Unrequited.. Not?

Chapter 4

Erandur drifted out of consciousness and away from some of the unbearable pain. Little by little he imagined (or truly) it was diminishing. He thought he had felt the healing magic surge; indication of its having become substantially more powerful for Song having followed carefully his instruction.

If that were so, then he well knew that tissue growth would be accelerating, and that through her use of the Bondheal the odds were now in favour of his survival. He was confident that the spell should now be sufficient to gain the edge between deterioration and recovery. This was a relief not least because yet again he had found himself not ready to die, when the time had otherwise come.

There remained, however, the other matter to think about.

Did Mara actually speak to me?

He did not know if it had been fantasy or reality, but he now had a little time to live with - and worry about – the consequences of what he had just done in teaching Song the Bondheal.

Gradually, moment to moment, his senses recovered a little more than just that he was in pain. Gradually he was able to process what his body was telling him more clearly. He was able to tell that some parts of his body hurt more than others, and where that pain was located, and he recognised that slowly clarity of his senses for hearing, smell and touch was also returning...

...But that frightened him more even than the prospect of ever again enduring such pain as he had so recently experienced. This is because soon through the Bondheal he would come to know things that Song had never before said.

- He would know his real place in her world, and her future.

- He would know with certainty what could change about how she saw him, and what could not.

The prospect of learning these things scared him more even than the thought of dying without knowing them. The waiting beforehand was even worse and he winced as his heart (already strained for its injury) skipped a beat in anxiety, and upped its pace a little.

There was nonetheless an equilibrium at play presently, where his pain was as yet too overwhelming for him to focus on any other sensual perception, and she was likely intensely focused on the task at hand at the exclusion of all else. He would feel nothing abnormal, for a time.

Be that as it may for the time being, he needed to steel himself. He needed to prepare himself not to mistake things he might feel whenever the time came that such revelations might be made.

He knew from experience that in crisis, a good healer's emotions were tightly locked into compassion and caring. That was from whence healing magicks were best drawn and it was in fact that which gave them their potency.

An experienced and focused healer could naturally suppress their other emotions while healing; their transmission diminished to a subtlety that perhaps only an accomplished magick user or person possessing of significant self-awareness might be able to discern.

Even so, misconceptions could still arise - an unfamiliar patient might mistake the comfort they might feel (through the Bondheal if used upon them) as being their own apparent comfort at the hands and for being in the company of their healer. The foundation of flawed attachment thereafter could easily be laid.

- That was one of the many reasons that the Bondheal was seldom used outside of the priesthood of Mara, let alone taught even to her acolytes until a decade or more had passed.

As for truer, more specific emotions that more directly revealed the nature of the relationship felt by healer to their patient for how they saw them, those were the cause of the real pain and why the Bondheal should never be taught to anyone inexperienced (like Song), and only practised with foreknowledge of its emotional truth-revealing nature.

Time would reveal how Song really felt about him, but not yet.

Conveyance of emotion was most likely to occur if there was a particularly strong attachment/association (for good or for ill) in the mind of the healer with regards to the patient.

Conventional emotional responses ranging from apathy all the way to revulsion towards a patient, would only creep across the Bondheal after mortal danger to the patient they were healing at the time has passed, and the healer's mind had liberty or cause (such as exhaustion) to wander.

In experienced healers it tended only to be through the idling of a brain no longer forced to focus exclusively upon the task at hand, particularly at the point of exhaustion, that you might detect any hint of undeveloped emotional regard as their patient through the Bondheal. They might otherwise be able to hide all but the strongest feelings.

Curiosity, admiration, disproportionate relief for the patient's welfare improving, a flutter of sexual attraction… or at the other end of the spectrum the certainty of non-attraction, or the simplicity of stone-set limits defining a fond but non-romantic relationship: These were the truths that the Bondheal could reveal, even from an experienced healer under the right conditions.

