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[ There is a knock at the door - late but not too late she hopes. Walked around her rooms at a pace for hours. Left with nothing else to do, she went to find something to do. Or at least company and there's the hope.

To that, she brings her own return for the milk drink of last time, a plate of food, mixed sweet and savoury - and a bottle of whatever she had left over from her dinner. The food balanced on one hand, the bottle tucked under her arm. Busying herself a moment in fixing the drape of her pallu over her shoulder. Material never sat right, she would insist, nothing at all to do with the fact she couldn't sit still if her life depended on it. ]

[It's a rare thing that she sleeps. Hasn't done it since whatever happened in the dreaming that was as real to her as waking, locked tight in her throat.

So only the book in her lap to be disturbed, Galatea doing what girls will at these hours with that huge stuffed halla taking up space when her face peers at the door.

(Knife hidden, away again. She's getting worse.)]

Lakshmi, come in, what brings you here this late?

[Ignore what looks to be the new-old pack stuffed beneath the bed, she's restless as ever and still in her leathers even in here.]

Edited (phone autocorrect ffs) 2018-09-06 20:34 (UTC)

[ She stops her fussing. Giving instead a brief nod in greeting. ]

Wondering if you mind my company, for a time.

[ The food is offered up, politeness to the point because she is in no better state. Her limbs too stiff, posture too straight. That way that often, she knows, she cannot bend, how could she? There is only breaking. It was made she was made after all these years to do -- ]

... Though please, send me away if it is an imposition.

It's been-- I was reading. Catching up, nothing important.

[Impossible that things from Skyrim appeared and yet there they were, waiting for her, even if it's two volumes of pulp and trash and nonsense, not anything of substance but somehow glad of it still.

For want of something to do with her hands, she takes the food, foot out to close the door and wonders how all of it is weighing on Lakshmi, everything that's gone on. How long it's been since they last spoke. Days blur easily even out of the wilderness.]

Are you recovered from everything? It was-- I've seen worse but they know nothing of dragons here, these children. [Miraak would have picked his teeth with their bones, she thinks and, I might pick my teeth with them.]

[ She drops the bottle into her hands, as they are freed from the plate. Following after Bronach - but the stiffness stays in her limbs, the way that each step is almost too light, each foot placed exactly so, her body rolling through motions that are not so much smooth as particular. ]

I have never seen dragons before. They belong to stories for most I know. [ A pause - a deeper breath. ] But I know sieges, I know the suffering that comes from them and... I fear that it will not end well, no matter what comes of it.

[Watching as she might watch the mark whose pockets she might pick, or the other whose throat she must find from out of the way with her arrow, Brónach settles back down on her bed, legs crossed easy enough; furniture is what it is, she didn't cast it all out but there are plentiful furs and pelts to make it comfortable, to look as a hunter lives her, and the chair is offered once she's got the food on the little table.

(Her hands never touch the wood, it's always her compromise when she has to be in these places, when she can't change it all. It'd be allowed, there were treethanes but-- a restlessness in her too, to cling back to her old ways.)]

Alduin-Akatosh had wings of adamantium taking flight. They would lift up their hands as if to brush the undersides, and the people would fall to their knees one way or the other in a time before. I saw them quake. I saw them with bow and blade against him and those he breathed the life back into when he came again to close his jaws about the world ending. These at least die, Lakshmi--

[Lakshmi she likes, she can make the effort even when she is ragged inside herself, when some part of her will not stop screaming.]

They are not divine here. They die. Is it the battles to come? Is it that which brings you here so late?

[it would be easy to let that be it all. As Bronach speaks and she goes to sit in the chair across from her. Smoothing her hands across the front pleats of her saree. To let the reassurance the other woman give, and is plenty, the surety that such things - they can die. That no foe can be insurmountable. For a moment, she cannot help the way it plays on her mouth, small, quiet, but utterly sincere, and with it her hand lifts and it is of her home, not the airs and graces - but an affection she seldom gives. To sweep her hands palm out in a downward stroke, facing Bronach then back in, towards herself. ] How you offer such things, I ought to ask if you are Krishna giving wisdom to Arjuna as you speak. Perhaps that is what I shall call you.

[ But her smile, it falls as her hands do settling into her lap. Something half hunted there, in her expression when the rest falls away. Tired as her eyes for once, through the rest of her body. Like it is pride that holds her up. ] I... Only wished to ask, have you ever met another of your home, here? Even... Even if they are not of your land, but... That they could speak of your... future.

