"Keep to yourself. Mingle, but don't draw attention."

We stood not far from the gates of Leyawiin, towers and the spires of the chapel barely visible through the fog. Newly dressed – Lucien had insisted we stop at a small village on route and change, my filthy robes stowed away, days of caked on dirt scrubbed off. I felt almost normal, were it not for the constant, empty throb in my chest. Still, it was softened. Near the hubbub of the city, away from shrines and my head filled with no voice but my own, I could almost ignore it.

Lucien cleared his throat, drawing me out of my reverie. "Are you listening, pet?"

"Not really." I dragged a hand over my face. "Lucien, I just want…" Exhaustion broke through, cracking my voice, making me slump. "I just want to go home."

"Soon. We won't be here long." He handed me a small purse – I weighed it in my hand, frowning as he continued. "Buy food and supplies for the journey back. We won't be restocking until the Imperial City."

"What about you?"

"I'll be keeping busy, don't worry." A flicker of a smirk, wearied but pleased. I searched his dark eyes, gnawing my lower lip. Weary – from days of constant travel, from traversing Oblivion and facing the Night Mother again? Or did loss weigh on him, too? Mother had trained him, called him Brother and family. She had cared for him, and perhaps him for her.

Even knowing they would have killed each other in a heartbeat, if commanded.

"One more thing." He caught my attention again as he pulled free a long, wrapped package from Shadowmere's saddle, presenting it to me lengthwise in his hands. "I found it on the road, outside of Kvatch."

I accepted it gingerly, as though even wrapped the blade might reach through and cut open my palms. My wakizashi, still so unnatural to me. I'd had little time to train properly, after all. Still, I bound it to my belt.

"I will meet you near the road to the castle, half past midnight, when my business is concluded." His head rose, chin pointed towards the mutt that now sat obediently at my side. "As for him…"

He rubbed against my hand, and absent-mindedly I scratched back and forth behind his ears as he crooned. "I'll say his mother was a nix hound, and his father was a very brave dog."

A snort. Lucien inclined his head in farewell, then turned and left me to enter the city, to try and pretend I was one of them.

It was painfully easy. Though some gave long, sideways glances to the mutt – I'd stubbornly refused to name him yet – no one approached, all intent on their own business. I wandered aimlessly, taking in the sights, busying myself. I didn't want to head to the inn, not yet. That would mean silence, time alone with my thoughts.

I wasn't ready to face it again. Not yet.

Besides, it felt good just to listen. The calls of mothers for scurrying children, the rattle of cartwheels on cobblestone, the bickering over prices and hawking of wares in the open market. So very different from Cheydinhal, from the Imperial City – all colourful, tall houses and whispering cypress, canals and grey skies – but so familiar, too.

"Watchit!"

I gasped, barely catching my footing, brought with a crash back into reality by the boy who'd run into my side. He stared up at me for a moment, then gave a wide, toothy grin. His front teeth were missing, smile impish.

A flicker of memory, for a stableboy and a friend from a lifetime ago.

"Oh! Sorry, miss. Thought y'were one of my pals." He shrugged a bag on his shoulder, showing off his wares; neatly rolled copies of the paper. "Yer kind've short for a grown lady. Want a copy of the Black Horse Courier? Latest news on the sack of Kvatch! Only three septims!"

My heart dropped into my stomach.

"No. Thank you, dear, but no." I gave the best smile I could manage. My face felt like paper, crinkling and crumpling into an unnatural shape. My own voice sounded strange in my ears. Somehow, it belonged to a woman older than me.

"Two septims, then? Look, I've gotta get rid of these or m'boss 'll beat me green as his arse. He's a lizard," he added solemnly, as though that was of some great significance.

I balked, half amused, half annoyed by the boy's persistence and rudeness. "He's an Argonian, then, and – no. I'm sorry, but no. I'm sure someone else will – "

"One septim! Just one?"

"Just – " I inhaled through my teeth and dug into the purse Lucien had given me. I could spare a few coins, couldn't I? "Here, but I don't need a copy."

His eyes widened as I dropped the coins into his palms. Almost quicker than I could see they were tucked into his pocket, his grin bared again. As he moved, I caught a glimpse of the illustration the paper boasted. A grim scene, charcoal on parchment mimicking the devastation I'd seen myself just days before.

"Yer sure you don't want – "

"Yes!"

