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It’s late at night, or maybe early morning, Veezara doesn’t care to debate the time with himself, instead wondering if he should walk past the Listener or not, but he’s spooked out of his thoughts when the Listener speaks, “hello, Veezara.” Their voice is tired, but not from lack of sleep, Veezara wonders briefly how the Listener knows it’s him, he was silent and they hadn’t opened their eyes.

“How did you…?”

“Mother told me.”

“Do you mean the Night Mother?”

The Listener just hums, Veezara wonders how true that might be, if the Night Mother really would bother with something like that, but the Listener has no reason to lie about the voice ringing through their head, the one that coaxes them to open their eyes and speak to Veezara; “Listener… speak with him…” They’d rather not, would rather that the Night Mother had warned them before they were spotted, so they don’t reply, just press their side further against the Night Mother’s open coffin door.

Their throat feels tight, and their nose tickles, little pins and needles running down their throat and nose as they fight the emotions sitting heavy in their chest.

“Listener…” the Night Mother says again.

“Did your job go well?” It’s not what the Night Mother wants them to say, but it’s what they can force out.

“The merchant never even saw me coming.” Veezara says with confidence even as he wonders exactly what’s going on.

The Night Mother is hard to ignore, her words ringing and coaxing the Listener to keep speaking, like a mother fussing over her child, the Night Mother loves all her children, but when her Listener is so listless and defeated she can’t help but call to them.

“…” The Listeners eyes feel like their burning and there’s a heavy weight atop of their eyeballs that carries to their forehead in a start of a headache, be it from their emotion or the Night Mother’s words is hard to tell. “Mother wants you to come sit with me.”

Veezara blinks, he’s unsure if the Listener is just saying that or if the Night Mother wants him over there for some reason, either way he complies, be it just the Listener saying so or an order from the Night Mother it’s still technically an order.

Veezara sits next to the Listener, near the feet of the Night Mother, he looks at the Listener before tilting his head up and back to gaze at the Night Mother, “…what does she say?” Veezara’s curious, truth be told.

“She says she knows what you’ve been up to, ‘curious little shadowscale’ she calls you, what does that mean?” The words make Veezara freeze as he tries to think of an answer, but the reply dies on Veezara’s tongue as the Listener’s brow furrows and they get a look almost akin to a pout, Veezara finds himself entranced by the expression, the idea that someone like the Listener was capable of such a face, a childish indigence, it’s oddly warming and Veezara can’t stop the laugh that escapes him, that makes the Listener’s eyes finally flutter open.

“She won’t tell me what she means by that.” The Listener mutters, Veezara already guessed that, but his amusement grows, he’s not even worried anymore about the Night Mother knowing he’d been following the Listener around, too distracted by the Listener, ‘by the hist.’

The Listener’s earlier emotions are gone, instead they’re focused on Veezara, and the Night Mother’s vague words, what was Veezara doing? What earned him a word from the Night Mother that she won’t tell them?

It’s always like this, Veezara always takes their mind off of things, they know that’s why the Night Mother urged them to call out to him, and why she is suddenly silent as the two stare at each other.

Veezara debates his next words, the Night Mother seemed to know about his following, but seemed to not tell the Listener, part of him wants to ask about the Argonian from the docks, “why are you out here?” He asks instead.

The Listener hesitates, Veezara watches how their eyes dart to look at the wall instead, and the Listener can feel how their throat contracts around nothing like it wants to close up suddenly, the Night Mother is quiet, but they don’t hear her, she let’s them be. Their tongue feels heavy, they open their mouth but no words come out, they repeat the motion two more times, both times nothing happens.

Finally they manage to get out a reply, “I wanted to speak with Mother.” It’s mostly the truth, but they don’t dare admit how they just wanted to cry how everything was weighting down on them, words circling in their brain, repeated phrases and flashing memories and ‘what if’s haunting them.

“Do you often speak to her?” Veezara thinks if Cicero said such a thing he’d call the fool crazy, but maybe it’s because he knows the Listener can hear the Night Mother, or maybe it’s just because he can’t bring himself to say anything bad about them, but either way he finds himself more interested in the person before him.

“When in the sanctuary I greet her in the morning, and say goodnight at bed, I like talking to her, she… saved me you know, back when Falkreath was in flames.” The Listener never spoke of Falkreath, beyond what they had told him months ago they never spoke of the incident again.

