Tirdas, 5:54 PM, 40th of Second Seed, 4E 202

Alftand

It was funny. Aicantar had left his home in Markarth behind weeks ago. He wasn't even sure he'd ever go back there again. Alftand was his home now, after all. But he'd just been starting to get used to this place, and then Markarth had come here after him.

The first arrivals had come yesterday morning. They'd been in a huge convoy of wagons, all together, all at once. Aicantar had spent most of that day down in Blackreach. It'd been the last day for him to work on the propylon indices. Now he was free to go back to his business in Alftand, and… it was a whole lot different now.

From what he'd heard, it'd been a real ordeal, receiving so many people so quickly. Alftand had a population of about a thousand, and the convoy had brought exactly four hundred. Four hundred, all in one day! Sarelle and the others in Administration had been busy from dawn to dusk getting everyone processed and settled in.

And that might've been an ordeal enough, except that Alftand was receiving these new arrivals with a whole lot of tightened security. After that incident with the stolen machinery, Jarl Noster had imposed a new set of rules for searching and inspecting incoming and outgoing cargo, from backpacks to crates to barrels—everything had to be examined. And then four hundred people had shown up, all with their own possessions in tow. The guards had gotten a whole lot of on-the-job practice, to put it nicely.

But then it wasn't done there, either, because the searching actually paid off. One of the guards had pried open a cargo crate to find that the entire thing was filled with bottles of skooma. The guard, of course, responded by promptly alerting the others, and they poured every single bottle into the snow outside. As a rule, the race of Khajiit might have been welcome in Alftand, but their signature contraband was not.

Actually, the owner of that skooma couldn't have been a Khajiit. It was impossible for them to move here from any other city, Markarth included. Aicantar wondered whose the skooma had been. No one seemed to know.

And honestly, the Altmer was pretty thankful he'd been so busy in Blackreach. He didn't think he would've wanted to be up in Alftand for all of this. He had the luxury of being here only for the aftermath. He'd gone down the lift just after hearing about the convoy showing up, when he'd come up later, he'd gone to his room to find three strangers taking up the empty beds. Simple as that.

So here he was, on the 40th of Second Seed, which by the way was a completely insane date. He was just sitting on his bedside, across from Cairine, one of his new roommates. She was a Breton, deathly thin and pale, with scraggly brown hair around what should have been a nice youthful face, if it didn't look so gaunt and bony. At the moment, she was just leaning back on the wall and staring off into space.

"You're quiet," Aicantar said.

This was how most of the new arrivals looked. It'd been long enough since the liberation of Markarth that they weren't all too bad, but the fact of the matter was, they'd been starving to death.

"I just realized," Cairine murmured. Her voice was so tiny and frail, even now. She had a bit of a vacant look on. "These rooms are what Alftand's giving off to people like me. We have these in place of the Warrens."

The Warrens. Now, there was someplace Aicantar hadn't spent much time around. They were the half-finished tunnels and vaults under Markarth that got used as a sort of living space for the poor. Which was a lot of people.

It was quite a comparison. Aicantar couldn't help but chuckle. "I suppose you're right. We don't exactly have to pay for this, do we?"

"You were a… court wizard's nephew, weren't you?" Cairine rolled her head to face him, squinting curiously.

"That's right," Aicantar nodded. "Well, I still am, strictly speaking. He's not dead, as far as I know."

"… I thought the Thalmor killed everyone up there."

He shrugged. "Well, not the court wizard. They only killed the useful people."

At that, Cairine laughed out loud. "Oh, you lucky lot. Up there in your Understone Keep. Now you're in that big secret Blackreach cave, too, aren't you?"

"Ahh, I wouldn't call that part lucky. The only people who go down there are the people the Dragonborn needs for his work. The living conditions are just as cushy up here. The Dwemer knew how to look after themselves." Aicantar patted the bedding beside him. Which was a little silly of him, probably. Of all the nice little amenities Alftand had to offer, the soft beds were pretty much the only one to not be a product of its being a Dwemer city.

