"M'aiq was soul trapped once. Not very pleasant. You should think about that once in a while." - M'aiq the Liar
*,*,*
M'aiq was bored.
The landscape was nothing much to look at. He'd grown up in a desert, filled with the blasted ruins of the civilization that had come before. That was nothing new. Of course, this place was gloomier than the warm paths his clan had taken and the sky was not a color he'd seen before - purplish-greyish-indigo? - but it was hardly a unique concept. See one half buried column, see them all and he had seen more than enough of them for several lifetimes already, he was certain, even if he was no longer certain of the passing of time. It disappointed him somewhat, finding out that the venerable rulers of a plane of oblivion so lacked imagination.
The company did nothing to improve matters. The Bonemen weren't much for conversation, he never had any idea which part of a Keeper's nonexistent face he should address when speaking with them and it was better to leave off talking to the Wrathmen entirely. But it was the other ghosts that bothered him the most. On and on they went - 'woe is me' this and 'oh, how I wish I hadn't trusted that Eight-damned wizard' that.
M'aiq knows this, he'd wanted to say to them, many times over now. This one too wishes that mad elf hadn't stuck him with the funny dagger, but wishing does not help the problem, yes?
He'd refrained from saying it out loud thus far. Somewhere in his shrivelled husk of a soul, the graciousness that his clan had taught him still held fast. Frustration with his eternal imprisonment on a plane of oblivion filled with whinging spirits and horrors beyond his previous comprehension hardly justified rudeness.
So, before he let something he'd regret slip to possibly the only other people he'd ever meet in this shadow of a life, he started walking.
He'd only meant to go for a stroll at first - just to get out of earshot of the whinging for a little while and some air, though that was more of a metaphor than an actuality. But when the glow of the ghosts vanished behind a dune of greyish sand, he kept walking. He walked through crumbling graveyards, deserted mausoleums, fields dotted with ghostly heifers grazing on wispy plants the same shade as the dusty ground. If he touched one of the animals, he realized, to his surprise, that he could feel the texture of its fur beneath his spectral fingers. A ghostly farmer glared at him when he made moves to climb up on top of one and he quickly thought better of it. He was greeted with the same reaction when he bent down to check if a ghostly chicken had laid a ghostly egg. Disappointingly, it had not. His spectral form felt nothing that could be described as hunger, but all the same, he longed to know if it would have had any flavor.
He carried on, through towering ruins that served no purpose he could discern, down once-fine roads now half buried in sand and finally, to a building more complete than any he'd yet seen in this place. For a span of time that could not be measured, he stood there, swishing his tail as he gazed into the dark maw of the entrance. It appeared to be some sort of mausoleum, more grand than any he'd come across thus far or seen when he was alive for that matter. The explorer in him - the kitten that had spent its childhood trekking from end to end of Ne Quin-al, the adult that had seen fit to go beyond - yearned to see what lay beyond those pillars. The coward in him - that had saved his hide all times except for this last one - begged him to turn around.
M'aiq is dead, he decided at last. What need has this one of caution?
And so, he stepped inside.
Down, down, down it went, into the earth, deeper by far than the aboveground structure suggested, its green-tiled corridors illuminated with a sickly light. He passed by chapels filled with stained glass and pools so still that even a drop of movement in them would have felt like the sudden conjuration of a fireball from an unseen hand. The Bonemen guarding the quiet halls took no notice of him and the ghosts that had taken up residence here drifted past without a word. Whatever lay in the trio of ornate coffins at the end of it all was just as silent.
M'aiq found that his boredom was coming back. Not that it had ever quite left, aside for the part where he'd come across the farmer and his cows. What was he expecting, really? The big mausoleum to be less yawn-inducing than the smaller ones? Foolishness.
He wondered suddenly if he was capable of hocking up a ghostly loogie. He couldn't exactly put a fist through the windows or knock the statuary to the floor like he wanted, but that? THe idea presented a faint glimmer of hope. If he could hock up a ghostly loogie, a ghostly chicken could definitely lay a ghostly egg.
It took some working, as his mouth felt as though it were coated in ash and had felt as such ever since he'd found himself here with no way out, but eventually a thin dribble of ectoplasm left his mouth to fall on the coffin below. He laughed out loud, as pleased with himself as he'd been when he'd figured out how to slip moonsugar from his mother's stash. It was the little things that mattered most - that mattered more than anything ever when there was nothing else to be done.
The coffin creaked open.
