WIP Wednesday - March of the Exile
Not tagged by anyone, because I haven't really written anything in 3 years. But I'm getting back into it!
Tagging @kookaburra1701 and @dirty-bosmer and anyone else who sees this and wants to write and maybe hasn't done so in a while. It's true what they say—much like a boomerang, love writing always comes back.
Fandom: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Context: A Khajiit-shaped slice from the prologue of my next longfic, March of the Exile, which is a sequel to The Return to Red Mountain.
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Kharjo reached Markarth in the small hours of the morning, following the main road. He drew the hood of his cloak forward to hide his whiskers, tucked his tail away, and flashed a few septims at the drowsy guard at the front gates.
He hissed a little at the bribe amount they finally arrived at. The guard shrugged and muttered something about hard times and inflation. Septims weren’t worth quite as much these days. What was?
Having lost the equivalent of a hard day’s work just to get inside the cold city, Kharjo nursed bitter thoughts when he finally passed through the groaning Dwemer gates. The ruin that was Markarth stretched up before him, ancient and unchanged. Mostly guards on the streets, herding beggars and other undesirable souls down towards lower and darker places.
No time to waste sightseeing, unless he wanted to end up herded himself. Kharjo had heard of the wretched Markarth warrens; he’d lived in their equivalent in the city of Raven Rock on Solstheim, in his days of greatest despair. Some poor folk spoke well of cities in contrast to the poverty of the wilds, but Kharjo had felt at his lowest begging in the streets of Raven Rock to feed his skooma habit. It was hard to feel poor when you slept beneath a beautiful sky on a bed of grass. He’d quickly learned it was the judging eyes of the fortunate that could make him feel the worst.
Smells traveled strangely in Markarth. All of the thick stone and metal trapped scents, keeping them from seeping out, and so Kharjo almost walked past the Silver-Blood Inn before recognizing the structure for what it was. He pushed inside to find a muted atmosphere: a few drunks slumped over the bar, the hearth sputtering as its last embers courted death. A bleary-eyed, straw-haired young man looked up at him from the proprietor’s side of the bar.
They completed the transaction with a short exchange of further monosyllables and grunts. Kharjo had found this was the best way to deal with Nords, at least at this time of the night. The man gestured in a vaguely western direction before setting his head back down on the bar. If he noticed that he’d just sold a room to a Khajiit, he gave no sign of it.
Kharjo’s leather boots made only a whisper of sound on the stone steps leading up to the side of the building containing the rented rooms. Scents, sounds: the stones of Markarth swallowed them all and turned them into nothing. So far in likeness from the lands of the dark elves, where the ground beneath his feet had often been fashioned out of some dead creature. If the elves had been blessed with the senses of the Khajiit, Kharjo wondered if they would have still built their civilization out of deceased insects and their various excretions. To walk the streets of Raven Rock was not quite a delight to the ears and nose of a Khajiit, but it was certainly not something those organs would ever forget.
In contrast, Markarth was a dead place. The floor of this inn had likely known laughter and tears, yes, but they bore no trace of the memories. This city seemed to say: you are insignificant. My stones will not remember you, and those that do remember you will die and be forgotten in turn, and my stones will still be here. Waiting for new footsteps, new lives.
Pausing before his likely room, Kharjo wondered if any of the Dwemer had ever walked these halls and been stricken by similar musings. Maybe that’s where they’d all run off to. Someplace free from memory, or safe from the loss of it. He imagined a lifetime living in a city like this could drive even the sanest soul towards a place of madness.
He left his pack on the stone bed and paused in the doorway of his room, sifting through unwise thoughts. Markarth was a cruel little corner of Skyrim. Cruel to his people, certainly. Zaynabi might live still if the caravan had been allowed to sleep inside of the city instead of miles from its walls. What did he owe these barbarians, that he should warn them of the Forsworn?
The metal door across the hall creaked open, and a pale child padded out rubbing its eyes.
“Kitty,” the boy said, blinking up at Kharjo.
Kharjo sighed, and went to find a guard.