The Breton scowled at him. "Didn't know how to eat, though."

Now he was laughing. Someday, some distant day far in the future, maybe Alftand would serve bearable meals. But he wasn't counting on it. "It's a popular theory around here that the Dwemer just didn't know how to do anything enjoyable. Of any kind. You heard about the beds, right?"

"Aye, I heard about the beds. Bare stone still would've been a step up from sleeping in filth like before." As she spoke, Cairine looked down at the bed beneath her, and laid a hand on it, sort of like Aicantar had done. Except much more thoughtfully. "I was sick, for a long time. Kept me from working. I could've died. And that was before the Thalmor took over."

"You seem better now," Aicantar offered.

"Sure, once the city was retaken, we all got plenty of love. Doesn't change that we could've all been dead by then. I could've."

A little time went by in silence. Cairine was just staring numbly at the ground in front of her. She looked to be barely even focused.

Eventually, Aicantar asked, "… You all right?"

"Mmm." The Breton nodded her head slowly, still seemingly not paying attention. "I s'pose you'll find out sooner or later, from someone. Only a matter of time."

That was ominous. A little more than ominous, actually. This had been a normal conversation so far, but now, all of a sudden, it was… something else. Aicantar's words came much more hesitantly this time. "Uh… hold on, what are you… what are you talking about?"

Even now, she wasn't looking at him. She was just looking down somewhere. "A lot of people starved in Markarth. Bodies… dead bodies, in the Warrens, under the ground, where no one would see. We all should've starved, when the Thalmor took our food away. The only ones who were there were Namira's people. They kept us alive. So many bodies, it was… it was all the same."

Aicantar put a hand to his mouth. He didn't have to guess what Cairine was implying. He knew what Namira had been. The Daedric Prince whose sphere consisted of all things revolting. And her servants had been in the Warrens, with all the corpses piling up. This was how the poorest in Markarth had survived these months.

After everything he'd seen, it didn't even shock him that much. But he was thinking back on those weeks in Understone Keep, how he'd been so terrified to live in his own home… and here was this poor woman in front of him, who'd been forced through so much worse. It made him wonder how he must have seemed to them all.

Markarth had come here after him, all right. The Markarth that the Thalmor had had their way with. They'd reduced the city's poor to eating each other's bodies to survive. And these were the people coming to Alftand. He had no idea what to expect from them now.

At least Namira was gone for good. Someone really needed to do something similar to the Thalmor.

Cairine looked up at Aicantar slowly. "You don't even have meat in Alftand, do you?"

"Uh, umm, it," he fumbled beautifully for words, "we, uh… uh… not really? You can't grow meat in a hydro farm, so no. Just that bean stuff."

"Small price to pay, I suppose. Might still be better than having to eat meat anymore."

Gods, it was even worse than he'd thought. They'd just established the awfulness of Alftand's food a few minutes ago.

Naturally, it was at that exact moment that Aicantar heard the distant ringing of the city's bells. If they could be called that, anyway. He knew what this meant. Six o'clock. Time for dinner.

Slowly, he pushed himself off his bed, and headed for the door. "So, still want more bean stuff?"

The lower dining hall was filling up quickly. The room was already filled with the noise of pleasant conversation between peers, but Aicantar knew barely anyone in here. Just a whole lot of pale skinny short people. Bretons. The standard light work clothes looked a bit large on them. They were all getting in line to get their food, so Aicantar hurried over and got his place as quickly as he could. It wasn't that he was looking forward to the food or anything, he just wanted to make sure he could get a seat next to Sarelle.

Wherever she was. He wasn't actually seeing her anywhere in here. Hopefully she wasn't stuck doing more paperwork. If she didn't show up for dinner, Aicantar was going to bring a tray of food to Administration and make her stop to eat.

Aicantar grabbed a tray of his own off the wall rack on the way into the kitchen, where a few people in aprons and hats were working away in a lot of noise and heat, and few more were serving people at a stone counter as they came by. He couldn't actually tell what they were cooking, but it smelled rather like mushrooms in here at the moment.

