Ask Dust

...Dust to Dust

starter for @askdusty

The wolf was lucky, yet again.

M’nari had shifted on the slow crawl towards the settlement; now an ordinary Khajiit, wounded by suspicious circumstances. She looked truly pitiful as someone dragged her through the small town; bruised from the chest-down, causing her already frail figure to look even more emaciated than usual. Blood stained her maw and her fingers - some patches wet and some dry - and her old scars were redder than usual from being afflicted by snow exposure.

Worst of all was the leg; mangled by the bear trap, which still clung into her flesh, and didn’t seem willing to release its prize any time soon. Given how there was little fat to protect the muscle, this would ache for a long while if she were to recover at all.

Fortunately, there was an apothecary in Ivarstead, it seemed - The Dusty Cauldron, one that the residents knew well.

Upon M’nari entering the little hamlet at a crawl, a few things happened in quick succession. One was the shriek of a passing local, throwing her armful of wood in the air at the sight of the bloodied, disheveled thing leaving a devastated trail in the snow. Then, the woman’s husband arrived at her scream and, after a brief exchange, sent her running while he dragged her those few steps closer to town, evidently wary of this strange Khajiit in their midst.

Finally, someone was called - a classic example of a Nordic woman with snowflakes settled on her shock of fair hair, blocky features and sharp eyes that assessed the situation in the span of moments.

“I’m Haelga. Lucky you, we’ve got an alchemist and healer local, and I happen t’work there. Up we go, then.” And without a word, she hoisted the little Khajiit into her arms and toted her off as easily as a babe, careful to mind her mangled leg. She shouldered her way through the door of the alchemist’s, brought her to a nearby bed, and shouted. “Dust! We’ve got a live one today, work cut out for us!” “Do we?” A merry voice rose from the hearth. The tap of a wooden spoon on the rim of a pan and the Breton woman approached, eyes widening at the sight of the one laid before them. “Do we ever. You poor thing - Haelga, something for the pain, and the usual supplies.”

“Aye-aye.” And off she jogged, leaving Dust alone to peer over her new patient - and the less new face. Her features furrowed.

"M'nari..." Dust frowns for a moment, chewing her lip and eyes narrowing as she searches her memory. Then her eyes light up and she wags a gloved finger, passing the broom she's been sweeping snow from the porch with to the other hand. "Yes! Yes, of course! That sweet little thing. We picked mushrooms together, before that unfortunate - revelation. My memory may be spotty, but I remember that."

A good sort, yes. Or, as a darker part of him in the back of his mind suggested, a good candidate for the culprit in this mystery. She had ample opportunity, and perhaps a motive, if she had any plans to acquire Dust’s business.

Then again, there were far less convoluted ways of going about it than slowly unraveling her employer’s mind and body, and to do it in such a way that he, with all his experience, couldn’t see how it was done upon first examination. Unlikely. Besides, if she did have something to do with it, why urge him to visit and risk being discovered? That wasn’t the act of someone careful and insidious enough to pull off an elaborate ploy such as this.

If he was being completely honest, perhaps he was merely grasping at straws for something other than the exactions of time to blame. Something he could control and put a stop to.

He sighed, and joined her in the kitchen. “I had not realized it’d been that long since I was last here. How long has she been in your employ, now?”

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Time’s funny that way. About a year and a half, I think? Nearly two years, since I hired her. Not so long since I last saw you, but I went to you, that time.” A longing sigh as she pulled down a parchment-wrapped hunk of smoked mutton, laying it on the board she’d apparently designated for Astarill. “Oh, that breakfast was something to remember...”

For a moment, it could have been like old times. What she’d wanted for so long. Him by her side, sharing her kitchen - stubbornly refusing to let her work alone, as he always had - and just chatting and laughing and pretending the last two-hundred some years had never passed at all.

But they had. It became clear in the tremor of her hands as she pulled down a cutting board and knifes to the counter, laying them there with a frown. The second knife landed with a clatter and she quietly cursed, squeezing the offending hand into a fist as though that might cease the trembling. It didn’t. 

She averted her gaze, and although it made no difference to him, he felt obliged to do the same, fixing his blind stare to the floorboards a few feet in front of him. He frowned, caught up in thought. He had many more questions, not quite as resigned to give up as she was just yet. But those questions were better reserved for her assistant. If there was a pattern to these fluctuations still waiting to be discovered, it wouldn’t reveal itself on Dust’s reports alone. Such a thing required a more objective observer.

“Regardless,” He stood and smoothed his cloak, “I should like to stay the night, if that meets with your approval.”

