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“So you’ve...met Hircine?” Morrin asked, giving Rumarin a long up and down look from over the fire.
“I can’t tell if you’re surprised I met a god, or surprised that I met a god.”
“I think we both know the answer to that,” she said with a laugh, nudging Ilde beside her.
“Well then I’m pleased to inform you that he didn’t look at me twice.”
“Not with Tsabhira there, no,” Ilde offered, more than a little drunk. Rumarin was actually impressed by how well they held themselves together, as he and four charming Forsworn were all drinking an off-batch of this particular clan’s otherwise pristine vodka. Tsabhi was across the camp—and he hadn’t managed to make eye contact with her any of the hundred times he’d looked—deep in conversation with the clan’s hag—who he’d successfully made eye contact with several times, unfortunately.
For once, however, he was making eyes at her because he was drunk enough to not care who saw him, not seeking a rescue. The Forsworn were good company, even if they were skeptical of his particular function. “Not to disparage her, but only one of us is a mage and it isn’t me.”
“Only one of you’s got the fighting spirit of lord Hircine,” Adrain slurred. Rumarin had been sure that the young warrior was fast asleep in his fellow, Braric’s, lap. “Being a mage’s got nothing to do with it.”
His eyes drifted over to Tsabhi again, and he felt his gut jump into his throat when she finally looked back at him, smiling instinctively. “That’s fair, and no offence but not talking to the god of competitive violence is a big relief for me. She and I have a longstanding agreement that so long as I keep us reasonably alive, she’ll talk to all the gods that have something to take up with us.”
“Only reasonably?” Morrin asked with a laugh.
“She’s also the healer.” Tsabhi turned back to her conversation with the hagraven and Rumarin huffed, struggling to find the willpower to refocus on his companions.
“There must be something to you,” Braric protested. “Maybe not to lord Hircine’s taste, but the Dragonborn keeps your company to the exclusion of all else.”
“We’ve offered,” Morrin agreed.
“She’s not good with people,” he said, waving them off and pouring more bad vodka down his throat instead of saying we’re together, obviously.
“Really? I would have said it was because you’re double her height.” Adrain cackled at his joke, and Braric picked up the laugh.
Not to be left out, Ilde nudged Morrin. “Sensible people have kept worse company for dumber reasons. Remember how long Nalena stayed with Pekah?”
“Aye, I was half in love with her at the time,” she responded with an eye roll. “I don’t think her height was why she kept that silly sload around.” The two dissolved into giggles, and Rumarin turned back to Tsabhi, no longer naïve enough to turn down a rescue. She was looking over some scrolls under the keen eye of the hag—Elspeth, if Rumarin was remembering correctly through the buzz—and had her reading look on. She focused so hard that she started to frown, but was fidgeting relentlessly—she’d broken sturdily crafted jewellery simply by worrying it too hard while reading.
Adrain rolled, dragging himself forward towards Rumarin comically by his elbows while Braric looked on, bereft. “Morrin’s not the only one half in love, looks to me.”
“No, she sounds well over this Nalena character.” Rumarin got the distinct impression that sidestepping the topic wasn't going to throw Adrain off the scent of aching vulnerability: not much could, after all, convince a drunk man not to storm into a delicate topic like an angry minotaur.
“You know, it’s Heart’s Day soon.”
“I did not.” Winter, or whatever passed for it in Skyrim, was drawing to a close then. They’d been away from civilization for a while looking for word walls, and if he had to place bets he’d put his money on Tsabhi caring more about the Summoning Day than anything Dibellan, although Sanguine was hardly the more respectable route. She’d never struck him as the orgy type, though, so maybe they’d get away with just getting embarrassingly drunk, like he was trying to right then. Maybe if he blacked out he wouldn't have to explain admittedly annoying Altmer modesty to this very young human.
“Why don’t you get her some flowers?”
“Because last I checked I’m not twelve.”
“Flowers are plenty alcho—achem—you can use them in potions. That’s something she does, alchum—potion making.”
“If you pick them right.” Even if he did know how to do so, he doubted he could do it in the state he was going to be in the minute that he stood up and let the alcohol flow through him unimpeded by his own bad posture. “Does Tsabhi strike you as the pretty flowers type?”
“Honestly? Aye, for sure she does.” Adrain gestured over to Tsabhi, swatting his man on the leg. “Don’t you think so Braric?”
“The Dragonborn? Maybe. Hard to say if she seems the sort or if I just think pretty elves should have pretty flowers.” Rumarin snorted, feeling his face go hot because actually that wasn’t a bad reason to get her flowers. The more he thought about it the more it made sense: she planted flowers all over their cottage, and yes it was absolutely for alchemical purposes but she was also very good at growing things and entirely indifferent to the part of her Pact that said she shouldn’t be cultivating plants for harvest.