Truth be told, the whole bean-mush thing was a little bit exaggerated. There actually were mushrooms down here, as well, and Alftand imported a lot of extra food and herbs and so on to make it more bearable. Aicantar's tray ended up being filled by a bowl of mashed hydro bean blend with frost mirriam, with a single big roasted mushroom on a plate, and a goblet of cold pure water.

The real item of importance here was the frost mirriam. Without any flavoring at all—and there often wasn't—the bean blend tasted sort of like wet flour, failed potion brew, and chalk dust. A few herbs went a long way to make his dinner less miserable.

When the Altmer came back out into the dining hall, he spotted Sarelle standing right there in line. He waved to her and immediately went to find the emptiest table section he could, which ended up being on pretty much the far corner of the room. It wasn't that he wanted to avoid everyone, really, even if they were strangers. He liked meeting new people. He just didn't want to end up giving Sarelle no place to sit by him.

That being said, he did still sort of have it on his mind that a lot of these people from Markarth had been forced to eat their deceased neighbors to survive. It wasn't worth getting worked up over, probably. Even if it was a terrible thought. They probably weren't exactly ecstatic about it themselves.

He didn't wait for anyone to join him before he began eating. This stuff wouldn't stay hot forever, and if there was one thing worse than a bowl of hot chalky bean mush, it was a bowl of cold chalky bean mush. He put that all down his throat first. While he sat and ate, a few people sat across from him with their own meals, which was fine. And kind of not really worth stopping eating for, at the moment. Again, cold bean mush.

On the other hand, the mushroom was all right. Sort of zesty, and still full of hot moisture from getting roasted. The laborers grew a whole bunch of different kinds of mushroom around here, which was nice, because otherwise Aicantar would've gotten completely sick of them long since. In any case, just around when he was halfway through the mushroom on his plate, a pair of nice, delicate-looking hands laid a full tray on the table just by his left.

It was Sarelle, here at last. She sat down heavily right by the Altmer, and let out a long, miserable sigh. "Hello," she said, eventually.

By that point, Aicantar had had time to give her a good look over. Beautiful as always, he thought. He'd seen a lot of this woman, these past fifteen days. It'd been fifteen days ago, exactly fifteen, that she'd given him that one life-changing kiss on the cheek. She'd shown him entire new worlds since then.

Was it strange to count the days since something like that happened? Aicantar wasn't even doing it on purpose. He'd just never really been with someone before, and Sarelle was as close to perfect as they came.

Every evening, after finishing his work in Blackreach, he'd had Sarelle to look forward to. Today was the first day he'd spent waiting for her in Alftand instead. And he'd been looking forward to their time together as much as ever. It was a little disheartening to see her so stressed. She was always beautiful, even now, but it was so much better when she was smiling. Maybe that could change soon.

"Oh, Divines, you sound sad." Aicantar put an arm around Sarelle's side and hugged her close. She still smelled like snowberries. "Long day?"

That made her laugh, but it wasn't really a happy laugh. It just sounded defeated. "Ahh… You don't even know. There was so much to get through. We got everyone in yesterday, but… It is good to see you, let me tell you that."

A couple of the new arrivals across the table offered Sarelle a sympathetic smile. One of them, some older-looking man who didn't seem too overly starved, asked, "How many people did you have to process?"

"I don't know. I lost count. I've been using a quill all day. My wrist is hurting like you wouldn't believe." Sarelle pulled away from Aicantar and started eating. She was handling her spoon with her left hand, which was going a little awkwardly for her. "Mmm. We got everyone's information written down yesterday, everyone got their keys and all, but it's still a mess. We have work teams wanting to scour our lists for qualified laborers, the teachers are trying to figure out who to add to their classes, the whole damn city's just scrambling to fit all the new people into the daily workings. I really… I really hope this works out."

"It probably will," Aicantar said mildly, in between bites of his mushroom. Honestly, he never heard that much about what Sarelle did with her work. Whenever she talked, she was a lot more interested in what Aicantar was up to, which was actually kind of amazing. No one was interested in that.

