In Pedo Impedimenta

by PurveyorofPulchritude

"But profoundly poignant prove the tawny knots of the womb-webb'd elves to the lonely scribe."

10. Chapter 9

AN: Many thanks to my single reviewer, The shadow 603 ()! It's good to know that at least one person is reading and enjoying this at this site. :)

Chapter IX

There is no endeavor more fearsome to the mortal nature than the pursuit of understanding. Which seems a strange claim to make, at first thought; understanding, fearsome? How so? Understanding, it seems to me, is the only real comfort, the only real solace we have from the hard cruelties of this world. Understanding is the fount of compassion, and of love. Understanding, achieved by unbiased rational investigation, is the only way in which we can improve our lot and better our peoples' lives. How could this possibly be fearsome?

It is not, of course. No, understanding is a great and wonderful thing, a shining, healing light to guide us through the darkness. Its pursuit, however, is not. Its pursuit is terror itself. Its pursuit requires us to face the very thing we find most disturbing in this world; that we might be wrong, that all of our carefully formulated explanations for society and life and existence might be utter nonsense. And this is no easy thing to face. You see it in the abandoned bastard who knows that his father was forced to leave him at birth by a shrewish wife, for to admit otherwise would be to admit that he is and has always been utterly alone; in the mother who clings to her belief in the Gods, because if the Gods are real then her miscarried child yet lives on in their arms, or in the womb of a more timely woman by their grace. To ask her to consider that the Gods do not exist, or that they are dead, is to ask her to kill her own child's potential spiritual existence, to condemn one possibility of that soul to complete, utter nonexistence. Few mothers can face such a challenge. Indeed, few anywhere are truly capable of accepting such a harsh prospect – and it is always harsh, whatever the circumstances. Small wonder, then, that reason and intellect are so rare in this world; it is simply too harsh a creed for most of this heartbroken world to accept. And in truth, no one does ever fully accept it. We slide as deep as we can into the bitter consciousness of doubt for as long as we dare, but there is no one who could possibly bear to submerge themselves entirely, and everyone withdraws in time. For we are mortal; we must have some little thing upon which we can stand in certainty. The mage has his 'immutable' formulae; the priest, his hierograms; the mother, the flesh-memory immortality of womb; the king, himself; but all of these are but illusions, comforters we use to escape the brush of despair and blatant insanity. To chase understanding is to sacrifice all of that, all preconceptions, all pride, all self to the cruel god of uncertainty, to ride the night mare of logic through the terrible seas of Oblivion without reins, without harness, without sight, and to accept, without hesitation, the possibility at which she deposits you.

I was reminded of the nature of this my life's goal with a bit of a rude shock, today. I was walking the strange tunnels around my chambers – not really exploring, though I may do so soon – and thinking on my account of our reception in Alinor. And as I walked, I found myself in an alarming position – the position of apologist for the Thalmor. Needless to say, that was never one I thought I would hold, and I tried my best to escape. I was unsuccessful. No matter how I pleaded and 'reasoned' with myself, I could not invalidate my conclusion: that the Thalmor, for all their despicability, are not to be condemned for their actions.

For who would not expect an organization with beliefs and behaviors as virulent as those of the Thalmor to form in a society such as Alinor's? Can we really blame the adolescent elves who became the Thalmor's most prominent misanthropists for maturing as such when they were raised in a place both devoid of all save elves and permeated with an unparalleled disdain and contempt for men of all races? What else could form, in such a society, but an extremist cult of racial superiority like the Thalmor? As conscious as we are in the Empire of the arrogance and thinly veiled misanthropy of the Altmer, I don't think any of us has truly understood the extent of their disdain for humanity until we have seen it at its worst, at its heart in their ancestral homeland. There are so many tiny – and not so tiny – quirks of elvish behavior that betray their feelings toward humanity. In every facet of life here, you find it; the arrogance, the indifference, the repugnance for our people, evident as much on the blank face of any stranger on the street as much as in the cruelties of the Thalmor. This is the culture that finds even the scent of man or beast unbearable; to walk the streets of Alinor is to scatter the scant crowds before you in flimsy excuses and superficially polite retreats, literally holding their lungs closed until they have escaped your aroma's aura. I exaggerate nothing; so distasteful did the residents of Alinor find the scent of our Ambassadors that the Thalmor deposited around the Embassy numerous latticed cubes filled with a gelatinous, hydrated crystal designed specifically to absorb our scent, and to wear amulets filled with the same substance upon perambulation about the city. I personally was never able to distinguish any particular aroma around our people – which I suppose isn't surprising; this elvish distaste was just a psychological manifestation of their contempt for us in unconscious (well, perhaps) insult. We did not smell, except in their minds.

