#telline

We both chuckled and watched seabirds soar over the waves. Pickle was attempting to chase a gull, but quickly decided his obviously-achy hips could not sustain the effort, and came over to lay in the warm sand next to us.

“It’d be a great story, if I could tell it to anyone,” Viggol said, after a long silence. “For two or three years, I jokingly bothered Telline about marrying me at least weekly, until I started to feel like the joking had a bit too much feeling behind it; like I was pressuring her. I knew she couldn’t marry me. I just wanted to be with her. But, two or three months after I stopped pestering her about marriage, we got drunk and she asked me! It’s illegal, not to mention dangerous and socially repulsive, here in Summerset, but we weren’t in Summerset—I hauled her right then and there to the nearest Mara shrine. Of course I wouldn’t actually marry her until we were both sober, but we sat right next to the shrine for several hours until we were both of sound mind. And she didn’t back out!” It was very sweet, how moons-eyed he looked as he recounted this.

“Ah, when an Elf is willing to do something moderately spontaneous for you, this is true love, yes? What convinced her?”

He laughed. “She said—” he did his best impression of his wife “—‘I have never done anything stupid enough to risk regretting. I suspect you’d say risking regret is the only way to do something that thrills you.’” He looked over to where she was standing, with unabashed adoration on his face. His eyes were dewy when he turned back to me. “That was what she said. Why she was willing to marry someone who would die before she was middle-aged. She said she wouldn’t stay married to me unless she was right about it being thrilling. That was almost fifty years ago, and she’s still here, even though I don’t have more than ten or fifteen years left.” He wiped a tear and laughed self-consciously. “Sorry. I don’t usually get to tell people how wonderful she is.”

I just smiled. “This one can sympathize; please, do not apologize! You have found just the right audience. Fifty years is a long time to keep such things hidden.”

“Heh, if you’re asking for advice, friend, I don’t know that I can be helpful. Before this, we lived in Solitude for a couple of years—no one gave a skeever’s arse about our relationship there, though we still had to be discreet in public, and careful around Altmer. We did live in a cave for a few years; that helped.”

“An Elf willing to live in a cave for you! That is love, walker!”

“Don’t I know it! She was actually the one who originally suggested Blackreach. My adventuring days are over, but I found Blackreach to be more neighborly than Lillandril, if that tells you anything. But after fifty years of adventuring alongside her crazy Nord husband, at very least, Telline deserves a few years of uneventful, easy living.” He smiled and shook his head. “I was younger than you are now when I met Telline, and she was a bit older than your… wife?”

Somehow it felt fitting that this strange Nord would be the first to hear the news. “Yes. As of yesterday,” I said, with an unexpected choke in my throat. “Married in Eymei's ancestral tradition. There will be no Rings of Mara for us, but that is unimportant—two days ago, we both truly believed we'd never consider marriage. To each other, or at all.”

“Ha! An Elf willing to do something very spontaneous for you,” he said. “Congratulations! That sounds like quite a story!” We both laughed, and he hugged me with boisterous Nord enthusiasm. I was surprised at how much I appreciated it. “If you’re ever back in Lillandril, I’ll buy you a pint of ale so I can hear it. Or… whatever sickly-sweet thing you probably like to drink.”

I glanced back over to Eymei and Telline. They were both staring stone-faced at the waves as they talked.

Viggol said, “can’t imagine their conversation is as fun as ours. Not that most Altmer particularly enjoy fun, far as I can tell.”

I laughed sadly. “Congratulations on the sand slipping through your fingers!”

Viggol laughed too. “Since I was a little mer, I dreamed of being young and sexually frustrated while my spouse grew withered and elderly.”

“It is unjust that we must hide our relationship from Praxis-obsessed Altmer, but at least I get to spend decades waiting for my beating heart to be torn from my chest with well over half of my life still ahead of me.”

“Yes, I am so looking forward to the isolation and despair of grieving my life’s love, whom most of my kin consider a lesser being.”

Now Viggol and I were also staring stone-faced at the waves.

After a long silence, he said, “you’ll lose your mind if you don’t give voice to thoughts like that sometimes. I’m glad we could help each other—I don’t get to meet a lot of people I can talk to about my marriage. But friend, if there is one piece of advice I can give you… that Elf married you with full knowledge that that would be her future. I don’t even have to know your wife to know she has already stared all of that in the face. Am I right?”

I nodded.

“It weighs on me every day,” Viggol said. “It’s going to weigh on you, too, and believe me, it’ll only get worse as you get older and she stays young, capable, and beautiful. Part of the reason I was a bit in denial about the end of my adventuring days.” His voice came out strained as he continued. “It took me almost losing Telline to get it through my skull: I could either get crushed under the weight of what she’s willing to face for me, or I could be worth it.”

I looked down at my hands. “It is hard for me to imagine anyone being worth that.”

“Me too, friend. It’s impossible for me to say whether I’d make the same choice, in her place. But… doesn’t matter what I’d do. Fact is, I’ve got that Elf fooled well enough that she keeps making that choice every day—I’ve gotten to live my life knowing for damned sure that the wisest, kindest person I know thinks I’m worth it. So, I decided that until the day I die, I will do my best to be the person Telline thinks I am. I don’t always live up to it, but the effort has made me better in more ways than I can count.” He waited until I met his eyes. “Don’t do what I did. Don't waste your time worrying that you’re not worth it. Be worth it.”

I looked over at the Elves. They were sitting on the sand now; Pickle had wandered back over to them, and was laying next to Eymei. I think Eymei might have been quietly casting a lay-on-hands on his hips, as Telline talked.

I sighed. “The person Eymei thinks I am is… quite a cat.”