Which is why you are supposed to tell those that you love, that you love them: To avoid the painful and awkward revelation of potentially mismatched feelings harboured by healer versus patient... At a point in time where the patient is likely at their most vulnerable, and may consequently feel as if their life hangs in the balance of their healer's regard for them.

In the case of Song, he feared no such thing for himself as patient, but her non-consent in the divulging of these truths felt like a terrible transgression and breach of her personal privacy on his part. He was surely going to be damned, he felt, for this.

Perhaps he had invented a conversation with Mara to once again excuse his own cowardice upon facing death? It seemed that here and now as once long ago: he readily abandoned the tenets he was supposed to have stood by when pressed hard enough for to save his own skin...

Song was not an experienced healer.

She was also by now surely exhausted.

Soon he would know all...

...And he cursed himself for every flip of his thoughts that turned toward yearning for that.

Except...

It had surely been a while now... And still he had felt nothing?

Perplexed, frustrated, and on the verge of feeling most tormented (a sentiment countered, he told himself, for being surely no less than he deserved) it suddenly occurred to Erandur that while he had been taught 'experience' mattered, perhaps rather more 'focus' might be the key to suppressing the transmission of emotional regard.

He had his suspicions that Song's capacity to focus was unnaturally adept - being 'Dragonborn' seemed to have a number of connotations and this was one of them. It was how, he believed, she so quickly mastered near any skill she turned her mind and body towards.

Could she use the Bondheal and let nothing slip of her view of him?!

No... The Bondheal has its name for a reason. It was meant to be a gift of Mara to those who love one another in her name most truly, that they might know the depth of their love for one another returned... to know of its resolve, its certainty, and surety of continuation... To rejoice in times of confidence, reassure in times of doubt, and resolve in times of dispute.

...I need only wait, for good or for ill.

Relieved that his breathing was a little easier than he expected when he then tried a deeper breath, he tried to breathe properly, aiming to meditate, to calm his thoughts and pass the time. He could in fact now breathe properly. Further tentative tests of his senses revealed that his heart-rate had eased his heart was now beating strong and steady, so it was already healing well.

The pain had eased significantly, and meditation had become easier with it. It was tolerable. He settled into a rhythm of inhalation and exhalation, and...

Anger. Guilt. Need. Fear…

- A wave of emotions suddenly coursed through his body in physical responses (elevated heart-rate, butterflies in his stomach, watering of his eyes and a shudder). This was in stark contrast to how he had felt moments earlier, and left him thoroughly bewildered and stunned before set in the realisation that his own brain had not initiated any of those feelings.

Backwards – he realised – it was backwards..! For he had felt the physical symptoms of those emotions first, and only after that (almost instantaneous, but not quite) had his brain assigned emotions as being the cause for them. In other words: they were not his own.

His eyes watered again. Then he suddenly felt a little warm, before it subsided into a sense of loss:

Sorrow… Tenderness… Regret.

- Such were the emotions tagged shortly thereafter to those physical responses.

Well then: so it was that the Bondheal was performing as expected after all. Song was tiring, and losing focus. Not so much as to affect the healing, but enough that these sentiments were being revealed. He tried to mentally note each as it came, to absorb and reflect upon each one, eager to analyse them for meaning (however distracting and disorientating they may be for him to experience at the same time as desperately trying to think clearly and objectively).

It actually made him calmer just to know that she cared at least this much. He was so incredibly grateful, and humbled beyond measure to learn that she did have some attachment to him, at least. It was towards him she felt these things, because her healing him required her mind at least be centred upon him in order to work, and the spell's power had not waned.

He tried not to allow excitement or hope to blossom, for these things alone must not be misconstrued. He reminded himself that Song, from his experience, seemed to want to care about everybody and everything, regardless of how resolute and severe her judgements could otherwise be.

...And yet... He had rarely glimpsed any capacity for her tenderness in his presence, save only on occasion with Lucia – a Nord child Song had adopted in Whiterun. Even then such tenderness appeared at times to be carefully measured and curtailed, especially when outside where other people could see it.