[Lakshmi isn't Elisif but the care in the gestures strikes her that way, or as close as she might get. There are few in her life with careful ways about them not tied to their craft, who move as grass bending with the wind or water over the stones down the mountainside. A smile is dredged up, one of the real ones normally given to Galatea who is as close to a little sister as Brónach will ever have again before she bends down to find the bowls she made before that they shared jagga in.]

When you see it happen, when you see time ending snap his jaws around his own end then-- [Her own mouth closes. These are things that she shouldn't say, the things that mark her out as the odd one, the outsider, the stranger, who can't keep herself from holding so tight to her own ways even when others would ask for her to bend in places.] It happened, why should I not say it if I might make it so the world doesn't end because I like the world. Not all things but the world. [Trusting in Lakshmi to make the distinction the way others might not, did not, last time this was posed.

Something in her begins to crumple in her, the bone jamming the gear finally being ground down, loose, out. She doesn't laugh like she might have if she had gone through and back but the dream had the realness of Apocrypha to it. You were there, that was you, all of it was you. You know his form too well to deny it--] No. There was-- There's only me. Was there someone here who knows your home? Time and the future are difficult to see, even for the ones attuned to it. What did they tell you that keeps you from sleep?

'I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.' [ Is the thick words on her tongue, and in utter understanding. Of something more than just a forest burned down, a home in ruins. But an ending. ]

[ There is a curiosity to the thought - only her? How had she seen her own future? How could that be? But then, with all the Brónach had told her of herself, it would not surprise Lakshmi very much, to think the other woman could read augurs, had some gift of prophecy on top of all else. But leaves it, selfishly, for now, for if she does not get this out, surely she will rend herself to pieces.

And it is not that she weeps, she has not wept for years. She would scarcely even know where to begin but in the comfort of closed rooms, with someone who knows such pains, her face falls. For once, how those old eyes could creep up to show all that she truly was at times - so very, very tired. The pain of it like a knife that was being turned into flesh. How she falls away completely with the agony of it. Her hands lose in her lap, fingers softly turned in, the press of her lips shut and then open as she took in a deeper breath. ] Only all my hope realised or destroyed beyond comprehension. All that I am, all that I have given myself for... my people's freedom, all people's freedom, the British dogs and their empire destroyed. Or it has only grown, become worse than even I have ever let myself imagine.

[ And the worst of it, that suddenly, she cannot sit, she cannot hold still. Rising up to stand and uselessly so because whether she sits, stands, or screams her lungs the worst of it is the same - ]

[If Thranduil hadn't done things worthy of a coat of black and gold there might be answers to share, but Brónach only knows the hollow truths of her dreams that don't lie to her; they confuse, they hurt, they claw at her into the waking hours to snap at her heels but her dreams hold their shape and the reality is that she lived this. Walked in another skin. Twisted herself and holds more truths she cannot within herself.

Questions no one here can answer. Easier to listen as she would to Arngeir or Paarthurnax when she doesn't want to do the talking. Elder speaks first, and Lakshmi, she knows somehow, is her elder.

Something holds her still though because she isn't practiced at this when all her grief has been howled into the wilds or carved into the flesh of others in some way. Gutted bodies in the roads. By my hand and my seal pinned on the Thalmor in Skyrim, and the Silver Hand a gutted ruin with her shield brothers and sister for all the good it did them.] There is the idea, the concept, that a person can exist as a balancing point for the forces of fate. That those who wish to hasten the end of a thing are slowing it without realising it, and those who wish to stop them are hurrying that thing along. [Careful. Watching her pace as the sabre cats before she'd come out of her crouch.]

What does it mean that it's both at once? That either your enemy and their empire are gone entirely. Or they have slipped into some new skin you wouldn't know. Or they are gone and a new thing has taken their place?

[Better to know what she's talking about when she holds out the drink if it'll be taken.]

I have heard two - two things.

[ Her hands spread, pacing, sharply, just that - prowling like these walls, this place itself is but a cage. That keeps her here, in someone else's war. How Thranduil's words were like a wound. This is your home, now. How could it be? How could she ever, ever give over what she knew she belonged too? ]

One... she told me that the British, their Empire, continues for another hundred years. That they have grown even now. That the wars I know to have already have happened, have not. That - the world, is not as it should be. Certain events that are already history for me have not yet come to pass for her. [ She breathes out - slowly. ] Another, today, she - [ her hand lifts, sharp above her chest, into the material, into her skin. Like she means to grip the heart below it. ] The other, she says - that they have fallen. That India - my homeland, has independence from British rule. If that has ended then... that means the... group that causes so many to suffer, no longer has the right to send so many beasts, to infect cities, whole lands, as they did before.

