#miralda

+ here is the base image before I added the background or lighting

Faralda stops short, her robes swirling around her ankles, and something cold and thin in her chest curls up to die. Mirabelle, who never rests, let herself sleep in the sun - until Faralda woke her.

“Faralda,” Mirabelle says at last, squinting up at her. Consciously, Faralda sidesteps so that the sun does not silhouette her tall figure quite so dramatically. Her shadow falls over Mirabelle’s cheek, wiping the sun-sparkle from her deep brown eyes. 

“How can I help?” asks the Master Wizard professionally, straightening up. Faralda’s gaze falls to Mirabelle’s nimble hands, sliding her omnipresent scrap of parchment out of the back of her book and leaning it against her lap. She shakes a quill from her sleeve, wetting the nib with a flick of magic. Her slender finger slips free of its place, Faralda watches the book fall shut and wonders if it misses her touch, her warmth. 

The chance of any remark or apology turns to ashes on her tongue. Stiffly, Faralda clasps her hands behind her back before they get any stray, stupid ideas about the dark lock of hair that tickles Mirabelle’s cheek.

“The room scheduling came out yesterday-” she begins sternly, and Mirabelle pinches the bridge of her nose. Her fingertips turn white at the end when she puts pressure on. Her hand drags over her cheek as she drops it back into her lap, exposing the secret softness of her palm; Faralda’s ear tips warm.

“Ah, yes,” she interrupts, wearily, “The Archmage’s efforts were-”

“-Appreciated, quite,” Faralda adds, staring rigidly at a shrunken snowberry bush, “But I am afraid I cannot have remedial Destruction students sharing class-space with ‘Alchemical Approaches to Combat’. I should think the issue is clear. Bombs do not mix well with uncontrolled fire.”

“Certainly, Professor,” says Mirabelle, “I shall have an updated schedule that takes into account our preexisting risk assessments sent round by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Thank you,” says Faralda, grimacing over that near-disaster. 

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” Mirabelle asks. She checks her list, quill dancing over the neat, tidy scrawl. “Ah - did you sign for the shipment from Birna this morning…?”

“She is expecting the delivery at the end of the week, now,” Faralda says, “I took the liberty of informing the cooks already. The menu has been adjusted.”

Mirabelle blinks, as if startled to find a job already completed without her input. She smiles, small, spidery lines around her eyes crinkling up. 

“Well, that is a relief,” she says lightly, and the line of Faralda’s spine itches. 

She stirs the embers turning over in her gut to a flare of magic which settles around Mirabelle’s shoulders, a flameless cloak that radiates a heat so strong it distorts the air. Mirabelle shivers pleasantly, leaning back against the statue.

“Oh, don’t,” she says, not sounding as if she minds in the slightest, “You’ll have me dozing off.”

“If you are at risk of such anywhere outside in Winterhold, perhaps you ought to prioritise your rest before you freeze to death,” Faralda retorts, “Unless, of course, you are so eager to resign your position that any death will do, in which case I may remind you that you are hardly the only capable sorcerer with a head for paperwork in the College.”

Unexpectedly, Mirabelle snorts at that. It is a peculiarly graceless sound; she covers her mouth when she does it. Her hand is trembling finely, worse than usual. When the sun catches her short, round nails they gleam, and Faralda’s stomach flips. The folds of skin over Mirabelle’s knuckles and the joints of her fingers are lined with creases, as delicate as the smile lines by her eyes, lips.

Decisive, Faralda sits quickly beside her, fussing with the fall of her robes. The heat from her spell radiates off Mirabelle and glosses the ice garlanding Shalidor’s steep and stern face. Mirabelle moves the teacup to make space. Faralda’s eyes fail to make their way back up to her face, instead, she lingers over looking at Mirabelle neatly folding the parchment back into book and tucking the quill away, absorbed by her efficient movement. 

She has a scholar’s hands, lithe and soft, with wide knuckles and sturdy wrists; hands that could be strong, if she wanted them to be. There is a long-faded magic burn on her left hand, barely perceptible from the natural warm shade of her skin, the only sign of Mirabelle casting once long ago a spell too great for her reserves. It is perhaps just the right size to be kissed.

The silence that falls between them is not uncomfortable. Faralda watches the ice melt on the tightly-furled leaves of the withered snowberry, dripping into the ashen dirt. Out of the corner of her eye, she observes Mirabelle fiddling with the book; On Oblivion. Her fingers delve in and out of the pages, feathering them against her skin as if she enjoys the sensation. Mirabelle suddenly glances up; caught before she can look away, Faralda’s ears pink and pin back. 

Quietly, Mirabelle asks, “I’ve seen you looking. Do you like my hands, Faralda?”

Faralda flushes up painfully; her stomach is lumpen and leaden with cold dread. Ice slides down her spine in thick, ashen clunks, like dropping failed experiments off the bridge into the deathgrip of the churning black water. Her grip on her robes turns rigid; she wishes, abruptly, to plunge into the sea or erupt into flames - whichever would be the speedier death. “You mock me.”