With a yelp, he leapt away, his back to the wall. Where was the door? It had been right behind him, hadn't it? It hadn't even been a door, he remembered. Just a hole in the wall that now appeared unbroken and smooth.
WHO DISTURBS OUR REST? a voice that he felt in spectral teeth, rather than heard, asked.
Could he phase through walls? Ghosts did that, right? He was wary of trying it and getting stuck in a worse place than he currently was but if there was any time he should consider it, there would probably be no better time.
His scrambling hand plunged through empty space. The entrance! It was there, right behind him, where it always had been. All he need do was run through it and never look back.
A thought occurred to him in the moment before he shot down the hall.
He relaxed.
M'aiq is being absurd, he thought, with a smile.
How easily he'd forgotten his ghostly invulnerability.
YOU ARE NOT INVITED HERE, the voice went on, every syllable as flat and measured as the last. WHY DO YOU DISTURB OUR REST?
There was the slightest of inflections on the 'why' this time.
M'aiq put his hands together and did a small, respectful bow.
"M'aiq the Sand-Walker wishes you well. Khajiit wishes to know who you are."
When he stood back up, his sharp eyes, trained to pick treasures out of the sand, caught the telltale glint of something precious within the coffin.
Hmm, he thought. No body for the body-box, then?
He could've sworn the thing sighed. If it had been alive, it would have taken a big breath before launching into the spiel it sounded like it had recited hundreds, if not thousands of times before.
YOU STAND WITHIN THE PRECINCTS OF THE SOUL CAIRN, AN OTHERWORLDLY REFUGE DEDICATED TO PEACE, LOVE, ETERNAL REST AND HARMONY. YOU STAND BEFORE ONE OF ITS MAKERS, WHOSE NAME IS SO EXALTED YOU MAY NOT EVEN SPEAK IT. YOU WALK AMONG ITS SERVANTS WHO HAVE PLEDGED THEMSELVES IN SERVICE TO US AND WHO IN REWARD HAVE BEEN GIFTED WITH LIFE ETERNAL AND THE PEACE THAT PASSES ALL MORTAL UNDERSTANDING. NOW, WE ASK YOU AGAIN: WHY DO YOU DISTURB OUR REST?
M'aiq screwed up his face in thought. He looked at the sickly light illuminating the ghoulish faces of the mosaics covering the close walls. He thought of all the wandering ghosts in the desert outside, endlessly bemoaning their fate. He thought of the gloomy sky and the cold sand beneath his even colder paws.
"M'aiq is confused." he said, scratching the fur of his chin.
The thing definitely sighed this time.
EVERY MOTE OF ENERGY SPENT DIMINISHES OUR ETERNITY. PERHAPS YOU WILL FIND WHATEVER IT IS YOU SEEK IN THE CHAPEL OF LOVE. GO, AND SPEAK WITH US NO MORE.
"But" M'aiq said. "Eternity does not diminish, yes? That is what makes it eternity, no? M'aiq is quite confused now."
Another sigh. M'aiq stepped closer and peered down into the coffin. On the satin lining inside sat a single, fist-sized gem of deep violet. He thought he saw shapes moving within it, but when he looked closer, there was nothing in its facets but his own reflection.
WRONG. ETERNITY IS A MEASURABLE QUANTITY AND YOU ARE SAPPING MINE AWAY AS WE SPEAK. BEGONE, SPIRIT, SO THAT WE MIGHT RESUME OUR REST.
M'aiq crossed his arms and leaned against the coffin.
"M'aiq thinks not. Either this one is eternal or this one is not. M'aiq will test this, to be sure. If M'aiq is eternal now, M'aiq must be able to stand here for eternity, yes? It will amuse M'aiq, if nothing else. This one is the only one M'aiq has found with a conversation worth having."
The gem was silent for a long while. M'aiq thought that it must be trying to bore him into going away. Too bad. A silent gem was less boring than a silent wasteland.
"There is another thing which befuddles M'aiq." he said, mostly talking to himself but very much hoping to goad the gem into responding. "This one speaks of love, but love means taking one's love to beautiful places, no? And treating one to fine food and pleasant times. M'aiq does not feel loved here. This one's plane is not what M'aiq would call beautiful and as for the food"-
ALL ARE LOVED EQUALLY WITHIN THE PRECINCT OF THE SOUL CAIRN.
"So this one says. What else did this one say? Peace, harmony? M'aiq does not find the wails of lost souls harmonious. Does this one?"
YES. IT IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MUSIC FOR THOSE WITH EARS TO HEAR.
M'aiq squinted into the darkness of the coffin.
