“I haven’t a clue what I’m going to do with myself now,” admits the priest as he pours in a bit more of that delightful rum into his tea.
“This life, it is over. I suppose it’s time. I’ll figure out something to do, somewhere to go. Do you think there’s a big call for music tutors these days?”The red witch shrugs and takes the bottle back from the wizard.
“Auntie Sheogorath calls for them and that is what is most important above all else. You will find something. Something will find you. It’s the same thing, really, if you think about it but people never do and wait around where nothing will ever be found at all.”
“I suppose they don’t.”
“There’s no point in supposing anything at all. No point, no point at all, dull as a butter-knife and not nearly as useful. But if I supposed, I’d suppose you haven’t got enough rum in that tea.”And Mathis was entirely right about that.
Neht does not know what to think about the infant at the best of times. As far as babies go, he supposes she’s acceptable. She’s capable of holding her head up. Her language skills consist of the coos and gurgles typical of her age. Her hand-eye coordination is developing appropriately. Although she can’t yet roll over, she’s making concerted efforts. She is a fine example of an infant.
It’s probably terrible of him that he thinks of Rilmsyna as ‘the infant’ instead of ‘his daughter,’ isn’t it? His daughter has only been in the world for a short span of months now and in that time, Neht has convinced himself that creating her was a terrible mistake because not only is he unsuited towards being a parent, he is, in fact, the worst parent. He wasn’t meant for this. If he was, he’d know exactly what to do with the baby instead of panicking every time that she so much as looks as if she might cry and handing her off to the wetnurse.Which she is doing right now. Neht knows that look. Neht lives in fear of that look. The little Dunmeri girl starts fussing and he knows it’s only a matter of time before she starts wailing. If anyone ever had any doubts as to her parentage, her lung capacity and ability to hit high notes are proof enough that she’s his daughter. She’s crying. Her nurse and most everyone else in the tower aren’t here due to the holiday, so if anyone is going to make her stop crying, it’s him. He can do this. She’s only an infant. He’ll just tend to her needs, she’ll stop crying, and he can return to his book. He can do this.Infants cry to signify things they need assistance with. She can’t change her own diapers, so perhaps that’s the cause of her distress. But no, no, she’s dry and Neht’s thankful because he doesn’t quite have diaper changes down yet. Hunger, then. There’s milk for her in the cold box and he goes to fetch it. When he returns, she’s wailing.“Shh, do you see? This is food. This is food for you. Please eat it.”He gathers up the infant, though she squirms and protests, and places her on his lap. Physical contact is important to maintaining a strong parent-child bond and more than that, holding her is one of the few things he thinks he’s good at. He’s an expert in holding his own child. Even when she’s crying, he’s never dropped her once. He's fairly certain he’s awful at everything else but at least he can pick her up expertly."Quiet, quiet now. Please do not make that face. I have food for you and it’s delightful. Open, open up now.”Rilmsyna is a fussy child and refuses to accept almost everything but the wetnurse, which Neht supposes is smart of her because he’s never quite certain if he can sterilize all the various cups and bottles out there well enough. When he’s feeding her on his own, the only thing she’ll accept is a alchemical dropper. It looks a bit odd, true, but it works, so he can’t complain too much.He squirts a few drops into her mouth. She spits it out. He squirts more milk into her mouth. She spits that out too. He tries again. She still spits it out. This continues until Neht gives up in frustration and the baby continues to wail.Is she tired? No, no, she’s napped a good length of time today. Does she need to be burped? He pats her back but it mostly serves to make her angrier. Maybe she’s too cold? But the blanket does nothing. Perhaps she’s sick? But she doesn’t seem to have a fever at all. Hurt? He inspects the baby for bruises and bug bites but she seems fine. Just in case, he casts a quick spell of healing but the light seems to confuse and upset her. Maybe she’s bored? He fetches the rattle, Tiny Tiger, Lady Guarsy, but even after he makes them dance, she just seems angrier. Peekaboo doesn’t illicit a positive response and neither does tickling.He puts her on her back. He puts her on her tummy. He cradles her and sings a song about spring and cute baby bunnies and little children who aren’t screaming. He puts her in her crib. He leaves the room. He has to or else he’s certain that he’s going to start screaming himself. He has completely and utterly failed his daughter. Something is the matter and nothing he’s doing is fixing it. He never should have grown her.“Mother, what do I do?” says the priest sometime later, the tower echoing with the cries of the upset baby as he speaks to the spectral skeleton. “She’s turning purple. Purple.”“Maris, it is-”“ I fed her, I played with her, I took her outside, I took her back inside, I bathed her, I changed her.”“It is-”“I did everything and she’s not stopping. What am I doing wrong? Why is she crying?!”“Maris, a child cries sometimes for no reason that can be seen at first, it is normal. It will pass. Colic, perhaps. A tooth coming in. Put brandy on the gums.”“I am not getting my daughter drunk.”“You are shaking. Do not shake. It will pass, I tell you. It will pass and she will stop. Perhaps it is gas in her insides. It is common.”“Gas? Are you sure about that? I don’t think a bit of gas would make her cry like that...would it?”"Your sister, she cried often because of it. She will stop. It is typical.”“Are you sure about that?”“I have had more children than you. I am sure.”“Yes, but-”“I am sure, Maris.”In the end, it turned out to be teething, though privately, Neht thought that she just hated peace and quiet and probably him.