“No, not at all,” Mirabelle says at once, insistently earnest. Faralda senses she is looking at her with her big, dark eyes, but Faralda cannot bring herself to raise her gaze from the pathetic snowberry bush; she stares at its twisted, shrunken branches and sees not a thing. “Not at all,” Mirabelle repeats. There is a softening in her voice; something like gentleness, something not bearable at all.

Faralda wars with herself; she strangles lightning behind her teeth, swallows bile rancid as tar. Her muscles are tense; she realises, dimly, she is shaking, and on the heels of that awareness comes a sudden and intense surging of something too incandescent for rage. She balls her hands into fists and forces the angry sparks of magicka into a smooth, controlled burn of smoke out her throat. Her nostrils fog like thready campfire.

Mirabelle waits, unmoving except the over-exhausted tremor in her hands clasped neatly in her lap. “I may be mistaken, of course,” she says, very kindly. 

Faralda’s lips cram into an agonisingly thin line. She is silent for a long, dragging moment, for she cannot quite bring herself to speak.

“Nothing would change if I was,” Mirabelle adds, “I believe, perhaps, I-”

“You are not,” Faralda’s voice grinds out from some horrible, wretched pit, “mistaken.”

Shoulders slumping, Mirabelle’s breath whooshes out of her. She presses a hand to her heart. Faralda braces herself.

“I had hoped so,” she replies softly, and Faralda’s toes scrunch inside her sensible boots. “Faralda.”

Faralda receives the sound of her own name with a flinch. She stares down at Mirabelle, wild around her eyes, bounding heart in her chest.

“I admire your cheekbones,” Mirabelle says, quite simply, “And I’ve always liked your eyes. Fierce and kind.”

Something on Faralda’s face makes her smile a little, not ungently. Mirabelle, quite deliberately, cups her own cheek in her hand. Mirabelle’s soft cheek fills her palm, her thumb tucking under the curve of her jaw. She traces the curve of her cheek with her nails; Faralda swears she hears the rasp of keratin on skin. 

Molten, Faralda shudders, and Mirabelle’s cheek darkens, but the smile lingers, small and pleased. She tangles her hands together in her lap again, fidgeting her thumb over her knuckles.

Faralda opens her mouth, but nothing sensible presents itself, so instead she wrestles her gaze to the dying snowberry bush and thinks that someone really ought to take responsibility for it. Perhaps she should put a bulletin up.

As the prickling feeling of exposure ebbs, the silence becomes different, resting but speaking. Mirabelle’s presence is companionable, even when she draws her quill out and presently begins to work on a mockup of the schedule she promised Faralda, apparently from memory. Faralda refreshes Mirabelle’s warming-spell, and, murmuring thanks, Mirabelle angles her shoulder so that Faralda can watch the balletic movement of her hand and wrist as she writes. She does not glance up to check if Faralda takes the offer, makes no mention of the conversation Faralda turns over in her mind like a jeweller scrying for diamonds.

 After a while, Mirabelle sighs, apologetically. She does not need to speak; Faralda already knows that their stolen moment is over, sacrificed to Mirabelle’s ever-looming workload.

“I must prepare for a lecture,” says Faralda, so that Mirabelle does not have to.

Rising to her feet beside her, Mirabelle says, “Very good, professor. I will see you later, I’m sure.”

“At the dinner bell,” Faralda says.

“Yes,” says Mirabelle, with a touch of that gentle amusement. Her eyes shimmer a thousand hues of rich brown in the sun. “At the dinner bell.”

“I will see you then,” Faralda repeats, then “Do not freeze to death, Master Wizard.”

She, technically, can sit there if she chooses, but there’s never enough chairs. Nirya’s move to get the table expanded has been met with confused blinking from the Archmage, and she was far too flustered to be speaking to him personally that she hasn’t pressed it, yet. She regrets it now, bitterly. Tomorrow, she promises herself, she’ll - send a letter, or something. 

The idea of Master Wizard Ervine reading out her letter to a sneering Faralda, who makes some joke and then they all laugh makes her want to walk the College bridge drunk and blindfolded. Maybe - maybe, the next time Aren is downstairs for dinner, she’ll just approach him directly. He’ll have to listen this time.

It is fairly busy tonight, classes having just let out, and eager students throng the hall, winding round the trestle tables with their trenchers piled high and repeatedly blocking Nirya’s view. She restrains herself from hissing at them as she picks at her food, a particularly tasteless fish stew. 

The deliveries must be late again. How Nirya misses good spices and vegetables that aren’t boiled into pallid, flavourless lumps - and anything but fish, endless, endless fish! Still, it is just another little unpleasantry to deal with on her way to the top, when Nirya will really change things. Just like irritating Orthorn awkwardly hovering behind her, talking about something or other in his whiny, stuttering voice.

“Um, Nirya?” He finally notices she is ignoring him and tugs at the back of the chair on the right side, blocking her view of the faculty table. 

“What?” Nirya frowns at him; Orthorn looks vaguely pained, like he always does whenever Nirya bothers to acknowledge him. 

“Can I sit here?” he asks, faintly.

