[h3]Ghosts and Reflections[/h3]
[sub]collab between [@Peik] and myself[/sub]

[i]Noon, Sun’s Height 28
Sea of Ghosts[/i]
 
''Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.'' 
 
It was one of those scenes that were mind-numbingly boring to look at in itself, yet would look marvelous as a painting. With the sun hidden behind distant clouds and constant fog of the aptly called Sea of Ghosts, the sky was grey not unlike an empty canvas, and beneath it was nothing but the wide, bottomless sea, bubbling with every wave washing in over itself, somehow placid and still, and treacherously shifty at the same time. The only sight that looked out of the ordinary in this endless mix of grey, white and blue was the occasional iceberg, which added some much needed density and matter to the vague and ever-changing scenery.
 
At least, this is what Sadri saw and thought from his quiet ‘abode’, which was simply a small part of the edge of the top deck, tucked behind some cuts of tarp and nets. After a bad bout of sleep, he had decided to breathe some good air – but he knew well how the sailors could get pissed at someone just sitting around doing nothing while they were working their asses off, so he had chosen a spot somewhat out of sight. 
 
Plus, the tarps were comfortable to lean his back on. He began quietly singing a tune to himself as he laid his head back and tried to think of better things than not having had a word with Solveig over her father while they were back in Dawnstar.

"Oh!" Niernen said and clasped her hand to her mouth, startled at the sight of Sadri. She'd just appeared from behind the nets and tarps, having evidently picked out the same spot to take a breather as her fellow Dunmer and not expected to find anyone there. "Sorry," she added and laughed. "You gave me quite a scare. I didn't mean to intrude, I can find a different spot if you..."

She trailed off. "Are you alright, Sadri?" she asked, the tone of her voice having shifted from embarrassment to mild concern. The look on Sadri's face had been a little haunting. No surprises there, what with Jorwen's disappearance. Niernen was well aware of the bond between Sadri and Solveig. 

''Oh, oh shi-'' Sadri thought in a moment of sudden panic, as if someone had caught him in a rather private moment (which thankfully it had not been). The panic subsided the moment he realized he was no longer sixteen years old, and the new arrival was not a concerned parent running into his child in an awkward situation. It seemed that the new arrival, who seemed to to be Niernen, was simply startled by his unexpected presence. He calmed down and took another look. It was indeed Niernen.
 
''Oh hi, Niernen,'' Sadri began after she finished her words, ''Not at all, I mean, yeah, uh, I’m alright, sit down if you want. Just watching the sea, you know,'' he trailed onwards. ''Ought to be enough space here, and the scenery’s nice.''

She nodded and settled down next to Sadri with a grunt, a moan and a long sigh. "Everything is still sore," she explained. "I've been trying to help the sailors out wherever I can. Keeping the body oiled and all that. [i]B'vek,[/i] I feel like I've been trampled by a pack of guars after just fifteen minutes every time." Niernen shivered and rubbed her arms together before drawing the folds of her gray cloak around her torso. She pulled up her legs too. "You're right, the scenery is nice. What did Veloth say when he first saw Vvardenfell? Magnificent desolation? I feel like it applies here too."

Wondering if she'd done enough to break the ice, Niernen figured there was only one way to find out. "Hey," she said softly. "We all hurt. What's eating you, serjo?"

[i]''Keeping the body oiled?''[/i] Sadri thought in an unaware moment of curiosity, before dispersing any possible dirty connotations that could follow up. Nonetheless, it made him feel infantile, something he tried to make up for by listening to Niernen in a more focused manner. It seemed she wasn’t convinced by his shabby excuses about him being okay, for after curling up deeper into her cloak, and some remarks about the scenery, she decided to push on.
 
Sadri sighed, he did not wish to talk about the matter, but eventually decided to budge.  At least the presence of Narzul on the ship gave him a ‘get out of topic free card’. He took in a breath. 
 
''Too much shit going on, I guess. It’s all messed up. It feels like there are mammoths fucking in my skull.''
 
It only hit him with this confession that he could really use a smoke, but his pipe was probably sitting somewhere at the bottom of the sea floor around Winterhold.
 
''Just concerned, that’s all. I’ve no idea what I’m doing, y’know, that just sometimes hits you. I went and confessed my love to a woman I barely know and is young enough to be my granddaughter, foolish, I don’t know why I did that, and then you learn she reciprocates your feelings. I just don’t get it. Now her father’s gone missing, and I’ve no idea what the fuck to say to her.''
 
He stopped, with a sad, faint smile on his face.
 
''I mean, you ever stop and think of ‘invaders from Akavir’? How fucked up does that sound? It’s all just fucked up, really. Thought I’d made my peace with it, but I guess I just managed to conveniently forget all of it. And you know how trips like these make you think of the most inane things.''

