#necroheals

Don’t you remember? We’re getting married. You proposed to me.

I’m six seconds away from slapping the ugliness out of you. Stop talking nonsense, this isn’t funny.

But we made plans! We wanted to invite all of the orc strongholds, I was to wear a robe with dead eyes and mudcrab remains tied to it, you were going to wear a pure white gown, Maybe you’re still half asleep? You were so overjoyed last evening!

[It was pretty clear he was grinning maliciously even despite the scarves.]

[She says nothing and her expression is as close to horrified as she can get. She quite believes him, especially since she’s certain she did something stupid last night - but she didn’t expect that.] That… would explain why Maramal was so excited to see me. [A sigh.] Well, I could have chosen worse, I suppose.

Have we actually managed to invite anyone?

You left me in charge of that. So far I have managed to choose the paper for invitations and that was about it. Work has been… hectic the past few days. I just hope when Marina and Martin return they’ll be wed themselves because I will put frostbite spiders in their food if they left the store to me alone for any other reason.

I’m really sorry for the lack of invitations yet, I wanted them prepared so we could burn them together.

Shadows, they’re not back yet? And you, of all people, have been in charge for Footnote all this time? Not bad for an antisocial hermit.

Ah. [She actually smiles. It’s brief and subtle, but it’s there and it’s genuine.] Yes, let’s get to it. I need to write more to work on my penmanship. The more invitations, the bigger fire, too.

Trust me, I am not happy with this arrangement either, but someone has to. I just wish they would have warned me beforehand. I had to sleep in the shop to save time.

And I thought you might want to have a say in them. [He procures from his bag a large stack of parchment sheets, each dyed in various shades of pink, purple or red. Some even looked as if they were dipped in blood.]

Mixing dyes is not a one-night job appearently.

Dye, huh. [She gives him a look and flicks through the parchments.] They lack essential ornaments, love. We will have to draw all the flowers and hearts by ourselves.

No matter. [She makes herself comfortable by the desk, ready to begin the arduous work.] Performing this activity together will only bring our hearts closer together, yes? [Somehow she gets the feeling that high Lamia doesn’t differ that much from sober Lamia.]

I knew you just needed some time to get back to your senses.

[He reaches to the bag again and pulls out a bottle of ink, which he unseals and places on the table. He reaches for the quill and is just about to dip it in the ink, but for some reason stops. He puts the quill back, looks at the contents of the bottle under light and with a soft murmur under the scarf hides it and takes out another.]

Apologies, I mixed up ink and chaurus fluid.

I have red ink back at my house. If I’d known I’d be doing this I would have brought it with me. Goodness knows red and pink look grotesquely awful together. [She helps herself to the contents of the new inkwell, and begins ornamenting the parchment with scribbles.]

I don’t even want to know how and why you acquired chaurus fluid… it’s best to leave some of the alchemists’ secrets undiscovered, as I’ve learned when I was young.

Neither do you want to know why I carry it around instead of leaving it with the rest of my reagents at my house. [He started covering a parchment with his own, packed and square-y handwriting, leaving enough space for crude drawings of floating eyeballs with tentacles.] I don’t know that many people so I might ask you for names, dearest.

Start with His Lordship And An Idiot, Aran. [She shrugs.] Or we could omit the names and just write couple of thousand invitations per hold, without an exact addressee. And by couple of thousand I mean twenty-something. [She draws several swirls and a penis.] This looks good. Forget the flowers, I’m drawing flying cocks.

You must have got some friends, invite them.

[He glances at the parchments he has written for Erii, Koussikka and Marina with Martin.]

I… may have a shortage of them.

Also, don’t mention him. [He started writing an invitation for Eros] Will you never forgive me the mistakes of my past? You know I truly love only you, right?

[She writes “DAK” with big, easily legible letters, and a bottle of brandy and a pair of voluptuous breasts next to it. The next one is “One And True Master Bodran Belaal”, with a tiny crown above his name.] Me not mentioning him would be like you not mentioning your love for alchemy. He’s part of my life, deal with that. [She almost barks, and it’s hard to say if she’s joking.

She peeks at his set of parchments, and seeing as he already invited Marina and Martin (in one invitation, no less) she moves onto the next name, which is “Sontaire Florens” - with the fanciest, neatest initials she can produce. There’salso a pair of breasts included.] I know. I love you too.

Don’t mistake my clients for friends, though. There’s not many of those. Honest ones, anyway.

…

[He stops right before saying something he would regret. Without a word he finishes up the invitation and starts another, a vague one for a name he couldn’t remember.]