[ her hand falls away. Furious, misery, so stiff. ] And I cannot know the truth of either while I am here.

Could it be their world is not the same as yours?

[There are planes of Oblivion. There is Thedas. There are the other places where other people come from. And so there are the pieces Brónach has been picking at here and there, where something is the same but not, off in some small but fundamental way.]

There are elves. There are elves here who call themselves elves. I am an elf to men but where I come from the word is mer to mean folk, so Bosmer is forest folk. Iorveth is Aen Seidhe, but elf stuck because of the humans. Thranduil is-- something else again, I don't know his word yet he didn't share that much of his tongue with me.

[Perhaps a clumsy way to make her point as she takes a drink, the other offered out to Lakshmi, still the point stands; here are where we overlap, yet here are all the ways we are very different. (Here be dragons for all of us, different again each time. She says nothing of that with the idea of another crawling through her - he could be here, all those eyes blinking, watching, on the edge of sight.)]

You could. [At length. Unwilling. Through her teeth.] There are dreams that come. I dreamt. I know. I saw my life happen to me without it happening, and I know. Prophecy only tells you what might be, not what should be, and even should isn't yes, do you know if these two tell the truth? Would you trust them that much here? Would you trust anyone so much?

[Don't, she is hissing in the coiled whipcord strike of her body ready to spring up from the bed. Don't trust them, don't listen, you have no way of knowing and neither do they, what do they know of time? But this is the conceit of someone who watches it through scrolls, who has walked an afterlife, and knows that she is--

That she is somewhere else, she isn't here, that she is some shade shape fashioned.]

[ She takes it gladly and comes closer to sit next to her instead of pacing about like a half-mad beast. Cupping it with both hands as she lifts it to her lips, and drinks deeply. She never had been one much for drink when she was younger, but that had changed since she had left Hindustan. ]

No, not with... not with my heart, not with my home. [ That way that neither are different. That she is of Jhansi. It is all of her. All the good that was left in her. ] But... if it is true... how do I find any peace, here? If it is true, and perhaps it has all come to pass as I have ever wished, do I not deserve my rest? Have I not fought long enough, longer than anyone should? Should I not pass as all warriors and rulers do?

[ A term not stated, but surely understood. ] Tell me, how is it that you came to dream? I have none of your gifts, none of your blessings, I do not know how I might see such things for myself.

[Jorrvaskr, somehow even when the Gallows is the oppressive weight of stone that could bury them same as Markarth would if Alduin had ever decided to hurl himself there, breathing molten rock and death upon them all, this moment is Jorrvaskr. The stillness when Skjor was gone, her and Aela with their knees touching. Or sat in Kodlak's empty room with his diary upon her lap. Maybe her memory is getting on somehow, bleeding at the edges.

She drinks.] Peace is-- You look between. I see where they take the shape of the Thalmor. Or where they work to make a thing smaller, I see it. I speak it. You keep a thing alive. I am further from Valenwood but I have kept my ways and I will keep them still, otherwise they roll up the world as if it's a map.

[That makes less sense. There aren't towers to hold it in place.]

When does it ever say you're finished? Wouldn't it be sometimes that you think you're done but you get up. What did I ask for? Destiny? Fate? It came to me and I had my bow, my arrows, the dagger, and the Voice that perhaps was always there waiting for the key to slide into the lock; Paarthurnax told me that if I could see my destiny clearly then my sight was clearer than his, him second oldest of all dragons, attuned to time. I, mer and Dovahkiin… [Now what-- she can't ask. There is no one to ask, she hadn't left Solstheim, she hadn't, she expected to wake with the ash of that place in her hair not some awful wretched howling cry in her throat as if she was the wolf again.

It's almost her turn to pace, instead her body curls inward as if to protect itself from all that might spill out.] I have nightmares of things that don't matter. They were, they are, they might be but this was more, this was as if I looked through the Elder Scroll, this was to make my own history in my dream, as if someone had taken me by the hand to say: here, these are the things that are happening to you. To be what I am is to be attuned to the forces of time perhaps that's why but it happened. I know things. I went places in Skyrim and beyond. There's a new shout in my throat I never knew before. I feel it.

