Chapter Text
The god's heart freed. The prophecy fulfilled. All fates sealed and sins redeemed. If you have pity, mourn the lost but let the weeping cease.
-- attributed to Azura
My mother went away.
(She said she was coming back.)
The store was once again called Sadri's Used Wares, and my father was no longer a mer of leisure, not that he ever really had been. Some of his investments had paid off, and even after the looting and destruction of Windstad Manor, we still had enough that we weren't destitute, even if we were no longer rich. Homes burning down seems to be the recurring pattern of my life, my father said bitterly, though with a hint of dark amusement. Fourth time's the charm.
We reside in fire, I replied, as I had been taught and understood.
No one had much money in Skyrim, anymore, so it wasn't as though any fine goods we might have possessed would have been in demand anyway. Kettles and leather and used clothes and iron knives, exchanged for reasonable prices with a tired and wary populace. Teldryn Sero sold us whatever he'd plundered from bandit dens, and now and then my father would start with recognition of some item that had passed though his hands once before. I still remembered most of the trade, and helped him as much as I could as my belly swelled and my ankles ached.
(We talked about selling the Spider. We never went through with it.)
When I had some time in the evenings, I would sit under the Gildergreen and stare at the statue in front of Jorvaskrr, its form corroded and warped to the point that its humanoid figure was indistinguishable from that of the serpent, one congealed form. Heimskr had lost his mind years ago, and his successor was somehow even more incoherent, a former acolyte of the Greybeards who'd been turned away after they closed their doors forever, saying that they had nothing more to teach the world.
(Talos has devoured Alduin! she screamed. The World-Eater has mantled Shor!)
There was a break in everyone's minds owing to the difficulty of reconciling what had always been with what had always been. Many old friends and allies fell away -- not from faithlessness, not from hatred, but from the enormity of it all, grappling with this new (old) memory overlaid on shared history. I could not blame any of them.
(My mother was -- among other things -- a dragon.)
Teldryn Sero remained, at least for a while.
He put down bandits and slew some local would-be warlords and antagonized virtually every other Dunmer in the city in the four months following our return. He was offered the position of a thane, and his colorful reply made Irileth lunge for his throat. Only the intercession of Lydia -- herself a thane, now -- kept him from being tossed in the dungeons.
He and my father were not friends and never had been, but many evenings found them sitting in front of our fire pit, staring into the flames and nursing sujamma in silence. Sometimes, I even heard them talking with one another, their tones mostly drained of venom. One night there wasn't any more sujamma, and only flin was left. There was something they both found amusing about that, though I didn't understand what.
Early that next morning, awoken by kicking, I felt compelled to walk to the ramparts and gaze out across the plains until my heartburn subsided. Preoccupied with indigestion and the first light of dawn, it took me several moments to recognize the figure in its ruddy leathers, trailed by the Spider on the long eastern road out of Whiterun. Abruptly the traveler stopped, and looked back towards the city.
Even from that distance, I caught the faintest nod of the helmet. Then the figure turned, and eventually disappeared from view.
We never saw Teldryn Sero again. He didn't go to Windhelm and he didn't return to Raven Rock. I suppose he could have gone back to Blacklight, or found work on Vvardenfell. He might be retired. He might well be dead.
(The ghartok and the bone rabbit are still warm against my skin.)
He might have gone to Akavir.
We were in Ustengraav again, my brother and I, on either side of a stone sarcophagus with Daedric script.
I'm sorry, I said.
It's all right, he replied. They said I'll need wings to get there. They can show me how.
You'll come back?
I don't know, he admitted, a moment of doubt flickering in his void-black eyes. But it'll be bad if I stay.
(They were never meant to stay.)
Talen, I said as he reached to touch the horn, and awoke with wet eyes. I heard muffled weeping somewhere downstairs and rose to comfort my father.
Two days later the strange woman was at our doorstep, with a message from Falion: the Psijic Order had come for my brother. He already knew all I could teach him, Falion wrote. Now his fate rests with Artaeum's wisdom. Have faith in him.
(Reach Heaven by violence, my father whispered, and buried his head in his hands.)
I've been meaning to give these back to you, the strange woman said, passing me a satchel full of books. I'd borrowed them from your library over the years. Maybe it was just as well I held onto them for so long.