Suddenly the hound – before complacent and all too happy to trot at my side – was upright, growling and snapping at the boy. His mouth fell open, a little whimper turning into a shriek that followed him down the road as he fled from me.

"Wait!" Guilt made my stomach topple. I reached after him as he ran, to no avail. "He won't – " I growled and turned on the dog, glaring and stamping my foot. "What are you doing? He's just a boy! You can't go around terrifying people, or – "

People were staring at me.

I was talking to a dog.

I cleared my throat, stood upright, and did my best to walk on as though nothing had happened. As though I wasn't debating inside if perhaps I really, truly had gone entirely mad, that these past days hadn't made my mind snap. I didn't feel mad, not now. Exhausted, lost, but not mad.

Then, the mad never know they're mad, do they?

I busied myself once more, skipping shop to shop. Dried rations and journeycakes, for the return trip. Proper bedrolls, the ache in my back and bottom a reminder of what sleeping on a blanket on the ground was like. Minor potions, remedies for little sicknesses and the exhaustion that could end an unwary traveller. I spent longer than I ought at the apothecary, reading labels and naming the ingredients in my head. My reflection warped in the surfaces of glass bottles, thin and stretched here, wide and dappled from an ornate design there as I paced.

Extract of dreugh glands, alkanet root, ground scamp claws, foxglove nectar. I was hit with a sudden longing, a need to return to this world. To lose myself in my work, to escape all of this and retreat back to the tomes and ingredients I knew by aching heart. I wanted to go home, but wasn't sure where home might be.

The glare of the impatient alchemist burning into my back, I paid for my selections and left.

The bookshop, next. It was only midafternoon, and the thought of the empty inn still filled me with dread. Besides, a map would hardly go amiss. I wasn't sure what Lucien had brought with him when he came to fetch me, but most I'd taken to Kvatch would have been lost or looted after – whatever had happened in Oblivion, to make the portal close. That, or still attached to Vicente's horse, returned to him in Bravil when they had met to anoint a new Listener.

He likely knew the main roads well enough, but I didn't. And if at any point I was going to take off on my own…

The shop was near empty save the shopkeeper and a single woman at the counter, dressed in red finery and slamming a small stack of books down with a smack. I winced at the sound, then at the smell that attacked my nostrils. Like animal waste, but worse, as though someone had tried and failed to burn it away. How was it a noblewoman smelled like that?

"Useless! Every one of these was useless!"

I hung back in the stacks, listening to the exchange. The Orc grunted, shoving the stack back at the woman, who gave an affronted gasp.

"All sales are final."

"But this is ridiculous! None of these helped me with – " She stiffened, rouged lips pursing before tossing her head. "Fine. Fine! Keep the damned books and the coin, I don't care."

"Good. Get out of my shop, you're stinking it up."

Another indignant gasp and she left, chin held high. I dared to creep up to the counter, wrinkling my nose from the scent lingering where she'd stood.

"Yeah?" The bookseller glanced back at me, lip curling. "Whaddaya want?"

"A Cyrodiilic map, please. Not an atlas, just a map." My gaze strayed after I'd given him coin, to the stack of books the woman left behind.

On the cover of the top book, in simplistic black script was the title – Myths of Sheogorath.

My breath caught in my throat. Though the days at the shrine had seemed like some strange dream, they now returned full-force. Their prayer, the face of the shrine illuminated by lightning, his cackle echoing in my head.

Could this be a coincidence?

As he wrapped up the map I plucked the book between my hands, feeling the velvety cover, something resounding within me. I gnawed my lip. "How much is this?"

The Orc made a face. "She had it shipped in special. One hundred, flat." My face must have fallen at the price because he softened, giving a little snort. "But now it stinks like whatever unholiness she's got in that manor of 'ers. I'll give it to you for seventy."

That would clear out what Lucien had given to me, nevertheless my own meager purse, but I was only too eager to accept. It had to mean something, it had to. And it meant, at the very least, I wouldn't drive myself mad in the silence of the inn room.

… Well. Perhaps that was assuming a bit much, if I weren't mad already.

Still, it was something. The mutt had waited patiently for me outside – cowed now, head bent and tail low from my earlier scolding - and we made our way to the Inn. I read as we walked, barely avoiding puddles. I could lose myself, if only for a little while.

In the earliest of days, in a time when the world was still raw, Sheogorath decided to walk amongst the mortals.