At that, a more familiar gleam entered her eyes. She chuckled and reached for his cloak, half-scolding. “You think I’d let you come all this way and sleep at the inn? Of course you can stay, as long as you like, so long as you don’t mind Haelga. I think you’ll like her – she’s a good sort.”

He didn’t think any embrace had ever felt so suffocating. Her despair, or… grief, or what have you, with which she clung to him, did not play well with his own.

But she gathered herself, and he sat back. With a deep breath, he brought his chin to his chest and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, their murky white glowed and burned, seeping with magick. In the landscape of his mind, a latticework unfolded against which the energies that sustained her were woven. Moments passed in silence. He neither blinked, nor breathed, while the lines in his brow deepened. He checked and double-checked for what he must be missing.

There was nothing wrong, that he could see.

He released his breath and let his spell dissipate. Careful to maintain as straight and unreadable a face as always, he neglected to remark on what he’d seen– or hadn’t seen.

“Did you keep any research from your time in Relmyna’s… ‘care’, shall we say? Any journals or notes?”

He didn’t need to say a thing. Maybe that was only because she’d become prone to assuming the worst, these past months, and the news she would have to give now wouldn’t help. Trying not to grimace, she shook her head. “… None that didn’t vanish with her, in the Pale. By the later stages of – this - “ She gestured to her throat, down her chest, where the most intricate of scarring sat. “I wasn’t as involved in the actual structure and creation of her golems, or my own upkeep. I think she liked to keep me in the dark, where she could.”

A soft sigh escaped her, and she returned to her own seat. “I’ve been considering what it could be, when I have the sense to do so, but it’s – difficult to pin. The physical symptoms remind me of those times I’m deprived of magicka, but they’re – chronic, rather than acute episodes, coming and going. And I have no reason for that to be an issue. I even wondered if perhaps somehow I’d been infected with some sort of magical parasite – remember the one you had, all those years ago?” A rueful smile. “… But, no. And it wouldn’t explain the rest of it. The sense of – confusion, emptiness, exhaustion. The – the memory loss. That…”

He observed every one of her uncertain, wooden motions minutely. His gaze fixed on her hands and stayed there, even when she raised her eyes to his, and after she had stopped talking. As though he stared right through her, lost in thought.

The whole thing sounded familiar. There were parallels with her withdrawal from the greenmote. She required a lot of sleep, then, shortly after she’d escaped the sorceress’ clutches. Sometimes she forgot herself, sifting through what was real and what wasn’t. And didn’t her scars burn and itch as well? Then again, her scars were responsive to many kinds of stimuli, magical and otherwise. And to suggest she had relapsed would be–… Well, the best that could be was insulting. He didn’t think she would, and even if she had, would she be able to hide it from her apprentice even now? No. Nonsense. It didn’t fit the whole picture, either.

He breathed in and out, deeply, then sat down. He reached to cover her hands with one of his. “Would you let me have a look to see if it is the magic that made you that’s failing?”

Once again she was left speechless, though this time it didn’t last. Her hand tensed under his. Her face crumpled. In the space of a moment she’d pushed up from her chair towards him, into him, brow against his shoulder. She remained there a few moments longer, leaning against him with arms around his neck where he sat before she took a few shuddering breaths and stood back.

“Thank you.” The first words came out a hoarse whisper. She shook her head and repeated them, stronger, more certain. “Thank you. When – whenever you’re ready.”

But when he was, the spell would reveal little of use. The magicka binding her form, soul to flesh, flesh to magicka, was intact. Fraying, not as strong as it had been when they met years ago, but unblemished. There was no obvious cause to explain whatever was happening.

There appeared to be no need for introduction on his part, so he said nothing while the woman he understood to be Dust’s apprentice ushered him inside. He hadn’t yet wiped the slurry off his boots or unfastened his cloak, when Dust herself appeared, much to his surprise.

She seemed astonishingly lucid, for someone who couldn’t string a coherent sentence together in her last letter, much less keep her writing hand steady. She seemed fine, here and now, relative to his worst fears and expectations. Drained, yes. Uncharacteristically feeble, but sharp enough.

It would also seem at least one of them didn’t want him here. Certainly, she’d said she was ‘delighted’, but he knew better, so while he undid his cloak, he didn’t hang it. He slung it over his arm, instead, and although he joined her by the fire, he did not sit, and left Haelga’s tea untouched.  

“She told me nothing. Your letters did.”