Perhaps the most galling thing about that particular insult to our people is that it was almost the only thing that could make the elves acknowledge us. If we wore the amulets that the Thalmor provided, we could walk the streets of the city for days without finding an elf who would see us for more than a moment. It is an unnerving thing, in truth, walking the perception-warped streets of Alinor city as a human. It feels closer to walking the streets as a ghost; for the elves acknowledge human visitors in their cities about to the extent that we would acknowledge a being invisible, immaterial, and inaudible. I stood in the center of the busiest overpass in the city for nearly three hours, once, just to see what would happen. Three hours in the middle of a crowded street, immobile, and not once was even the slightest brush of contact made on either my person or my personality; the silent Altmer commute-crowd streaming around me, in iridescent carriages and on shining horses with manes to their hocks like the hair of womer, in sea-shelled sedan chairs borne by white-shrouded servants (which I now know were goblins, but did not then) or hurrying past on feet fleet with the famous Altmeri stride, and not once was I touched. They slid around me without effort or pause, passing flawlessly the scantest half an inch from my arm, as though I had entered some further warp in Alinor's already weakened spatiality. Their eyes, too; not once did I see a set of those golden Altmeri eyes actually focus upon me, no matter that I was blatantly, purposefully obstructing their paths. By the Nine, but I was fit to question my own materiality, after that. And Alinor could do very little to reaffirm my own consequentiality, for the whole of the city was like that (save, of course, for the Embassy, which was another matter entirely); the only way to obtain some degree of response from the bloody people was to torture their bloody pointed noses with your scent. Even the shopkeepers – in those few shops we were allowed to enter – had to be spoken to to acquire any information or accomplish any purchase. And perhaps that is why it is so difficult for me now to bend to speech with these Kemendelia Altmer; I have been too long in the practice of removed observation, for non-interactive observation was the only way to acquire information in Alinor urban. I had assumed it would be no different here… perhaps I was wrong.

But then again, perhaps not, for the Kemendelia themselves must be highly involved in that other so alienating quirk of Altmeri society that no doubt had a not-insignificant role in the nurturation of the Thalmori philosophy; the incredible elvish obsession with the relationship between sustenance and the sustained. I have of course encountered before what might seem to be undue particularity over the preparation of food – Mara knows I have spent enough time in High Rock – but never have I encountered a culinary sedulousness of the sort that reigns here in Alinor, which is not so much concerned with the preparation of food – though concerned it is – as it is with its production. I was astounded on my first expedition into the city's markets to find that it is quite impossible for any outlander to purchase a bite to eat, even the meanest scrap, regardless of the price offered. They simply won't let you have it. It doesn't matter which market or vendor you approach; if you're an outside in Alinor urban, the only place to procure food is at one of the Embassies.

Odfrin explained what she knows of it to me, when I came back fuming and starving from my first excursion. Apparently, the restriction stems from a pervasive societal obsession with where and how food is produced; every elf consumes only food grown in a specific region of the city-isle, under specific techniques of cultivation. Usually, she said, this means that they only eat food grown at or near the spot upon which they were born and raised, though an elf may decide to begin purchasing food from a different location instead. The act carries some cultural significance, but I've really no idea what it is. As a consequence of this rigid obsession, places like Alinor urban, or Firsthold, or Shimmerene, which house many elves who have relocated from their place of birth, are riddled with literally thousands of food markets, each selling products essentially identical save for the identity of the parcel of ground upon which they were grown. Some locations are more popular than others for those elves who do change their eating habits – though the why of that I cannot answer, as it is tied up in the cultural significance of the phenomenon – which no doubt has had its consequences, both good and bad, for the growers of the isle (if the Kemendelia allows for localized profits, of course, which I doubt).

Outsiders who visit the city-isle, then, fall into a sort of limbo; we have no dedicated plot of land for our own consumption needs, being guests, and the elves could not possibly allow us to eat food grown on the same land as theirs. The solution, as far as Odfrin and I could tell, is complete importation; the Dominion buys our food from Cyrodiil and has it shipped here for us to eat. Of course that begs the question of how it is all kept fresh for so long, which I still cannot answer – though the obvious is most likely correct, in Alinor. As to why the Dominion would go to such trouble and expense merely to prevent its human visitors from taking succor from the same land as its citizens – I'm sure I don't know. It seems utterly senseless, to me – but then, so does the whole obsession. Just one more example of ordination for the sake of ordination, rigidity for the sake of rigidity, one more way for the elves to set themselves apart from men and to alienate us when we intrude upon their strange ,synthetic sanctuary.