It was something she guarded carefully. That was a new piece of information about her, even if perhaps it may mean that tenderness towards him again was not necessarily anything special (she hid all forms of it from everyone, regardless to whom it was directed). He felt deeply privileged for a moment, having gained such intimate insight into her inner workings...

- Until he reminded himself that this was not a gift he had been given, but one taken from her at his bidding (and then felt sorry and very guilty again for it instead).

Still... That she felt these particular emotions towards him at all he hoped meant nothing less than her holding him in relatively high regard. He was touched by the mere suggestion of it.

For him to be so acknowledged in spite of all he had confessed to her (and he had divulged much since they first met)... To be accorded such consideration in spite of her first hand account of his role in the downfall of the people he had once called friends and fellow acolytes...

...And further more this... In spite of her having learned along with that experience that he had also been despicable enough as to have been a priest of Vaermina himself...

- These things meant more Erandur than he imagined Song could ever know or understand. The impact upon him was profound. It was almost like his meeting Mara for the first time all over again.

He tried not to weep for it. He reminded himself (again) that Song was an unusual being for her natural capacity for compassion and thoughtfulness towards others. It could well be simply that she cared this much about everybody - and everything...

(He began to recall the most specific example that came to mind)

- Like how she seemed genuinely upset whenever she accidentally crushed a snail under her boot.

It amused him how at first he had mistook prior occasions for the signature behaviour of a keen alchemist. In their earlier travels she would seemingly stop abruptly to scoop up (something) from the ground and excuse herself to wander off and seemingly closer inspect (whatever it was), muttering to herself things he was too far away to make out before returning but a few moments later either with a look of disappointment or one of satisfaction.

Alchemists often guarded their recipes fiercely, and only common ones were shared with amateurs or anyone who wasn't an apprentice. Masters often guarded their recipes even against their own apprentices, sometimes because they wanted to maintain superiority, but often because some ingredients were incredibly dangerous or the recipes that used them could go terribly (and dangerously) awry if not followed by an experienced hand and wizened eye.

He himself knew this much, but otherwise had only dabbled in the basics. So this apparent habit of hers along with the number of potions she carried meant he had presumed her quite correctly to be an alchemist, just for entirely the wrong reasons.

Her scurrying off into the undergrowth was not with the purpose of tasting some unknown ingredient in solitude in case of unwanted effects, or to keep secret some established and useful ingredient whose quality she simply wanted to check. It was to whisper apologies and attempt to heal (or otherwise end the misery) of some small creature she had harmed.

It wasn't until more recent months that he had realised this. It was apparent only after she had begun more often to dawdle in place where an accident had occurred whereupon his quick inspection of her placement as it had been at the time she had stopped revealed nothing of note, excepting an emerging pattern of miniature calamity.

This was confirmed only very much more recently after Song had apparently stopped even bothering to walk off to attend to her mishaps. It was only then that he discovered (her whispering over time grew a little louder on each subsequent occasion, with his pretending to pay no attention to it) that she was actually seemingly quite upset for having accidentally hurt some creature or other.

Lately she would, sometimes right in front of him, scoop up whatever-it-was and apologise almost to the point of sounding tearful as she tried to do whatever it was she thought she should to remedy the situation. He would only stand quietly behind her, patiently waiting for her to finish, with a small smile having crept upon his face as he observed...

For only Erandur's closest friend, Tarinir (Mara bring him peace) had ever been so kind and so indiscriminately to all living things... Yet they were very different people - she and he.

Song's application of mercy and kindness was perverse. She would readily eat carrion (Tarinir would have seen this as desecration of a corpse), and nor did she have any aversion to hunting when hungry (Tarinir wouldn't hurt a mosquito, not even one of Molag Bal's vampiric minions, which had most miserably been his undoing).