I don’t. But you haven’t spent most of your life among ruins and bandits, so I imagine that merits more friendly contacts than a few months in Riften. Also, how do you feel about spiced wine?

Haven’t I? Love of my life, you don’t know me that well. [If she convinces herself hard enough she can relate - after all, isn’t the Nightingale Hall a ruin, especially now? And aren’t thieves just glorified bandits?

Name “Cpt. Shey ‘Hellcat’ Catrasius” and a tiny boat adorn the otherwise blank paper.] Those bandits then - surely you had to make some friends to stay around them and not get killed? None should be uninvited for such a ceremony.

Spiced wine is among my favourites, but only if prepared well, and not this… watered-down piss they sell at the inns. Why?

[He takes out a bottle of spiced wine bought at a store out of his bag and places it on the table] I earn quite an amount lately and I felt that after last night you might need… something to calm down. From all the excitement of course. Do with it what you will.

As for the bandits, I have known some. I later poisoned them all. It was a good arrangement for a time, but inevitably they all disgusted me to no end. One group has been kidnapping women for years and holding them as their slaves. They evaded capture only because some of their members were in the guard. Luckily, they haven’t evaded poison, save for one.

[Lamia takes the bottle in her hands to read the label and raises her eyebrows, impressed with the quality she didn’t actually expect.] Ohh. I will have to check how many different poisons are in it, but I think I know exactly what to do with it. [The bottle is put on the table, still corked. For now.

She gets back to writing the name of Diana Crassius, as she only managed to write down “Diana Crass” before she was distracted with alcohol - she considers adding “the” before the unfinished surname now, simply out of spite, but in the ends decides against improving the priestesses name, and gets back to writing.] That’s fucking disgraceful. [A murmur more to herself, than him.] A pity you didn’t manage to deal with that one, then. Figures, though, the more fucked up these bandits are the faster they seem to be able to run.

If you check the opening of the bottle, you might notice it hasn’t been opened yet. I didn’t poison the contents.

[He gracefully omits what else he could have poisoned.]

As for the bandit, he didn’t run in fact. He was in a cage. Submerged in ice cold water. I threw him the key. [Dalne finished writing the third unaddressed invitation in a row and proceeded with the fourth] Never looked back if he actually managed to catch it and survive. But we never met again, and I suppose that is a blessing.

You could have injected whatever through the cork, or supervised the wine merchant. [She addresses the last invitation to her mother, adding a small heart next to her name. Doesn’t matter that it’s cheesy, she isn’t going to get it anyway.]

You admit to unleashing some degenerate shitsmear upon the world after you just told me he was involved with slavery? What in blazes for? [She frowns, taking a sharp inhale.] You might as well have jailbroken every useless piece of shit lowlife from the jail.

Actually, neither him nor me participated in the process. We were outsiders who joined out of convenience. And I somehow grew… fond of him. I had never assumed before meeting him that there can be in fact someone more disgusting than myself. It put things into perspective. [He continued writing more and more anonymous invitations. Did he really remember only five names? But then again was that little or many?]

For all I know he has been submerged for half a day when I threw him the key. It is unlikely he has caught it.

…How the fuck do you join a group of slavers “out of convenience”? [Lamia squints suspiciously. What Dalne says makes her think of someone, but she brushes the thought away - nobody could ever grow fond of him. She continues to squint until it gets difficult and she moves onto another invitation. She starts jotting down the name of every client she can remember, but she’s lost inspiration and there are no more drawings.

There’s something off, but she can’t quite place it. She shrugs.] Perhaps he didmake it. If you were so fond of him as to grant him even a chance for freedom, do you not want to look for him?

Shelter and their cave was rich in fungi I needed for my potions. As for Nir, I cannot tell. He was not very responsive to inquiries and at the time I was much too detached to ask anyone else. And had you known him, I am sure you would not propose a search. Whenever he is, it is best for him and for society as a whole to stay as far away from anyone as possible. In a dwemer ruin, preferably.

[Ah, right, fungi seems to be all that matters for Dalne. Lamia almost chuckles at the thought, but then he mentions the name.

The only reason she doesn’t interrupt him, incredulous, is because she is too stumped to say anything at all. After he stops talking she finds herself pressing the quill to the parchment and leaving a nasty stain.

With what little self-control she has she puts the quill away, slowly and calmly, as to not stab Dalne in the eye with it. She immediately clenches her fist, and her brow furrows, her voice hushed to almost a whisper.]

You. Let that shitstain. Go?

[He observes her reaction with initial mild surprise, but after several blinks he smirks slightly and returns to writing. No reason to stop now that only two pieces of parchment were left.]