Blood in his eyes smelling of metal and meat left out to decay in a damp, dark place. His head hurts, his arm hurts, his stomach hurts, it all hurts, it’s all screaming at him. His magic should be coursing through him hot and alive but the poison is cold in his blood and he can feel his magic drying up more and more with every second.
Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need it. Hircine taught him what to do.
No time to escape out the kitchen window and the people ransacking the tomb would see him if he did. Out the front, then.
He’ll remember things in bits and pieces. Her hand is in his hair and then his hair is in her hand and the fork is in her thigh and isn’t it good that he didn’t pick up the dishes today? Someone throws an urn at him -why would you throw an urn?- and suddenly he’s seized with the thought that he doesn’t know where the cats are. Someone’s yelling but that’s him. His side hurts. A flash of white out of the corner of his eye and a smell like storms. She can’t do that in here, why is she doing that in here, she’ll ruin his table.
Running, bleeding, the big man has him, his hands leave bruises, armor everywhere but his face and then Neht’s mouth is full of blood and skin that isn’t his own and he lets go but they’re closing in and it’s okay, it’s going to be okay, it hurts quite a lot but he can still get out the door but one of them scoops up his apprentice and, trailing blood everywhere, he turns and charges like a bear until they let the girl go and she scampers away and oh, oh no, they’ve hurt her, they’ve hurt the poor, little thing, they hurt his apprentice, and his blood is coming out and he can’t see out of that eye anymore and everything hurts and he realizes he’s not getting out of that door but there’s still one thing he can do, one thing left to him, and he...
Necrom smells like dust, like myrrh and resin, like the smoke of a thousand candles, like bones and dessicated flesh and burnt offerings. It’s been so very long since he’s been here last and he‘s almost forgotten how comforting being amongst the dead can be, that he ever spent hours excising organs and burning bodies.
He wore grey and red in those days -the dull, heavy robes of a death-priest, his sash the single bright, bloody slash of color- but he left that behind with his old life, and now he’s a dandy again: pink and cream silk for spring, the gold cuffs on his ears glinting with rose quartz, spectacles perched on his nose because this Neht can afford them, not butterflies crowning his hair like in the old days -he doesn’t have enough hair for that, for one- but when the flickering torchlight hits it just right, the pearly shimmer becomes noticeable.
He tried being plain. He tried very hard for two centuries to be mild and modest and mousy but the truth of the matter is that he’s a peacock.
Necrom has too many turns, too many tunnels, but at last, he’s at the right crypt.
“Thank you truly, muthsera,” he says to his escort and after giving her the customary gift of a pack of cards, the bonewalker ambles off to assist the next traveler.
It looks exactly as it did when he saw it last: unsatisfactory. They could have done so much better, they could have given their king the funeral chamber that Neht couldn’t, but instead, it’s a gaudy nightmare.
“I am terribly sorry it has been so long, my king,” says the Telvanni to the skeleton. His robes have held up surprisingly well over the centuries but they’re the wrong color, lined with the wrong fur, decorated with all the wrong symbols. He can fix that. His bones are unadorned and he can fix that too, enliven him with gems and ebony beads. He hasn’t got any children to do it for him, so if Neht doesn’t, who will?