"But...this one does not have ears. How might this one hear at all if"-
The coffin slammed shut. The lid passed right through his ribcage. He didn't feel a thing. M'aiq chuckled.
"It is no wonder that this one does not know much of music! Buried underground, with no friends or instruments or ears! Terrible. Here, let M'aiq show this one…"
He patted his pocket. It'd been there when he was killed. He wouldn't have called it part of his soul, but then again, he wouldn't have called his clothes part of his soul either, but here they were. What a sick, sick afterlife it would have been, were it filled with naked ghosts. Very sad.
With an exclamation of triumph, he pulled out the ghostly flute. The first few notes he blew were weak and discordant. It was going to take some doing, re-learning how to play a wind instrument without breath.
"M'aiq apologizes for that." he said sheepishly. "Khajiit is rusty. Mayhap practice will help."
He blew a few more discordant notes. They were a little louder this time. The trick was to envision himself breathing so thoroughly that his ghostly form actually did it. He sucked in a big breath and blew his loudest, most piercing note.
The gem groaned from inside the coffin. He blew another, making sure to draw it out.
"M'aiq has known love." he said, conversationally, after he'd spent a little time working out the notes of a song he'd made up on the spot.
This was a lie. He had hoped to know love. But where do truths begin, if not within the roots of lies?
"Were M'aiq to return to Nirni, M'aiq would spend his time making many small M'aiqs. Imagine it! Many M'aiqs. Infinite M'aiqs! Many M'aiqs is better than one M'aiq, yes? M'aiq thinks so. M'aiq thinks"-
WOULD THEY BE AS INSUFFERABLE AS YOU?
M'aiq shrugged, then wondered if gems had eyes with which to perceive shrugging.
"M'aiq cannot say." he said, just in case. "M'aiq is only one M'aiq."
WOULD YOU TRADE MANY M'AIQS FOR ONE M'AIQ?
M'aiq wrinkled his brow.
"Khajiit...does not understand."
AN INFINITE SUPPLY OF M'AIQS MEANS AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF M'AIQS UPON WHICH TO BESTOW OUR LOVE.
Does M'aiq hear this right? he thought. His mouth felt even more ashen than before.
"This one...offers khajiit freedom?" he said, frowning warily.
FOR THE SOULS OF ALL YOUR PROGENY.
He swallowed thickly. Suppose he agreed and then had no children? What was the worst that could happen? He got to spend a little while longer on the mortal plane before returning here? That was fine. That was better than any deal he thought he'd be able to get in this dead-end place.
"All...of them?" he asked, the fur down his back standing up as he spoke the words.
UNTO THE LENGTH OF ETERNITY.
"B-But eternity has no length!" he sputtered, baring his claws and then retracting them again. "Khajiit has discussed this with this one! This one knows as little of numbers as it does of music! This one is a troll-headed jeek if it thinks"-
The gem laughed. It was a terrible feeling, like the grinding of stones inside his head. M'aiq clasped his hands to his ears but still, it went on.
FIND THE MEASURE OF ETERNITY AND YOU AND YOUR PROGENY WILL BE FREE OF ALL DEBT. YOU HAVE OUR WORD. BUT FOR NOW, FOR THE LAST TIME, GO, AND LEAVE US TO OUR PEACE.
"M'aiq has agreed to nothing! This one must give time to M'aiq to think! This one must"-
And he was gone.
Silence filled the halls of the Ideal Masters' domain once more.
*.*.*
On the desk of a necromancer in a flophouse in Bravil, a soul gem exploded with great force.
Mannimarco had blocked his eyes with his sleeve a moment before it had happened. Slowly, he lowered his arm and looked at the shards littering his desk. One of them had knocked his inkwell over and spilled it all over his notes. He grimaced at the prospect of cleaning it up himself. This wasn't exactly a place he allowed servants to enter. Or, what passed for servants in this backwater town. That damn Galerion and his damn Arcane University and their damn laws. Once, not too long ago, the tangled wilds of Bravil had been a perfect place to conduct his studies in peace. Now, he had to hide everything that even faintly stunk of necromancy, to avoid drawing attention to himself.
That is, until he was strong enough to no longer care about such things. Just a little longer and he'd be home free.
With a harumph, he levitated the bigger shards into the wastebasket.
Which one of them had it been? That hunter who hadn't realized he was being hunted? That guild mage who always stared down her nose at him but had quite a different look in her eyes as he drained her life force away? The khajiit who'd wandered off from his caravan?
