#*courier.

@anoffering

HE FOUND IT DIFFICULT TO DISCERN THE OTHER'S TONE. Whether it was because he'd spent so long without human socialization or just that Asgeirr's tone so perfectly skirted the line between condescension and genuity, he wasn't certain. One was just as likely as the other. That was frustrating.

After all, on a surface's glance, they couldn't be more dissimilar (not counting the equally unsettling eyes, that was). To call the duo very alike was laughable… If you didn't know them. Indeed, the longer they spent in one another's company, the more he got the opposite of that impression. Different but so very the same.

“Which parts of us — The mage? The scholar?” Erstwhile, the condescension was not as dubious in Miraak's voice. He can't help but make his own jab, for this is what conversation with the Last Dragonborn is; a sort of verbal jousting.

Privately, he thinks of memories skulking alone through dark halls. The similarities are there even beyond the obvious draconic soul. Sometimes he cannot tell who he is in those memories. The lines have blurred together so many times. If he hadn't a latent instinct to hold his tongue, he might have blurted out the sudden question that abruptly surfaced his mind (he relished to think these private thoughts, sacrilege and tabboos coming so much easier now that he hadn't the need to hide it) — Do you dream about me? As me? Forget the self-preservation, now it's pride that silences him.

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“As if I lack for mystery.” SOMETIMES, IT FELT LIKE THERE WAS TOO MUCH OF IT. He was an unknown, so much so that any trace of him had been wiped from mortal minds — a phantom with a name and little more. Did they forget, or was he erased? He could never truly tell the difference.

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NO OTHER HAS EVER UNDERSTOOD HIM SO INTIMATELY. Even times he walked alongside allies, not one of them could truly comprehend the breadth of his experience — what it was like to be somebody like him. Created the outsider to dragons and man alike, never fully relating to one half or the other, doomed to an inherent sense of loneliness that was unlikely to ever abate.

Miraak had long accepted it was a path one walked alone. Even now he was adjusting to the idea that now he would have the opposite. Someone at his side. Someone that was so much closer than any brother or sister in arms. Her soul was warm like the sun; each time Daenerys was close to him, he realizes again how cold he'd been.

He takes her hand, the gesture rougher than intended, clumsiness born solely from a prior void of interaction. For once, the hand holding his is not his own.

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“The world only gets stranger. You'd best get used to it.” JUDGING BY TONE, IT WAS NO SURPRISE TO HIM. Arrogance exuded from Miraak's every pore, but not without reason; he was well aware of the oddities in life that followed him at every turn, no matter where that turn led. Where he walked, dragons or daedra were never far behind.

One hand still held Firstblade . He wiped the front of it across his robes and promptly slid it back into its scabbard, whilst a pearlescent orange eye seemed to blink and stare at the stranger, tendrils retracting their grip from the Dragonborn's hand like wisps of shadow.

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MIRAAK PAUSED WHERE HE STEPPED. He wasn't even going to try and name what that smell even was. It was easy to guess he might have just always smelled of the ancient black bile of Apocrypha. Of something ancient; dusty old books, a mildew-ridden library older than time itself. A peculiar and particular scent he had been steeped in for centuries upon centuries like only the very oldest wine. Aged poorer, though.