"Akavari invaders presumably brought here by our so-called High King, no less," Niernen added to Sadri's rant as she returned his smile with a lopsided one of her own. "Ready to slaughter and pillage their way through everyone and everything. You're right, it's almost beyond comprehension. There's an old Bosmeri saying that goes, 'May you live in interesting times'. It's more of a curse, really. They used to say it to people they didn't like. We are sure in interesting times now..."

She took a deep breath and patted Sadri on the shoulder. "As for Solveig... I wish I could help you there, but I fear that I know less about love than you do. I've never..." Niernen looked away and bit her lip, suddenly regretting all the hours she spent studying, traveling and practicing. What if this invasion would be the end of her without having ever experienced reciprocated love? Suddenly, she knew what to say.

"It's good that you told her how you feel, and it's good that she feels the same way about you. You never know. Perhaps something might have happened and you never would have gotten a chance to tell her," Niernen explained, wondering what the odds were that Sadri hadn't come up with this by himself yet. "Jorwen... condolences, I suppose. Offer help, whatever that might be. Depends on what she needs. I don't know her at all."

Niernen rubbed her face. "I don't know much of anything," she sighed.

''Frankly, this is probably only ‘slightly’ worthy of news by Bosmer standards. I’ve seen shit in Valenwood you wouldn’t believe, and I still don’t believe some of it either,'' Sadri replied to Niernen’s explanation, trying to find a slightly more optimistic note in the conversation, but it seemed Niernen had fallen far too deep into her sorrows to turn back, and Sadri couldn’t find the cheeriness within himself to save the conversation from itself. And with Niernen’s voice so regretful, Sadri found it too selfish to continue talking about himself.
 
''I see the little firestarter has her own issues. Has the trip gotten to your mind as well, or is it something else that's troubling you?'' Sadri asked, sounding more caring than he expected.

Niernen couldn't help but crack a smile at the way Sadri described her as a little firestarter but that fleeting expression faded from her face almost as soon as it appeared. "It's not the trip, though I can't say I'm pleased to be back on a ship so soon. There's, ah, someone..." She paused to look Sadri in the eyes for a few seconds, judging how trustworthy he was, unaware that Sadri already knew the true identity of the heavily-armored Dunmer warrior that accompanied the mercenaries on their voyage. Niernen had passed him off as a hired bodyguard, similar to Valen's previous occupation, that her family had sent after her in order to keep her safe. Narzul, satisfied with this disguise, had done or said nothing to the contrary -- as far as Niernen knew, anyway. Narzul hadn't told her of the conversation between himself and Sadri on the eve of his arrival in Dawnstar. In fact, they'd barely exchanged a word since their disastrous fight.

"You know the other Dunmer that's with us? My bodyguard?" Niernen asked, deciding that Sadri, an enemy of Morrowind in his own right, could be trusted with this information. "He's actually my brother. Don't tell him I told you. He... [i]disagrees[/i], to put it mildly, with my choice of friends. He's real Redoran. You probably met him too at some point during the Black Marsh campaign. I think he knows by now that I'm in far too deep to safely return home, and he's risking everything he has ever worked for to protect me. I tried to tell him to go back to Blacklight but he wouldn't listen. I'm... conflicted. I love him and I'm glad he's here to watch my back -- he's an exemplary warrior -- but I also feel guilty to drag him away from his entire life. [i]And[/i] I'm angry. He wasn't exactly considerate when he shared his opinions on... this whole situation, and all of you, with me." Niernen pulled her legs up even closer against her chest and rested her head on her knees, staring out over the Sea of Ghosts with a frown on her face. "And now we're on our way to take the fight to the Armigers. Those are... or were, before he came here, his allies. The Nerevarine thinks highly of him and Narzul thinks highly of the Nerevarine, family history be damned." 

She looked back at Sadri. "What do you think? Is it... I don't like saying it, but, dangerous to have him here?"

A sense of worry slowly began creeping into Sadri as Niernen pulled the conversation someplace, or to someone, he had been trying to forget – he had hoped that he was the only one worrying about that special someone with the black blade, but it seemed that things hadn’t gone well in their reunion. 
 
''Ah, shit, I see. Well, don’t tell him I told you,'' Sadri echoed Niernen’s choice of words, ''we actually shared a drink in Dawnstar, I know who he is. Real Redoran alright, seemed to hate my guts, but I don’t think that feeling is exclusive to me, admittedly.'' Sadri grit his teeth together for a moment before continuing. 
 
''Well look, Niernen, I have buddies amongst the Armigers as well, but that wouldn’t make me turn and stab one of us folks in the back. It’s not in my nature to betray people because of old friendships (in truth, it was, but Sadri liked to believe he had principles). I don’t care if your brother hates us, loves us, or whether he thinks Argonians make better belts than warriors, what matters to me is what he’d do if he had to choose between, say, me or some old acquaintance in the heat of battle.''
 
