get told what to do, and I can go anywhere I want and get lots of money. You know? That kind.

I know it’s really important to be an Ordinator, and Mother and Father would be real happy if I did that so maybe, but I’d get bored a lot, I think. And there’s even more rules for Ordinatoring than there is for soldiering. Drer and Ral are already Ordinators, anyway, and Mori is lots of things still and he’s nearly 55.

[shadows-of-almsivi]

Vorialmo, what's your favourite thing to bake? How do your relatives treat you after marrying a Dunmer? And where do you see yourself with Moraelyn in a hundred years' time?

Cinnamon scrolls! Definitely cinnamon scrolls. Have you ever had them? Ah, wait here, I’ll make you some. 

Here, some ground Valenwood cinnamon and some fine sugar in the butter, we beat this until it’s blended, then we spread it over this pastry sheet– Not to the very edge, or it will leak out. Now, good, we just roll it up like this… And slice it into rounds, you want a good, sharp knife for this or the pastry will tear. Rae keeps our knives well-sharpened, it saves us a fortune at the smiths. A brush of the melted leftover butter mixture on top, and it’s into the oven until they’re lovely and golden and ready for the icing sugar. 

They’re very simple to make, but you see, they’re Rae’s favourite, and seeing him so happy with his tea and his pastries is what I think about for the rest of the day. Especially when he gets the powdered sugar on the end of his nose; he can be so precious…

-

Ah. Family matters. Relations are… Cooler, yes. But then, they were never very pleased about me being a baker, either, they wanted me to become a mage. The Athorins are technically exiles, so it’s not quite as fierce a hatred as it could be, but it’s still… Uncomfortable. Even though Rae has told me it’s alright for me to lie and say he’s a woman, if it makes it easier, I won’t insult him like that. My family will accept us as we are, or they won’t, but I won’t have them denying Rae who he is. 

There’s a sense I get that one of my fathers is waiting for me to change my mind and decide to settle down properly with some Altmer lady, like I’ve just been acting out all this time and I’ll become a fine, respectable gent someday. One of my mothers drops unkind hints to me that Dunmer are untrustworthy people who will turn on me and cut my throat in my sleep, and warns often of the evils of Daedra worship. I’ve tried to tell her that Rae isn’t a Daedra worshipper, really (not that I told her what he actually is), but it doesn’t do much good, I think. 

Some others seem happy that I’m happy, but they don’t accept us yet, not the way they might if I’d married a high-born. I’ve told them that Rae is basically kind of high-born, from what I can understand of Dunmeri society. I hope they’ll come around. I miss visiting for New Life festivals and things, it’s been a long time since I last went to Wayrest and I miss it. Maybe this year, we’ll come to visit anyway, and they can see for themselves how happy Rae makes me.

-

A hundred years, goodness… I can barely think of what I’ll be doing next week, most of the time, but let’s see. Well, I think I’ll have my own bakery, at the least, so that I won’t be filling up the kitchen with flour and broken eggs. We have so many arguments about egg whites on the counters. I’ll have hired some assistants to help me, maybe an apprentice once I think i’m good enough. We’ll move from these gloomy little tenement flats to a townhouse above the bakery. Maybe we’ll move to Anvil, for the warmth. That does sound nice, and Rae will like the heat, he’s always chilled here. 

Rae will likely take up tailoring and seamwork full-time, I think, he’s very good with a needle and he does get bored so easily. We will have long, comfortable evenings reading in our library (we will, of course, have a library by then, not just this rickety bookshelf made of bricks and stacked planks. Neither of us are particularly good carpenters, you see). Rae will be as beautiful as ever, and perhaps learn to accept custard without arguing, and I will have the most wonderful woollen sweaters anyone has ever seen and learn how to play the fiddle.

[shadows-of-almsivi]

What did it feel like when Vivec changed your body? How did your family react?

Oh… Agonising. The death of the old flesh was a necessary pain, one I expect Lord Vivec meant me to endure to prove my devotion and dedication to my altering. One must have a deep passion for their desired path, and the root meaning of passion is to suffer; this was never lost on me, drilled deep by Temple teaching and the words of my grandfathers. My Lord’s Love came to me in a belly full of burning coals and a chest that tore itself inward. I was glad for this, this opportunity to show my devotion, though I was very small and the pain was often so great as to make the daily walk to the Temple take all morning.

The pain itself is easier to describe than what that pain meant to suffer through. If you felt pain as you grew, perhaps in your bones as they stretched… It was akin to that, perhaps. A little similar to childbirth, in the later days; appropriate, really, to be rebirthing oneself through one’s own flesh. It is not easy to describe an inverse of puberty, a reversing and a regrowth in a third direction. Where what once grew gradually and without much notice, there was instead a violent retraction within the course of a moon. Not instantaneous, but fast enough to see and painful enough to feel naught else. The agony inside remained for a year, the feeling of things being cauterised and rearranged and repurposed.