Of course, at the moment, he was totally fine hearing about Sarelle's workday. It was generally just better to listen than to talk. People liked to talk about themselves, after all. Sarelle had actually pointed that out to him, one time. Might as well let her have a turn.

"Dammit, I don't even want to eat the…" Sarelle interrupted her sentence by putting a spoonful of bean stuff in her mouth. She washed it down with a big mouthful of water. "All right. … Ahh. It's been interesting how everyone's reacting. I sort of expected everyone to get all anxious about the big scary armies of Markarth all pouring in, but instead, I have an endless gods-damn list of work team leaders wanting anyone with half a minute of experience working with Dwemer things."

Aicantar finished off his mushroom with a contented sigh. "An endless list, huh? Sounds like Imperial paradise."

"Exactly, thank you." Sarelle went quiet as she resumed eating. She probably wanted to get it all down while it was hot, too.

While she was doing that, the Altmer asked his new neighbors across the table, "How have you been liking it in Alftand so far?"

"It's fine," the older fellow said. "Bad food's still better than starving."

"That's what I'm hearing, yep," Aicantar nodded, a little ruefully. He really hoped these people from Markarth would be able to pay attention to something besides the fact that they were able to actually eat their fill of food now.

On the other hand, that would probably be when problems would start coming up. Once everyone was able to take their survival for granted again, and start finding things to fight over.

He asked, "Did anyone ever find out who tried to get us all that skooma?"

The people across the table didn't really react. Sarelle said, "No one's confessed to bringing it, if that's what you mean. It was just in there with all the other crates from Solitude. We think it might've belonged to someone over there. And that makes it impossible to arrest anyone for, because the Haafingar guards can't work off of crimes in the Winterhold."

"What? … Really?" Aicantar frowned. "That's stupid."

"Yes, it is, but that's what you get when each hold is its own little province. They all keep their own records of criminals. If we wanted to see who sent us that skooma, we could try warning the guards there about it, in case the person tries to send more. But that actual shipment is a dead end. No one's ever going to face justice for it."

For his part, Aicantar wasn't exactly the most savvy individual for governing-type issues. He didn't know that much about how the law was handled, or why anything was arranged the way it was. Still, he wasn't beneath commenting on what he was hearing now. "That's really stupid."

Across the table, the older Breton was starting to chuckle. It started out quiet, but he was just chuckling more and more, because of… something. The look on his face was a little incredulous.

Sarelle looked at him blankly. "What?"

The older Breton was just openly laughing now. "You lot are on about justice? Really? Is that how things work in Alftand? People care about that?"

Now Aicantar got it. He offered the man a mirthless smirk. "I guess it's not exactly like Markarth, is it?"

"I'm… not from Markarth," Sarelle said. She didn't sound like she had it in her to say anything more charming.

"Blood and silver, that was our motto. Used to be, anyway." The older Breton fixed her with a wry, almost sort of rueful look. "Those were the things that flowed through Markarth. Money. Power. And that's how Markarth worked. So what's this place's motto? Food and drink?"

"You have to admit," Aicantar said, "it's quite a lot better on everyone."

But the man just shook his head slowly. "Sounds it. I'm still waiting for the catch. We all are. This is what we like to call, 'too good to be true'. So let me ask you—what's the catch?"

Sarelle shook her head back. "None. No catch. Except if you lot ruin this place with your blood-and-silver values. Alftand's a new city. It could be a nice place if you let it."

Aicantar asked, "What's your name, old man?"

"Uthyn," the man said. "You're that elf from Understone Keep, aren't you? Saw you on your little errands sometimes."

Well, that was a surprise. Aicantar didn't realize anyone had ever even noticed him. He nodded slowly. "That was me. I have to say, I don't miss Markarth at all. It was pretty awful."

The Breton man, Uthyn, sighed and sat back in his chair. At some point, he'd gotten through a lot of his food. "Well, the Silver-Blood family's all dead. So's the Thalmor, or the ones in Skyrim, at least. And now we're here. Guess that puts you lot at the top. I'll play nice if you do, I reckon. Can't speak for the others."