That left her stunned, lips parted for a long moment before she nodded. “I’m – I’m sorry. I – I didn’t know, then, I thought it would pass. Just my age, I thought, or – I didn’t know. It came and it went, then came again, and I…”

She took a deep inhale of the tea to steady herself, fingers tight around the mug. “… I’ve been having – spells, episodes. Sometimes, I’m alright. I have been for the last few days. Tired, sore, but at least – together. Then, with no real warning, no cause I can find, I – I fall apart. I sleep, much of the day. I get confused when I’m awake. I – I forget where I am, when I am, I stumble around like an old woman. Everything hurts, those days. My scars burn, inflame. And it’s been getting worse and worse. Brief moments of forgetfulness, at first, but now...”

Her hands chose that moment to tremor, a splatter of tea cascading down the side of the mug. She winced, then with exaggerated caution lowered it to the table and clasped her hands back in her lap before meeting his eyes.

Cold Comfort

@askdusty

Ah, yes. A typical Skyrim welcome: A faceful of sleet, a biting wind, and a no less frigid look from a passing local.

Astarill got off the cart and promptly sank to his ankles in snow. Marvelous. He sloshed to the middle of the thoroughfare, where wagon tracks had turned the snow to a marginally more traversable sludge.

In the depth of winter, Skyrim was an inhospitable and dismal place. Relocating to Hegathe had been one of his better ideas in recent years. It was hard to believe, now, that he’d once spent half a decade up in the frigid mountains of Winterhold. Voluntarily, at that. A testament, if nothing else, to his unwavering devotion to self-punishment.

And today would be another exercise in punishment. Not only had he dropped everything to hotfoot it off to Skyrim in the middle of winter, he’d done it to witness his last and only friend wither and leave him, if she hadn’t already. He must be out of his mind.

He headed up the porch to the familiar cottage, shook a dusting of snow off his furs, and with a freezing breath, he knocked on the door.

It was only the span of a moment or two before the door was opened, by a Nord almost as typical as the weather that greeted him. Tall and fair, she filled the doorway for a long moment, blocky features tensing as she looked the stranger over before she relaxed. With a nod she stepped back, gesturing into the warmth of the cottage.

“I’m Haelga. Come in.” She shut the door behind him and moved to the hearth, popping a well-used, burnished kettle onto a hook. “I’ll get something hot for y’to drink.”

“Haelga?” A softer, more familiar voice called from below, accompanied by footsteps. “Who in Oblivion is wading through that weather - “

She’d almost left the stairs when she realized. Her jaw dropped. She looked to Haelga, who only shrugged, before almost running to him – or would have, if not for the momentary wince and clutch of the counter that slowed her as she made her way.

“Astarill! I – what – gods, what are you doing here? Not that I’m not happy to see you, of course, I’m, I’m delighted, but - “ This close, it would become clearer what these past months had done to her. She was haggard, lines carved under her eyes, her sleeves hanging loose. Haelga sniffed.

“I asked him to.”

“What?” The syllable was sharp as the cutting wind outside, but Haelga didn’t finch. She only brought two steaming mugs from the fire, giving the first to Astarill before delivering the second to Dust, not without a stern glare.

“Now, I’m going t’get out of your hair, get some work done in the laboratory, and let you two talk. You need anything, just shout.”

“Haelga - “

But the Nord woman paid her no further mind, trudging downstairs wordlessly. Dust stared after her for a long moment before sinking into a chair across from Rill with a sigh.

He hadn’t thought much of it, when there was no letter of hers forthcoming around its usual time. Perhaps it had simply gotten lost. The Empire was a pale shadow of its former self, and so too its courier- and postal services. Skyrim and Hammerfell were further apart now than they had been in an era, in all ways but geographically. Mail usually travelled by boat, and there were dozens of ports along the way where a letter could get overlooked or sorted on the wrong stack.

And wasn’t that just how he liked it? To be unreachable, free to focus on his work without distraction. No, it hadn’t worried him. No news was good news.

But he’d been a fool to think so. Despite the letter’s optimistic tone, it worried him very much. He’d accepted her death once already, like that of every non-elf he’d known in his youth. But then he found her again two centuries later, made of sturdier stuff than even him. He’d taken her condition for granted, complacent, trusting she’d always be there, even long after he himself was gone. Perhaps it was time to re-evaluate that belief.  

A dozen times he’d read her letter, looking for clues, symptoms with which to diagnose the problem. Was the sorceress’ magic fraying at the edges? Or was there a flaw in the necromantic energies that bound her being together, allowing for age to take hold much sooner than anticipated?