And this is why I cannot condemn the Thalmor for their beliefs and their actions toward men, for I have seen, now, the society that gave them birth. We could expect nothing else from a people that demands humans carry aroma sequestration elements when they leave their designated residences, that pretends it cannot see us though we stand flat in its way, that will not even suffer us to consume food grown on its island. No, I cannot condemn the Thalmor, but I can and do condemn the society that created and supports them, for I can find no excuse for the existence of such widespread racism among such a purportedly intelligent people. In some ways, even, I feel a kinship with the Thalmor. For when I think on how furious and frustrated and hurt – aye, hurt – the attitude of elves in Alinor for my manhood has made me, I cannot now help but think how proud of myself, how included, how superior that very same attitude would have rendered me had I been born with the knife ears and gilded skin of an Altmer. The very things which alienate me from Alinor, as a man, are the same things to which we must turn if we are to explain the Thalmor's existence. So if I have been thus far unable to overcome the dissociating effect of this society, how could I expect the Thalmor – or any elf, for that matter – who spent their vulnerable, formative years (if those can be described as vulnerable, for elves; I swear they are born with hearts and minds like iron) under the complete and utter influence of such a culture, to reject the vile prejudices and customs of their people?

I cannot expect it. The Thalmor – and all Alinorian Altmer – are what they are because of how they have grown, just the same as all the rest of mortality. I would be a fool and a disgrace to my Illusion masters in the College to think that I would have done any better, had I been born an elf. I cannot condemn the Thalmor, or any individual Altmer – with a few exceptions – for who they are, but I can and do condemn and revile the culture they perpetuate. It is not their fault, but that fact does nothing to mitigate the despicability of their culture. No, the only Altmer who I could actually condemn for their misanthropy are those few who predate its cultural predominance, such as Tsirelsyn – if I can believe the accounts of his birth. He was not born into a society that hated men – how could he have been, when the two races had not even encountered each other? – he does not have the excuse of negative influence to explain away is arrogance and self-righteous superiority toward man, and so it is he I condemn, he and any others who may yet live from his era, for theirs is the generation that began the horrible phenomenon. In a sense, Tsirelsyn is the father of the tragedy that has split man from elf throughout history; he and his ilk, in perpetuating a culture of arrogance and misanthropy, have caused innumerable sorrows in this world – and what possible excuse could there be for them? For those few, like Tsirelsyn, who actually lived in the Dawn Era, unbound by cause and effect, free to make what they would of themselves, what excuse could there be?

There is no excuse. If Tsirelsyn and his contemporaries made Alinor what it is today, it is because they, free in a way none of us can now be, chose to do so. And that I can neither excuse nor understand. There is no comfort, no escape, from the emancipated decision and its results. And thus, when I think of the soil sorcerer, I feel nothing but disgust, despite that he treated me with a greater semblance of respect and kindness than any other elf in this damned island, and when I think of the Thalmor I feel none of my past frustration and hatred, only pity and compassion for the ignorance their people have imposed upon them.

… it is good that this is only a private journal. As beneficial as it might be for some of my colleagues to adopt my view on the subject, I doubt that it would be well received. Accept the Thalmor and the Dominion the Empire must, but that has meant very little thus far in our relations with the elves; it is an elf-hating world, out there. Or an Altmer-hating world, at least. I find the compassion oddly comforting, though, even though I have confided it only to myself, and Mara knows there is little enough comfort in this place. Compassion is all I have left in that way, in truth, taken as I am from the Embassy and isolated away in this little hole. Things were better, odd as it feels to say it, when I was at the heart of the alienation, when I stared their arrogant indifference in the face instead of simply avoiding it as I do here. We had each other to cling to, as well, in urban Alinor. As the elves' arrogance and hatred of man unite all the many stratifications of their people, so too did it drive us closer together in reflex. We became – a community, accepting and supportive, our sympathy the sole comfort we had in that horrid city. And I guess that's part of what has made this transition to the Kemendelia so difficult; the sudden absence of that non-Altmer sympathy and the support of – of –

Good gods, Jon, just say it and quit dancing. Out with it. You've been winding up to this all night because you're a coward who can't even talk to himself about what's really bothering him. So quit hiding behind your pretentious ox-offal and just admit to yourself that you miss Odfrin so goddamn much it hurts even to think about her. And you've been hiding from that bare fact for over a month, you great prune. Do some credit to the woman you abandoned, at least, and torture yourself actively over her memory.

But that would be impossible, of course. I don't think there's a single moment I spent with her that would give me anything less than warm joy to recall; and I did not, in truth, abandon her, as much as my self-flagellant instinct in depression goads me to think that I did. I was assigned; I had to leave, if I wished to remain in Alinor. The Thalmor would only have returned me to Cyrodiil, had I refused the assignation; it is in the terms of the Embassy's accord. No, it's just that – well, the very warmth of the memory makes the frigidity of the present bite even deeper. Or so I feared, at least, when I left her arms. Perhaps I am wrong, though… perhaps that is the reason beneath this trans-oceanic journal, in fact… to help me bring some of the warmth of the past forward to the now. Time is immutable, of course, but perhaps I can touch in some way those gold-beaded moments. Perhaps she can comfort me even here.