Nirya glares at him. There are at least a dozen other empty chairs around her and even some spare seats with Katarina and Pithi, who are casting pitying looks in his direction and probably would let him tag along with them. Orthorn clearly catches the direction of her thought and flushes up an agonised brassy red. So they’ve done a few group projects when they took Tolfidr’s advanced Alteration class together, and he’s given her a few pages of spare notes when Nirya was busy, doing other things, making sure no one was sabotaging her - it doesn’t make them friends.

“Um,” he starts, “I’m sorry to uh- bother-”

“You should be, I’m sure,” says Nirya sharply, because she has no patience for self-effacing foolishness, and Orthorn goes a further pitiful shade of deep red. 

An idea occurs to Nirya; sitting alone, she’s much more obviously a spy than if she has a decoy conversational partner. She won’t be as unsubtle as Faralda, no indeed! Besides, if she glances to her left she can see Enthir, not at the faculty table either, dramatically regaling a crowd of enrapt students in his latest scheme, and no one ever thinks he is just a research adjunct who has got too big for his boots, who isn’t really any good at magic either, like Nirya knows they think about her, secretly. But she will prove them wrong. She will prove them all wrong, when she’s a Master.

“Fine,” she concedes. 

Orthorn gawps at her, poleaxed. His ears perk up like a little boy’s given his first taste of shaved ice soaked in fruit. “What - really? Are you sure?”

“Obviously,” says Nirya, “Sit here.” She pulls out the chair and then carefully shifts her stew over so she can lean on the table - her consciousness of her impolite table manners ignored, for now - and see past his bobbing head.

“Um, thanks.” Pleased with himself by the upright cant of his ears, he settles down and starts anxiously pursuing a lump of off-white fish around his bowl, sneaking looks at Nirya.

To her annoyance, whilst Orthorn was distracting her, Sergius came in and now sits next to Faralda. The magelights gleam over his bald pate and sparkles of powder in his bushy white brows, some explosion from an unwary apprentice, no doubt. His robes glitter with the aftermath of soul-gem dust; he clearly hasn’t had time to change before dinner. His striking pale eyes glint as he waves around his goblet, one hand brushing Faralda’s shoulder.

Nirya tenses. 

Faralda is pretending not to notice, her hawklike eyes sweeping the entrances like she’s waiting for someone, like she hasn’t got everything she wants right by her side. Nirya scoops some fish stew and nearly misses her own mouth, her eyes narrowed.

“Are you all right, Nirya?” Orthorn asks, obliviously, “You look…”

“What?” she snaps, and his courage fails him. He glances down to his stew, his hands shaking on his spoon. 

“You just seem kind of upset,” he says to his bowl. “Can - I - can I do anything to help?”

“No,” Nirya responds reflexively, “I can handle it myself.”

And she will. Sergius still hasn’t taken his hand off Faralda. She twitches, like she’s just noticed, like she isn’t dragging it out on purpose. Her ears flatten and she says something, interrupting a story he’s telling. He grins, raising his hands up as if in apology - though she is too far to hear the words, Nirya already knows his joking, playful tone, the way his charming grin folds up lopsided at one corner. It’s a devastating look, Nirya knows the effect of it well, making her palms sweat and her stomach fill with butterflies. Pursing her lips, Faralda looks away - playing it hard to get, Nirya thinks, with a rush of superiority, but it won’t matter, because just as she thinks that, Sergius also gazes out over the dining hall, like he’s searching for someone.

Maybe even for her.

Heart pounding, she sits up straight at once, in case he catches her with such a slovenly posture. For a moment, she regrets Orthorn’s presence, aligning herself with a student makes her look so young, not like the dignified scholar with a bright future, already assistant teaching, he sees in her. Presentation is everything. If she wants to be Archmage someday, she needs to mind her image, not align herself with stumbling, weak mages like Orthorn.

Orthorn mutters something. 

“Pardon?” says Nirya, frustrated, and spares him a glance; Orthorn for once is looking steadily at her, though he’s chewing at his lip unattractively. A terrible habit, really.

“Maybe you don’t have to,” he says, and spoils it when his voice cracks. Whatever pale ghost of social graces he had then deserts him and he shovels an overly large spoonful of stew in his mouth and promptly chokes.

Sighing exasperatedly, Nirya slaps his back. Orthorn coughs gratefully and she withdraws her touch as soon as she can. He smells overwhelmingly like mint - yes, he has alchemy for his last class. Nirya has dropped it for teaching prep time. 

“Well, thank you,” she says, awkwardly. The words feel unfamiliar in her mouth, like a different language. He brightens, hardly dims when she adds caustically, “But it’s really not necessary.”

“Just, so you know,” Othorn says, “There’s - uh. Some of us are going down the Midden tonight. If you wanted to come-”

“That’s off limits to students like you,” Nirya interrupts officiously, “Only teachers and associates can go down there.”

Like her, she doesn’t need to say.

“Like me,” she says, anyway, because some reminder of the hierarchy is always good.

 “Well,” he says. “Uh, yeah. Of course.”