“She did?”

The Listener nods and let’s out another hum as, they do that a lot Veezara notes… he likes the sound. “’Listener, embrace me,’ she told me, the sanctuary was collapsing and the fire was everywhere, I found Nazir and Babette but had gotten stuck, I went into her coffin and closed it behind me, she told me to sleep and by the time I woke Nazir was pulling the coffin from the rubble.”

“Wait; you got in her coffin?!” Veezara’s eyes widen, the idea of someone doing something so disrespectful of the Night Mother baffled him – he killed because that was that he was raised to do, but even still the idea of someone climbing into the Night Mother’s coffin…

A laugh distracts him, from that thought, “it was my second time in there.” The look on Veezara’s face must be stupid he imagines given the laugh that comes a second time.

“…Astrid had me get in the coffin before.” The Listener’s voice is more quiet, like speaking about Astrid opens up an old wound.

“She did?” Veezara asks, if it was an order he could understand but he couldn’t imagine her asking the Listener to do that, “surely she must have had a reason…”

“She did, it was Cicero, she thought he was plotting with someone she told me to hide in the coffin to listen to them, it was the one place he wouldn’t see me.”

“Still… what about how you’d get out? Surely Cicero would’ve opened the coffin to tend to the Night Mother before you could escape, what were you suppose to do then?”

“…That’s a good question, he did open it, but not before the Night Mother spoke to me, she said she wouldn’t speak to Cicero, but would speak with me, she told me the phrase to tell the Keeper and that probably saved my life.”

Veezara didn’t know what to say about that, it wasn’t like Astrid couldn’t have foreseen Cicero opening the coffin, did she want to get rid of them both? Did she hope Cicero would open the coffin and kill the Listener for their actions – giving Astrid a reason to kill Cicero… it was possible and Veezara didn’t like the way that information sat in his stomach. Did she really want to get rid of the Listener so badly; even before they were the Listener?

“She… she must’ve had a reason.” Veezara forces the excuse out, the Listener smiles like they know the conclusion Veezara reached. Like they reached the same conclusion.

The Listener sees the conflict play out on Veezara’s face, loyal Veezara, they turn the subject away from that, instead cracking a joke, “I almost screamed when the Night Mother spoke, her face lit up and suddenly there was this voice in my head.”

The idea of the Listener screaming in fear was a far fetched one, but he supposes it was believable, “her face lit up?”

“Do you not see it? When she speaks her face glows, an orangish light behind the eyes.”

“…Huh.”

Veezara knows it’s said to distract him, and he wonders if he should press the matter. He doesn’t have to. Because the question the Listener tries to fight back, tries to ignore slips out without their permission. “Would you have killed me? Is Astrid had ordered it.”

Veezara freezes, he doesn’t know what to say to that, he… he would have he thinks, and that makes his heart sink, makes his blood turn to ice and makes the warm cloak on his shoulders feel like the heaviest of armors.

“…Before you were Listener, yes. After I might have hesitated however.” Veezara’s silent for a moment, “…would you have killed me?” He doesn’t know why he asks, maybe because it’s the only think he can ask in response, would the Listener have killed him for trying?

“…No.” How was that answer worse? “No, I would’ve let you kill me.” Because they would have they think, any other member and they would’ve fought back, but Veezara? They would’ve let him, not because they couldn’t win in a fight, but because they wouldn’t have been able to bring themself to.

They sit in silence for a while.

But something lingers in the Listener’s mind, “…you once told me to just do as Astrid says,” they begin. “Are you upset that I didn’t kill Cicero?”

Cicero being alive was… Veezara didn’t know, it had been an order, the jester tried to kill Astrid and Veezara suffered a bad wound because of it.

“I thought the Night Mother would be upset if I killed him, I debated it, I really did, but he’s the Keeper, and I…”

“I understand,” the attempt at comfort leaves before Veezara can really make a decision on if he’s ‘upset’ or not. “You did your duty as Listener."

Listener presses their lips together for a moment before speaking, “when I came to kill him Cicero said he felt bad for stabbing you.”

It’s not funny, but the way the Listener tries to offer smooth over their guilt about the decision to let Cicero live draws a chuckle from Veezara. “Did he? He never apologized to /me/.”