Golden the moments were, with her; tawny like the lovers' dawn and the seducers' dusk, filled with laughter and camaraderie, with engagement and connection. She was our great comforter, there in the Embassy, too, not just mine. Gods – even from the first instant of our arrival, she was helping us. I see her still; milky cheeks buffed in vivid rose, her dazzlingly lucid ice blue eyes wide and sparkling, her rounded face blazing in its frizzy halo of wonderful, bushy golden curls, caught halfway out of her seat at a deep divan by our arrival in the ridiculously high and narrow door. Her plump lips burst open in a radiant smile, and she gasped out, "Oh, oh, oh hello!" and tumbled backwards into the cushions.

"What, someone here already?"

Miles poked his rubicund face in beside my shoulder, though there was hardly room for it, peering around at the room, with its murky ochre walls of really rather woebegone crystal and its step-sunken center, its central column of hollow, lacy glass lattice, its dilapidated divans and settees with lace like old parchment, its shabby shaggy rugs and old-fashioned paper lanterns twisting above and shedding dim red light like dust, its mish-mash of styles and tastes from ten different eras and at least three different provinces, as though the elves' idea of an attempt at hominess was to toss together whatever they could find at the cheapest price from any part of Tamriel proper and hope that it appealed to what the natives please to call our 'aesthetics.' Needless to say, it did not.

"Why, look at that," he exclaimed as he caught sight of the woman flumped in shock on the maroon divan. "Someone the Thalmor haven't been able to scare away! Incredible! They've certainly done a number on us already, let me tell you."

"You do realize," I muttered in the man's ear, "that Aatheril and his lackeys are still just outside? And anyway, it's not so bad as all that."

"Not so bad as all that, he says," Miles mumbled back, shooting me a dark look. "Easy for Jolly Jon to say, what's not lost a whit."

"Don't let Miles tarnish us too much in your eyes, madame," I said, descending the room's tiered steps and holding out a hand to the collapsed girl. "We really are not in such a poor condition as my companions seem to believe. Hopefully we will not darken your day too deeply."

"Not at all," she breathed, smiling softly up at me from her near prone position in the plush, weary depths of the cushions, touching my extended hand almost disbelievingly with one pale finger. "You couldn't possibly. No, not when I've been waiting for you for so long!" She spouted quite abruptly into effervescence, clasping my hand and literally bouncing up to her feet. "When did you get here? What's your name? Where are you from? How many are with you? What's been happening in Cyrodiil? In Skyrim? Is – "

"There is a girl here!" Tsabhi's rough Khajiit purr growled out from behind me. The woman leapt immediately into action.

"There is a Khajiit here!" she squealed back ecstatically, springing across the room on her toes, dragging me in jerks along behind her by the hand she had not released. "What's your name? Do you need help with that?" She did not wait for an answer, but clicked her pink-nailed fingers briskly together and sent magic rippling through the air, tingling up my arm. The bulging bag leapt out of the surprised Khajiit's clutching arms with speed like an arrow, shooting through the air and across the room to settle with sudden gentleness on the clouded crystal floor.

"And, oh look, there's more of you!" she went on in a blindness of blazing happiness, edging her gold wreathed head around the door jamb and beaming out at furious-faced little Ciene and towering Ildonis struggling with the rest of the luggage as Alusan watched the dark, narrow streets warily, his hand on the hilt of his curved sword. "Well, don't tary out there," she chided cheerfully to the sweaty and ill-mooded pair. "Get ye in here!" And with an identity of speed did the rest of our luggage streak through the air and the narrow slit of a doorway, whistling as it arced across the room to stack, neat and soft, atop and around Tsabhi's bag against the far wall.

"Who are you?" muttered Ciene in a mixture of awe and horror as she climbed – and for a woman that size in an elven city, 'climbed' is the word – up the ray of steps to the door, staring at the flush-cheeked woman.

"You're a dear for asking," she answered, crinkling around her pale, ice blue eyes. "I'm called Odfrin." And to the Breton's breathless shock, the yellow-haired Nord took the other's delicate cheeks in her hands – still holding my own, mind – and kissed her softly on the lips.

"Oh, come in, come in," she went on brightly, pulling the speechless little woman through the door and beckoning an amused Alusan and Ildonis forward. "We must get you in off the streets and settled in. You must be terribly maligned from your arrival. Oh, it's just lovely to have you!" She dimpled her cheeks up at the two men as they slipped through the door – Ildonis with some difficulty – patting their shoulders with her welcoming free hand.

"Well then," she said brightly when our entire group stood awed and awkward on the threadbare rugs, staring around at Odfrin and the place's horribly clashing accoutrements, "here we all are, and here's where we'll stay. Safe and together. And we've had quite enough of you," she went on, spinning about to stick her head out the tall door at the watching Thalmor, her tone quite abruptly hard and cold as a Skyrim winter, "so go on home you mangy old dogs. Shoo! Shoo!" And she slammed the door sharply closed on their sudden, incredulous laughter.