"If anyone doesn't, they're always welcome to head on back to Markarth," Sarelle smiled cheerfully.

Uthyn stared silently at her for a few seconds. Then he raised his eyebrows and went back to eating. "Damn. Lady's got it nailed down."

Aicantar and Sarelle exchanged a look of amusement. It was beautiful when she smiled.

It was another couple of minutes before Sarelle was done eating. When she finished, she collected Aicantar's dishes on top of her own, and took them back to the kitchen for cleaning. Nobody else was really doing that yet, but that was because everyone was busy talking instead.

While he waited, the Altmer stood up from his seat and ambled on over to the doorway to the rest of the city. He wasn't leaving yet. He just leaned casually against the wall by the doors, and… let his mind wander.

It was pretty loud in here. If it went like any other evening, it would quiet down as people finished their dinners and left, then get louder again when the evening crowd came in and started getting drunk. Presumably, that was the part where people would be drinking that moonshock stuff.

He realized, as he was standing there, that he was probably the only person in the entire room to have talked at length with the person who'd created moonshock to begin with. Did they even know it came from a Khajiit? They must have. It was called gods-damned 'moonshock' for a reason. Though … surprisingly, the reason wasn't because it actually contained moon sugar. It wasn't skooma. It was just made by someone from the race obsessed with moons.

A delicate hand tapped on his shoulder. He jolted a little. "Eh?"

"C'mon." Sarelle's face was right next to his. She was smiling again. "Let's go."

And that was their dinner dealt with. The two of them walked on out into the city without a second glance.

Alftand, being a sprawling underground Dwemer city, was completely crammed with secluded little spaces for people to be alone in. In their case, it wasn't for anything serious, really. It was more that it was hard to have a really personal moment when everyone was always in public. So pretty soon, the two of them were heading through a side hallway into one of Alftand's machine junction rooms. It was basically just a little square room full of winding pipes and turning gears. The grinding of the city's machinery was very plainly audible in here.

Comfortable? Sort of debatable. Secluded? Definitely. This certainly wasn't the first time they'd gone in here. It was just a nice place to be away from everyone else.

Sarelle closed the doors behind them, then sat down with her back to them, burying her face in her hands on the way.

"You look exhausted," Aicantar astutely commented as he sat down beside her.

"You're great," Sarelle said through her hands, before leaning over and hugging tightly around the Altmer's side. That gave him a real thrill, just feeling her do that. Somehow, and he honestly didn't know how it worked, Sarelle somehow managed to be really firm holding him, but really soft and gentle at the same time.

He just laid his head back and smiled. After a moment, he put an arm around Sarelle's back, to hold her close the same way. "Well, you can count on me being around a lot more now. For whatever that's worth, I suppose, with you being so busy."

The Breton had just been starting to lay her head against his shoulder. She picked it up again and looked at him curiously. "What do you mean?"

"Oh well, uh… I finished my project down there yesterday, so they don't really need me anymore, I don't think." It was a little hard to think of Blackreach as being a thing of the past for him now. But the facts were what they were—people didn't go down there except for when they had to, and Aicantar didn't have to be down there. They'd needed his help just that one time, and it was over.

"Huh." Sarelle laid her head back down quickly enough. "What're you planning to do now?"

Aicantar paused for a second. For some reason, he hadn't been expecting that question. "I dunno, actually. I spent today mostly just thinking about that. But maybe there'll be some way for me to help with the Markarth thing, or… I mean, I did live there, myself. So maybe that, uh…"

Sarelle made a thoughtful noise. She always sounded so cute when she made noises like that. It was hard to describe. "Honestly… honestly, I think you might have better luck in Blackreach."

Now, that was a surprise. "Really? … You think? I mean, I just finished there, they don't need me."

"Not for what they're working on now, but I know how it goes in Blackreach. All you really need to do is go down there and start showing an interest in the place. The rest will just happen on its own. It'd be a lot easier than dealing with all the business up here."