“And if I should hear of any students going into restricted territory, I shall have to inform the proper authority,” Nirya adds, and Orthorn practically wilts.

“Yeah,” he says again, weakly, like he regrets everything. 

Nirya doesn’t need to look over to know that Katarina and Pithi are whispering and looking at them, giggling at Orthorn’s hangdog look. She bites her lip against a flash of fury. No doubt it will be all around the dormitories again; Nirya is a bitch, she’s nasty. Well, she doesn’t care, when she’s just saying it how it really is. They can think she’s as unpalatable as they like, when she’s in charge.

At the faculty table, Faralda is talking to Sergius and fussing with her vibrant curls, probably to draw attention to the perfect, elegant triangle point of her ears. Nirya resists the urge to brush her plain blonde hair over her own; Sergius has never said anything bad about Nirya’s ears, never so much as hinted at dismay at the curving shape of the points. He has better taste than to be taken in by something so, so, common, when Nirya’s good looks outstrips Faralda’s in all ways - almost, she amends self-consciously, but definitely in every one that matters. 

Sergius laughs at something quick-witted and dry Faralda says, but she misses it entirely as the door opens. A gust of cold air shudders down Nirya’s back and the conversation of the tables at the door ebbs. 

“Oh, it’s the Master Wizard,” says Orthorn, anxiously, “Nirya, you won’t really tell, will you-?”

Nirya ignores him, ignores Mirabelle Ervine sweeping past, ignores everything except Faralda suddenly lighting up with her first smile of the night, while Sergius fills her wine.

No, she won’t tell, not that she mentions that to Orthorn, it’ll do him better to have a bit of caution and proper respect for authority here. But Nirya will be busy, she thinks, eyeing Faralda’s bright smile with curdling suspicion in her belly. It’s Tirdas tonight, Sergius won’t be expecting her. The perfect time to sneak in and see if he won’t be expecting someone else, instead.

—

The sun sets on a blustery night, and Nirya nearly turns back half a dozen times before she makes it to the Hall of Countenance. At each stumble, she hesitates, doubting herself, a thousand remembered insults echoing through her mind; paranoid Nirya, frigid Nirya, bossy, stupid Nirya, who never gets the joke til she’s the butt of it. The flash in Sergius’ eyes when he touched Faralda’s sleeve drives her on, despite the cold and the persistent, nagging insecurity. If he is lying to her too, she might just kill him.

The shrieking winds yank with insidious fingers Nirya’s robes as she hurries through the darkness, a sneaking shape with snow-tossed hair pale as bone around her shoulders. Ice slicks the stones like grinning teeth, and the storm moans around her a chorus of ghostly laughter and divine mockery. She trips at the door to the Hall of Countenance, wrestling with the heavy iron knocker. The metal’s intense chill saps the strength from her trembling hands.

Grimly, Nirya sets her shoulder to the door. She’s come this far, sneaking out of bed and creeping in the freezing cold and dark to pursue a hunch. Snakes twist in her belly, their searing fangs digging into her heart with each panicked thump. It feels different, sneaking in tonight. It shouldn’t, but it does.

She has no choice. She cannot turn back, not without knowing.

The door’s creaking hinges wail when she pushes it open. Nirya hisses a curse and bites it back at once, but the sound plumes out of her anyway, traitorous white fog wisping around her lips. The hall is dark, lit by bobbing magelights shining soft blue. She puts her back to the door and eases it closed, soundless with experience. 

It is immediately warmer inside. Leaning against the reddish shimmer of one of the warming enchantments worked into the stone, Nirya waits, every knot in her body rigid, for the hems of her robes to start to warm, then slowly steam. The steam wasps ticklishly up to her nose, smelling faintly of musty fabric and slush. She grimaces and tries to primp up her limp hair. 

She’s painted her eyelids, her lips, and dusted her cheeks with blush. It’s a subtle look, just enough to highlight her features without being too obvious, just enough to give her face a little help. It has taken hours of anxious deliberating, but it doesn’t look like it. The humiliation of being sent away despite a visible effort makes her stomach squirm with horror. Better by far to pretend she’s above it all. 

One day, they’ll all see, and Nirya will never have to pretend again, she promises herself. One day, sooner than they all think.

Ghosting up the stairs, Nirya hugs the shadowy wall. Her pricked ears swivel, hunting for sounds. The hall sleeps, humming with the ticking turnover of the magicka wells, a hundred-thousand forgotten enchantments whirring in the walls, the distant wind reduced to a sigh through the ice-crusted windows. A bespelled quill somebody forgot to dismiss determinedly tries to scratch words into the stony wall, by the remnant smears of ink, Nirya guesses it’s somebody’s research notes. The diagram is too archaic even for her, and she moves on with only the briefest pause to examine it. Somewhere, a scratchy, disembodied voice croons softly in mournful Dunmeris; Drevis’ dreams of his motherland brought to life by some sleeper-spell. Under his door, strange lights flicker, stirring wistful false-memories of an ash-choked land Nirya has never known. Used to ignoring the odd pulling towards the illusionist’s experiments, Nirya slides past.