Also, she would kill instantly if it seemed to her to be a matter of mercy - she would inspect the damage and heal if she could (if she had managed to detect the telltale crunch in time before fully placing her weight), but if it seemed the snail had better be dead than be alive in that state she would see to that instead.

Conversely, Tarinir couldn't kill even in such a situation where mercy might require it (Erandur... would handle that for him) and only wept. Even when his survival required it after Molag Bal's vampires (Azura curse them) had turned him, he would not take even blood freely given (Erandur had offered his own). Rather than do this, to Erandur's great horror, he had killed himself rather than turn fully into one of those... things.

(Erandur had refused ever to offer vampires any form of forgiveness or mercy from that day on. Nobody could ever convince him that they deserved either, after that.)

Even more perverse, Song's attitude after necessitating the killing of a creature she had accidentally harmed, would suddenly flip from sorrow to cheerfulness on most occasions. The last time she had to kill a snail, she smiled gleefully, placed it's (doubly squished) remains on a rock and then cawed...

...The sound of which had taken Erandur so much by surprise that it had taken him a moment to realise that it had indeed come from her. He only recognised what noise it was she had made when he heard the flutter of larger-than-songbird wings, caught black-as-night movement out of the corner of his eye, and a telltale answering 'caw' come back from a nearby tree.

She then made eye contact with the crow, tilted her head and pointed to where she had placed the dead snail on the rock beside her. The bird stared at her, face likewise side on, with one beady-black, curious eye. Song smiled at it and then walked away.

'Nevermind." She had shrugged, exclaiming cheerfully "Someone's dinner!' before she bade herself and Erandur walk away to leave them to their meal.

Spying over his shoulder, he saw that the larger of the bird family that had come to her call, hopped down onto the rock to inspect the offering she had left them. Smart bird... He had known a sorcerer who'd kept one of its bigger cousins (a raven) as a pet once, but he had had no idea that its smartness extended to other members of its ilk in the wild until his travels with Song and occasions such as that one.

His curiosity finally piqued, Erandur had once recently asked Song about her contradictory nature - the willingness to kill and eat, but equally to heal and save the life of any animal she could (and to avoid killing whenever it wasn't her express intent).

Given her usual lack for want of conversation her reply was surprisingly explicit:

"I can no more deny my need to to eat meat than a sabre cat could chose to eat grass. To deny that is to deny our equal connection to this world. Do trees not feel pain when felled for timber? If it is harder to end the life of a living thing because you feel akin to it, then so much the better. Maybe if people felt that more equally towards trees as to cattle, towards bears as to dogs, to stone as to children, perhaps they might leave smaller scars upon this beautiful world."

- He had wanted to fall in love with her all the deeper after that.

So perhaps it was merely a measure of her character and he should never have expected anything less. Perhaps this was precisely why Mara might well want to have a hand in this particular mortal's fate…

Alas, thinking of her in such a way made him sad. To think she could be so gentle at heart, but so uncomfortable in showing it outwardly - that to him spoke volumes of her life before they had met, and he knew more about her past now even if she had spoken little or nothing of it in words.

Her past was indeed a puzzle he pieced together more from her behaviour and reactions than any words they had exchanged during their travels together. He imagined himself to have been much the same in brevity and content when speaking about himself.

He practically was the same, at least no doubt from first appearances. His withdrawal from speaking openly about himself was however a more of a recent adaptation of his mannerisms, one suited to the circumstances in which he had found himself of having a past that would lead him to be shunned, scorned and outcast more than any conditioned response that he might have learned earlier on in life.

- He had always been quiet, but he had been content to share of himself once he had made friends within the cult of Vaermina.

Song on the other hand was younger by a hundred years or more. Known and admired as she now was, this might otherwise have cast aside inhibitions she might naturally have had through prior lack of confidence or a more demur nature. She seemed not to engage personally with anyone if she could help it, but it almost seemed as if to be lack of practice or some strange sense of normality on her part, more than fear of what others might think of her.