"Come, come, sit down!" she said, moving forward down the tiers and pulling me along as she did, and then down beside her in the divan's depths. She gestured to the other mismatched couches, settees, and armchairs scattered about in a rough ring around the lacy, hollow crystal pillar in the center of the room. "Take a seat, and I'll get us something to drink; I'm sure you must be dying for some real refreshments. Damned elves won't give us anything. Daniel left his old Orcish samovar when he gave up; that will probably make enough for all of us. With a little flip of the flask to loosen things up, of course. Yes." As she spoke, the doors of a rickety, splintered cabinet scraped open along the opposite wall and an enormous samovar of greenish grey metal floated out, covered in ornate spikes and jagged gilt, along with a tall glass pitcher, a rusted flask, a faded cedar box, and a swirling gnat-horde of chipped saucers and mugs. The latter shot immediately over to our ringed gathering and arranged themselves on the circular hearth around the hollow pillar – whose here and there shattered lattice glowed suddenly within with the seemingly spontaneous flames licking its insides – as the samovar went about the business of filling itself with water and amber alcohol and a scattering of glossy black beans before following the rest over to snuggle up beside the warmly roaring flames.

"Excuse me," Ildonis said gingerly as he settled into a massive, highbacked armchair with scarlet, goose-pricked cushions, like a throne sold in the foreclosure of a High Rock barony, "but is there a reason you're doing everything by spell?"

Odfrin squeezed my hand, still clasped in hers and nestled in the folds of her scarlet linen skirts as she laughed. "Oh, you know, you've got to get back at these elves somehow. Telekinesis wasn't anywhere near my specialty when I got here, but it sure does make their pointy ears twitch to feel a Nord woman tossing spells around next door, so I guess I've gotten into the habit. Anyway this is Alinor so you'll get used to it in three days and never think about it again."

Our group traded uncertain glances from settee to couch to armchair and back. Miles spoke after a short pause, from his seat next to still spell-shocked Ciene on a garish, low-backed divan patterned in winged bulls of brown and blue.

"So… how long have you been here, Odfrin? And where are you from?"

"It's either eighteen months or twenty-nine years, and if you can tell which one when your time has come then we'll have to anoint you as Jhunal incarnate for you've greater psychological fortitude than anyone who's gone before you. And I was born in Skyrim, but assigned here from the Cynosure at Rielle. Where are you all from? And who are you? Let's have introductions; you first." She pointed to Tsabhi, who had draped herself with a purr of relief along an ox leather Colovian settee. Her tail thumped, rhythmic and relaxed, on the deep, scuffed cushions, but her ears twitched in surprise when the Nord pointed to her.

"This one is called Tsabhi," she rumbled after a moment's pause. "Born Elsweyr, to look to the stars and the moons, the planets and the Sun."

"Oh, a cosmologist!" Odfrin exclaimed savvily. "How wonderful! We really must have a talk about that issue with the moons. But later." She bit her underlip as she smiled at the Khajiit. "And you, sir?" She went on, turning to Ildonis' towering round-self, framed in the armchair's wings.

"I'm from Chorrol," he answered simply, starting slightly and turning over one large hand reflexively in a tiny wave. "Well, near Chorrol, anyway. A little hamlet along the Black Road; no one's heard of it. I'm the alchemist in this crew." His chubby cheeks were looking distinctly more their usual flushed pink; the effects of the journey were finally wearing off.

"Ooh, you'll have a hard time with that here, I'm afraid," the Nord woman replied, shaking her bushy head. "The elves aren't too keen on letting us buy things, and just try botanizing in that." She waved her free hand toward the door, a sour twist to her lips.

Ildonis shrugged his massive shoulders weakly. "I shall do what I can, I suppose. Surely the School of Thoughts and Calculations will be willing to supply me with information and supplies, if asked. That is why we are here, after all."

"Pshaw, the School," Odfrin exclaimed. "That for the School!" Her arm jabbed in a rude gesture, but she did not elaborate, instead turning to look expectantly at Miles' scaly, peeling red face.

He jumped slightly in his seat, starting out of a brown study. "Oh, me next?" he said. "I'm Miles the Mildewed, silken 'istorian, though that's likewise shot up and out the patoot."

"'The Mildewed'?" Odfrin asked with a curious smile and quirk of one pale, frost-dawned eyebrow.

The red-faced Nibenean shrugged off-handedly. "Moth culture's a bit of a… fungal business," he said in explanation. The Nord woman at my side just nodded bemusedly before turning to the tiny Breton beside Miles. "And you, dear?"

Ciene turned a violent pink and looked down at her knobby knees, running a hand nervously across her short cut helmet of mousy brown hair as she mumbled her answer.

"Um, Ciene, and I'm um bumble commbumblee."

