Ariel breathed in to speak after Rukeewei's first question and she held her breath as he added more and more. His last question caused her to close her mouth and let out her breath to try again.
"Yes, what I did tell you was true, everything I did say." Ariel slowly explained through her guilt. "I am a witch, I was in a coven in Vos, in Morrowind. I grew up there with my sister after we were taken in as orphans. I did want to move away and I was interested in Thorn after Meesei suggested it. It's just..." Ariel paused to rub her ear. "I...omitted a few things. It was Sabine's secret, really. It wasn't mine to reveal. I'll tell you how this really started..."
Ariel sighed and looked down, thinking. Finding out where to begin was hard, much more finding out how much detail she wanted to go into. She traded a glance with Sabine, who was remaining patient and quiet opposite the couple.
Ariel finally started with a low voice, occasionally looking at Rukeewei but mainly avoiding his gaze. "When Sabine was a girl, we had a group of cultists come to the coven. It was not uncommon, as witches often knew how to contact daedra on their summoning days. These cultists wished to contact Hircine, so we gathered the materials for the ritual. After trying for a long time, we knew that the ritual had failed and Hircine would not be speaking to the cultists. They were angered, thinking they had been tricked into giving us useless payment. They ended up transforming into werewolves in front of us and attacking. A few people were killed, but they were driven off. But...not before Sabine was struck by one."
Closing her eyes and bringing her forehead to her hand, Ariel hinted a twinge of emotion through her tone. "She was horribly wounded. We healed her, but she had been infected with lycanthropy. We did not remove it in time before it set in. We...contained her at first. The others wanted her out. I tried to convince them to help me find a cure, they told me that I would do it on my own and I set to work. I tried everything I knew of, devised knew things, became so involved that...I tried methods I felt deep regret for. Nothing worked."
Ariel lifted her head, taking a respite from her darker memories by explaining the facts. She made gestures with her hands to motion her words. "One of the things I discovered was a method for suppressing the beast spirit of a lycan. To force them to transform back into their original forms or keep them in their original forms. It was an inhaled substance. Unfortunately, it was no cure, in fact, it made the condition worse. Each time a lycan beast spirit was suppressed in such a way, it came back enraged and stronger later on. It dominated the mind of the host. There was no chance of controlling it under such conditions."
Sabine was looking off to one side at this point with a hand wrapped tightly around her other arm. Even coming to terms with such memories in the past did not make their discomforts completely disappear.
"Anyway," Ariel continued, lowering her hands and head again. "After a while, I knew that Sabine's best chance would be to get onto mainland Tamriel and find a place to live in the forest. I...had nowhere else to bring her. Taking her to anywhere civilised would risk the lives of those she was near. Staying with me in the wilds might have had me killed; her beast spirit saw me as...well, we were not on good terms. And as for a cure..." Ariel's next breath was shaky. "I had no cure. I was just...trying things that were hurting Sabine. I couldn't stand to keep going. She was going to die in a cage otherwise. Her beast spirit knew how to hunt for food on instinct, so I knew that she at least had a good chance at surviving. A better chance than anything else. It was the hardest thing I have ever done to leave her there."
Ariel had to pause with her eyes tightly closed, but Sabine's gentle voice chimed in. "Then I found Meesei."
That caused Ariel to look up and give a sad, tight-lipped smile. "That you did." She paused to allow Sabine to continue, though she didn't. Eventually, Ariel picked up again. "I did not see Sabine again for several years after that. The coven was not fond of my actions and banished me. With nowhere else to go, I set up a shop in Vos. Then, one day, Janius turned up in my shop and I...through means of my own, found out he was a lycan and tracked him to his pack. It was there that I found two things. I found my sister again, amongst a new family, and I found that their purpose for being near Vos was that cultists of Clavicus Vile who had been brewing something of a war against Hircine had a leader there. A leader who had procured my suppression gas from my old coven. You see, Meesei was no ordinary lycan alpha. She is something of a leader herself. The champion of Hircine. She and her pack are on such missions often, hence why they often travel."
Ariel nodded to Meesei. "I told Meesei what I knew and I took steps with the pack to go back to my coven, destroy my notes and any suppression gas they had, and then...I couldn't stay in Vos any longer. I knew the coven would come after me, or lycan hunters, or even more cultists of Clavicus Vile. With my words and Sabine speaking more about what happened, Meesei resolved to head south to have Sabine speak to the Hist to help with the horrible things that she...experienced. At my hand and all the matters surrounding. In return for my help with the gas and essentially giving up my life in Vos, Meesei repaid me by guiding me to Thorn and helping me to set up a new life here. The rest is nothing you don't know. Well, the Hist ritual worked, thank the light. There is that. Oh, and the war between Hircine and Vile has been raging for some time now, away from the public eye." Ariel had her hands clasped tightly on her lap. "I think that is all. I am not proud of it, but that is the truth about Sabine and me."
Sabine tried to reassure Ariel by bringing a hand to her upper arm and smiling.