As surprising ideas went, this one wasn't the most unprecedented. It just sounded too good. He'd already been sort of wondering if he'd ever make it back into Blackreach, but as he thought about it now, he realized that he'd been afraid to really let himself hope for it. It'd just been so much more… engaging, than anything up here in Alftand. This place was a Dwemer city, but Sarelle was right—it was full of business now. And Aicantar didn't want to do business. He wanted to do magic.

"I might just try that out tomorrow," he murmured. "I bet J'zargo would be happy to see me."

Sarelle exhaled sharply. Her voice came with a bit of mirth. "Oh, he's happy to see everyone. Doubly so for other mages, I imagine."

Aicantar leaned his head on top of the Breton's. It was a nice little layering, with the two of them. "… You're not getting jealous, are you?"

"Pff, what?" Her voice hit an impressively high register. "Why would I be jealous of some cat? Oh, please. You're joking. You've got to be joking. Pff. … Cats."

"If it makes you feel better, I did actually turn him down for that sort of thing already," Aicantar deadpanned. Or he tried to, anyway. He was struggling so hard not to laugh right now.

"Well, far be it from me to get in the way of your special magic. I'm just a lowly list-maker." By the sound of it, Sarelle was having the same struggle herself. "Oh, gods, I miss that fellow."

A lowly list-maker. Aicantar was definitely laughing a little bit now. "This is your problem, you know. You're just doing what Imperials love. Follow your dreams, Sarelle."

"Ahhh… I suppose I should follow my own advice once in a while, right?" With that, Sarelle pulled away from him just enough to raise her face up to his own. Oh, what a beautiful smile she had. It got him every time. "I know I've said it before, but that really is my favorite thing about you. You're not the type for business. You're the type for things that feel right."

"Like you, for example."

"I'm all kinds of flattered." Sarelle settled in to embrace him a little more tightly, putting herself right up against him, letting him just feel her as she was. It was so nice. He wanted to just lean over and—

There was a loud, metallic noise from the ceiling. Aicantar jolted upright a bit, and turned to look at the sound's source. A grated vent, previously closed, was hanging wide open, revealing a dark enclosed space above.

A moment later, a white-and-gray shape poured out of the open hole and thudded hard on the floor. It was a person. A young, slight-looking Dunmer, wearing light work clothes with a tool belt. This—actually, Aicantar completely knew who this was.

Sarelle let go of him and stood up. "Rem! What are you doing in here?!"

The Dunmer had landed on her front in an ungraceful heap. She picked herself up and looked at Sarelle, then Aicantar. The look on her face was somewhere between indignity and suspicion. "Uh… I'm working. I was working. What are you doing?"

"Trying to find someplace private," Aicantar grunted, as he pushed himself up to his feet as well. He was so much taller than both of the other people in here. It felt a little weird.

"Well, don't," Rem frowned.

Sarelle pointed to the ceiling. "How did you even get up there?"

Rem looked behind her where Sarelle was pointing. "Uh…" Then she turned back with a shrug. "I was using an access tunnel to dislodge some debris in one of the air filters. This was the quickest way back out. Did I miss dinner?"

"That was a while ago," Sarelle said, quite a bit crossly. But then she stopped, and took a breath in, and shook her head slowly. "I'm sorry, you're doing good work. I just… I don't get it. Do you just have an interest in jumping out of high spaces?"

The Dunmer squinted at her. "What? I don't—" But then she apparently realized something, because she began shaking her head vigorously. "Ohh, no. Ohhhh, no. Enough of that. No no no no no."

Aicantar glanced between the two of them expectantly. "… What am I missing?"

For some reason, just that question made Sarelle laugh out loud. She laid a hand on Aicantar's shoulder in a confiding sort of gesture. "Oh, all right. Might as well tell you about this. It's Rem's greatest moment. She doesn't like to talk about it, but it really deserves telling. So… Rem here used to be a thief in Windhelm. She was in with the best of them. Poor, maybe, hungry, maybe, but she was there."