It took everything I had to look away from those dear, familiar shapes. Did they help? With learning history?
They helped me get a feel for the world, she admitted. But I think it's time I go and see it for myself.
(I did not ask her why her eyes were no longer glowing red.)
My water broke while I was manning our stand in the market.
My father didn't want me working this far along, but he'd had a restless night and I was bored to the point of tears hanging about the house, and in any case we weren't that far from the Temple. Anoriath ran to get him while Carlotta and Mila walked me there, murmuring encouragement. I hadn't thought I would be so scared. After everything else I'd been through in the past few years, it didn't seem possible, but the moment loomed and was so sharp.
I can't find Mama, I whimpered to the priestesses. I can't do this.
(Mama had said there was going to be a baby.)
You're doing fine, they assured me, and then my father was there, gripping my hand and telling me to breathe with him throughout the long, tortuous hours that followed.
The experience of giving birth is nothing I can recommend, except for the part where everything slows and you are so acutely aware of being both one being and two, a living threshold, a Door. The servants of Kynareth were appalled to hear me venerate Boethiah in that moment, but She esteems all bloody triumphs, and oh, this little screaming thing that parted flesh with me was that, forever and always.
(There was a baby.)
Is she not perfect? whispered my father, placing my daughter into my arms.
(I was a mother.)
The portrait that had once hung with pride in Windstad Manor was usually rolled-up in the corner of Breezehome dedicated to the Waiting Door, but after introducing his newborn grandchild to the ancestors, my father insisted that we show her the rest of the family. I didn't want to argue, though my heart ached to see it again: one moment meant to freeze Time, only to be scarred and overwritten by another. But there we all were, more or less, and I couldn't look away.
(The right half had burned badly before I rescued it, my mother's form black and unrecognizable.)
All my heart is here, my father said to my daughter, pointing in turn to the portrait, the relics of the dead, and her. Listen for them, my little love. Listen always when they speak your name. He turned to me, red eyes sparkling. Did you decide on one yet?
Helane, I said.
What a pretty name, my father cooed. What made you choose it?
I couldn't say. Of all the names I'd picked, there hadn't been many that were human, much less Cyrodiilic ones.
(The dead are faithful.)
* * **
I awaken to the sound of a crying child, and rise out of habit, peering into the doorway. Little love, what's the matter?
My youngest grandson looks up at me tremulously, wiping his nose. I had a bad dream.
What about? A scary dream?
I don't know. He clutches the edge of his quilt with morbid self-consciousness for a child barely six years old. Sad things.
Well, the world's a sad place, I say, and ease myself onto the little bed, careful not to wake his sister. But sometimes you cry because things are good, too. I brush red curls away from his face, tucking them under his barely-pointed ears. My mama told me that.
Where's my mama? he asks for the fifth time this evening.
She's coming home tomorrow, I repeat as I have since last Fredas. Remember? It's your Great-Grandpapa's birthday, so she went to get the special drink he likes. You're going to help me make his favorite stew for the party.
He perks up at that; he's always loved parties. Can we do it now?
Nighttime is for sleeping, little love. I smooth the quilt back over him. Do you want a song to go back to sleep?
I'm not sleepy, he protests, and is dreaming again before it's over.
I meet my father in the hall. I heard singing, he says.
Talen had a bad dream, that's all. I straighten the sides of his robe and kiss him on the cheek. Go back to bed, Papa. Unless you need a lullaby, too.
No, I want a story, he grumbles, fondly. Tell me a good one.
So I do.
It's about a little house that holds all the world. It's about waiting and wondering in the long night and the way the morning light glints off the marshes. It's about a library that never burns and the distant howling of wolves. It's about bits of antler and sea glass and impractical swords and barrows and gathering flowers.
It's about a caravan of faces, living and dead, that I am charged to shepherd through a dangerous and beautiful land, full of trials and tribulations. Perhaps I will find my sister. Perhaps I will find my brother.
And what shall we see? asks my father, keeping pace with me as we walk beside our caravan.
I lift my golden mask and smile. Wonders, I tell him.
And someday I will find my mother.
For my mother is a dragon, and my mother will come back.