There were too many to keep track of. Not that it mattered. Souls were souls. Just a form of power and nothing more, whatever any upstart guildmasters had to say about it. He felt a slight disappointment at having one less of them to experiment with, but well, there were more than enough potential targets about to replace it to feel too bad about it.
But why had it exploded in the first place? He levitated an inky shard back out of the garbage and examined it. There was nothing to see but the jagged fracture lines along which it had broken. He let it drop back in. A poor crystalline structure, perhaps. That was interesting. He had to admit, he'd never come across a soul gem quite that defective before. He levitated the shards out of the wastebasket and set them on a handkerchief for later, while he set out to find something capable of getting ink stains out of wood.
*.*.*
When M'aiq awoke, it was to a mudcrab with a pincher around his toe.
He clawed and kicked and hissed until, after the battle that felt far longer than it had actually been, he managed to punt it back into the stream from whence it had most likely crawled. Then he scrambled up the muddy bank, as far as he could go from the water before his strength gave out. With sudden wonder, he realized that his heart was pounding and that he was sucking in great gasps of cold, fresh, unimagined air.
His hand rushed up to the spot where the dagger had slipped between his ribs. The rip in his clothes was still there, as well as the blood caked in his fur, but the wound itself - gone, as though it had never existed.
He lay there for a while, savoring each deep, real breath he took and looking up at the blue patches of sky visible through the canopy of living, swaying leaves above.
*.*.*
"M'aiq saw a mudcrab the other day." M'aiq said, wrinkling his nose in disgust despite the sweetness of the moon sugar on his tongue. "Horrible creatures! One tried to eat M'aiq once. M'aiq has told you this, yes?"
There was a chorus of groans around the campfire.
"Oh, yes." Ra'mokir said, rolling his eyes. "M'aiq has also said that Tamriel sugar grows on the moon, that he once saw a farm filled with ghost cows, that there are invisible dragons on the ground and that M'aiq was soul-trapped."
"It was not very pleasant." M'aiq interjected. "Khajiit does not recommend it."
When M'aiq passed the bowl, Ra'mokir took another shard of sugar out of it. He was a decent caravan master, for all his bluster and M'aiq was immensely glad he'd found him when he had discovered that his old caravan had moved on without him without so much as a backward glance.
Ra'mokir grunted.
"Hmm. Well, Ra'mokir cannot decide whether M'aiq needs more moonsugar or less."
"Always more!" Ak'soud shouted, plucking another shard of his own out of the bowl and passing it to the next in the circle.
"Ak'soud would say this." Shasirri said from beside him with a giggle. M'aiq loved her giggle. It was much nicer than stones grinding against one another.
"Ak'soud says many things." Ra'mokir said, with another eye roll. "But not nearly so many as M'aiq. Does M'aiq ever speak true?"
"What is this truth Ra'mokir speaks of?" M'aiq answered, with mock incredulity. "What M'aiq sees with his eye is true. What Ra'mokir sees with his eye is just as true. Stories have truth. Rumors have truth. The best lies are built of truth. What is truth in this world, when all has truth hidden within it?"
Ra'mokir scoffed. Shasirri listened, a look of baffled wonder on her face. Ak'soud appeared to have checked out of the conversation entirely and was now staring blankly into the fire, his cheek bulging as he sucked on the shard.
"Ra'mokir thinks M'aiq is just an excellent liar." Ra'mokir said, shaking his head just before crunching the sugar between his teeth.
M'aiq shrugged.
"Ra'mokir may think what Ra'mokir thinks but M'aiq...ah, M'aiq knows more than Ra'mokir knows."
"Ra'mokir thinks M'aiq should cut back on the moon sugar after all."
"M'aiq very much disagrees."
"Ra'mokir graciously says no."
"M'aiq politely says yes."
Shasirri giggled again and passed him the moon sugar bowl as it came around again. As the night of the Colovian Highlands grew colder and the sugar in the bowl grew lower, she snuggled up to him. M'aiq was too warm and content to shoo her away.
*.*.*
When Shasirri informed him that she was with kit, a type of dread that wouldn't go away settled in M'aiq's stomach. He tried to convince himself that it was the ordinary first-time father jitters, that he'd feel better once the kitten was safely in his arms, that of course he wanted it and that there was no question that he wanted her. But all of that mincing around served only to distance himself from the real problem.
He'd tried to write off his short adventure in the wilderness of Bravil as the result of having taken one too many hits of skooma the night before, so many times over. All dreams, even awful ones, contain truth, but that does not make them true. He wanted to believe that it was only a bad dream. He wanted to live his life in blissful ignorance, not knowing what he did not know, not seeing what he had not seen.