"What was that?" Odfrin replied with a smile. "Could you speak up? I didn't catch that."

"I'mCieneandI'maconjurerfromHighRockandit'sapleasuretomeetyou," the little Breton bumbled out in a rush, looking up and then back down through her lashes in a flash of wide, dark eyes and pale, heart-shaped face.

"A pleasure to meet you too, Ciene from High Rock," the Nord answered with a wide-eyed nod. "You'll have to put up acres of wards if you want to do any summoning work here – this whole place is a matricial nightmare, thought it may not have sunk in as such as of yet, and one of the functional side effects of that, or so I have been told, is a redoubled resistance to even momentary liminal aperture arcana – but no doubt you'll be equal to the task."

"I… hadn't noticed that," Ciene replied quietly. "But I see what you mean. I'll have to think about it."

Odfrin nodded simply, and turned on to Alusan, who had eased back into a lumpy pouf with his hands cushioned behind his head in his black fuzz.

"Don't look at me, I'm just the bodyguard," he said, shooting an easy look and twitching his narrow hips to jog his scabbarded sword. "'Cause someone's got to keep this lot safe from all the knife-ears hereabouts."

"Oh, come on!" exclaimed Miles disbelievingly as the group erupted in similar indignant squawks and scoffs and sent an array of frowns showering down on the Redguard's mock-innocently amazed head. "You're hardly just our bodyguard, Alusan-who-walks-the-waves-and-chats-with-cephalomer."

"It's not like you know more than any of us about hemi-temporal geographical shifts, or anything," put in Ciene sarcastically, sliding more inter herself. "See how well we would do in this place without you!"

"And of course he's not one of the College's few mages with a certification in developmental theology," put in Ildonis. "No, Alusan's just our spell-sword for hire, here to preserve us from the natives. Of course he is."

The Redguard pursed his lips as he frowned around at us slowly. "I do believe," he said, "that you all are trying to imply, in your sneaky, sideways manner, that I have some training in more theoretical areas of magicka than the sword and the fireball. I must apologize for my wards, Odfrin; they're usually not so duplicitous with strangers – it must be the effects of the voyage still –" A hissing crackle through the air, and Alusan sat suddenly straight up in his seat, his wiry black hair popping a bright momentary halo of sparks. Tsabhi lashed her tail and purred happily as he slumped back into his pouf and waved a hand weakly in the air.

"All right, all right, fine, you're right. I admit it," he sighed, rubbing a spot on his thigh. "They speak the truth, lady," he said to a giggling, twinkle-eyed Odfrin, "although I must insist that I really do think the Assemblage chose to send me to keep an eye on the rest of you. I'm really better with my own research than I am with communicating with the locals and stealing theirs."

"That's what Jon's for, anyway," Miles said, nodding to me.

Odfrin twisted her body toward me, leaning back deeper into the cushions to cock an interested eye at me. "Oh?" she said. "And what does that mean?" She kept rubbing her thumbs over the back of my hand as she had been doing for the last few minutes.

"It means that I'm the linguistics specialist here," I answered. "It's my job to understand the locals, and, hopefully, to help us make some interesting discoveries while we're here. Jon Urfe, Specialist in Poly-Spectral Techniques and Phenomena. At your service."

"'Understand the locals,' hmmm?" mused Odfrin quietly, ice blue eyes watching me with sudden reserve despite the press of my lips on the back of her hand. "Well, perhaps you can… but I advise you not to rely upon it." I held her eyes seriously for a long few moments without making a reply. Then she gave her bright head a little shake and turned back to the ringed group.

"It is a delight, a pure delight to have you all here," she said, smiling around at us all. "I couldn't tell you when Daniel finally left, but it's been a fair while now and I have to admit I wondered whether the Assemblage hadn't just forgotten to send me some company. And oh, here's the brew done, and we all need some warming and loosening up inside, so no time to waste!" And the steaming samovar was quite suddenly surrounded by a swirling flock of teacups, each promenading around and down for their turn under the spiky spout and their dram of the aromatic black liquid it dispensed. "Which Cynosure are you all from, anyway?" Odfrin went on as the filled cups floated around on their saucers to my waiting colleagues. I caught mine in my teeth just barely as it was about to spill; the damn thing flew right over and away from my grasping fingers. I thought at first that the Nord was just a bit absentminded with her spellwork, but as I removed the saucer from between my incisors I caught a mischievous twinkling spark struck off in my direction from her eyes, and she squeezed the hand she still had not released.

"Mis-cand," Ciene choked out, oddly stiff and staring at me for some reason.

"What was that, dear?" Odfrin asked kindly.

"Miscarcand, she means," Miles put in helpfully, sipping from his tea cup gingerly. "We're from the Miscarcand Cynosure."