He took a breath; he obviously couldn’t ask the girl to smite her brother should he turn on them. 
 
''He strikes me as more martial rather than blue blooded. Sure, we seemed to agree that we wouldn’t get along, but I’d like to believe that he’s got principles and would put his current allegiance above his past.'' 

He took a pause. It didn't feel right to leave things on such a vague note.

''Well, I guess I just want to think that I’m not going to get my head lobbed off when I’m not looking, I guess. Even I couldn’t survive that,'' he added, hoping Niernen would find some humor in his words.

Niernen raised her eyebrows in surprise as Sadri told her about his encounter with Narzul. The more she learned about how her brother behaved outside of the ivory tower they'd lived in as Redoran nobility, the more she grew to dislike him. Was Sadri's status as a mercenary and an outlander really enough to make Narzul hate him? She grimaced, and not even Sadri's joke made a dent in her disapproval.

"Sorry you had to deal with him," Niernen said in a low voice. "Honestly, I had no idea he was this stuck up. And you're right -- I think you punch well above your weight as a warrior, Sadri, but Narzul would probably make short work of most of us. He killed an ancient Dremora in single combat. That said," she continued quickly, "you are also right in that he has principles. Perhaps moreso than you or I. Thank you for reminding me of that." She fell silent for a few seconds and the frown that creased her brow slowly relaxed. 

"I have faith he won't turn on you, or any of the others, in the heat of battle. He has always been very loyal to his family. As long as I don't want you dead, you're fine," Niernen said, and finished her line of thought with a joke of her own and winked at Sadri. "So stay on my good side, alright?"

''Oh my, is that a threat I sense? Well, I’ll have you know, muthsera Venim, that I graduated at the top of my class in the Ansei Academy,'' Sadri replied coyly, doing his best to take the seriousness out of the conversation. He continued on with a sudden, deadpan serious tone, one perhaps almost too serious. ''Jokes aside, it’s good to know that you’re the only thing stopping the sword prodigy from trying to gut all of us.'' He raised his eyebrows, puffed his mouth, and shook his head as if he had said something deep and profound, in hopes that the humor would not be missed. 

Having relaxed a little, Niernen allowed Sadri's dry humor to amuse her and she laughed out loud for the first time in a while. It was a pleasant, pealing sound that surprised even herself. "Thanks, I needed that," she said and snickered while shaking her head slowly from side to side. "You're absolutely right, this life of ours is utter madness, and yet what else is there to do but laugh in the face of Sheogorath? Either way, I'll keep Narzul in line, don't worry."

A short silence fell as Niernen's thoughts turned back to their earlier topic of conversation. "Do you... do you think Jorwen is still alive?" she asked tentatively, glancing sideways at Sadri.

Sadri went quiet for a moment after Niernen’s question – it was one that had been in his mind for some time, but also it was one question that he had been trying to avoid. His expression went absent as he decided to gather the pieces of thought that had grown around the question in his mind, and form a proper opinion out of them. 
 
''Well,'' Sadri said, ''I know this answer’s pretty lacking, but I really don’t know. Maybe he fell on the field after the others retreated, maybe he somehow broke through and is trying to slowly make it out of the woods, or maybe it was there in the woods where he found his end. He could’ve… he could’ve gotten captured as well, which, after things I’ve seen and heard, is not a possibility I’d like to entertain. What I do know is that Jorwen is one nasty warrior, though, and the sort of guy who doesn’t give up easily. So if they haven’t taken him yet, I reckon soon they’ll wish they did.
 
Nonetheless, I hope whatever the case is, we find out soon. I’ve known people who just lost their loved ones and never heard from them again, and I’ve observed that the lack of conclusion ends up hurting more than learning whatever bad end came to them ever will.
 
During the Great War, for example; I was just content waiting it out, but my neighbors either couldn’t avoid conscription like I did, or just weren’t as cowardly as I. They got sent to the fronts, and for most, letters came back home to their families, saying how they valiantly fell facing the foe. Some people didn’t have the luxury, though. I often saw them, with their gazes fixed on the streets, waiting for their loved ones to show up. Some did, too. Some came back unharmed, some you couldn’t recognize. It took years, and some came back. And the others who waited but never got an answer, either they moved on and tried to forget, or they just faded wallowing in unfulfilled hopes and past memories.''
 
He thought of himself, and his own friends that he had lost to the Great War, those that never came back, those who left their joy of life on the battlefield, those that came back, but never forgave him for hiding behind his status as a Dunmer. Maybe that was why he had left after the war’s end – a new perspective, a bitter one, but one that offered more explanation about himself.

His voice went quiet.
 
''I wouldn’t want her to suffer that.''