“Terribly, terribly sorry. It’s been…strange. The dragons came back. The Empire fell. I’ve got a tower and a city now and it’s incredibly dull without you skulking around. They’re thinking of calling Morrowind Resdaynia now, isn’t that funny? They’ve even designed a national flag and it’s so very ugly. I wish you could see it. I brought a present. That’s why it took so long. It was hard to track some of them down but I did it. You know me, killing your assassins is my greatest talent.”
Neht opens the bag and lets the finger-bones of fifteen Dres conspirators spill onto the altar.
"What I want to know, what I think is really the most important matter at hand," says Neht and oh, is he really slurring his words that much? That can't be good. Of course, the whole situation is not good, not even a bit. Inelegant speech pales in comparison to the fact that he may or may not -but he's certain it's the former- be sprawled out on the ground in Moonshadow right now. He's accepted that one day he might pass into Azura's realm but he had thought that his entrance might be a bit more dignified.
Hlaalu Helseth frowns as he kneels at Neht's side and gestures at his face with the pipe, rudely interrupting him and his very important musings but Neht hardly cares about something so inconsequential as that. He's here.
"There is a curative brew stored in the bottom left drawer of your alchemy cabinet. You will take it when you have regained some measure of strength and then tend to the dagger wound lest it become purulent. I mislike the look of it."
Mislike. Purulent. He might be wearing his hair down instead of tying it back (Neht always adored those rare private moments where he would loosen the tie and let his hair brush against his neck) but he hasn't changed at all. But was he always so young?
"You may choose to ignore your injuries but never let it be said that Helseth did not advise you otherwise."
"King Helseth. Or do the dead hold titles no more, wolf of mine?"
But Helseth only continues to frown. Typical of him. Helseth only smiles when he knows where the poison is.
"Any bones broken must be set. The facial swelling must be brought down. You must tend to this at once, Hortator."
"I will, I will, I promise you, I will stitch myself back together but please, may we talk, if only for awhile? I have had such a bad past few days. Or centuries."
"If you will swear to me that upon waking, you will seek medical attention, then yes, we may talk, you and I."
"I swear by all the gods and the stars too, I will go to the healers."
Or I would if I were alive, which I clearly am not.
"Very well. Perhaps you wish to continue your line of thought before?"
"Right, right, that. What I want to know is how come she gets to be a flaming skeleton and you're not?"
He sees the last great king of Morrowind for the first time in years and that's what he thinks is the most important thing to ask him?
(childhood) The loss of someone or something important.
After the funeral, the others wouldn’t stop holding him and Selwyn, hugging them, stroking their hair and telling them it’s alright if they cry. Neht doesn’t understand. He’s twelve, not a little boy in need of comfort. His eyes are dry and he wishes that the others would stop telling him that it’s alright if he cries. There’s nothing to cry about.
Evelyn is bony and full of sharp angles and Neht was relieved when Uncle Absolom led his partner back to their room because he was crying into his hair. Neht doesn’t understand why they all think he needs to be squeezed. It’s not going to bring his brother back and it’s not going to make Selwyn smile, so what’s the point?
Morimar sits down on his bed with a plate of food and tea and Neht thinks that he’s going to hug him but he only sets a plate of biscuits on his nightstand. Neht feels snubbed but then again, he doesn’t know if he can stand another person trying to console him for something he didn’t even do. Of course, it wouldn’t be so bad if Morimar hugged him. He’s big and soft and he always smells like the library.
"Hello," he says and hands him a biscuit. Neht takes it hesitantly.
"Thank you, uncle, but I have no room to scold Selwyn for eating in bed if I do it myself. Sloth is a sin and-"
"-and small sins now and then are only natural but eating in bed is not counted amongst them and you know that. You neglected your dinner."
Neht shrugs and picks at the biscuit. It’s flaky and probably tastes wonderful and he’ll get crumbs everywhere if he tries to eat it.
"I thought such rich food to be decadent and inappropriate for the occasion."
The cakes and baked pasta and curries looked and smelled divine but Neht couldn’t stomach the thought of it. They never ate like that when his brother -the little brother that Neht sang with and debated with and tended when he fell ill- was still alive, so why should they now? He wanted pottage and brown bread, not all these strange dishes that the Marans brought over to console them.
Selwyn wasn’t like him. When Neht last saw him, he was still working on a casserole, picking at the noodles with his bare fingers like he was only half conscious that he was even eating.
