[center][h3][b]Harmony[/b]
and
[i]Balance[/i][/h3][/center]

[i]Between the 15th and the 16th of Midyear, 4E208
Above the Oasis, Alik’r Desert, Hammerfell[/i]

In the midst of the night Mazrah had stepped out of the oasis, her bare feet carrying her silently through the camp and out of the mouth of the cave. She took in the sight of the endless stars that hovered silently above the desert dunes and placed her hands on her hips, a smile on her face, her golden eyes shimmering with the reflected light of the night sky. Masser and Secunda were both full and looked down on her from directly above, the crowning jewels of the incredible tapestry. It was as magnificent a sight as ever. While she had been more used to seeing the same stars between the snow capped peaks of the mountains that surrounded Orsinium, the Orsimer huntress had to admit as soon as she moved south into Hammerfell that there was something even more grand about the unobstructed view that the desert provided. 

But she hadn’t come just to stargaze. Mazrah had offered help to Latro, the gentle man that carried a rabid wolf in his heart, but she couldn’t do that without proper preparation. It had been many years since she had received the necessary lessons from her mother to control her own beast, the sulphur and fury that burned within all Orsimer. Mazrah turned her back on the sky and began to climb the rocky edifice that stuck out of the sands beneath which the oasis lay. Her movements were easy and effortless and the stones were comfortably warm to the touch, still slowly releasing the heat that Magnus had instilled in them during the day. Her spirits high, Mazrah began to hum a tune to herself during her ascent. It only dawned on her after a few seconds what that tune actually was; an old Orsinian war-song. “Fitting,” she muttered to herself. The accompanying war-dance would help her with her task. Spontaneous inspiration was how Mazrah got most of her ideas and this time was no different. 

She crested the top and saw the hole in the rock ahead of her where she knew the natural light filtered into the oasis, illuminating the river that ran through their camp. Feeling around with her toes, Mazrah nodded, satisfied. It was reasonably flat and smooth. She was going to need the space to move around. But first she sat herself down, cross-legged, and placed her hands on her knees and closed her eyes, just like her mother had taught her. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She thought of Sora’s Moonpath, the mystical journey she could undertake through the power of moonsugar to speak to her ancestors. Mazrah had no such talents available. But she could definitely remember, [i]remind herself,[/i] of who she was and where she came from. She thought about the streets of Orsinium where she had played with the other whelps, boys and girls alike; long summer days when the day seemed to never end, and when it did, the sky burned like a campfire for what felt like hours more as the sun set behind the peaks of the mountains. The woods, the valleys, the steep cliffs, all the places that she had roamed and explored as a young woman, bow and arrows on her back. Mazrah thought about Maulakanth too, and about their father, and how he would push Maulakanth so hard she feared that he would break. In the end, of course, he had, but years after their father had already died. She sighed and pushed her thoughts about him to the side -- he was long gone, probably dead and buried in an unmarked grave in High Rock by now. 

After that, she opend her eyes and looked down at herself, her arms, her chest, her legs, eyes tracing the white lines and shapes across her green skin. Mazrah ran her fingers down her arm, remembering the pain she had felt when the wise women had worked the ink into her skin. It hadn’t been a cause for suffering, but [i]pride[/i]. She felt sympathy for Latro well up in her chest as she thought about how scared he must have been to be subjected to his own most violent self without the proper guidance. Durash, Mazrah’s mother, had been there every step of the way, and Mazrah saw her in her mind’s eye -- hair so long it came all the way down to the small of her back, slightly shorter but stockier than Mazrah herself, but eyes that were just the same. Every time Mazrah had been disobedient or stubborn or just plain annoying, Durash had been unable to resist laughter, which never failed to disarm her adolescent daughter. “It is just like looking in the still water of a pool,” Durash had said with the warm smile that only mothers can muster. “I see myself in you so much.” And as time had passed and Mazrah had grown into the body of a woman with the same tattoos as her ancestors, it had happened multiple times that Orsinium’s rabble had mixed up mother and daughter. Mazrah snorted at the memory. 

That was her anchor. As long as she did not forget where she came from and the warmth and guidance that her mother had given her, Mazrah knew that she could not lose control of herself. She had a lifetime of knowing [i]exactly[/i] who she was behind her. She didn’t need a Moonpath for guidance: her mother had already given her all the guidance she needed to become one and whole. Latro hadn’t. From what little he had told her, it had sounded like he had been on the run from himself and his past for a long time now. Mazrah’s heart ached for him, for his suffering, and for Daro’Vasora’s too. Even the Khajiit had not been one with her heritage until recently. Mazrah could hardly imagine what that must have been like, to be caught between worlds and to feel out of place in both of them. As much as she liked Hammerfell and the Redguards and their funny, rigid ways, she was glad that she had been born and raised in Orsinium and by ancient Orcish tradition. It made her an unmovable object, for the bedrock upon which she stood was impenetrable. 

She saw Maulakanth sitting at the table of their longhouse, his back raw and bloody, his head between his hands, trying not to cry. 

Mazrah bit her lip and shook her head, trying to rid herself of the image. Their father and his treatment of her brother wasn’t representative of Orsinium as a whole. Mazrah only had to think of her mother to know that there was so much more to the ways of the Orsimer than harsh cruelty and senseless violence. Frustrated, she fiddled with the hem of her loincloth. How was she supposed to use the foundation of her own harmony and balance to help Latro if it was being undermined by other memories? She needed to have faith in the things she had been taught, in the indestructible spirit of the Orsimer and the way it had been tamed for generations. Latro could not stand on the same bedrock… but at least she could teach him how to stand. 

In one smooth, fluid movement, Mazrah uncoiled her legs and got to her feet. She hummed the war-song again, slowly at first, making sure she was getting it right this time, before she dropped into a loose and flexible pose, her hands at the ready to greet an imaginary enemy. She remembered the roaring bonfires of Orsinium’s celebrations and the way she had seen her mother dance with the other huntresses as a child, and remembered the feeling, the urge, to join her. It was like a rising flame in her chest, a call that could not be ignored. That was how how her mother had first guided her in releasing her rage. That was the thing -- it wasn’t just [i]rage,[/i] or mindless anger, but [i]passion[/i]. To do something with every fiber of one’s being. She felt the feeling coming and opened herself to it. That is how the Orcish women danced: their eyes crimson and their blood singing, until the earth shook with the reverberations of their singular thought in that moment. 

[i]Here I am. All of me.[/i] 

Gold turned scarlet and Mazrah danced, her voice soaring over the dunes, the rock trembling, a cloud of dust kicked up all around her, her muscles burning. This was not a fight. It was a release. And this was how she would make Latro whole again.