[A hand curls to her chest, claws up at her throat. Voice softer but no less desperate, eyes cast down at the bowl as if Hermaeus Mora will rise out to give her answer.]

I feel it.

[ Without meaning too, her fingers lift, raising to the dot between her brows - though now the dot between her brows is stained red, a bright vermillion paste, the crescent underneath it - but below them deeper, the same mark but made permanent. She will always be that woman. No matter what time here might ask for. ]

Do you fear what you have become because of it? [ Is the dry swallow - the admission she would give to no other that sits in the empty space between. I fear it, I fear it always. Someone who might understand what that could mean, what it meant to look down at yourself, to know yourself inside of your own body and know that it was slipping away. Eaten up. ]

I have been many shapes. [A bitter terrible admission: it beats in her heart for as long as the Doom Drum exists in some shape that she is forbidden to alter her physical form and not once has she done it now but twice, looked it in the eye (blood, blood both times, what is it in the blood) and not flinched from it.] There is the story I learnt so long ago no part of me doesn't know it, we called it The Ooze: A Fable, and it tells us of formlessness, and that land held no shape, trees had no hardness in bark or timber and the elves shifted from form to form and that was the Ooze. Y'ffre saw it and ordered it, told of the Green, the forest, the plant life in it, and gave the Green the power to shape itself as the Green willed. This was Y'ffre's first tale.

[Soft. Soft as-- well all her family close and extended told this to her as she did when she was old enough, repeated over and over, never to be forgetting, to be pressed tight against them as armour. Her mouth is half-smiling, her eyes are unseeing.]

We were Y'ffre's second tale, our forms shaped as the story spun, given the power to tell stories but warned against shaping ourselves, shaping the Green. Shifting or destruction of the forest were forbidden, and instead Y'ffre commended the Bosmer to the Green so we might go to the Green and ask it to provide us with shelter and safe passage. And so long as there was respect, it would obey, and this was how the Green Pact came to be.

Violation...violation means formlessness at the end. Silence. To be written out of the story. Forgotten. [Nails catching on the bowl, she's aware of her painfully loud swallow.] I am Champion to many things. My soul might never have been bound for where it might have gone, there are all the Princes of Oblivion to squabble over the portions. And no one tells you where a dragon's soul goes. I devour them. But dragons are divine, are bound to time. So. I don't know. I can't know.

[It isn't polite, is it? To tell someone the ending of their own story while they live it?]

[ If it was that comfortable, she would not be in this state. Half bound up and half loose. Her knuckles white from holding, her foot twitching in the absent need to move. Between one fate and another. One sight and another that spans out before her and her head feels full of them both. Twisted images of horror and prosperity both. ]

We ... we are taught. For a Hindu, form is... changing, but eternal... [ a sip of the milk, feeling it settle warm and heavy, letting her fingers run against each other. The matter of flesh, the heaviness of skin, weighty and yet - no more than the sands of mandala's laid out at the doorstep for Diwali. Hours, to their beauty, and blown away in a second. ] ... 'Just as a man gives up old worn out garments, so too does the soul discard the old body and accepts a new body.' We live... many times, constantly reborn, for the soul... it cannot be destroyed or harmed. Water does not drown it, fire does not burn it. For the soul is made from the same fabric as the Gods, as plants and animals, all equally divine. But... when it is our time, we are to part from this flesh. To go onto the next life... is to be rejoined with those that have gone before us. My husband... before he... he promised me he would go to be with our son, and then, in time, when I was ready, this time, he would Rani, and I would Raj. [ She covers the laugh, the sting of old pain that drains it of life, that her husband could be so bright, so sharp, even as the life drained from his body. That - somehow, in his own way, he would find the right way forward.

Rao, Rao, had she followed what he wanted for their people? ]

... Unless... unless we have realised the truth of ourselves when we have found our Dharma... we become one, once more, with the eternal divinity that is all creation. Freed from this. I do not suppose such a thing has happened to me. [ That is an arrogance and a pride she does not possess. Only an exhaustion. ]

[ Perhaps it still will, perhaps she worries over things that do not matter. She feels like it will, but then, she always had. Clear as standing on the walls of Jhansi watching her city burn, she could feel the words she had said to her mother in law, her dearest friend, do you not see we will never see each other again? to the words she gave Devi explaining why she could not risk her, for when something happens to me, sure even then, that her death would come swiftly as a cavalry charge. How it seized up in her chest. ] I fear being here, so far from what I know of myself. I know not the purpose of my life, like this.

ic/ooc: inbox/plot with/contact post

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