And it wasn’t like she hated flowers. She liked deathbell and nightshade, and dragon tongue...and weird stuff like the crimson nirnroot from Blackreach, and suddenly he was remembering how she’d frustratedly tried to build herself a little tower of broken down dwarven furniture to try and reach some sprout of red nirnroot, and he’d grown more and more anxious as her tower got less and less sturdy until he’d finally just knelt down and offered to lift her on his shoulders.
She’d found some old carving while she was up there and he’d played step stool for a lot longer than he planned, but she’d been so pleased about it that it was hard to complain. When she’d gotten down she’d given him such a look, like he’d done something impressive by being tall. Even remembering it made him shiver in a way he didn’t want to unpack in public, almost feeling her hands playing through his hair like she did when she happened to be both eye level with him and thinking... “I should get Tsabhi flowers,” he decided, standing up…
...and promptly falling over.
Ilde and Morrin laughed harder than before, but Adrain and Braric had only needed his confirmation: now they were all men on a mission. They quickly converged on him to get him upright again, giving his concerned Dragonborn two enthusiastic thumbs up before disappearing out into the hills.
. . . . .
“They’re back,” Elspeth said with a grin, swivelling her head at an angle that would kill any other creature. They’d been at the scrolls for hours, trying to experiment with the limits of Tsabhira’s alteration and a pinch of the hagraven’s shapeshifting magic to see if they could manufacture Shout-like spells from recorded dragon language and willpower. Nothing much had happened, but at least the endeavour had been more quiet than Shout experimentation usually was.
Rumarin had disappeared part of the way through, looking drunk but otherwise fine. She searched for him now in the crowd of laughing warriors, more than the two that’d dragged him off. She didn’t find him (impressive, as she wouldn’t usually think Breton-adjacent humans would make an effective shield for an Altmer) until he was directly in front of her.
She laughed, covering her mouth hastily; a whole crowd of eyes were aimed directly at her, but more importantly Rumarin was looking at her as if it were only just sinking in what had happened since he left the fire.
His armour was full of flowers, tucked into the various creases, seams, and chain loops. He had a ring of nightshade across his collar, deathbells dotting his torso, mountain flowers of every colour under the moons running up and down his arms and legs, and someone had very coyly made him a crown of dragon tongue and juniper berry bunches. The pockets of his robe overflowed with what looked like blessed thistle, and he was holding a nirnroot plant with an air of nervous energy that got more intense with every passing second.
“Hello,” he offered, his voice overly loud in the quiet. “I brought you flowers.”
“I see that.” He stole a little closer, leaning over to speak in what was a still objectively loud but overall whisper-y voice.
“I think there’s bugs in my armour, but I don’t want to make a big deal out of it because I think the warriors would laugh at me.”
He was definitely sharing some real estate with several insects, but it’d hardly serve him to know that. “I’m sure it’s just the roots tickling you.” As she usually would if she needed to reach higher than roughly his chest, she gestured him downwards and was surprised when he dropped to his knees.
“Sorry, I’ve been waiting to collapse for an embarrassingly long time. I might be a lightweight.”
“I think you held out just fine, looking at the state of the rest of them.” There was hardly a steady hand in camp, besides those unlucky enough to have been on duty for the festivities. “Were they the ones who put the flowers…?” Her fingers traced his collar, and she didn't miss how the attention made his ears go scarlet.
“Oh, no. Well, yes. It was actually Adrain’s idea—I’m obviously very bad at being romantic, but he said I should get you flowers and then we kept dropping them everywhere, so Morrin said that we should jam them in my armour and in retrospect I have no idea why I agreed. You know how I hate to carry things.”
“You carry my books.” He’d started doing so wordlessly, simply taking them out of her pack. She’d meant to ask him about it—maybe explain that she didn’t expect him to do so, as she had a lot of books—and now seemed like the exactly incorrect time to bring it up.
“Probably for the same reason I filled up my armour with dirt and bugs in the middle of the night.”
“And what reason is that?”
“Well, it could go either way. I could be an undead thrall who’s obligated to do your bidding and you just don’t have the heart to tell me…” he paused, and she laughed.
“I would tell you if you were my thrall, Ru.”
“Oh good. Well in that case then I’d have to be in love with you, or else I’d just look stupid.” She laughed instinctively, in the way that only he could make her. One of her strongest impressions of Rumarin as soon as she met him was that he was very funny, even if she didn’t get it; and that he didn’t even mind whether or not she got it, because whether or not she laughed was more important. He liked making her laugh more than he liked telling jokes, and she liked him telling jokes more than she cared whether or not they were funny.
She supposed that meant that she loved him as well: that and how she hadn’t killed and resurrected him as a thrall yet.