He thought that perhaps it would be a stillbirth. A quiet kit that entered the world with no soul at all. The thought saddened him. The stories he told Shasirri late at night became more subdued and his jokes, farther and fewer between. He knew she knew something was wrong but whenever she tried to ask, he'd crack another absurdity to deflect the question. She'd throw a pillow at him and for a moment, everything would be as it was.
But still, though he tried to be at ease, he worried.
*.*.*
Within the birthing tent, he heard mewling. It went on and on, unabated. It was still going on when he was invited in and when the wiggling lump was thrust into his arms. He could scarcely believe it was true, but then, when he looked into the face of his child-
-M'aiq looked back.
He could see his own face through M'aiq's eyes. He was thinking M'aiq's thoughts and his own all at once. It was making him dizzy. He gave the other M'aiq back to Shasirri before he was too dizzy to hold the kit and stumbled out of the tent.
*.*.*
When he was old enough to choose a name, the child, to the chagrin of his mother, had insisted on being called M'aiq also. He would answer to nothing else. Shasirri supposed that this should have come as no surprise. He and his father had always finished each other's sentences. They had the same mannerisms, the same habits, the same odd sense of humor. Sometimes it felt as though she really was contending with one person who just so happened to have two bodies. She loved them both, but it was about as frustrating as it sounded sometimes.
And then, one morning she awoke to find that M'aiq the elder had gone. For her, he had left the sum of every piece of coin he'd ever saved. For her son, there was the much-used flute he had once spent many nights playing around the campfire. He had carved it with the words 'A gift from M'aiq, to his son M'aiq.'
For a long while, in her anger at M'aiq's disappearance, she debated giving it to their child at all. But when he came to her, asking for it specifically, as though the knowledge of her possession of it was the most natural thing in the world, she could not help but hand it over.
"M'aiq wishes to apologize for his behavior." he'd told her, when she'd given it to him somewhat huffily.
"Ja'khajiit…" she said gently, stooping down to his level, immediately feeling awful for how her unthinking actions may have impacted the child who had not disappeared like his father. "This one has no need to apologize."
"M'aiq must measure what cannot be measured, for the sake of all of us. That is why he had to leave. M'aiq is very sorry for the trouble he has caused."
Whatever words of affirmation Shasirri had meant to say shrivelled up and died on her tongue. She kept her wits about her as he then asked if he might go out and play with the other kits in the caravan. She nodded numbly and then, the second he was gone, she burst into tears.
*.*.*
When M'aiq was older, he dreamed of his father's death. He woke up with an emptiness inside and the feeling of having lost a thing that he couldn't describe. It was disorienting, going about with one mind when all his life he had always had two. All he had now were his own thoughts to think.
Deep down, he knew that his father was not really dead. He was his father, after all. They shared a single soul. They had watched each other's lives as they lived it. He had his father's memories of events that had taken place long before he himself had been born.
Though he had to admit that the memory of the things his father had experienced were always slightly fuzzier than the things he had lived through personally. And there were parts of his personality that were, most probably due to the slight differences of his upbringing, most unlike those of his father. Was M'aiq the same M'aiq or was he his own M'aiq? The question made his head ache worse than the aftereffects of a skooma bender.
He did not tell his mother the news. He was uncharacteristically quiet as he did his work that day as he turned things over in his aching head. After several days of this and of adjusting to a single-minded life, he came to a decision.
His father had failed. What he had left his mother for and spent his life seeking was impossible. The desire still burned inside him to try, to keep trying endlessly until he found a way to free the soul whose life he had unwittingly stolen and all who might come after it, but the headache-inducing question remained: was this his desire or was it his father's?
There were so many beautiful places to visit and pleasant things to try in this life. How much of it he would miss, if he wasted it bashing his head against a wall that was never going to budge.
When he was ready, he bade his mother goodbye and set off to make his own fortune. This was mostly achieved by playing his father's flute in taverns for coins and supplemented with silly stories of Tamriel sugar and invisible dragons to bemused crowds. It was not easy, this lonely life on the road, but it was his life and he was happy.
*.*.*
Eventually, he found himself falling in with a travelling circus. They had a juggling Argonian, a dancing Breton and a very flexible Khajiit. At first, he provided musical accompaniment to her act, but soon enough, they were a double act - in more ways than one.
When she told him that they were going to be parents, he was overjoyed, despite his father's nagging memory of his own birth. How easy it was in his bliss to forget that he was no ordinary Khajiit. How happy he'd been, dreaming of all the little tumbling Khajiits they were going to include in the circus act when their children were old enough to entertain the masses.