He let it sit for weeks on end. He tried to put it out of mind, hoping against hope that by the time he had found the words to address the matter (or pretend it hadn’t happened), she’d be her old self again, nary a care in the world.

Dust,

Let me begin by apologizing for the time it took to answer your letter. Per what you are no doubt accustomed to, I have no shortage of work. It takes me everywhere but home, most days.

I have little to share to satiate your hunger for gossip, but perhaps it may interest you that Medeia represents her mentor on the council of the jewelers’ guild these days. I believe she has her eye on a position on the council of the merchant’s association, as well. She’s inherited my sister’s appetite for politics, it seems. A frightening prospect. She inquires after you, often. She hasn’t forgotten your kindness and companionship in Winterhold.

I won’t pretend your last letter didn’t leave me concerned. I hope this finds you better, and that I may relay the good news to my niece.

- Astarill

Several weeks later, another letter arrives, but it might as well have been written by a stranger. It is no longer recognizable as Dust’s handwriting, scrawled and smeared, and only some of it is entirely legible. A few comments make sense – she writes of remembering Medeia fondly, to pass on her congratulations to the young woman – but there is also references to the Mages Guild that hasn’t existed for over two centuries. Perhaps most alarmingly of all, at one point the letter seems to devolve into a list of groceries.

But, it doesn’t arrive alone. Accompanying it is another letter, this one written in a tight, neat shorthand.

Astarill

We’ve never met. My name is Haelga Greyhand, Dust’s apprentice. I don’t know you, but I know she writes to you often and speaks of you fondly. Dust forgot about this letter, but I’m sending it to show you how bad things have got. I told her to tell you sooner, but she didn’t want to worry you, so here we are.

I’m fairly damned certain you’re the closest thing to family she’s got, so I’m asking you to come to her. It’s not my place, and it’s none of my business, but she’s my friend and I know she wants you here, even if she won’t admit it. I’m not sure how long she’ll be able to wait. So, if you can, please come, and please hurry.

He did. He did think of everything. Always, and without fail. Although there were times when, in momentary lapses of judgement, he caught himself thinking it would be nice if someone else could be trusted to take over, so he might rest. If only for a day.

But that was ludicrous. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself. What the fuck was he, if he faltered, if he quit? A waste of space. No good to anyone.

He walked around to the other side of the bed and sat to rid himself of the last items of clothing she’d left to him. A last scan of his lodgings to confirm that everything remained in order, and he let his sight spell dwindle. He got in, and adjusted himself to accommodate her.

“Goodnight.”

It had been perhaps an hour or two, no more, when Dust awoke. Not suddenly, not for any particular reason. There was no noise, no lingering dream, no sudden discomfort prodding her awake. All was warm and still and silent, save the slow rise and fall of his breath beside her. It was almost like she’d never really woken up at all, still blanketed in velvety darkness and pressed up against him, breathing him in, contented.

Almost contented.

It happened, on occasion. And over and over, she pushed them down. Those words that would ruin everything, those words that threatened to spill every time he held her hand, or poured her tea. Those words that would betray her, and him in turn. He’d never forgive her. How could he? She knew. She knew, dammit, how many burdens he laboured under already. The last he needed was this.

But gods, it hurt. It welled up like tears, hot and fresh, making her breath shudder in and out. She couldn’t keep it locked in forever, she just couldn’t. It felt too enormous, pushing everything else in her head aside, making her so painfully aware of him – his arm secure around her, his profile silhouetted in the dark, his steady breathing, in and out.

She listened to it for minutes on end, until she was certain it never wavered. He was asleep. And the pressure was building, enough that if she didn’t speak, she’d sob. That would wake him.

So she spoke.

“I love you.”

Relief swept through her, tingling from the ends of her hair down. Just that whisper was enough. Even unheard, it granted release, enough that she could snuggle in closer once more and drift away again. Oh, those feelings would swell again, the urge to tell him the truth, but for now…

She was determined to assist, it seemed, despite her evident exhaustion and inebriation. He left the room divider to her, and applied himself instead to remove the bed warmer from underneath the covers. He left it by the hearth, and turned back, right into her hands.

The sound that left him made up the middle ground between a chuckle and a sigh.

“If you insist.” He shrugged off his leather jerkin he’d unfastened earlier that night, the moment he came home. He now hung it on the divider. “Time does appear to be of the essence. I’m getting second-hand cold off you.”