"When we grieve, many of us seek out whatever comfort we can find. Your uncles and brothers need it more than ever right now. You needn’t be the same but you must eat.”
“I know that,” Neht snaps and then regrets it. He has no quarrel with Morimar. All the funeral business, all the tears and disorder and strangers asking him how he’s faring, it’s too much for him to take. He wants to scream and throw things around if another person pets his hair and he knows that it’s entirely inappropriate when people are only trying to raise his spirits, but why are they so concerned with how he’s holding up? He’s not the one who’s dead.
"There are too many people here. They don’t know us," he mumbles and he takes a biscuit because it’s at least something to occupy his hands. "They didn’t bring him pie. They didn’t wipe his brow when he was sick. I did that.And they are angry at me because I do not weep, I know in my heart it is true, but there is no point.”
"They are not, I assure you. You needn’t cry or join the others; it’s enough that we remember him. But you must eat."
Later, when Morimar is gone, Neht picks at the same sort of biscuits that his brother used to devour and for the first time, he weeps.
There is no ash blowing about in the air now and that is good, both for the hunters and for those of us back at the camp. It's best to tend to our village's garden and forage for anything that might be sprouting up in the ash wastes. There's less danger. But when you see wild guar, you must take them when you can or else they will devour anything. It is hard enough to keep what few domestic ones we have alive.
Everything stinks of blood. I used to spend my days walking with lords and kings; now, I butcher animals and my hands smell like an animal's heart. Now, a few hours later or a few days, I do not know, we are readying the chunks of guar for the fire. Guar and greens and a scoop of saltrice for each person. Is there enough to go around? We'll make it go around.
"Who taught you to cook, priest?"
Someone asks me that. Who? It doesn't matter. I am washing rice. You have to wash it carefully or else it's full of ash. Everything is full of ash. My belly is full of it but I don't eat it on purpose.
"A bit in Daggerfall. A bit in Mournhold. From the palace cooks."
I think that I say that. Maybe I say to them, "I taught myself." I do not remember. Everything runs in my head and out again and I cannot remember. I am cooking guar and there is rice in a pot and I smell ash on the wind.
[In which the Hortator and the king of Morrowind are adults and not giant babies squabbling over which part of High Rock is better.]
"I say, dear man, why is that you insist on having smoked duck at every breakfast? I can’t imagine how many poor waterfowl have been slaughtered for your table," said I to the king of Morrowind, who affixed me with a baleful glare.
Still, he had no real malice in that or rather, I should say that he bore me no more ill will than normal. It was only a year ago that the last of that terrible business in Mournhold concluded and it was only a few weeks after that we mutually decided that it would be for the better if he left my throat intact and if I didn’t rip out his heart with my teeth. He wanted me to go and pretend that we had never met. I wanted to stay and I always get what I want in the end.
I think that we’re friends now. I would so hate not to be friends. Hlaalu Helseth tolerates my lack of respect for his regality (the poor dear takes himself far too seriously and look where that’s got him) and in turn, I tolerate his tendencies to see dangerous subversives at every corner. Actually, I don’t tolerate it one bit but I am trying to gently correct him towards perhaps not killing everyone who looks at him askance. I am very kind to him and I don’t think he appreciates it one bit, the Imperialistic devil.
But at any rate, breakfast.
"You were not invited to dine in my company, Hortator," he said in the tone of someone who has long since given up on fighting fate and has instead wearily accepted his lot in life.
As I am essentially a very kind person, I declined to note that the table was set for two and his mother -dear woman- certainly wasn’t dining with him. He even had my favorite breakfast tea, which is a delightful ginger mix, poured for me in an absolutely darling teacup, even if the design was from one of the most unfashionable parts of High Rock. I appreciate it when he thinks of me. He must have poured it for me himself because one of his many peculiarities is that after the servants bring him his food, he does not tolerate them handling it at all, even to carve the meat, and he dismisses them from his presence.
"I thought you could do with some stimulating company this morning and I did not want to spend my breakfast around Kammus. Besides that, I’d like to discuss the issue of the Grand Council and -what is that?”
As I spoke, I helped myself to some breakfast fare -good bread spread liberally with honey butter, toast with cherry jam, a bit of good white cheese that reminded me of my old home, three cucumber and butter sandwiches, a radish to excite my palette, a sweet apple from the Rift, sugar-coated strawberries, a slice of that smoked duck, and a small glass of hot chocolate, as I am always of the opinion that tea must wash down food and chocolate must wash down tea- but my heart was overcome with a terrible sight.