She is nearly there. Her steps pick up with increasing confidence; she starts to feel she has already got away with it, and then she hears the worst possible sound.

Faralda, lightly clearing her throat. Nirya stops dead, but the chilling call of her name never comes.

In the silence, Master Wizard Ervine says, simply, “Faralda.”

“... Mirabelle,” replies Faralda.

There is something in how she says the name that Nirya has never heard before. Something she cannot quite put her finger on, something that makes her desperately curious. Something that feels like a crack in perfect Faralda’s infuriating facade.

Nirya glances longingly at Sergius’ silent door. Then she sighs, knowing herself. Stealthily, Nirya sidles round a chilly pillar and, trying to cram herself into the shadow as best as she can, surreptitiously peeks out.

Mirabelle and Faralda are standing by the blue radiance of the magic font. Faralda’s gold skin looks copperish in the cold light and her windswept, beautiful red curls are washed out oilslick-purple. Her robes are pushed up to the elbow, revealing her pallid forearms criss-crossed with fine, glinting hairs. Nirya can see the muscles jump in her forearms when she crosses her arms tightly over her chest, like she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. The elegant points of her perfectly-shaped ears drag downwards at indifferent, irregular angles. 

“Won’t you come in for a moment?” the Master Wizard asks. There’s an undercurrent in her voice, a lilt that makes Nirya’s eyebrows raise even as it inflames her curiosity.

Mirabelle is regarding Faralda steadily. Her robes are rumpled and a flyaway lock of hair has escaped her sloppy bun, but she holds herself with the same unflappable, quiet confidence Nirya expects from her. Master Wizard Ervine, no matter how pressed for time, how harried, how tired, looks at the world like there’s a solution to every problem, one that cannot stand against the deep, iron core of persistence and inner strength that radiates from her like heat shimmers from Faralda. 

But Nirya has never seen her smile like that. It is a strange little smile, very calm, nothing but the slightest curl of the lips and a richness in her warm brown eyes that makes Nirya’s palms sweat. 

Nirya shrinks back, intimidated and intensely aware she’s eavesdropping. She feels, suddenly, that while she has had a relatively comfortable intercourse with Master Wizard Ervine, she does not know Mirabelle at all. She imagines Mirabelle’s patient, disappointed face at catching Nirya spying on her, and her stomach clenches over cold and ill. As silently as she can, she rubs her hands on her robes, and hopes she doesn’t see Faralda’s sharp ear twitch at the rustle of cloth.

Instead, Faralda speaks, quickly, tensely, like she might think better of it. “I had better not.”

Mirabelle sighs, leaning one hand against a plain black door - obviously, leading to her room. They are in the enchanters’ quarters. Faralda’s slender, tall frame sways a little. From her crouched vantage point behind the pillar, Nirya sees Faralda stare hard at Mirabelle’s hand, warm colour against the faded woodstain, her brow furrowed like she’s trying to unpick a problem. 

“I am able to control myself,” Mirabelle says, a little tartly, and Nirya frowns. Control herself - how? She presses her cheek to the wall - ignoring the cold - and squints, hoping to catch some flicker of expression that will explain the whole puzzling interaction to her. 

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Faralda replies, lowly. 

She means me, Nirya realises. Faralda’s voice pitched rough and deep does something to Nirya, something strange that makes her face flush up hot even as it slides thickly ice-cold down her spine like snow dumped over her head from jeering apprentices. She curls her toes in her boots, but it doesn’t stop the itching, jittery urge to do, to do - something. Something that lodges in her chest, uncomfortable and hard to breathe around, something that surges like heated victory in her veins. 

It’s proof that Faralda sees her, proof that she knows Nirya is a threat to her, that she’s coming up behind Faralda, ready to take her for everything she has. Finally, she’ll see what underneath that distant, fiery mask, finally, she’ll see what Faralda is so desperate to keep from her, finally, she’ll have some proof that Faralda is trying to split her apart from Sergius! And then, and then, Faralda will have to look at Nirya with a bit of respect, when Nirya foils her plans, when Nirya proves she’s just as savvy, just as clever as Faralda and even the Master Wizard, that she deserves to be right up there with them, included in their secret councils and whispering gossips late at night. It’s all she’s ever wanted, and it makes her sick to hear it.

The vindication of being right distracts Nirya so utterly she nearly misses Mirabelle’s reply, but then Mirabelle cocks her head and takes one small, measured step towards Faralda, barely sliding her shoe forwards and shifting her weight closer. 

Speaking softly like she doesn’t want to wake anyone, Mirabelle murmurs, "I want a simple word with you, that's all." 

Faralda’s shoulders jerk in a tight movement Nirya recognises well; Faralda, putting on her mask, preparing for a rousing debate or a catty fight. When she speaks, her aristocratic Alinorian drawl is sharp and clipped.  "And what word may a Master Wizard have for a professor, this late at night?"