She pulled him in to kiss, the air between them smelling like the delicate flowers they were mutually crushing between them. He sighed against her mouth, then pulled back when the warriors started to whoop in earnest, looking almost confused. “We have an audience,” she reminded him, and he groaned.
“They’re awfully nosy, aren’t they?” He struggled to his feet while she struggled to right him, not used to steadying someone so much taller than her. “Will you help me with the whole…armour...situation?” He absently picked out a stalk of nightshade and handed it to her, and she tucked it behind her ear without bothering to confirm that she would, of course, help him out of his armour.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Matriarch,” she called out, waving to the tittering hagraven.
“I hope you’re ready for a camp of very unhappy Reachmen come dawn,” she returned with a cackle. Tsabhi got the impression that Rumarin would be less popular among the warriors when it became obvious that he’d been healed of his hangover, while Elspeth clearly didn’t extend the same service to her foolhardy warriors.
. . . . .
The second Rumarin sat down in their tent, the energy drained from him completely. “You know, in retrospect I think drinking the bad batch of vodka with warriors about ten years younger than me was, perhaps, a bad idea.”
Tsabhira knelt down beside him, unruffled as ever but far less unreadable than usual. He was a pretty good guesser when it came to whatever moods she got into, but there was no ambiguity in the way her leg snaked out to tangle fondly with his. It was almost worth the burden of knowing that he would be sober tomorrow. “You know what was a worse idea?”
“Suggesting to you that I would be a more pliable, useful companion as an undead thrall?”
“Running off into the hills while you and everyone you were with was drunk,” she corrected, starting to unbind his pauldrons. “But close.” He didn’t answer, abruptly much more interested in the way the candlelight was making her sort of glow, and how his unfocused gaze made her look even dreamier than that. Their faces were very close, and he’d liked the part where they’d kissed and it smelled like flowers instead of sweaty young warriors with booze-breath.
“I get where you’re coming from, but I think most animals find me too pathetic to eat. I haven’t had a run in with so much as a wolf in ages.”
“Yes, I wonder why that is.” She rolled her eyes fondly, pulling back his robe and letting him lift off his chainmail. He was halfway tangled in it when he abruptly understood that she meant that she had specifically been the only thing standing between him and the bizarrely hostile fauna of Skyrim.
His brain stretched, switching the track of the topic. “I’ve never seen you actually talk to an animal.”
“It’s not actually talking.” She stood and helped him follow, steadying him when he tilted dangerously enough to be a threat to their shelter. “It’s more of an intuitive thing. The animal recognises good intentions and then doesn’t need to be bothered with feeling threatened; no amount of Bosmer blood will save you if you genuinely intend to hurt a creature.”
“That’s too bad. I’d love to see someone chat with a wolf or something, they’ve probably got a lot to say. One of the most popular symbols in mythology and just general Skyrim...isms...to say nothing of the Companions, and yet they’re still culled as predators. Is nothing sacred?”
She snorted, caught between helping him detach his leg armour and keeping him upright. “I think animals in Valenwood have it worse. There’s a whole religious bond to protect the flora, but open season on everything else.” He was embarrassed to admit that even being blasted on bad booze didn’t seem to help how he instinctively tensed when her fingers brushed his thighs; he recognised himself as an unbearably awkward lay, and the only thing worse than how he tended to babble was how he couldn’t even leave it in the bedroom. If he got to thinking about it too much, he’d just open his mouth and say something stupid right then and there.
“Wolves should unionize.” Yep, there it was. Gods, he sounded drunk even to himself. Still, she laughed, which was better than sounding even passingly sober. He finally sat back down, bereft of armour and flowers, sitting in his trousers and watching her again. She put everything to the side and stretched languorously.
Neatly skipping by the wolf thing, bless her, she moved behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders with her chin resting in the crook of his neck. “You know it’s Heart’s Day soon.”
“Mhm. Hence the flowers.” There was at least a little method to his madness. “I’ll take my gift in the form of a quick death before I wake up with a hangover tomorrow.” He leaned back, surprised by how eager his body was to drop all its weight at a moment’s notice. He was lucky she was a stronger mage than she looked.
“H’m, unfortunately I’ll have to save that one for your birthday. I already got you something.”
“What, really?” So he’d been wrong about her not even noticing the holiday in favour of the Summoning Day; unless his gift was an orgy, but she wasn’t usually that bad at reading a room. “What is it?”
“You’ll see. It’s not Heart’s Day tomorrow.”
“I showed you mine,” he whined, and she laughed against his neck. “Please?” She hummed thoughtfully, and then abruptly stepped back. Without her behind him, he watched the ceiling become the floor and hit the ground with a thud that he barely felt past the surprise of falling.
That time, she laughed for real.