And then, the day came when he was at last holding his kit in his arms.
M'aiq stared back at M'aiq from the swaddlings. The memory of all that had transpired before his birth came rushing back. And all he felt, when he should have felt, pride, relief, joy...was a smothering, leaden disappointment.
He handed the other M'aiq back to its mother.
In the morning, he set out to do the impossible.
*.*.*
M'aiq the third was a thief. He had run away from the circus at the first opportunity, joined the local group of ragamuffins that called themselves a guild and never looked back.
Night was when he was in his element. He snuck, he stole, he rejoiced in how free he was of ridiculous quests. When he was high enough in the rankings of the guild, he became an acolyte of Nocturnal.
Not because of any particular fondness for the daedra, though most of the guild swore she brought them luck on their endeavors, but because he'd simply wished to see another plane of oblivion. It was a part of the world his predecessors had never seen, had never even dreamed of. It had nothing to do with the niggling thought that perhaps oblivion had what his sire had failed to find in the mortal plane, oh no, not at all. This, as all things in his life were, was for him alone.
The Evergloam was as beautiful as he'd imagined it. He explored to his heart's content under the endless moonlight and gorged himself on its shadowy secrets.
When he came to Crow's Wood, the relative peace of the Evergloam was shattered by a flock of (what else?) crows who harried him all the way through, demanding a toll for passage. He hadn't planned on giving in to them, purely out of spite for the one that had crapped in his fur, but when he reached their altar, covered in the strange detritus other travellers had left as payment, he felt differently.
He didn't know why he had kept the flute for so long. It had belonged to his grandfather, who had given it to his father, who had left it for him when he was too young to remember meeting him personally. He knew his father had meant well, leaving it for him. He knew exactly what he was thinking when he did so, in fact. But he could never get past his father's memory of his own birth and the all-consuming disappointment he'd felt upon realizing that he was M'aiq and no one else.
He set the flute on the altar. The crows ceased their angry cawing.
Far away, a kit that he'd never met but with whom he shared every thought grew up.
*.*.*
Across centuries of history and lucky investiture, the M'aiq family line had become a rich and prosperous one. M'aiq had a fine house in the Imperial City, a line of caravans that travelled to distant lands, a wife who loved him and a son...well, a son who was exactly as strange as him.
When they were together, much to the annoyance of his poor wife, they finished each other's sentences. They both had the habit of remarking casually on things that had happened before their births, or perhaps, not at all. Others chided them - half-jokingly - for being liars, but who were they to say what was lies and what was truth when they themselves had no idea where the line between them lay?
There was also another similarity they shared, which they did not share with others - a not-entirely-natural interest in measuring tools. Rulers, scales, clocks, calipers - they hoarded them all in an attic room that hardly anybody knew was there. When M'aiq the elder came home from a trip, he would always bring a new one home with him. The feeling that there was something important they needed to measure nagged at them incessantly but what it was and what tool it required - that information escaped them. M'aiq the elder figured that it would become clear once he'd located the right tool. M'aiq the younger thought much the same.
And so M'aiq the elder set off to Vvardenfell. There were trading interests over there which, outwardly, he said he was going on the trip to oversee, but his true purpose was to find a black market selling some type of yet-unseen dwarven calipers that would give him the answers he sought once he held them in his claws.
Though he was normally quite good with directions, especially in places he had never before visited, he got the feeling that much had changed in Morrowind since he'd not been there last and as a result, got more turned around than he'd ever been.
This was how he'd ended up in a swamp with mud between his toes and dirt streaking his fine clothes while some outlander as weird as him asked his opinion on naked liches.
He never did find his dwarven calipers.
*.*.*
The Oblivion Crisis was not kind to trade. Daedra spilling out of portals near the more heavily trafficked highways tended to do that. M'aiq the younger was thrown out into the streets, he and his father's caliper collection barred behind a locked door. But it wasn't something that bothered him overmuch. None of them were right anyway and a Khajiit living inside towering walls had always felt wrong to him.
So he said goodbye to his parents as they consolidated their old investments, wished them luck on their endeavors and took to a life of wandering. The roads were dangerous and the way the sky changed around the portals made his fur stand on end, but when he was scared, all he need do was run and all his troubles would fall away behind him. The daedra, nor anyone else for that matter, had never caught up to him yet once he got going. All those laps around Lake Rumare during his childhood really paid off.