"Oh ho!" the Nord exclaimed suddenly, drawing back and eyeing us with a new light in her eyes. "So they've finally broken open the inner vaults, have they? Well, I just hope you six are as much better than the rest of us as your Cynosure's reputation boasts, because if you're not it will be one long disillusionist's ride for you here in Alinor, and perhaps worse when you return to the Assemblage and their results-rapacity."

The lot of us blinked blankly at her, nonplussed. Tsabhi lapped at her drink quietly.

"Oh, dear," Odfrin went on, taking a sip and blushing embarrassedly. "I'm sorry, very sorry. I forgot that you wouldn't even know you'd been sequestered together apurpose. Please, think no more of it. Let us just enjoy our drinks now and discuss something different. Maybe you have questions?"

There was a long, silent pause as we glanced awkwardly around at each other. I cannot speak for the others, of course, but I know I was wondering just how long in truth the poor woman had been left alone. At last Ildonis spoke up.

"Well," he mused, peering down into his cup, comically tiny in those large fingers, "there is the obvious thing, of course. We've just had most of our most prized belongings destroyed by the Thalmor and the Dominion's restrictions on the importation of soul-bound material. Should we expect anything else like that as we go along, or was that the worst, as Jon insists?"

Odfrin was shaking her head violently before he had even finished. "Oh, why is it always this way?" she cried. "It doesn't matter what you try; the new crowds always end up bringing things they shouldn't! Torture to stay, but impossible to leave, this place!" she huffed angrily. "There… is no real answer to that question," she went on after a moment, more calmly. "It all depends on what you try to do and how vile the particular elf overseer is on that particular day. The chances are that something else will happen, but it's really all quite unpredictable, with these lowest of the low elves. The only thing I could guarantee," she said, "would be that anything you do in here should have no consequences from the Thalmor. But even there, there might be a first time. We never know."

"What else could they possibly take from us?" Ciene snapped. "Most of us have nothing of value left." I did not miss the barb in her words.

Odfrin's soft shoulders shrugged. "I know, I know, but hush, hush, my dear. It does not due to tempt or challenge the Thalmor. Insult, yes, but not challenge. They think it very amusing to turn our words on their heads and prove us both naïve and ignorant. So quiet."

"Do they hear us even here?" Miles asked in a sudden, hushed whisper.

The Nord's mouth twisted. "Where do they not hear us, save under the protection of the heart-talk their cold immortality cannot fathom? This is Alinor, Miles. Who knows where that spot in the air may twist, and through what ears our words may tangle? We need not guard our tongues overmuch – they are too overproud to think what we speak carries any import – but challenges and temptations are plain foolishness. I have seen it proven."

She fell silent, pale eyes staring moodily down into her cup. The rest of us did likewise, all save me no doubt brooding on their lost treasures, but even I must admit myself to have been dampened by the woman's words. At last Miles straightened up, draining the last drops of black liquid from his cup and setting it and its chipped saucer on the low circular hearth.

"Well, everyone, difficult as it is to tell in this city, by my reckoning we should still have half of a day left. So I'm off for a little exploration of this city, along with whoever cares to join me."

"What?" squawked Odfrin, leaping up and releasing my hand in shock. "What? You want to leave? Why?"

Miles blinked bemusedly down at her. "To learn of this place, madame. That is why we came, after all."

"Oh, but –" she sputtered, "but, really, don't you think you'd rather rest on your first day here?"

"I am not particularly fatigued," he answered. "So, no. I would rather get started with what we are here to do. I have a mind to find this School of Thoughts and Calculations and talk to them myself."

"Nobody finds the School," Odfrin scoffed. "It's a strand synthetic, you, you – oh, you wouldn't have any luck. Nobody does."

The Imperial raised an eyebrow at her. "Perhaps no one yet," he said, "but I cannot let that stop me from trying." He took a few steps toward the narrow door.

"Ooh, you arrogant Miscarcand hothouse scholars!" Odfrin gasped, stamping her foot. "I'm telling you, don't go out there!"

"You seem quite emphatic about this, Odfrin," I understated, standing up and laying a hand on her shoulder. "Is there some reason Miles should not begin his explorations now? Why all of us should not begin now?"

"Yes!" she gasped vehemently. "Because it's not safe! You don't know where we are, yet. Really, really, really, it's not safe. Just wait until tomorrow! Please? Please?"

The sunburned Imperial shot me an exasperated look over Odfrin's pleading, earnest head, and I responded with a tiny jerk of my own away from the door. He frowned displeasedly and hesitated a few moments, but then threw up his arms in capitulation.

"Fine!" he grumbled. "Tomorrow, then."

"Ohhh, thank you!" squealed Odfrin in relief, rushing forward and throwing her round arms about Miles' middle in a tight hug. "Thank you thank you thank you!"

The disappointed man blinked in grumpy surprise, but then relaxed into a helplessly charmed smile and patted her back through her mass of bushy golden hair.

