01 - Talking About Home

9-05-2024

A column of light erupts in a small apartment on the top floor of Arrile's shop in Seyda Neen. Out of it walks a tall nord, wearing the metal mail of the lords, green glassy boots and grieves, along with black and gold highlighted pauldons, bracers of ebony, and finally his head obscured by a bonemould helmet.

 "Another day, another profit! This glass dagger will go for quite a paycheck Ari!" he says with a smile under his helmet.

 From behind him walks a blue and pale skined woman. She has blue webbed wings with a single digit in place of arms. The winged twilight's fair face is fair freckled with blue. The smile on her is genuine while her sapphire eyes have a subtle glow about them. On her head is a faded gold crown with engravings and her purple hair that looks like she only recently left bed. In place of feet, she sports sharpened talons. Her leg braces and pauldrons sport designs similar to her crown. She has a tail that ends with a pointed stinger. Her full but toned figure is only covered by a green top and button that doesn't leave much to the imagination. Even at a full stand, she is still easily two and a half heads shorter than her companion. The pillar of light from the recall spell fades away.

 "I can't wait to see all the drakes we'll get Aevarr!"

 The man removes his helmet with a bit of work, revealing his clean face and green eyes. His well-maintained dirty blond hair cascades out of his helmet to just above his shoulders. The nord turns to flash the winged twilight a smile.

 "You know how I work Ari. Not a lot of people like what I had to say but they're always listening to my money. Not much different from how things are in Skyrim, except that I have more of it!" he states as he begins removing his armor, setting it aside on a table that was already overloaded with various armor pieces and weapons, ranging from the armor of the long gone Dwemer to the deadly arms of the Daedra. Daggers, axes, dai-katanas and everything in between. Each piece removed showed of more of his muscular figure.

 "Before I forget-" he reaches into this pack and brings out several soul gems, all of which glow softly. Ari's eyes come alight as she awkwardly takes the soul gems with her arms and squeezes past Aevarr with glee to get to the only bookself in the tiny apartment. She sets the soul gems aside on an empty part of a shelf and begins looks closely at her gem collection. Not only were the shelves filled with soul gems of various sizes, but earthly gems suchs as rubies, sapphires, and emeralds lines it as well as many others that glittered in the light to Ari's delight.

 Aevarr finally sets aside his final piece of armor and his glass crossbow and sits down at the overloaded table on a less than comfortable wooden seat. Aevarr lets out a breath of air and lets himself finally relax on it. His hand reaches down to his pack and takes out the grand prize of today's efforts and places it down on the table.

 Azura's Star. It's brings a smile to Aevarr's face.

 "A reusable soul gem. This will be phenominal for creating permanent enchantments. I bet I could create a set of gear that boosts my ability to enchant so I-"

 Aevarr's thoughts are interrupted a certain winged twilight sits herself into his lap, using her tail she wraps it around his chest to help find a comfortable position. Ari-Ari nestles herself against Aevarr's chest and rests her head right under his.

 "Making yourself comfortable?" Despite the distraction sitting right on his lap, he doesn't really make any effort to stop her.

 "Much better than the other chair and the one you're sitting on!" she remarks.

 Aevarr smiles and rolls his eyes. "Well, there's a nice bed right there!" He points towards the bed with his right hand.

 Ari shakes her head. "No way! This is already warm and it's near all of our shinies!"

 "Pfft. Is that why you're sticking around after we helped Azura?" the nord retorts.

 Her retort comes a half-second later than he expected. "Maybe."

 It makes him glance over all the items he's collected on during his time in Morrowind. It has barely been two months, but it was more than he had accomplished in the rest of his life combined.

 "Maybe with this..."

 "They at least seemed to be open to taking you back Ari. With all of this and most of my own gear, I think I could afford a trip back to Skyrim- home."

 "Sure, but that's only beca-" Ari-Ari's words got stuck in her throat.

 "L-Leave!?"

 The winged twilight immediately turns around onto Aevarr's lap to face him, her concern and shock plasted all over her face.

 "What about the Blades!?"

 "Hm? I'll just hand in the notes to Caius and tell him I'm done and want to leave. The Blades are everywhere, so maybe I can just get a transfer over to Skyrim and pay the travel costs myself. I'm not really the bookish type and most of all I don't really belong here in Vvanderfall, much less Morrowind." Aevarr says, showing little concern.

 "You said you were sent here by the Emperor himself from that note right!? If up and try to ditch what about the consequences?!" she states, flapping her wings in a panic as her face is darkening in color.

 "Caius has only given you easy jobs so far right? It can't be that bad to just stick around and take the Empire's money until we get Caius what he needs to figure out who the Nerevarine is!"

 That statement makes Aevarr stop for a second. "Caius right now only wants information on those prophecies. Why would she say that?"

 "I guess I can stick around until that. Why are you so concerned about me staying around Vvanderfall?"

 The daedra's flapping comes to an abrupt stop and she looks at Aevarr as if she was a singer on stage that forgot the next lyrics to her own song.

 "Vvanderfall... uh, Vvanderfall, that's right! We still haven't seen all of Vvanderfall together! You said we would visit all of Vvanderfall together, remember!?"

 "Something isn't right. Guess I'll play it cool until something else comes up. After all, I did promise to go around Vvanderfall with her, but every new place we visit I'm almost sure she knows more than I do." the nord thinks to himself.

 "That's right- we still need to visit all the major areas of the place."

 "Yup! So no leaving until then!" she says, poking him on his chest with her right wing's finger before promptly hopping off.