His mornings were spent playing at being a cryptic sage. If he said something extra wise, people would throw food at him. How kind of them to keep him sustained. He thanked them wholeheartedly every day.
Afternoons were for searching for a type of calipers he'd never seen before. As per his expectations after years of searching, they were all wrong, every single one. But it was hardly the destination that mattered - it was the journey. And he loved the journey more than anything on the face of Nirn.
*.*.*
M'aiq had seen snow before, many, many times. Or perhaps he had never seen snow. It was hard to say. What he did know was that taking his wanderings to Skyrim in the dead of Evening Star was probably not the best of his ideas. It'd been a while since he'd been to Skyrim. At least, it felt that way. It just felt right, going back to it for the first time.
Though the snowflakes were pretty, the wind was like an icy knife and the drifts it formed had piled up to his knees. He wished he would've had the sense to not get caught picking up that blacksmith's tongs in broad daylight. They had looked like they might be calipers from afar and he'd thrown caution to the wind in the midst of his excitement . But they had not been what he was looking for, obviously, and now the Riften guard was rather angrier than the situation merited at him. He didn't have the septims to pay the fine and he had no wish to spend a night in jail, so here he was, on his way north to Windhelm. There, he figured they wouldn't care about such things as mistaken calipers and he could have a good sleep in the stables with no one bothering him. Horses were much better with cream sauce, but at this point he was far past being choosey.
His fur rimed with frost, he stumbled towards a light shining through the blizzard. Maybe it was the Windhelm gate. Maybe it wasn't. He was too cold to do anything else but keep on blundering toward it. If it was something less pleasant, well, he'd just kick up his heels and hightail it out of there like he always did.
It was not the Windhelm gate, but it was something better.
He had stumbled into a ring of khajiit huddled around a fire. They stared at each other for a tense moment. Then the tension broke and they were all welcoming him in with open arms, pulling extra blankets out of their tents and shoving a cup of frost mirriam tea into his hands.
"Ahkari welcomes you!" a khajiit dressed in heavy robes and shiny jewelry said, clasping her hands together and doing a shallow bow. "This one did not expect to find a brother wandering in the storm."
"No, certainly not." a younger khajiit dressed in less grand, but no less lovely clothes said.
"Hmm." a third clad in armor that looked as though it were frozen to his body added. "As long as Khajiit brings no trouble."
Ahkari hushed him.
"Kharjo protects us." she explained. "It is hard to know who to trust in this savage land, no? Please excuse him for his rudeness."
"M'aiq understands this." M'aiq answered with a nod. "It is no matter."
The tea was bitter, but it felt nice going down his throat and in his hands. His whiskers were unfrozen in no time.
"Oh!" Ahkari said a little while later, smacking herself lightly in the face. "Forgive my rudeness too. This one is Zaynabi."
She gestured to the younger khajiit, her fur just a shade darker than his. She smiled shyly back at him.
"And our fourth is called Dro'marash. He had a most unpleasant encounter with a hagraven and needs his rest. That is why we camp here, far from the city's walls."
"Hmm!" M'aiq said with a grimace. "M'aiq certainly wishes him well."
Ahkari smiled.
"Ahkari thanks you for your concern. But what brings this one out into the storm, hmm?"
"Calipers which were not calipers." he answered, with a shrug. "M'aiq is always in search of calipers, yet finds none. It is very distressing."
Ahkari stared at him intensely, trying to read his face. Kharjo gave him a hard look. Zaynabi chuckled.
"Calipers which were not calipers?" she asked. "What were they, then?"
For a moment, he considered telling the truth. No, the truth was boring. It would not make Zaynabi laugh again. Better to tell a different truth.
"Fishy sticks!" he answered, grinning mischievously as he wiggled two fingers to show what they looked like in his mind's eye. "Hanging next to each other, so they looked like calipers but when M'aiq picked them up, ah, how disappointed he was. M'aiq is sure the guards who took off after him were too."
"Oh dear." Zaynabi said, with the chuckle he had hoped for. "That sounds like - what is it these Nords say? A 'fine kettle of fish.' Though Zaynabi does not understand how this is bad. A kettle of fish is a good thing to have, no?"
M'aiq smiled.
"M'aiq very much agrees. All the better to make fishy sticks with."
"M'aiq is not like other khajiit." Kharjo said, shaking his head.
"No, it seems not." Ahkari added, mirroring his expression.
M'aiq shrugged again and started to rummage about in his robe.
"M'aiq is like M'aiq. Why would he be otherwise?" he said, having fielded this conversation countless times before. "M'aiq also thinks he has a little moon sugar left that he would be happy to share. Ah! Here."