“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” She kept her voice to just above a whisper, giggling softly. “I’ll do my best.” In no particular hurry despite her words she worked to help him disrobe, giving fluttering teases of her fingertips up his sides, down his shoulders as they stripped him. Caresses, almost, ending with her touch grazing down to his wrists before she pulled away to the warmth of the bed.

“Oh – ohhh…” An utterly contented sigh left her as she slid snug under the covers, purring and sidling in close when he might join her. “Oh, it’s so toasty! You really do think of everything, don’t you?”

He inclined his head, and held back a smirk as well as the impulse to inquire exactly which ‘honeyed words’ of his she thought so effective, just in case he ever needed them to distract her, or assure her compliance.

Poor sportsmanship, is the best that could be. 

“Mind your feet when you get in.” He rose from his chair. “I’ll take the bed warmer out shortly–” to be replaced with yours truly. 

But first, he had a table to clear, candles to extinquish and a fire to douse, afore he would draw out the old, creaky panelled folding screen to section off the bed from the rest of the single-room apartment and join her.

Already thinking of how nice it would be to snuggle in warm with him, she only half-heard his comment about minding her feet. After all, she had things to do, as well. As he tidied up the remnants of the night, she did the same for herself - swigging down one of her hangover remedies with a grimace, followed by a glass of water. She chewed mint while washing her face and tending to her necessities before stripping. He would wake up to a perhaps slightly hungover bed partner, yes, but not to a whining, smelly mess. 

At last, as he was dousing out the remnants of the fire, she pulled over the folding screen, setting it up by the bed as she’d seen him do previous nights. Only then did she return to him, naked now, giving a contented little smile and reaching for the buttons of his shirt. 

Oysters? His surprise was clearly there for her to read off his features. She wanted oysters? For breakfast? Now, he liked raw fish and shellfish as much as the next mer born and bred on the Isles, but to start the day with them after gods knew how many mugs of mead?

“… I think that can be arranged.”  

Perhaps, in this case, they would be better served poached, or baked with a buttery sauce, some herbs and breadcrumbs on top. He could get some smoked salmon, while he was at it, roast a few slices of bread. Perhaps, if time permitted, some deviled eggs. He could work with that, if she could stomach all that after her night of wild wassail.

“We’ll make it a late brunch, shall we?”

“A late brunch,” she confirmed with a yawn that petered into a soft whine, stretching out her limbs one by one. Then, catlike, she cracked open an eye to soak in his expression before giggling. “I know it’s odd. I know! But I never think to have them while I’m here, and then I always wish I had too late. Not this time!” A crick of her neck as her tone changed, almost businesslike, but still with that glint of a tease.

Besides, breakfast is just a concept.” She waved a hand dismissively, draining the last of her tea with the other. “Who says one can’t have whatever they please, mn? I find bacon and sausages rather heavy, some mornings, but many do adore them as a hangover soother. This is just a different type of savoury.”

It annoyed him to no end how she was always on about having to repay him, even if it was only in jest this time. This time. That did not discount any of the other times when she was very much serious. For once, he would like to be able to help her without the side-effect of guilt, or the feeling of owing him.

Nevertheless, he sat himself down, went to take his cutlery in hand, and quite purposely froze.

“Kings?” He looked up at her, his face a graven image of solemn and sincere concern, “Then what will we eat?”

Oh, that bastard. How could it be that the man who could shrink her with a glare, who once had her anxious for days over broken soul gems, who was so gods-damned serious and stoic and ornery as a goat...

How could he know, better than anyone else, how to play?

She let her own eyes widen as if in sudden realization, giving a sharp intake of breath. Her gaze scanned their plates, teeth sinking into her lower lip in concern. A beat, two. Then, a smirk crept over her lips, every inch of it calculated as her fork lowered. She sliced off a tiny piece of the omelette brought it to her lips, eating delicately as a noblewoman. She even dabbed at her mouth with a napkin before, at last, bringing her gaze back to his.

“Something like that,” was all he wished to concede.

He shifted sideways in his seat so he could cross one leg over the other. Even here, in Skyrim, where the majority of the indigenous population towered over most everyone else, he still had not found a desk or table that allowed him to cross his legs without bumping his knee against the underside of it.

“I figured,” he began, changing the subject, “in the morning, while you sleep off your wild night of abundant drink and merriment, I’ll head over to the market and prepare you something to bolster you for your journey back to Ivarstead. Would there be anything in particular you’d like to eat?”

Her face lit up at the offer, bright before smoothing into a rather catlike preening as she smirked. “Well! An excellent host, you are. I’ll be spoiled rotten, at this rate, and I doubt I’ll even mmmind.”