secret santa for @everybodyknows-everybodydies: wizard girlfriends stargazing! talking to you about tes, writing and whatever else over the last few months has been a joy and a delight; you're a lovely person and I hope you're having a splendid holidays!! I have a part ii of this gift (sort of) (it got away from me a bit) which I will post in a couple days bc I am extra :) details + progress image under the cut
+ here is the base image before I added the background or lighting
"The differences between you and the Master Wizard," seethed Faralda, nostrils flickering with flame, "are so - incalculable, insurmountable - the very first, that you would ask - that you would dare! - such, such - disrespect, familiarity-!"
"I should say we are different, in some regard," said the Eye of Magnus mildly, in that wretched cadence, as calm and wry as Mirabelle at her best. Those dark eyes sparkled in a beloved face, glitters of potent radiant magicka glinting off black eyelashes like fallen snow. "Given that Mirabelle Ervine is a smear of ash across yonder hall, and yet, here I stand. But I do know you, enough to claim, yes, familiarity. I remember you. I remember - the state of things between us, such as they are."
"Such as they were," Faralda corrected in a voice of bitter stone.
The Eye's terrible grave mask softened. "Is it truly such a loss?" it wondered. "I am alive, and greater than ever for having known myself, I will live - have lived! - a thousand lifetimes in the moment of my making and my death. The pain - and there was pain, terrible pain, I am not too proud to say - but it is nothing, now. I am more than I was, but I was - once, yes - this woman you love."
Faralda's shoulders slumped inward, careworn boughs creaking under winterweight. "If that were true," said she, all granite-glacier grind, "you would not follow at my heels, you would not hound me, with questions, with - with your invitations, of all things. You would not ask me why I grieve."
"Then I am sorry," said the Eye, sanguine, "not that I love you now, but that I - when I was only one - have loved you less."
Flushing up pale and ill, Faralda shuddered away. "I loathe you. I wish you had never returned."
The Eye cocked its head, dislodging its ash-down layer of skin-tingling arcane dust. Mirabelle's wry little coil of a smile curled its unforgivable lips. "Ah, but then where would we be? You might have had to hold the vote to pass the staff to poor Tolfdir, after all."
It is a rare clear day in Winterhold when Faralda seeks Mirabelle out in the courtyard. A pale grey sun is wan in a brilliantly blue, breathtakingly cold sky. Ice cracks when Faralda puts her shoulder to the door from the Hall of Countenance; the cold instantly slips needy nips into the seams of her clothes. She breathes deep and ignites the fire-wick inside herself, feeding it and fanning it with morsels of magic. Smoke wisps from her nostrils when she exhales, curling over the tips of her ears like the warm licks of a summer breeze.
The outspread arms of Shalidor are daggered with icicles. The wind whistles between them like they are the grinning teeth of ice-wraiths. The ghosts from the sea reaching up to the lonely College on its bulwark perched on the crumbling edge of the abyss find no purchase today, the courtyard is salted, sweet and lovely, melting ice making mirrorlike pools to the sky, blue within blue. Salt-grit sparkles on the pathways and crunches beneath Faralda’s boots.
Mirabelle is perched on a bench beneath Shalidor, leaning back against the carven robes with her face angled to the watery sun. An empty teacup, no longer steaming, sits politely at her hip. Her eyes are closed against the light, but a book rests in her lap. Her finger holds her place, tucked between the pages.
“Mirabelle!” calls Faralda, and Mirabelle twitches. Sheepishly, she blinks her eyes open, shading her eyes against the thin, sharp light with her hand.
Faralda stops short, her robes swirling around her ankles, and something cold and thin in her chest curls up to die. Mirabelle, who never rests, let herself sleep in the sun - until Faralda woke her.
“Faralda,” Mirabelle says at last, squinting up at her. Consciously, Faralda sidesteps so that the sun does not silhouette her tall figure quite so dramatically. Her shadow falls over Mirabelle’s cheek, wiping the sun-sparkle from her deep brown eyes.