He set the pouch before the campfire and soon, as the night wore on, all concern over calipers and fishy sticks faded away.
*.*.*
It was decided that M'aiq would stay on with the caravan until Dro'marash was recovered from his wounds. Not that he was much use as a bodyguard, but he could carry the tents and wares that Dro'marash was currently unable to manage. He was a warrior used to proving his strength at all times, in every little thing, even if it seemed ridiculous and made it obvious that he was upset that he needed help with those things now. When M'aiq asked him if he'd gotten the hagraven, he only hissed under his breath and rolled over on his bedroll.
But grumpy khajiit aside, it was exceedingly nice to be in a caravan again, surrounded by friendly faces that did not scoff at his offers of moon sugar and knew exactly what he was speaking of when he used phrases that the nords never seemed to understand.
An hour or so after they'd started walking, it occurred to him that he did not know if he'd ever been in a caravan before. Part of him said that he had not - that he'd never even been to Elsweyr, let alone been on a caravan, but that couldn't be right. The other part of him was quite certain of this fact. There were so many things he swore he'd done before but couldn't quite recall.
Probably, was the answer he settled on as he hiked on. M'aiq has done many things. How can anyone keep track of them all?
Around midday they found a stream suitable for refilling their water skins, M'aiq volunteered to break the ice. He cracked it open with a few satisfying whacks of an axe and then reeled in disgust when a half-frozen mudcrab peeked its eyestalks out of the hole. Unable to fill the waterskins with that horrible creature watching him, he went downstream aways to finish the job instead.
Zaynabi laughed as he told the story around the campfire that night.
"Horrible creatures!" he said, with exaggerated motion. "One tried to eat M'aiq once. Has M'aiq told this one yet?"
"M'aiq has not." Zaynabi answered.
"Well, it was after M'aiq was soul-trapped"-
"Heh." Kharjo said.
"Which was distressing enough, but then what does he wake up to find? A mudcrab feasting on his toe! Look, M'aiq still has the scar."
He pulled off his boot eagerly to show her. There was nothing there. He dug around under the fur and still came away with nothing.
"Hm, well" he said sheepishly, before putting his boot back on. "It was a long time ago. Before Elsweyr was Elsweyr. Scars should heal in the time it takes kingdoms to rise, no?"
Zaynabi chucked and shook her head.
"Is there anything M'aiq has not done?" Kharjo asked.
"Worn sandals in a blizzard!" he answered quickly. "M'aiq does not know what these Nords are thinking. Madness!"
"Oh, Khajiit cannot dispute the truth of that." Kharjo said, his stern face smiling a little at last.
*.*.*
Dro'marash was doing much better and M'aiq was beginning to remember why he was in the habit of spending so much time alone. It was nothing at all against the caravan - in fact, he found one member of the caravan very pleasant indeed to be around - but it had been a while since he'd gone searching for the right calipers. The need to find them was building in him again, threatening to burst if he didn't make some kind of progress towards finding them. It was time to move on, resume his wanderings and leave his small family in this frozen wasteland behind.
Zaynabi looked crushed when he told her. He had planned not to tell her at all, to avoid something like this, as he had so many times before. But she'd run into him on his way out and well, here they were.
"May this one not come with?" she asked, her dark eyes going as wide as a kitten's begging for just one more scrap of dessert.
The question took him off guard.
"No." he answered, after giving it a moment of thought. "M'aiq has always done this alone. M'aiq does not wish to burden Zaynabi with M'aiq's troubles. M'aiq is...sorry. For leaving her."
"Oh?" Zaynabi said, tilting her head. "And how is M'aiq to tell a caliper from a fishy stick without Zaynabi being there to help, hmm?"
M'aiq smiled, but could not keep the sadness from his face. He was struggling - actually struggling - to think of some clever comeback that would throw her off balance, when she spoke again.
"M'aiq does not have to shoulder his burdens alone. It is good to accept help from time to time, no?"
"Even if what M'aiq seeks is impossible?"
"Especially so! In truth, Zaynabi would be disappointed if what M'aiq seeks was not impossible. That is who M'aiq is, yes?"
M'aiq chuckled, bowed and said goodbye for the last time that day.
He still spent much time alone in his wanderings, as was his custom, but from time to time, his path crossed again with Ahkari's caravan and they had many fine reunions around the campfire.
He said no to Zaynabi many times before, but then one day, finally, as he was on his way out once again, he found it in him to say yes.