He was in the process of plucking a sausage out of a nearby pot and the sight of the thing’s unnatural pallid color flecked with horrid green spots turned my stomach. He was eating that for breakfast?
Helseth is sensitive by nature and my outcry startled him. Perhaps fearing assassins (as if any could reach him with his small army of guards roaming just outside), he reached for his knife, but I calmed him with gentle words and a soft touch.
"Goodness, but you are jumpy. But my king, I must ask you something. What strange force has compelled you to think that that is in any way a breakfast food? Or even something that should be eaten.”
The poor man looked quite bewildered. If Hlaalu Helseth is bewildered, his eyebrows knit together, his frown deepens, and I have an overwhelming desire to comfort him in his hour of confusion.
"I beg your pardon but what could you possibly be referring to, Hortator?”
"That!" said I, pointing towards the awful thing with a look of complete and utter disgust. "If you must eat sausage at breakfast when it is clearly meant for dinner, must you eat that abomination?”
There was no end to his confusion. He looked at the horrid thing and then looked at me, looking less the feared king who would go on to order five executions that day and more like someone who has just been told that what he thought was water was really an elephant.
"What issue can you possibly take with weisswurst? We had it every day for our breakfast in Wayrest."
Wayrest. A city full of barbarians who would never know the proper way to do anything even if it bit them in the rear. I know that he had little choice in growing up in the city of the enemy, but did he really have to eat like a Wayrester? For gods sake, they put milk in tea. I suddenly wasn’t sure if I could ever love a man from Wayrest. To prove how utterly disgusted I was with his poor choice in eating habits, I speared one of those disgusting little things with my fork.
“This is unnaturally colored. Meat should not be the color of milk. Unless it’s chicken, of course. Moreover, it is for the good of one’s health that you take only light and airy things at breakfast because too much flesh in the morning is bad for one’s digestion. Look, you’ve got nothing on your plate but meat and fish. And at any rate, we have to think of your image. The public thinks that you have too much of Cyrodiil and High Rock in you. It might comfort them if it were known that you took only Morrowind delicacies for your plate.”
He looked unimpressed. It was far too early in the morning for him to be impressed with anything at all (I don’t know why he doesn’t wake up at noon like a normal person) but he looked distinctly unimpressed by my claims, even though I had only his best interest in mind. He plucked one of my sandwiches from my plate and nibbled off a corner, earning much grumbling from my side for his blatant rudeness.
"Truly, I must live up to your example. Cucumber sandwiches are well known to be the finest dish of Morrowind, of course, and absolutely not an excessively dainty affectation from Daggerfall.”
"It’s not excessively dainty," I protested. It’s true. I didn’t even have the corners cut off and they weren’t even cut up into little triangles like I usually have them. Helseth -the nerve of him!- took a sip of my hot chocolate and had the audacity to smirk.
"I know that it is exceedingly hard for one from Daggerfall to eat anything that isn’t obscenely coated with jam or butter or sugar, so I’m inclined to forgive you your lapse in good taste, but I hope that one day you will overcome these tendencies. After all, I only think about the good of your health.”
It was my turn to glower and glare. Hlaalu Helseth is very rude and a constant disappointment to his lady mother. To prove him wrong, I took an enormous bite out of that awful sausage, staring into his eyes all the while to prove my dominance. I assure you, the experience of eating that sausage was nauseating. It tasted disgustingly like good veal and fine spices. I thought it would prove him wrong but he started to laugh.
"My dear Neht, you are eating it wrong. You must suck it."
“What? I don’t care for you that much.”
"You suck the meat out of the ends," he explained as if he hadn’t just made it sound incredibly filthy. I don’t have a dirty mind but I can tell when others do, and he has an exceedingly filthy mind, which he continually denies.
"The peel is not to be eaten. You are red in the face, Hortator. Perhaps Wayrest fare is too much for you?"
"It’s not as filling as you seem to think it is."
"Truly, you wound me. Might you pass the mazte? I require fortification if we are to discuss the Grand Council."
I remained quite cross that day due to his terrible rudeness to me, but then he had the nerve to kiss me that night and that, of course, made everything much more complicated than it needed to be.
I’m still right about the proper way to eat breakfast.