I see you have met him. I do believe that is proof enough I should not send an invitation.

[The more she processes the fact the more furious it makes her.

The fact that he returns to his writing as if nothing happened doesn’t help, for she takes it for utter disdain, which makes her absolutely livid. Lamia has yet to remember when was the last time she left a seat so swiftly to bypass a table, get hold of Dalne’s collar and yank him away from the work - it was probably years ago, when she still used to brawl in the Windhelm inns. She wants to yell at him, but the lump in her throat lets her only hiss.]

Do you have any idea— ANY idea what you’ve done? [Talking only makes her more furious, and she aims to slam the Breton on the table. She cannot control— oh, she absolutely can control, but she simply allows the fire to slowly engulf her until she’s entirely cloaked in the element.] Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t melt what’s left of your face off!

[She has absolutely no care for the environment. He wanted a bonfire, and so he shall have it.]

[Her outbursts catches him completely off guard. He looks at her confused, dropping the quill and making a small stain on the parchment]

Calm yourself— [But his words are interrupted when he’s slammed onto the table, causing his scarf to fall loose and cover his eyes for a moment] Stop— [And then he notices the flames]

[He freezes for a split second with wide eyes, before letting out a trembling, terrified yelp. But soon enough that yelp started growing and turned into a deafening scream, as if Dalne was being murdered this very second. He struggled, trying to get out of Lamia’s grip and back away, but his panic and his clothes robbed him of any possibility of smooth execution.] NO! [He shrieked] NO NO NONONO! LET ME GO! LET ME GO! [His shrieks resounded in the room and soon mixed with cries and pleas. His eyes shot around like a small animal’s]

Funny. [Sneering, she keeps the fire away from spreading any further, but it’s still painfully present, and her grip doesn’t slacken.] I begged the exact same thing of him.

[Dalne’s panic doesn’t appease her at all, and - even if aware that it’sflames that frighten him, not her wrath - she almost revels in the effect her actions have on him. She feels mighty, and, although capable of needless cruelty needed to keep him in this irrational fear, Lamia is pragmatic first. Her efforts won’t undo the damage, she doesn’t want to educate him on the matter,and she’d already had her revenge. She wastes no more time.

With more force than necessary she lets go of him as quickly as he was grabbed. She’s merely sizzling, as if ready to burst into flames again again. As opposed to her actions and a rational - according to her - train of thought, her voice is anything but steady.] You’re going to make this up to me. You had fucking better, Dalne, or I’m going to make your life a living hell.

[Once he’s free he crawls away in blind panic, forgetting about dignity or any semblance of bravery. He wants to find something, somewhere, a hole or a crevice he can crawl into and protect himself from the flames. All he can find is a corner in the walls, but he still pushes into it, away from the creature of fire, covering himself with fabrics as if it could protect him and shaking and sobbing, and muttering apologies and pleas that not even he can differentiate anymore.]

[She lets him scuttle off (like a bug he is, she thinks), and tries to occupy herself until calm herself down. She briefly checks for any permanent damage (there’s little), and starts pacing nervously, away from the table. This doesn’t help at all, as he’s being noisy, and she needs absolute quiet if she’s not to lash out again. She considers calming him with a spell, just so that he can get out, but she doesn’t want to waste any more magicka.

Although still fuming she feels quickly overwhelmed with her outburst. The fire is contained and Lamia mercifully waits until Dalne can make out her words. He better.] Get up. Get out. Get out of my sight.

[Even despite the fire disappearing, he was still terrified. Shaking. Crying and begging. But the moment the creature of fire he fell silent in terror, listening to every word. And he would do anything to get away from the flames. The flame was letting him go. He did not stop to think that it was foolish of it, he did not think to laugh, he was only relieved and terrified that it might change it’s mind. So he scurried hastily, almost tripping on his robes and running to the door. Once he was on the streets, he didn’t stop. The light of the sun although mellowed by the cold weather still burned him. He ran with no regards for other citizens, he ran lower, into the damp shade in a dirty, slimy corner. He pushed himself inside it as far as he could and made a barrier out of his robes that protected him from his robes. And like that, he started sobbing silently.]

[As soon as he’s gone she sighs, disappointed, her expression that of a great turmoil and fatigue. She doesn’t intend on bringing him (or anyone) the things he left in a hurry - she kind of wants to set them on fire, but, again, pragmatism gets in the way of anger - they could be of use later. Lamia carefully picks up the chair she knocked over earlier and falls into it heavily, hiding face in her hands and groaning exasperatedly.