The Adventures of the Dovahkiin

Roxy fidgets with the jars above the kettle that hold her too-small collection of teas. It’s really uncomfortable to have Mordred starting like that. Should she say something else?

The silence doesn’t bother him, but his inability to comprehend the nature of the interaction is an irritant. It used to be that he didn’t care, and perhaps it was simpler then… but there are levels to moving throughout the worlds, spiritual levels and social levels and levels of comprehension, and his hunger for knowledge has only expanded to match.

He had to know how everything worked. Including people; that which he was [partly] made in the image of, for whatever purpose.

So he stares at Roxy as he circles her, brow intensely furrowed. She does things with her hands that seem to have no purpose, moving things that don’t need to be moved, avoiding his gaze. She who barely flinches when he shapeshifts mid-step, who’s seen him lustily devour all manner of Tamrielic wildlife – including the sentient kind – avoiding his gaze.

Strange.

I’ll give you overpowering, she thinks, before she can stop herself. The flush isn’t unexpected, but with Mordred focused on the wall spider, she was hoping he wouldn’t notice. “I have to get more, but you can have the rest of it once I make my tea.”

A brief stillness settles over him as he communes with his fellow arachnid, as Roxy makes tea, and in the stillness he notices that something is nagging at the back of his awareness – something that is familiar and yet unknown.

He remembers <can calah> and <lady rose>, and the inn in snowy Windhelm. His brow furrows impatiently – he doesn’t know why he’s remembering that, or why it’s relevant now. Sometimes the connections his mind makes seem to be beyond his understanding, which is strange since nothing in one’s mind should be beyond the understanding of itself. –Right?

She shoves the arrows back into her quiver, and thinks for a moment. It definitely wouldn’t kill him. But surely, he could be injured. And she’d injured Alduin enough, hadn’t she? “I don’t expect it to. But it’s a long way down and a long way back up.” She sighs, “Look, I get that eating things is your purpose. Don’t eat Paarthurnax. I’ll give you every Thalmor in Tamriel, just, leave him alone.”

“Think I can get to Aetherius before you.” Mordred is still in a taunting mood, and if this Aetherius is anything like the realms and in-betweens he’s already travelled, it’d probably be a piece of cake. Whether he’d be able to stay in it is another question, but there’s no need to mention that now. “Dragon god of time sounds like snake eating tail, anyway.” The image of a dragon eating its tail makes him grin toothily.

The fact that Roxy seems to care about whether this dragon of hers was eaten or not makes him even more curious. What does Paarthurnax have that is so important that he must remain whole? Probably something that Mordred would gain by devouring him. – Perhaps this is a lesson in playing with skill instead of force, a voice behind/inside him says idly, and although he doesn’t fully understand what that means, he knows he will not eat Paarthurnax this day. Maybe not ever, even, as unfathomable as it sounds now.

Snake eating tail. “My dear grandmother insists Akatosh is as mad as she is. You might be right.” Roxy shrugs, “Guess that’s what happens when you’re actually several versions of yourself at once.”

“Lavender’s a flower. I’m pretty sure you’ve seen them, I just never pointed them out. I’m sure I have a few in here, they smell really nice.” There might be some in Zoe’s alchemy kit, but she doesn’t feel like checking. “They’re kind of sweet, nothing overpowering.”

Mordred sweeps his vivid eyes around the room, looking at everything as if it were new. People miss many things because they take for granted that their surroundings are familiar; Mordred has no such filter, and misses very little as a result. The downside is that he is easily distracted, if nothing spectacular is holding his attention.

She fumbles with her house key for a moment, but managed to unlock her home. “I think I have some lavender tea from back home left, there’s a berry tea, a mint one and a ginger tea. What sounds good to you?”

She’d been watching him. He knows it, but he doesn’t know what to do about it. At one point, he’d stared back, but that seemed to dissatisfy her. He wonders, briefly, if there’s something wrong with his face. Maybe he still had spider mandibles, or something.

He surreptitiously touches his face as she fumbles with the lock, but can’t feel anything amiss.

“What is a lavender?” He recognises berry, and mint sounds vaguely familiar, but lavender and ginger were completely alien concepts to him. Lavender is fun to say, though. He silently repeats it, his teeth raking his bottom lip slowly as he lingers on the V sound.

She catches up, “No, it’s fine. I have an anti-drunk potion waiting for me at home. I also really want tea, did you want any?” They’re almost back to breezehome, and she’s glad for it. There’s a very large blanket, and very warm bed, with her name on it.

He thinks he can understand why people drink. There is a laziness in it, a lack of attention that gives power to spontaneous thoughts and impulses– a lack of care for what has come before and what has come after. It removes people from time, and it is time that doles out consequence, time that keeps the mill of cause and effect ever running. Drunk, one only knows of the present, of one’s most immediate desire and immediate fascination. Nothing else matters, and why should it?

Drunk people are easier for Mordred to understand. They operate on the hunger of a moment, and they don’t cage him into their systems of propriety and morality either. He’s seen the various hungers of many people tonight. But not Roxy’s, oddly enough. Didn’t she want anything?

She hadn’t expected that bringing Mordred to the Saturalia festivities would have gone badly. And wouldn’t you know it, she’d been right. A little awkward at times, but the people of Whiterun trusted her, and so they worked with it. “My slightly odd friend, Mordred” was enough description, with emphasis on friend.

And so, there was food, and mead, and conversations well into the night, and then there was more mead, and finally, closer to sunrise than sunset, Roxy had decided to head home. With slight difficulty; while she could hold her liquor as well as any nord, it was been snowing, and her balance was off. Mordred, inexplicably, was having no trouble at all, and in fact, was acting as though he hadn’t had anything to drink at all.

From what he’d gathered, it meant food, and drink, and laughter, and grandstanding. It meant friendly scuffles and tables groaning with the weight of multiple courses and numerous toasts to everything from ale itself to not being drunk enough to think of a proper toast. It meant enough people plying Mordred with tankards of the stuff that intoxication made a whirling carousel of the hall and a drowsy-eyed lazy-smiled caricature of him.

That is, until he thought, all right, enough of this, and felt the boozy delirium drain from him like dirty bathwater.

That had been an interesting new development, and he’d tested it multiple times– each time, his body shifted itself to the state he requested, as simple as shifting form. Perhaps the two talents were related.

Mordred follows Roxy when she finishes with her merry-making, not attached enough to the rowdiness to protest. The snow is annoying to navigate, but it seems Roxy is having a bit more of a time with it than he is.

He doesn’t really know what’s happening here, but a shiny wrapped box is being thrust at him, so he might as well take it.

He sniffs at it first, rattles it around, is unsatisfied; so he commences to opening– with hands and teeth, of course.

His confused expression remains as he gingerly lifts one dagger from the pair in the box, sniffing at the blade and then the hilt, then licking the hilt experimentally. There’s a taste, an arcane one, and it makes him shudder reflexively.