"Oh, very well, if it will comfort you, professor," says Mirabelle, amused. The tension draws out of her shoulders and she tucks her fingers against her palms, the sign for disengagement for mages everywhere. Faralda doesn’t smile. "Go sleep - are you on watch duty again tomorrow?"

Mirabelle’s lightness doesn’t seem to relax Faralda at all. Has Nirya caught the end of a telling off? But Mirabelle doesn’t seem angry in the slightest, and Nirya knows all too well the squirming dread of being on the other side of those solid stares, the private horror of all but watching the tiredness engraved under Mirabelle’s eyes dig deeper, all because of her. 

No, the tight, tense line of the shoulders creeping up to Faralda’s ears cannot really be guilt. 

"Well if you're going to stand out here all night torturing yourself, I'm bringing you tea," says Mirabelle briskly, when all Faralda does is jerk her chin. It’s the Master Wizard in her voice again, level and efficient, but the chill blue light lingers on the dimples of her warm smile, unutterably fond as she looks up at Faralda’s taut face, shadowed by the sharp angle of her cheek, turned away from Mirabelle.

"You need rest," mutters Faralda. She frowns, quick and severe, twisting her neck to regard Mirabelle seriously. “You do not sleep enough.”

"Don't be silly. I have far too much work to do." Mirabelle brushes the accusation off with a brief, affectionate touch to Faralda’s arm as she passes.

"I - very well, but - Mirabelle…" says Faralda, completely disarmed and completely ignored as Mirabelle bustles off.

Nirya jerks back behind the pillar, alarm thrumming through her body. Mirabelle passes so close by that Nirya could reach out a hand and caress her shoulder. She digs her nails into her palms and holds so still she barely breathes, heart drumming in her chest. Hidden only by the trick of light and Mirabelle’s path away from her towards the stairs, the near-miss inflames Nirya. Quickly, before she can lose her nerve, she darts out of cover and snakes towards Sergius’ room, praying Faralda is too preoccupied to hear the soft scuff of her shoes.

The affectionate brush of Mirabelle’s hand to Faralda’s arm is burned in her mind, how her hand skated up the smoothness of Faralda’s forearm and lingered in the caress of the robe falling over her elbow. She fumbles with the doorknob and sees it replay over and over in her mind, an odd thudding sensation in her veins and the knots of her belly. She makes it inside without incident, pressing her back to the door and her hand over her elbow, the same place Mirabelle touched on Faralda. Beneath her robes, she itches.

She looks, with some desperation, on the entire reason she has come out tonight.

Sergius is stretched out under the covers, one leg thrown haphazardly over nothing. He snores in rhythmic, whistling breaths through his hairy nose, his skull soft and vulnerable as an egg in the dim light Nirya conjures to see by. Gadgets and gizmos in various states of sawdusty disrepair cover every available surface in his room, a towering maze Nirya has to pick her way through to reach his rumpled bed. It smells of explosions, arcane dust, and man, and she feels something in her shoulders unknot at the familiarity of it all.

Best of all, he is alone. No secret lover has crept into Nirya’s space at his side, if Faralda means to visit him tonight then Nirya has beaten her to it. She is suddenly, overwhelmingly pleased, flustered by her delight, and her doubts seem foolish and insubstantial when he is there, before her. Memorisingly, she stares down at his face and the dearness of the wrinkles around his eyes crinkling in his snuffling sleep. 

“Sergius,” she calls, softly. She touches his shoulder, crawling up beside him. Her heart burns a warm coal in her chest, and she purrs his name again, bringing her lips to his ear.

He shivers in his sleep, mumbling something incoherent the pillow swallows. When he raises his head, his bushy eyebrows are haywire and his striking eyes bleary. 

“Whazzit?” he manages, sleepily, blinking at Nirya like he doesn’t quite recognise her. After a moment, a tentative smile stretches his lips.

She catches his hand and presses it to her face, relishing in the roughness of his calluses against her skin, the smallness of his human hand in her long, spindly elven one. She wants to press his fondness into her body and eat it, consume it until it’s a ruddy part of her, inextricable from her flesh. He squeezes her sharp chin, swiping his thumb over her lashline, where tears have clumped up ready to fall. She is remorse personified, her heart turning over itself overspilling and rotten through, she is a stupid girl, she is everything they say about her, for doubting anything at all.

“Did I get the day wrong?” Sergius’ voice rumbles around in his chest. She strokes his chest to feel it vibrate, dragging her fingers through sprigs of curly hair. He is very warm against her chilled skin. His vitality pumps through his chest like a drum. “I thought it’s Tirdas.”

“It is,” she admits, bashfully, “I just had to see you.”

She fears briefly he’ll press, and she will have to speak aloud her torrid, terrible worries, but he doesn’t. Instead he blinks, slow and sleepy like a startled cat, and asks, “Y’right, Nirya?”

“Yes,” she says, and then bends to kiss him. 

He accepts her lips with lazy, lordly composure, but his eyes are drooping. He is half-asleep already when she sits up, sighing. His eyes are closed, so at least he doesn’t see the tears that she hurriedly swipes away before it can ruin her makeup.