No surprise there, Aicantar thought. Meanwhile, Rem herself was standing there and seething quietly.

Sarelle ignored Rem's reaction and kept going. "One day, she snuck into a rich noble family's house, she was hungry, she wanted food, they had a pheasant roasting on the fire—but just as she went to grab it, the lady of the house came in the front door! She had to vault right over the hearth to escape, and in the process, she knocked the pheasant down into the fire. And it could've burned to a crisp, but she grabbed it anyway, and ran right up the stairs. From there, the only way out was by the bedroom window. So she ran at it and dove through, fists first, right through the glass panes, with the flaming pheasant in her teeth."

Aicantar stared silently.

Sarelle added, "The guards saw the whole thing, but they were too stunned to try to make an arrest. She just got up, put out the pheasant, brushed off the bits of glass, and walked away with her dinner."

At this point, Rem just couldn't take it anymore. She waved her arms furiously at Sarelle and started sputtering for a reply. "No! That's—ghthat's not what happened! At all! I didn't jump out! And it—oh my ghghh gods, come on, it wasn't on fire! The pheasant was not on fire!"

A couple seconds went by. The only sound was the machinery next to them. Sarelle folded her arms skeptically. "Really? Why don't you summon your ghost friend and see what he has to say?"

Rem gave her a puzzled, indignant look. "What, Bryn? He wasn't even there, he was in Riften. Why do you people keep doing this to me?"

"I don't know," Aicantar grinned. "That sounds like something to be proud of."

"Easy for you to say," Rem spat. She was so ferociously bitter-sounding, it was amazing. "I'm just trying to have a normal existence here. Is that too much to ask? Is—is that too much? Because at this rate, the story's going to be that I transformed into a pheasant and fought a dragon outside."

"That's a really good idea," Sarelle murmured thoughtfully.

The Dunmer stared at her for a second, then put her head in her hands and sighed. "All right. Fine. It's funny. I was actually hungry, though, you know. The Gray Quarter was terrible."

Sarelle's tone softened. She really did sound soothing, when she wanted to. "Don't feel too bad, Rem. You're safe now. You're in Alftand. You'll never, ever run out of delicious food."

Aicantar wasn't sure whether to laugh or to gag. His belly was still full of all that stuff from earlier.

"Good plan, I'm going to have dinner now. And it's going to be amazing." Rem strode forward and walked right on out of the room, passing around Sarelle and Aicantar by a wide berth. The moment she'd gone through the doors, she sped up to a run. Her footsteps receded into the distance until they blended in with the noise of the machinery.

A little more time went by without anything being said. Aicantar looked at Sarelle expectantly.

"She left that thing open," Sarelle said, pointing at the ceiling port Rem had fallen through. The grate was still hanging sideways.

Aicantar raised his hand towards the grate and lit up a soft orange spell aura. It swung closed by itself and clicked into place.

"I like her," he said, after a moment. "I hope she's not angry with me now."

Sarelle waved dismissively. "Ahh, probably not. It's just sort of a thing with her. She does well with her work, though. The Jarl pays her to help keep this place running, and… that's good for her."

Aicantar nodded. That made sense. Obviously, at some point, Rem had been using her talents on picking locks. This was probably better for everyone involved. "… I'm still probably going to go back to Blackreach, though."

"Figures," the Breton smiled a little. "Just try and remember to come back up in the evenings, all right? It's so cold and lonely without you."

"You know you can count on me against that cold," Aicantar replied flatly, before relaxing and walking towards the door. "That did sort of kill the moment just now, didn't it? … Rem falling out of the ceiling for no reason?"

"I think what we should take away from this is that we need to look for an even more remote place to be together." As she joined him in walking out into the corridor, Sarelle grinned and put an arm around his side once again.

More likely than not, Aicantar was going to head back to his room after this. And he just knew he'd have a little bit of Markarth waiting for him when he did. That wasn't exactly a happy reminder—but on the other hand, Markarth wasn't the limit of his world anymore. Now, he could balance it out with the knowledge that Blackreach was going to be waiting for him too.