#arota.

''They mean, does Ma'Ridhinna fall in love with men or women?'' She seems bemused. ''Ma'Ridhinna is a woman --- she couldn't fall in love with another woman, it isn't --- it is a silly question! She is a woman, so she can only love men, yes?''

While not exactly a fear, Ma'Ridhinna is uncomfortable around water, especially the ocean. It makes her uneasy - she'd never seen the ocean before travelling Skyrim, and was completely unprepared for so much water at once. In Elsweyr, water hadn't been so common - it seems wrong for oceans to exist.

Ma'Ridhinna travels so much that it's hard for her to make a connection with one place. She finds comfort in Halls of the Dead, by the shrines of Arkay. And though she'd never admit it, the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary is one of the few places where she doesn't have to hide that she's a murderer, letting her relax. It's the only place she can really keep things of her own, and have a bed she owns, and not have to rationalize eating food she hasn't paid for. So it's the closest thing to a happy place she has, though Ma'Ridhinna doesn't realize this.

Yes. Due to eyes that adjust very well to the dark, even a little light would be enough to keep her up if she couldn't sleep with it - very impractical. Ma'Ridhinna will sleep when she's tired enough to, it isn't really influenced by surroundings so much as if she's exhausted/drunk/concussed/drugged.

       Ma’Ridhinna does not remember how her siblings laughed. She focuses on that as long as she can, trying to recall if Sivarra was the one whose nose twitched ridiculously, no --- perhaps Ashirr, who would giggle with the soft sound of a river, or maybe that was Dar'ssi who laughed like that --- just so she doesn't have to thinkk about what is so close to the truth.       Because she knows her siblings have laughed at addicts. They would come by the house sometimes, shaking like sand in wind, or spewing out whatever their imaginations would tell them was true, and Ma'Ridhinna (La'Ridhinna, then) would imitate them so that Sivarra and Ashirr were not so scared.       And they have often laughed at Ma'Ridhinna, especially in the last few years before she had to leave them. The Khajiit had taken them to a festival once. Right in the middle of town. She'd gone to the market in the morning when the pink dawn was still crawling up the sky and there it had been. Singing and dancing and all the bright colours of the desert cracking in stained glass over the street. Melodies echoing from white-plastered houses. Ma'Ridhinna returned home that day with no food but she took her siblings to the festival and they had laughed at her (she cannot remember how it sounded!), told her the streets were empty, asked her why are you pretending again?       ''The stranger is pretending, yes?'' Almost pleading in tone. ''This one is not an addict, and the stranger could not know about this one's siblings. It is -- not true.''

          She is born on a night where only the waning light of Jone lights Rimmen; brought up in a house that smells more strongly of sugar than any other home nearby. With ambitious parents, it is not too many years before she finds herself alone much of the time, dragging out the books that she can reach climbing on tables and into shelves. Ridhinna cannot read the current of the script but flicks through the paper with small fingers until she grows bored and the pages grow tattered.          Usually the basement is locked but sometimes when her parents leave they forget to close the door and the cub traipses down the stairs, tumbles every so often, finds herself in a world of glass bottles and sweet fug. She pretends she is discovering a new land. Transparent, bulbous columns like the fruit trees Ridhinna can barely see out the windows; the walls carved into the bedrock become the defences of a city she so rarely goes out into; she imagines citizens no bigger than her fingers hiding underneath crates; she imagines them making her the queen.

          ''His name was Giovanni. This one thinks he must have had a surname, because he was an Imperial, but she does not remember it. We had known each other for many years, since perhaps... five winters had passed from each of our births. He was this one's friend for many years. Ma'Ridhinna had many friends, but Giovanni was the best and kindest! He would teach this one how to speak the language of the Imperials, and tell her stories that his mother had told him, about the brave Emperor, and the gleaming gold-white tower at the heart of his homeland, and the gods he still carried the amulets of.          When he was older, and Ma'Ridhinna needed to take care of her siblings, Giovanni would help her; they would go to his family's house when Tsavleena and Dar'ssi were away, and he sang the sweetest songs to Sivarra when she was no taller than this one's knee. One day, the sky grew heavy and growled out thunder, and Sivarra and Ashirr were scared of the storm.           Giovanni helped this one ease their fear. When they were asleep, he told Ma'Ridhinna he could imagine, in the future, that we would have children together. We would be better parents than our own. When storms came, he said, we would put our children to bed together, and the morning after, things would be warm and bright and good again.           Then Ma'Ridhinna knew she loved him.''

''When this one's brother was almost born, Tsavleena --- mother --- she brought Ma'Ridhinna to her sister, Ahzira, who was very sick. She was thin, and her fur was thin. Ahzira was Alfiq, so she was very small, and she was curled up like a knot, and she couldn't speak but she made very small noises.Ma'Ridhinna and Tsavleena had travelled many days north across the desert, and Tsavleena now was very slow, so they stayed with Ahzira for many days until she was no longer making noises. Ashirr was born before Tsavleena could return to Rimmen. This one thinks Ashirr carries some of Ahzira in him.''