 Aevarr watches Ari begin organizing her 'shinies' once more.

 The nord blinks before returning to the table- he attempts to push out the oddities of Ari-Ari's comment so we can work.

---

 Time slips by the nord as he carries out his task of organization ignoring the outside word; the decision making process of sorting whether an item needs to be sold, kept in reserve, brought as gear, and left as a collector's item is at the forefront of his mind. While the gear is an apparent unorganized mess on the table, Aevarr has nearly finished his task of categorizing them.

 "I could take that but it might not protect me enough..." Aevarr mutters. He taps on the table with his finger as he glances through all the gear he had chosen not to sell. His thoughts trail back to the last trip; which while was not disasterous, was a painful ordeal. His biggest consideration however was the weight of the gear because-

 "Have you decided which of your stuff you're bringing yet?"

 Aevarr blinks, his mind taking in the world outside of the table of gear and his own thoughts as he notices that Ari-Ari had taken her place on his lap once more with those blue eyes staring up at him.

 "Almost. I just need a few more minutes." he states as he starts looking over her back to to the gear table.

 Ari-Ari shifts on the nord's lap, then she gently grabs Aevarr's head using her cool wings and cranes it back onto her.

 "It's already past the time you wanted to go sleep! It's sleepy time mortal!" She states with a smile. Ari then lets go of his head and hops off of his lap to the right. Shen then grabs his right hand and starts tugging on it, to which Aevarr reluctantly allows. His companion drags Aevarr to the only standalone bed- which in the tiny apartment, is only a few steps away from the table the they were sitting at. It was just past the stack of books on the chair at the end of the table and then past the overstuffed chest at the bed's foot. The daedra gets on the bed, still holding Aevarr's hand which drew out a sigh from him.

 "This again?" He points into the only other room in this already small apartment.

 "There's a bunk bed over there. Why don't you sleep over there?"

 Once again the nord found himself wondering if he would ever have his own bed again. Aevarr then redirects his gaze to Ari-Ari.

 "You look angry when you sleep otherwise!" she states, giving him that same smile she always has that lacks malice.

 Truthfully, he doesn't mind this arrangement but he does find her usual justification outlandish. At this point however it was just a song and dance they did.

 "Besides, you and I both know what you're aren't getting aaaaaanything done tonight until you clear your head and rest!" she says as she tugs on his arm once more.

 "If I had the tongue of an imperial, I feel like there's some witty retort I could make. Well, I guess a lot of things in my life would just be easier."

 "Alright, fine." Aevarr relents as usual.

 Ari moves aside on the bed and he lies down on his usual spot. Ari pushes herself up to the nord and drapes a wing around him. The nord couldn't help but think of how silly this would look to anyone watches due to Ari being shorter than he is.

 "When did this going from 'yeah, I'd definitely sleep with her' to 'this is just more comfortable than sleeping alone'."

 They both lay in silence for some time before Ari-Ari speaks up.

 "What do you miss about Skyrim?"

 Aevarr blinks at the serious question.

 "Huh? What's with that question?"

 "Just... Humor me okay?"

 "Well, okay Ari. For one, the weather. For us nords, the cold is much more comfortable and I often find Vvanderfall and mainland Morrowind to be a hot and humid place. It's way too stuffy."

 "What about So-"

 "Nope!" The nord is quick to cut her off. "We don't talk about Solstheim. Not after those clowns with the paralysis weapons.

 I still have scars from how many times they hit me." Aevarr unconsciously flinches in response to recalling countless times of being slashed and stabbed followed up by his body suddenly siezing up and being entirely unresponsive.

 "It wasn't that horrible! You should have seen the looks on their faces when they exhausted all of charge on those enchanted weapons and you were still standing! I swear I smelled something foul coming off of one of them!"

 Aevarr grunts. "Easy for you to say when you naturally reflect magic. Anyway the second reason is that I do just miss my old life and family back there. The comfortable chilled winds, the green of the tundra. At the family shop I sometimes ran the front desk. Usually though, I was out hunting with my crossbow and then using the animals to create and enchant armor for us to sell in the shop. My older brother helped my mother run the inn and cooking side of things- he didn't really inherit any of our dad's toughness or strength for that matter. Even by standards of other races he's kind of frail. He about as sharp as I am though, so he decided to more into business."

 "Ooh! Your family is pretty active in making money! Do you help out much on the inn side? I don't you think you've talked about that part at all."

 Aevarr shifts his eyes towards the other end of the room, where his mess on and near the table clashes against the neatly organized assortment of 'shinies' Ari-Ari has on the shelf along with the various books Aevarr has collected. His face flushes as he recalls 'the mess.'

 "Once. Then my mother and I mutually agreed never again."

 Ari giggles and smiles, pulling herself closer to Aevarr.

 "I wonder how you managed to take care of yourself before I met you!"

 "I don't really want to say how..."

 "Alright, I won't pry!"

 For a while the two laid in silence together, until Aevarr recognizes the soft sounds of the daedra having fallen asleep.

 "If I could get Ari to come with me, how would I introduce her to my parents? Just say, 'Hi mom, hi dad. This is Ari-Ari, my daedra girlfriend who serves Azura that I met out in the middle of a volcanic wasteland?'"

 "...At least that would be a pipedream compared to what will probably happen." He cranes his head over to look at the sleeping form of the winged twilight before looking away.

 "Better try to enjoy the trip around Vvanderfall. It will probably be the last time I'll have with her before I make my way back to Skyrim."

 Aevarr finally closes his eyes and allows sleep to take him.