#arkngath

She almost fails at the door –comes close to shredding her fingers on the immovable stone seal– but she’s already sinned so deeply and eagerly that she’d wade forward into Oblivion before turning back. It would have been near impossible to find the entrance she finally manages to slip through, had they not once parted too close to the brass sentinels for the increasingly paranoid times they lived in. The ghost of a kiss taunts her, the scrape of metal hinges the chime of brass on chitin, pistons pumping the hot air of sweetly warm breath. 

Beyond the hallways are empty, scattered with curious piles of dust as she advances deeper, no echo of living beings. In the blindingly cold light cast neither from Azura’s sky nor Boethiah’s fire it’s all too easy to be reminded of a House mer ancestral tomb long disused. No single bone, just metal, metal, metal, yet she feels awfully watched. Good.

Arkngath signed fanciful pictures of the city more than once; describing the way to her study in precise detail while throwing whimsical morsels about the baths, the workshops. Dal remembers the explanations well, the awfully explicit fantasies her partner wove for them. Suggestive smiles and gestures as they lay under the open sky, hands and minds wandering to the facsimile of a starry canopy in her room, where the Dwemer constellations would keep watch over them. 

She’s had the layout of the cavernous floors traced on still golden skin more times to count, though it’s torture to recall the strong hands so gently roaming muscles and ink, drawing goosebumps over ticklish ribs. Dal blames it on these distractions, tinged sweeter with despair and longing, that twice she gets lost. Still silent on her feet, she retraces her steps by necessity. There is no one to ask for directions, if they would even understand her, and she avoids the constructs like one would the osseous tomb guardians. 

The study is as beautiful as Arkngath described, door standing open to reveal a domed room full of spheres and gems and so much brass inlaid with other precious metals she has no name for. Clean cut stone walls stuffed with scrolls and tombs, the paper giving the room a peculiar warmth the rest of the pristinely kept keep sorely lacked. Constellations whir overhead with the ticking of a hundred cogwheels. Beyond, the curved ceiling is eternally dark, a deep unsettling blue stuck in perfect nadir between dusk and dawn. No indigo, no rose to blot out the myriad stars. Suddenly this mechanical sky is too profane a mockery to bear, forever devoid of Azura‘s touch, her hopeful blessings. Dal shivers, wishing fervently Arkngath were here to wrap her softly in warm arms, polished jewellery cool on a flushed face. The soft smell that would comfortingly envelop her as she closed eyes eternally red with unshed tears. 

In the corner is a blanket thoughtlessly discarded, beautiful ashlander weave crumpled on the cot. Familiar comfort in this abandoned alien structure, Dal still remembers the day she gifted it, the jovial arch of her partner’s “thank you” as ‘gath spoke with one arm all evening to not let go of the love declaration. When Dal hugs the fabric close the smell still lingers faintly, and she drapes herself in it as she paces the room to sooth panicked thoughts.

There’s an itch under her skin like the tremor before a storm, and when her feet have traced three circles round the chamber faster and faster, she descends unto the shelves. Like a tempest she rifles around, overturning sheets and sheaves, until hidden between piles of equations and diagrams, she finds a letter half written. 

“Beloved,” it reads, “there is something afoot, and I wish you were safe in my arms behind these walls, for all you and yours would sooner run them down. Little is known or told, but the construct-wizards” –they had formed their own silly parlance learning each other’s tongue, loaning vaguely from proper Dwemeris– “and our architects have become yet more secretive and meticulous in their preparations.” 