“How can I help?” asks the Master Wizard professionally, straightening up. Faralda’s gaze falls to Mirabelle’s nimble hands, sliding her omnipresent scrap of parchment out of the back of her book and leaning it against her lap. She shakes a quill from her sleeve, wetting the nib with a flick of magic. Her slender finger slips free of its place, Faralda watches the book fall shut and wonders if it misses her touch, her warmth.
The chance of any remark or apology turns to ashes on her tongue. Stiffly, Faralda clasps her hands behind her back before they get any stray, stupid ideas about the dark lock of hair that tickles Mirabelle’s cheek.
“The room scheduling came out yesterday-” she begins sternly, and Mirabelle pinches the bridge of her nose. Her fingertips turn white at the end when she puts pressure on. Her hand drags over her cheek as she drops it back into her lap, exposing the secret softness of her palm; Faralda’s ear tips warm.
“Ah, yes,” she interrupts, wearily, “The Archmage’s efforts were-”
“-Appreciated, quite,” Faralda adds, staring rigidly at a shrunken snowberry bush, “But I am afraid I cannot have remedial Destruction students sharing class-space with ‘Alchemical Approaches to Combat’. I should think the issue is clear. Bombs do not mix well with uncontrolled fire.”
“Certainly, Professor,” says Mirabelle, “I shall have an updated schedule that takes into account our preexisting risk assessments sent round by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Thank you,” says Faralda, grimacing over that near-disaster.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” Mirabelle asks. She checks her list, quill dancing over the neat, tidy scrawl. “Ah - did you sign for the shipment from Birna this morning…?”
“She is expecting the delivery at the end of the week, now,” Faralda says, “I took the liberty of informing the cooks already. The menu has been adjusted.”
Mirabelle blinks, as if startled to find a job already completed without her input. She smiles, small, spidery lines around her eyes crinkling up.
“Well, that is a relief,” she says lightly, and the line of Faralda’s spine itches.
She stirs the embers turning over in her gut to a flare of magic which settles around Mirabelle’s shoulders, a flameless cloak that radiates a heat so strong it distorts the air. Mirabelle shivers pleasantly, leaning back against the statue.
“Oh, don’t,” she says, not sounding as if she minds in the slightest, “You’ll have me dozing off.”
“If you are at risk of such anywhere outside in Winterhold, perhaps you ought to prioritise your rest before you freeze to death,” Faralda retorts, “Unless, of course, you are so eager to resign your position that any death will do, in which case I may remind you that you are hardly the only capable sorcerer with a head for paperwork in the College.”
Unexpectedly, Mirabelle snorts at that. It is a peculiarly graceless sound; she covers her mouth when she does it. Her hand is trembling finely, worse than usual. When the sun catches her short, round nails they gleam, and Faralda’s stomach flips. The folds of skin over Mirabelle’s knuckles and the joints of her fingers are lined with creases, as delicate as the smile lines by her eyes, lips.
Decisive, Faralda sits quickly beside her, fussing with the fall of her robes. The heat from her spell radiates off Mirabelle and glosses the ice garlanding Shalidor’s steep and stern face. Mirabelle moves the teacup to make space. Faralda’s eyes fail to make their way back up to her face, instead, she lingers over looking at Mirabelle neatly folding the parchment back into book and tucking the quill away, absorbed by her efficient movement.
She has a scholar’s hands, lithe and soft, with wide knuckles and sturdy wrists; hands that could be strong, if she wanted them to be. There is a long-faded magic burn on her left hand, barely perceptible from the natural warm shade of her skin, the only sign of Mirabelle casting once long ago a spell too great for her reserves. It is perhaps just the right size to be kissed.
The silence that falls between them is not uncomfortable. Faralda watches the ice melt on the tightly-furled leaves of the withered snowberry, dripping into the ashen dirt. Out of the corner of her eye, she observes Mirabelle fiddling with the book; On Oblivion. Her fingers delve in and out of the pages, feathering them against her skin as if she enjoys the sensation. Mirabelle suddenly glances up; caught before she can look away, Faralda’s ears pink and pin back.
Quietly, Mirabelle asks, “I’ve seen you looking. Do you like my hands, Faralda?”
