Madness
4. The Dark Side of the Moon
She didn't believe it, not at first. She closed her eyes, opened them. Blinked. Again. The Door behind her was gone, closed off. The metronome was still on the table, and her Isles were still as beautiful as they ever had been. But after all her wanderings, her determination and despair, it would take more than a landscape to convince her.
It wasn't until she breathed, really breathed, that she understood. She inhaled the air, and with the air came the Isles. Ecstasy and agony, joy and depravity, death, life, dark, light, the nature and artifice of it all, permeated everything and flooded in and clung to her like a missing piece of her being. She knew then that she was home.
She moved dreamlike, godlike, through her realm. First she stopped in Passwall, collected her raiment and staff, greeted the Gatekeeper like a mother. She spread her arms and called forth the rain (she loved the rain) and then, unable to decide between the Manic route and the Demented, she elected to travel both on her way to New Sheoth.
None of her stubjects appeared shocked to see her as she passed. Rather, they all beamed in awe and love and joy. She was glad for this. There was no cause to bemoan the past, not with the present so full of promise and delight. Lord Sheogorath was returned to Her Realm, and the good madfolk had a Prince again.
Even the chamberlain could offer no wry looks, no barbs about her extended absence. "My Lord," he said, "welcome. Welcome home. You were away for a long time, and we missed You. But now You are back, and we welcome You. We thank You and welcome You."
"Welcome, Lord," said the Saint and Seducer guards. She smiled as she passed them, smiled as she sat her throne, and they smiled back as they had never done before.
That night the madfolk gathered in the palace courtyard. "Welcome, Madgod," they cried, the crowds of her subjects, her children. They celebrated her return with feasting and drinking and song. She watched over them through the night, fulfilled and determined and no longer old, ready to keep and protect her Isles for all the tides of eternity.
The Madgod watched it all in His mind, and smiled.
The Madhouse had many rooms, and Sheogorath was in all of them and none of them. He formed them all, surveyed them all, maintained them and contained them. He was the Sithis-shaped hole in the world, not created but born from the separation of Lorkhan. The bit about Jyggalag, however far-fetched, had been one of His cleverer notions, and it had served His purposes admirably.
Sheogorath's plane was nothing like the Shivering Isles, except for the part that was. The part that had drawn the Champion of Cyrodiil into Madness, the part that had appealed to her sense of responsibility. Now her soul found asylum there, and the Prince of Madness watched over her as He watched over all His children.
"Welcome, child," said Lord Sheogorath, almost sadly, almost contentedly. "Welcome to the Madhouse."
A/N: C'est ça. On chapter titles... I listened to a lot of Pink Floyd while writing this. :P