The daedric letters always look a little too neat and stocky under Arkngath‘s quill, but as the line skips too far they lie even more squat, almost a little smeared. “Forgive me, my head was not made for this suspense. If only you could be here to ease the tension. Your hands on my neck, soothing the muscles. I’d make do with the baths, but the steam makes me unea– you’re rubbing off on me, beloved. Soon I’ll sound like a Chimer, then maybe I will be thrown out to join you. Nchamz told me she keeps hearing a sound, a hum beating increasingly louder…”

She has to hold the letter to the light now to make out the last lines, hasty and uneven, jumbled across the page. Beneath her knees, a wrap dress shivers to the floor as she scrambles across the seat and halfway onto the table. “Dal, beloved, song of my stars, I’ve seen you! Please make it stop, the visions, the pain. I-I can’t see, can you read– don’t go! The pulse, I can feel you running through– no, the arc–” 

The line drops off in the middle of a word, ink splattering across the paper, pooling at the crude upstroke of a cess. 

With it shatters Dal’s entire world. She tears apart the desk, the shelves, but none of the letters make sense to her, and even if they would, the words wouldn‘t. So many secrets she’ll never read and what if somewhere Arkngath left her another message, a clue where she’s gone, who’s taken her– Dal crumbles down under the profane facsimile of a sky as not-masser rises bleeding garnet red. Raw hands clutch the half finished letter to her chest as rawer still panic robs her breath. 

TES Femslash week Day 3: Theatre, Performance, & Masquerade

“Look, that’s a good part. Dissent is growing and Veloth receives the guidance of Mephala, who completes the promise the Three Good Daedra made to our ancestors.” The Dwemeri signs made the phrase come across as less reverent than Dal would have otherwise been but Arkngath found herself too enthralled by the spectacle to point it out. The shapes of the dancers blurred in the night, crude masks throwing the Mer beneath them into mystical roles. 

“You know this story, everyone here does. So why spend so much effort on telling it?”  

“Maybe they want to impress you”, Dal responded, her fingers joyfully jumping between signs. “But no, we thank our ancestors and try to appease them by remembering their deeds. Their valour in coming to this beautiful, deadly land.” 

Arkngath leaned back against the tent pole, once again alienated by the superstitions of the Chimer but anxious to intrude on them. “Then I shouldn’t be here. My people killed yours when you first arrived... We helped in making this land dangerous.” 

Instead, Arkngath let her head roll back, taking in the stars above them and tracing their paths with her eyes. She counted them, named the major constellations with a twitch of fingers by her side, hesitating to pose the question she wanted answered for so long.

“Can you hear the stars?”, she asked after a while as she focused back on Dal, her nervousness betrayed in the size of her eyes and the slight tremor in her hands as they formed the signs. Arkngath had never cared that she could not hear the tones her people were so enamoured with and found it off-putting the few times she could hear their echoes in her mind, but the idea that she could not perceive the stars in their entirety bothered her.

The warm hands of her girlfriend tracing patterns on her arms provided some comfort to Arkn as she waited for Dal to collect her thoughts. They were falling into a quiet rhythm when the other pressed a soft kiss to her shoulder, sat up and cracked her knuckles to remove the stiffness from them. It was a cold night but the sky was free of ash and smoke, and the waning sickles of Masser and Secunda provided still enough light for them to read each other signs.

“Maybe your people can with all your strange creations.” Dal’s response faltered for a bit as she struggled to separate the signs for Dwemer from the concept of ‘us’. The logical part of Arkn’s brain took note of it, already running through a list of linguists she would have to convince that such a distinction was necessary. But the current political situation lessened the need for secrecy so it would be vital for their language to be usable for outsiders. Dal had made every effort and Arkngath loved her for it.

“I can hear the wind and the guar and our breath but no, not the stars.” She paused to brush a braid out of Arkn’s face and look into her wide-blown eyes. “In our songs I can hear our love for the stars though. My tribe” - the word quickly fingerspelled in Aldmeris as they always did with concepts not widely used by the Dwemer - “we sing our hymns to Azura in thanks and happiness, glad that she paints us the night sky.” A frown had settled on Arkngath’s brow at the mention of the daedra -a silent taboo between the lovers-and Dal stopped her slow tale again to lean down and kiss her forehead. “The stars are yours and though I am glad for every night you share them with me I doubt anyone could ever see them like you.”