Faralda flushes up painfully; her stomach is lumpen and leaden with cold dread. Ice slides down her spine in thick, ashen clunks, like dropping failed experiments off the bridge into the deathgrip of the churning black water. Her grip on her robes turns rigid; she wishes, abruptly, to plunge into the sea or erupt into flames - whichever would be the speedier death. “You mock me.”
“No, not at all,” Mirabelle says at once, insistently earnest. Faralda senses she is looking at her with her big, dark eyes, but Faralda cannot bring herself to raise her gaze from the pathetic snowberry bush; she stares at its twisted, shrunken branches and sees not a thing. “Not at all,” Mirabelle repeats. There is a softening in her voice; something like gentleness, something not bearable at all.
Faralda wars with herself; she strangles lightning behind her teeth, swallows bile rancid as tar. Her muscles are tense; she realises, dimly, she is shaking, and on the heels of that awareness comes a sudden and intense surging of something too incandescent for rage. She balls her hands into fists and forces the angry sparks of magicka into a smooth, controlled burn of smoke out her throat. Her nostrils fog like thready campfire.
Mirabelle waits, unmoving except the over-exhausted tremor in her hands clasped neatly in her lap. “I may be mistaken, of course,” she says, very kindly.
Faralda’s lips cram into an agonisingly thin line. She is silent for a long, dragging moment, for she cannot quite bring herself to speak.
“Nothing would change if I was,” Mirabelle adds, “I believe, perhaps, I-”
“You are not,” Faralda’s voice grinds out from some horrible, wretched pit, “mistaken.”
Shoulders slumping, Mirabelle’s breath whooshes out of her. She presses a hand to her heart. Faralda braces herself.
“I had hoped so,” she replies softly, and Faralda’s toes scrunch inside her sensible boots. “Faralda.”
Faralda receives the sound of her own name with a flinch. She stares down at Mirabelle, wild around her eyes, bounding heart in her chest.
“I admire your cheekbones,” Mirabelle says, quite simply, “And I’ve always liked your eyes. Fierce and kind.”
Something on Faralda’s face makes her smile a little, not ungently. Mirabelle, quite deliberately, cups her own cheek in her hand. Mirabelle’s soft cheek fills her palm, her thumb tucking under the curve of her jaw. She traces the curve of her cheek with her nails; Faralda swears she hears the rasp of keratin on skin.
Molten, Faralda shudders, and Mirabelle’s cheek darkens, but the smile lingers, small and pleased. She tangles her hands together in her lap again, fidgeting her thumb over her knuckles.
Faralda opens her mouth, but nothing sensible presents itself, so instead she wrestles her gaze to the dying snowberry bush and thinks that someone really ought to take responsibility for it. Perhaps she should put a bulletin up.
As the prickling feeling of exposure ebbs, the silence becomes different, resting but speaking. Mirabelle’s presence is companionable, even when she draws her quill out and presently begins to work on a mockup of the schedule she promised Faralda, apparently from memory. Faralda refreshes Mirabelle’s warming-spell, and, murmuring thanks, Mirabelle angles her shoulder so that Faralda can watch the balletic movement of her hand and wrist as she writes. She does not glance up to check if Faralda takes the offer, makes no mention of the conversation Faralda turns over in her mind like a jeweller scrying for diamonds.
After a while, Mirabelle sighs, apologetically. She does not need to speak; Faralda already knows that their stolen moment is over, sacrificed to Mirabelle’s ever-looming workload.
“I must prepare for a lecture,” says Faralda, so that Mirabelle does not have to.
Rising to her feet beside her, Mirabelle says, “Very good, professor. I will see you later, I’m sure.”
“At the dinner bell,” Faralda says.
“Yes,” says Mirabelle, with a touch of that gentle amusement. Her eyes shimmer a thousand hues of rich brown in the sun. “At the dinner bell.”
“I will see you then,” Faralda repeats, then “Do not freeze to death, Master Wizard.”
Mirabelle’s lips quirk, but before she can say anything more, Faralda turns on her heel and strides away, salt-rime shining on her boots like everyday diamonds.