“Tomorrow?” he mumbles without a shred of shame. Idly, he pats her hand on his chest. She can feel the strength in his wiry body, even lax and heavy with his interrupted slumber.

“I suppose,” says Nirya, a little disgruntled but without rancour. She dusts a gentle, farewell kiss on the bridge of his proud nose and eases herself up, careful not to disturb him. 

She needn’t have bothered; Sergius stays where she leaves him, sprawled out and breathing deeply. There is a faint smile on his lips, like a man who slips at once and easily into pleasant dreams. Nirya does her best to match it as she carefully opens the door a crack, listening intently. Her body is warm and flushed with girlish pleasure, the simple joy of validation and doubts dismissed. She is still quick to draw her eye back from the crack in the door when she hears the rapping of Mirabelle’s footsteps.

Mirabelle’s shape swishes past, carrying two steaming mugs. In the brief flash, Nirya spots her tired face and sees Mirabelle’s hands are shaking where she holds the cups. Tea splashes over her brown wrist, burning her skin. Mirabelle doesn’t even flinch, her dark eyes scanning the shadows for the professor she’s left waiting. Nirya exhales slowly when she has gone past, and nudges the door open a hair more.

“Here,” Nirya hears Mirabelle announce softly, “Your tea.”

A pause, then Faralda’s surprise. “Peppermint?”

"Snowberry is for our mornings," Mirabelle says, firmly. "Though, peppermint is an early tea, too. How you drink it at all hours only the gods will know."

"Thank you," Faralda says, quietly enough that Nirya almost misses it. 

"You're welcome," Mirabelle returns, in the same intimate manner. 

There is a brief, telling silence. Her ears twitch and strain. She wishes she could see them still; Nirya is certain there is something very interesting happening, something that will only give her an edge. She wonders if it is not about her at all, but something else, something even more illicit.

Gently, Mirabelle adds, "If you change your mind, you know where to find me."

"I won't," says Faralda. Stolid and resigned, her flat self-denial makes Nirya clench her fists. She sounds like she regrets it even as she says it. It’s irritating. Faralda is better than this, Nirya knows she is, she has to be better, or she’s not worth beating at all. 

"Goodnight, Faralda." Mirabelle doesn’t sound upset, though. Her voice remains even, if slightly fond. Nirya scrunches her robes in her hands and glances back at Sergius, dozing contentedly. Something in her heart twists. No, she recognises that tone, understands it in a terrible series of interlocking revelations that have her mind spinning. 

"Master Wizard,” replies Faralda.

She waits for the sounds of retreating footsteps, then gives it an extra minute or two for good measure. Then, certain she has evaded all discovery, Nirya eases open the door and slips out. She straightens up, mind full of the snippets she has gleaned. She finds herself smiling, wolfish. Another seamless infiltration of the Hall of Countenance, and she has learnt new gossip to boot; gossip no doubt worth a pretty penny of social currency, if she ever chooses to share it. If she doesn’t keep tucked under her ribcage, next to her flighty heart, the fact that Master Wizard Ervine and the Destruction Professor have … something going on. 

You’re not perfect after all, she thinks, You’re just like me. Except Nirya would prove to everyone, anyone, some day, that she is better still.

A single word shatters her glee.

“Nirya?!”

Nirya’s body locks up in sudden horror and she whirls round. Faralda is staring back at her, mouth ajar, equally as shocked to see her as she is to be caught. There are still lingering traces of blush dusting Faralda’s ears and cheeks. She holds the teacup out from herself like it’s a stave, a defensive weapon, and Nirya feels a brief, stifled flare of warmth; Faralda’s fire, hastily banked. The slightest brush of her magic against Nirya’s core makes her shiver head to toe, but she draws her shoulders back proudly, like her face hasn’t flooded with guilty red.

Officiously, Faralda does the same, her chin tilting harshly and her shoulders setting into a straight, forbidding line. The teacup she still holds ruins the foreboding silhouette somewhat; the white china cup is small in her long hands, sized for humans, and there are periwinkles flashing blue between her violet-tinted gold knuckles. Her sharp eyes drill down into Nirya like hot motes of firelight from searing torches.

“Mistress Nirya, this area is out of bounds at this time,” Faralda says, cuttingly, like it will distract Nirya from her still-visible blush.

“Professor,” she returns, with an insolent smirk. Faralda’s ears quirk back, vexed. “Don’t worry, I was just leaving.”

“Whatever you were doing here in the first place, I should not like to know, as business is to be conducted in the daylight hours,” Faralda says superciliously. She has a very fine nose for looking down at Nirya, despite their near-equal height. It is straight, long, and slightly pointy, and makes her gaze absolutely withering when she wants it to be. 

Stubbornly, Nirya clenches her hands into fists until her nails cut into her palms. She hates it when Faralda looks at her like this, like she’s some irritating, misbehaving student, some errant girl caught out of place and out of bed. It turns her guts to water and her spine to fire, and the angry hissing between comes out of her mouth, all spite.

“You think you’re any different? You think you can tell me what to do? What were you doing?”