"Oh, it's not such a big thing," he said kindly. "I probably could do with a day of relaxation, before we begin. We all could, I imagine." He looked pointedly around at the rest of us.

"Definitely," Alusan agreed without a hitch. "Why, I've been positively decimated by that trip. Fit for nothing but the lounge."

"I need to review my notes on Altmeri grammar and culture anyway before I'd feel confident acting as translator," I said. "A day inside will be just the thing."

"I don't think I could muster the energy to make it out anyway," Ciene added fervently. "I'd stay in with you even if everyone else wants to go."

Odfrin stepped back from Miles' chest, smiling with a brightness fit to beat the sun, her eyes glistening like stars through tears.

"You're wonderful people," she said with a quiet, overwhelmed joy. She slipped her hand back into mine. "Wonderful people. I know it must seem silly – but trust me. I know more of this place than you. It is best this way."

She blinked a teary smile around at us, squeezing my hand. Then she visibly gathered the trailing threads of her personality together in one cohesive tangle and set into brisk activity.

"Now, we must get you all settled, mustn't we? I don't have an unlimited spatial allotment, of course, nor an infinite number of habitable cells, unfortunately, so I think some of you will have to share a space. I'm very sorry about that, but –"

"It's no problem," chirped Ciene with an odd brightness. "I'll share!"

"Why thank you," Odfrin answered with a soft smile. "Then I'll put you and Tsabhi together over there," she pointed to one of the doors in the chamber's facets; it burst briskly open to receive the three dark bags shooting through the air toward it, "Alusan there and Ildonis there," she pointed to two more doors in the rust-tinted walls, which likewise opened and swallowed the luggage of their appointed resident, "Miles there," another door, "and Jon…" She turned toward me with a shining in her pale eyes, dimples in her cheeks and her underlip between her teeth. "… no more rooms, I'm afraid, so you'll have to share too." My hand tingled suddenly in hers as those dimples deepened. "So off with Miles with you," she said mischievously – and, admittedly, to my disappointed surprise – and flicked my bag into the room with one pink, telekinetic finger.

"Over there is my room," she went on, pointing to one of the few undesignated doors, "so if any of you ever need anything, day or night," her eyes flickered toward me, "please don't worry about disturbing me. It gives me nothing but joy to have you here; I'm delighted to help in whatever ways I can."

And that was Odfrin, indeed; always doing whatever she could to help us in whatever ways we needed, whether we knew it or not. That was how it was, in Alinor urban, in the Embassy; wherever we looked, wherever we went, whatever we did, we saw some sign of Odfrin's incredible love for us all; the cup of tea and tray of breakfast waiting every morning, always hot and fresh for each of us despite our disparate sleeping habits because Odfrin knew when we would awake better than we could ourselves; the eternally tidied rooms regardless of our inattendance – except for Tsabhi's and Ciene's, of course, who preferred the clutter; the miraculously cleaned clothes and polished boots, the primly made beds and precisely warmed heating pans, all done without our observation, by Odfrin's invisible, nurturing telekinetic hand; the bright smiles and warm hugs when she laid eyes on any of us, the open and sincere interest in who we were and what we thought; the riveted pale eyes and slightly opened mouth as we talked about ourselves; the almost savant's understanding of us and of our understandings ourselves. The incredible skill with which she ferreted out the similarities between us of which we had been oblivious and used them to knit us closer together, joining Ildonis and Tsabhi in their secret confectioner's connoisseurship, Ciene and Alusan by mutual fascination with trans-mundane fossilry, Miles and I by our long-repressed delight in and childhood experiences with the transcendent boys' bell choirs of Dibella. She drew out our secret fantasies and fascinations, our hidden pasts and lonely sorrows and showed us that we were not alone in them; she bound us together, all of us to all of us, in mutual humanity – yes, even Tsabhi – but above all in our love for her, the golden-haired, golden-hearted caretaker of our souls and our sanities in that cold urbanity.

That was Odfrin, our sole comfort. Our souls' comfort. That is Odfrin, gods help me, outside of this sundered solitude, back in the city proper. She is there still, and still her incredible, loving, slightly touched self – while I am here, alone, comfortless, bereft, pining. Empty, without her warm, embracing arms. And that is why, truly why, this has been so difficult… because I have never wished to leave anyone less than I wished to leave Odfrin when the Thalmor came to take me. Mara forgive me for having done it anyway. And that lady of love as my witness, I shall never do it again, if ever I may be so blessed as to return to her arms. Vowed and vowed, in love and love.

Gods, but it's true that I don't usually talk about what really bothers me… and this is why. There's no real point in it; the warmth of memory has dispelled the numbness to reality I had accumulated. Even dreams might be a lesser torture than this freshened wound. Gods. I – Mara hep me. I cannot go on.

Jon Urfe

in correspondence with

Jon Urfe

28 Mid Year, 4E XXX