#*anonymous.

Ask my character "How do you feel about ______?"

the tamaranean wasn't expecting the question, obviously by the puzzled expression on her face.

‘ are you unfamiliar with him? this must be why you're asking me such a thing... ’ sitting back, hands in her lap, bright smile.

‘ he is kind. and strong. nimble. were you aware he was in the circus? a trapeze artist. ’ she gasps, though his acrobatic skills should be of no surprise.

a glance into the night sky, almost poignantly. ‘ i feel most safe with him... ’. a delicate whisper.

Miraak gave the question pause. Of course, he knew a great many songs — lyrics were a written form common enough to Apocrypha. Even sheet music written for instruments he'd not seen nor heard in centuries, a distant concept. He could analyze the music as he would analyze any book, but...

There were no tunes he could associate to the glyphs as he read them. No high or low note, no strum or chime or whistle. Even the score belonging to that of a drum was difficult to picture; he knew the sounds, he could make them himself... But he could not know if his replications were accurate. There were some titles that yet held familiarity to him even now — but there was no sound to match any of it. Only silence. A void. He felt the hollow in his mind of something that used to be there, but was no longer.

Forgotten, muted taken — gone all the same.

Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic?

𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚚𝚞𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜.

Nothing he was willing to talk about, but he relents a few sparse answers, “I've been told by man, dragon, daedra alike that I am... Restless. Dii wuth fahdon, he once told me that I was always unsatisfied. Ever restless. Discontent. Said to me — Hi laan fah pogaas, Miraak. You want for too much.”

Bully. A trivial, inconsequential word. Yet, was it not at times accurate? Did Hermaeus Mora not speak to him with its edge of disdain and mockery? Miraak scoffed at the phrasing and the idea that the Prince would ever leave him be. There could be years of silence between them, but it was never not watching. Never not there. Its presence always somewhere in his mind. Always reading him. Studying him. Only ever ignoring long enough to make the next plot more entertaining.

Hermaeus Mora could ignore him, perhaps, but Miraak could never ignore it in turn. If only he could — it was an impossibility. The realm itself could not be ignored, and the realm was only a further manifestation of the Abyssal Cephaliarch. It had wound itself so thoroughly around him and every facet of who he was, Miraak could not think of himself without it even if he tried. Such a notion would have brought the Prince a sense of pleasure, of that he was sure.

Miraak feels a spike of aggravation for it. What a witless question this was.