"Me neither," Niernen said and exhaled deeply. "That said, having been their prisoner, I can tell you the Kamal are very proud, very arrogant and very cruel creatures. I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to capture Jorwen alive so they could... well, torment him," she continued uneasily. "It's not a pleasant thought, I know, but he could very well still be alive. Where is life, there is hope." She patted Sadri on the shoulder again, gentler this time, and her hand lingered there for a few seconds. Sadri reminded her of the grizzled veterans that had accompanied Niernen to Black Marsh to act as her bodyguards. They had been full of wisdom and humor too, and their appearance had been equally worse for wear. Niernen's mind flashed back to the nights she'd spent with one of them, Llerwen, in her tent, exploring her budding sexuality. It had been a loveless affair, but interesting. She missed him sometimes.

She pulled her hand back and gathered her limbs beneath the gray cloak again. "It's cold," she whispered. "When do you think we'll reach Bleakrock?"

''I suppose.'' he replied quietly – the only reasonable and viable reply that came to mind was more dry humor akin to his previous attempts, but still, making jokes off a lost friend and the possibility that he was captured and getting tortured was not even dry, but just unpleasant. She did have a point, though, he wasn’t sure if their hope would turn out vain in the end.
 
Her following question came just right in time to break the silence and change the topic, and Sadri quickly took to mental gymnastics to answer the question properly – it wouldn’t be fitting of a mer who claimed to have been a sailor to give an incorrect estimate, after all.
 
''I’d give it… a day or two at most, provided the wind stays this way. Not very exciting, but then again, the only exciting I’ve seen with this company is the fatal sort, and that loses its charm fast.''

"Good," Niernen said, suddenly bitter. "Mephala guide me and Sharmat take them, I want my revenge on the thrice-damned traitors." Her emotional stability hadn't improved since they set off and Niernen was constantly thrown between bouts of anxious sorrow and seething wrath. 

"Sul en am as errat Chimer, almardar as sharmaat malshok alna," she added in Dunmeris, quoting a passage from an ancient Ashlander oral tradition: [i]the unbreakable soul of the lost Chimer would silence devils mad first,[/i] and smiled wryly. "Ironic, isn't it? That used to refer to the Nerevarine and Dagoth Ur. Now it feels like we're the lost Chimer setting off to silence [i]his[/i] madness."

''Only time will tell whether we are the heroes or not, I’d argue. Times change, morals change, people change. It’s not like we’ve never been part of an invading side,'' Sadri replied solemnly, recalling his conversation with Narzul – the older Venim was certainly much more standoffish and less amicable, but Sadri appreciated the logical, clear-cut outlook that he could bring to the table. Or maybe he was just too exhausted from the trip to keep his hate fanned. 
 
''There’s plenty of reasons to hate the Kamal and the Nerevarine – his madness, or whether he's right or not, though; I don’t think they count. For me, the fact that his allies are trying to kill us is enough. No morality or nothing special in it – just us and them. Keeps things simpler.''

He felt like quipping about how its simplicity made it desirable, but, he found it unnecessary on a mercenary ship headed for a raid. It wasn't the best context for faux-philosophical aphorisms based off perceptions of war.

Niernen's flaring temper subsided at Sadri's polite admonishment and she looked away a little awkwardly. "Yeah, well," she began but fell silent again. She still thought the Nerevarine was insane, bringing the Akaviri monsters to Tamrielic shores, but Sadri had inadvertently made her doubt herself after all, undoing Wylendriel's work from a few nights before. What if they weren't the heroes in this story? What if Narzul was right, and the Nerevarine's vision was truly the best for Morrowind -- who was she, then, as a Redoran noble, to concern herself with the plight of the rest of the continent? Was this even her place to be?

Frustrated with the capricious nature of her motivations and beliefs, Niernen sighed and slowly got to her feet, working through the toxic aches that still lingered in her limbs. "Thanks for the talk," she said, trying to sound as genuine as possible, and conjured a wan smile for her fellow Dunmer. "I'm going to see if the sailors need any more help." 

The Redoran’s stillborn reply caused Sadri to chastise himself internally for possibly alienating her with his sudden, contemplative rebuttal. He preferred not to deal much with mages, and if possible, be a person whose presence they wouldn't want to disintegrate. And yet, all of a sudden, he had gone full moral relativist against the face of a recently imprisoned battlemage. Whether he was right or wrong, that didn’t matter, what mattered was that the action had the possibility of tilting Sadri’s worth in Niernen’s mind slightly further to the ‘Yeah, smite’ end of the scale. This alone made it undesirable, but there was also the stuck-up swordsman brother with the ebony blade and disregard for the lives of common folk. Add them together and it was not the smartest course of action.
 
Then again, it was his sudden acts of foolishness that made him himself. He decided to accept the sense of worry that came out of it, and watched Niernen get up and leave. 
 
''So long.''