She ladles her voice with insinuation, and Faralda flushes at once. Her lip curls off her teeth. “Adjunct,” she begins, and Nirya scoffs. Her heart is beating quickly in her temples, her breath is shallow in her lungs, she feels incandescent and alive, adrenaline a high behind her teeth. 

“Had a … private question for the Master Wizard?” she drawls, taunting, and the heat shimmer haloing Faralda’s glorious curls thickens like a summer storm. Faralda’s eyes flash, lightning; Nirya feels electric.

“How did you - you spy!” she snaps, incensed, “I have tolerated your rudeness, but this invasion of privacy is a step too far-”

“Oh, like you’re any better than me!” Nirya cries as the bubbling inside of her erupts, “You think I’m some stupid rube, some country wizard! But you’re jealous! You’re jealous of me! I bet if I had your fancy training from Summerset, I’d be just as good as you-! Better!”

“Jealous?” Faralda looks so baffled it hurts like a slap in the face. “Why would you ever want to go to Summerset?”

“You just don’t think I could succeed there because I’m not like you!” Nirya flares. Traitorous tears sting at her eyes but she blinks them away. She won’t cry out of the tumultuous mix of emotions that can only come out as anger, not now, not ever! And certainly not in front of Faralda!

“I’d pray you’d never have to go to that cesspit, though Divines know you have the will to wear down anywhere you’d like!” Faralda says crossly, “Nirya, I thought you were prouder than that.”

“I am!” Nirya shrills, confused, pleased, and furious enough to weep. 

“Good!” Faralda spits.

An impatient, bristling silence falls as they both stand there, panting. Nirya swipes roughly at her face, forgetting her makeup and then hissing when she sees powder on the sleeve of her robe. Her shoulders sink. She can’t bring herself to look at Faralda, not when she looks like such a state, not when crippling awkwardness and shame revolt in her stomach with the heaviness of lead.

Faralda sighs. It’s a deep sound, a release of built-up pressure and irritation, one that musters despite herself a contrary flicker of indignation in Nirya. When Nirya glares up at her - and how rude, that Faralda is just a little taller than her - she finds Faralda reclining back against the wall, long frame sinuous and the teacup held seriously against her sternum. She sips from the tea, eyes burning down at Nirya, and Nirya has to glance away again, a hot flip in the pit of her belly. She grits her teeth against a wave of prickling frustration, at herself, at Faralda, at everyone. It’s not fair.

“I shall not say a word of where I saw you tonight, adjunct, but I advise that you leave. The storm outside only grows angrier,” says Faralda. 

“Like you don’t know why I was here,” Nirya mutters rebelliously, still not quite able to raise her eyes all the way to Faralda’s face.

“I do not, and I try very hard to keep it that way,” Faralda replies, with the measured intensity of somebody trying very hard to not be snappish. “What another does not know cannot hurt you - an element of discretion some folk of Skyrim can seemingly only aspire to.”

Nirya rolls her eyes. She doesn’t believe her, the hot, wormy feelings inside of her won’t permit it. Bitterly, she bites back, “You’re lying.”

Faralda exhales - not quite a sigh, not yet, and turns away. “Good night, Adjunct.”

She walks away, and with each step the bubbling within Nirya grows. She has to speak, to say something, to release the mounting pressure, something, this isn’t how it ends tonight - “Where are you going?” Nirya blurts.

Pausing, Faralda’s cheek is lapped with cool blue light, her eyes shifting as fire as she glances over her shoulder. Nirya’s armpits gather sweat. “To bed,” she replies, clipped and tart, “Like you should, seeing as we both have classes in the morning.”

Nirya speaks quickly, too quickly for her mind to process the words she says and demand to know what the hell she is doing. “You should ask her what that word was about, professor.” Faralda is rigid, her eyes widening, but Nirya isn’t done digging her own grave, “Offers - opportunities like this don’t come always. One day it’ll run out, and then you’ll just be alone again.”

Wincing, Nirya draws herself up straight; Faralda’s gathering ire at the reminder of her trespass shifts the air humid and crackling and the tips of Nirya’s ears cherry-red. She is quiet, waiting for Nirya to finish in disbelief at Nirya’s audacity, so Nirya keeps going, casting about inside herself for a hint of self-assurance, smugness, so it sounds like she knows what she’s talking about, like she doesn’t care, like she’s above it all. 

“Anyway, you may as well give up any advantage you have over me now, because unlike what you might be used to, here, we judge on merit,” she intones, self-importantly.

Unexpectedly, Faralda smiles. It’s only a rueful, tired quirk of her thin lips, but Nirya stares at it and feels a pain swell several sizes in her aching chest. Tingles run down from the centre of her spine to her extremities, and Nirya vaguely hopes it’s not some heretofore unknown seizure issue. She sucks in an unwieldy breath and tries to look proud. 

“So we do,” she says, kindly. It’s unbearable. Nirya wants to throw an arcane bolt into her smug face. “And so I hope to have much to fear from you, one day.”

“You already do,” Nirya lashes back, and then she turns on her heel and leaves so quickly she can only pray it doesn’t look like fleeing.