I lost, or rather I yielded, my ability to conceive. This was the last to go, and my final choice. I remember the Temple priests theorising in the next room as I prayed at Lord Vivec’s shrine and clutched at my aches: that a flattened chest could never nurse young, that the life-giving within my womb would be used for my life-long alteration, that perhaps this was purposeful on the part of Lord Vivec to prevent the breeding of monsters, as had been begotten upon him in days of scripture. I did not hesitate long at the time, desperate to escape my birth-skin and blazingly devout in my suffering. I gave permission to Vivec in my prayers, offered up my sacrifice of future children along with my incense and the pearls I gathered from clams I had dug from the riverbed.

I began to grow again, in my new shape, since I was still young enough to have growing left to do. I know I seem almost Bosmeri-sized compared to some of my kind, but I’m only a little smaller than perhaps I ought to be. No matter. A little height and a few life options are a small enough price to pay, for the touch of divinity and a body I could accept a lifetime within. And nothing comes without sacrifice.

My brothers were the first to learn of my deep unhappiness with my skin. It is expected; we were always much closer to each other than to our parents, and it was impossible to hide my discomfort from them once I had first noticed that my growth did not mirror theirs. I was afraid to tell my parents at first, supportive and loving though they were. I think I was afraid that they would think me a childish liar, jealous of the attention paid to my newborn sister, or else afraid I would be thought mad. My brothers did the telling on my behalf, while I hid on the roof of our house to listen, sick with anxiety.

My father was afraid for me, I know now. Perhaps he was right to. He knew that, blessing or not, those of my affliction did not tend towards easy lives outside of the Temple, and he knew also that I would never be happy as a shrinebound priest; I’d been raised already with a love of the blade and spear, and such things could not be undone so late. And it was true that even Vivec themselves had not managed a safe life for themselves, and so went all that followed so closely. He mourned me as a daughter, as a bearer of his grandchildren, in secret to my mother when he thought me asleep. I do not begrudge him this, and he loved me fervently as son-daughter, to the point of almost self-parody.

My mother feared far less than she praised, and once it was plain that my fidgeting and sullen moods had not been so exasperating for no reason, she spent a great deal of time at the Waiting Door, spreading the news to aunts and uncles and grandparents. Most were, frankly, unsurprised; great-grandfather Elinan admonished her for not noticing sooner. My great-aunt-uncle Suvarys demanded I be sent down to visit at once, so that ze might show me how to properly apply my eyeliner in ways befitting one of my skin; ze had once shared such afflictions, though had preferred not to seek alteration.

A few of my most distant ancestors were quite displeased, and I did not understand why. Perhaps I never will.

[shadows-of-almsivi]

♝ :Ever killed for sport? | ♛ :A time when mercy was requested but not provided

♝ :Ever killed for sport?

Sport, no. Exercise... Perhaps. 

One must remember that bandits are indeed still people. Necromancers, much as I am loathe to admit it, are still people. But a blade raised in defense is blameless; is it not right to slay those that mean you harm?

And if I happen to seek out bandit-infested areas for my afternoon walks, or choose to explore ruined forts that I know to carry rumours of necromancer hideouts... Well...

A mer must keep busy, hm?

♛ :A time when mercy was requested but not provided

Oh, many. Many.

The guilty beg the loudest, most often. Do not misunderstand, I have always balanced judgement as carefully as a merchant’s scales. The child of a line of Ordinators does not so easily forget the concept of mercy and justice. It is this that has condemned countless men and mer. Too many beasts walk upright and without reprimand, just as too many fine folk die in the gutters like animals.There is nothing so repugnant than the grovelling of the vile and the depraved, in the moment that they understand that they will die. They twist and leap in desperate directions, like a rat trapped in a pot over a cookfire. I remember one, a corrupt city official, who tried to plead for his life on the grounds that he was a widower and a father. When this did not sway me, he offered me his daughter. For... Carnal purposes.I slit his throat. I sent every coin of my reward to his daughter, a refund in full. Men such as that, I will gladly silence free of charge.

[shadows-of-almsivi]

VII and XXII?

7 and 22, here you go!

[bookofalmsivi]

Little Neht, how can I be happy in life?

When I get sad, I try to find a lizard and if I find a lizard, then I am happy because I got a lizard and it's my friend, but if you cannot find a lizard, then it's very good if you find a, a, a chicken because then you can eat its eggs and that will make you happy.  You're supposed to cook them, I guess, and turn them into boiled eggs or scrambled eggs, but if you know how, you can just eat the insides out while they're still goopy.  I also get happy when people aren't mean to me, so if people are mean to you, then bite them until they're too scared to be mean to you.

[relvinmeru]

Creepy Mephala art

The little neck arms are based off of the pedipalps of real spiders; small limbs that they use to put food into their mouths and manipulate small objects. I got a bit bored of the depictions of Mephala as some kind of lady with spider legs so decided to go a bit further with the whole spider thing.