It was if she had spend a great deal of time alone, and was not used to speaking... Except that she was also guarded about her feelings, which told him that at least at some point in her life (and for a significant time or during a significant period of her it, like early childhood perhaps), her emotions may have been used against her.

He had noticed that she was very good at putting on a brave and cheerful face, but that she was very physically guarded around people. The only times he saw her drop her guard was around animals (usually healing them after pacifying them with her Voice) for to heal them, and then she almost seemed childlike.

He had only seen her behave like that around himself in the past month or so, and it was a very, very gradual shift in her behaviour (as if she had been guarded against him all time previous).

He wondered why he was any different, for being a member of Vaermina's cult was not a particularly friendly lot in life. As a young elf upon initiation he had not been permitted to socialise, however much he may have wanted to. Therein however was perhaps the key: he had wanted to.

He perhaps would never have begun speaking more openly about himself or developed the inclination or ability to do so, were it not for his early childhood spent with such kind and loving parents.

His parents had always encouraged him to be honest and forthright (qualities that had nonetheless made his time in the cult of Vaermina very difficult to begin with). He was grateful Vaermina had never taken his memories of them, for he didn't have a single bad thing to say about them.

He only felt regret for not having been able to share his life with such loving people for longer, to have learned from them rather than the priests of Vaermina how better to view the world. Erandur hoped only that one day he could visit their resting place and stand before their graves unashamed - something that in over 50yrs, he still felt unable to do.

Erandur realised that his thoughts had drifted: was there nothing more to be revealed by Song through the Bondheal..?

She feels those things… But 'love'…

- He thought longingly, and admittedly selfishly -

Love? Could she..? Could she ever feel that way... for me?

Nothing of the sort could be felt. He reprimanded himself for having reached for such a stupid dream in the first place. Maybe if Song could love all living things and every aspect of Nirn itself this much, she may simply have no room left for romance thereafter. He should rather be grateful to find himself getting any kind of special mention, instead of wallowing in the self-pity of love unrequited.

Perhaps that strange vision of Mara really had been but a dream, and all that supposition merely his own pain-induced delusions of grandeur. Perhaps he had simply broken yet another vow, the thought of which left him feeling only disgust towards himself.

If the Dragonborn was born to love the whole world enough to save it, how could that person devote themselves to the true love of just one of the people found within it? Possibly least worthy of all being himself... Who was he to weigh himself against a world?

- Someone who felt even older than his years for his engagement in dark sorcery, as well as having the few friends he'd made in life since die off from old age (being most of them human) or killed by the scum of this world, decades ago.

- Someone whose past was long enough (nearly the first fifth of his Dunmer lifespan – twice that of a human's) and despicable enough to warrant his embarking upon a quest for redemption that would probably take him the rest of his life to complete.

(...And he was dubious that even that would be enough because the fact always remained that what has been done can never be undone, and he was the one who had done those terrible things.)

He sighed in dismay and bewilderment: even if Mara had spoken to him, only an idiot would think he could call her back to query the details after the fact. He knew himself well enough by now to recognise it when he was panicking. Not that he could do much about it, except try to go numb and stop thinking altogether...

...And so in that moment he decided he should focus purely on just staying alive. He would drift there somewhere between meditation and sleep quite, quite peacefully in his exhaustion, or so he imagined.

- It wouldn't stay that way for long.

Author note:

Gosh. Why do I always find so many errors?! Forgive me occasionally updating previous chapters. Sometimes I just don't see things until I have posted online, then re-read what I've written a week or more later on my phone... Something about reading it in a slightly different format and presentation seems to jog my brain into spotting errors that I can't see for looking at the text when I'm actually able to edit it prior to publishing.

No matter, here's the latest chapter, there's already another I've drafted. Sorry I have to edit so much... Hope you like this one.

Word of advice: if you see a new chapter pop up, wait a few days! I will probably have fixed a lot more things by then...