» Wed Sep 24, 2014 10:38 am The streets of Alinor were simply teeming this time of day: soldiers, scholars, students, farmers from outlying villages, townsfolk on the way to market, Thalmor philosocrats… It made the absurdity of their journey all the more clear to Alduwae. “Don’t you think it would be easier to visit Ja’Naatha’s stall after the streets have cleared?” he asked his companion. “Nothing is worth all this.”
“You speak like an Entitled Brat,” Vaaj-na told him. “And also like an Over-muscled Barbarian.” The Khajiit glanced back at him while deftly avoided a hulking Thalmor Justiciar. “This one should turn you in to the Ministry of Right Talking!”
Alduwae frowned and shook his head. He wished more than anything their Thalmor Re-Educators had not introduced them to Linguistic Mythopoesis. Vaaj-na had become insufferable.
They had reached the main market by this point and the crowd dissipated slightly as military and educational personnel made for the Tower of Transmogrificational Enlightenment. Alduwae let out a pent-up breath and thanked the Eight. “This had better be worth it, Vaaj-na,” he muttered.
The Khajiit turned and stared at him incredulously. For not the first time Alduwae cursed those sensitive Khajiit ears.
Though he could not say for certain, Alduwae remembered Vaaj-na’s rant – delivered as they searched for Ja’Naatha’s stall – going something like this:
“Do you know what the real problem is with the Aldmer? Do not accuse this one of blasphemy! The problem with the Aldmer is a lack of Aesthetic Perturbation. What drives the greatest artist is his own thirst for perfection; for expression that transcends words, that embodies the Ineffable Mean That Cannot Be Known But Can Be Felt. For the greatest artists know that to truly know art is to live inside of it. To simply behold the Imperceptible Beauty of the Moment and to take it within your Self is an act greater that love. It can only be experienced in that precious moment of First Knowing before the mind falls to the Sublimation of Categorization. That! That is the terrible Fallacy of Linguistic Mythogenesis! For Art is best Known through the Experience before the Tyranny of Language.
“But the Aldmer are too comfortable, too certain in their own Right Thinking, Right Acting, and Right Doing to ever ponder the Inscrutable Moment. It is a great sadness. Do not mishear this one and turn him in to the Ministry of Right Cognigenmisanphalusthropy! This one means only that the Path is so well known that there is no need to consider the beauties that line the Road, and for Vaaj-na, this is a great sadness. No, the Aldmer must learn the Interdimensionality of Purposeful Lethargy and Interdependent Mental Deliquesce. In that way all things become new and even that Which Is Not New becomes a Delight.”
If he were being honest with himself, Alduwae stopped listening after “Aesthetic Perturbation.”
Vaaj-na continued searching the market while quoting virtually every Thalmor philosopher of the last six centuries but Alduwae followed only half-heartedly. The last months had been difficult; in many ways he still felt…there was no word that really expressed it. Empty? Hollow? More like: “hollowed out” or “echoing.” He glanced around at the tall, beautiful arches of the city – his city – and wondered why he was still here. Yaldunir could have killed him for his actions in Rimmen; it was clear he was trying to leave with Kaasha. And yet here he was, undergoing Re-Education and Mytho-purgation; sometimes he could hear his ancestors crying out through Memory in their collective disgust. He touched the moonstone dagger at his hip and wondered if there wasn’t a simpler solution.
A panicked Khajiit came running up to him. “It cannot be! It’s some Ministerial Jocularity, this one is sure of it! There is no way…” Vaaj-na’s eyes were filled with terror.
“What’s wrong?” Alduwae asked, genuinely concerned for his friend.
“Haven’t you been listening? Ja’Naatha is gone!”
*
For not the last time, Alduwae found himself trudging through a sewer, following a Khajiit rambling about conspiracy theories and Thalmor doctrine.
“It must be a conspiracy!” Vaaj-na was saying. “This one tells you! It is all a part of their Aesthetic Imperturbableness. Ja’Naatha must have ruffled their Aldmeri feathers with her artistic vision of Consumptory Perfection. They could not stand the way she made them question everything in a single beautiful act of creation! Stendarr preserve this one if he can never behold her magnificence again. He does not know what he will do! A world without the artistry of Ja’Naatha is a world not worth living in!”
Alduwae looked at his friend incredulously, noting the Khajiit’s robe was covered in sewage. “I just can’t see any way that her…”
Vaaj-na rounded on him angrily, pointing a clawed finger. “Don’t blaspheme! You will see soon enough! And then you will acknowledge the genius of the Greatest Artist Tamriel Has Ever Known!”
Alduwae stared back doubtfully as Vaaj-na turned, his long tail pushing a floating something to the side.
They had just emerged from a long stretch of tunnels when the skeevers attacked.
The moment struck Alduwae as oddly poetic. Maybe he had been listening to Vaaj-na for too long, or was so tired from the miles of trudging through only-the-gods-knew-what, but the half-dozen over-grown rats launching themselves at them seemed almost…beautiful. The dun light of the sewer reflecting off the piebald ivory of their fangs almost seemed a metaphor for his life. Of course, feeling those fangs sink into his shoulder didn’t seem like a metaphor…it seemed like the worst pain he’d felt in a long time. But then his dagger was out and the waters around them were raging with skeevers.
Vaaj-na was laughing as he brandished his twin daggers and for a few minutes neither of them had time to think about philosophy.
*
“This one swears,” said the Khajiit, doing his best to clean the wound. “He thinks his friend would try not to let the skeevers taste his flesh. Even a first-year philosocrat knows better.”
Alduwae gave him a withering stare. “I was distracted by your diatribe on beauty.”
Vaaj-na lifted his brow in a mimesis of disbelief. “Next you will say theology is the source of your suffering.”
“It’s the source of some suffering,” he said very quietly. Vaaj-na did not respond.
*
“What time is it?” Alduwae whined. “It has to be after night-fall by now. Yaldunir will think we’ve defected! Gods! There will be Justiciars searching the city for us.” He would have continued but he was too tired to say anything more. At this point they could have met Yaldunir and a legion of Justiciars and Alduwae would count himself the luckiest mer on Nirn. Anything to escape these tunnels.
They had left the sewers behind hours ago and were wondering an endless labyrinth of halls too ancient to date. At first Alduwae had been amazed at the number, and variety, of people living beneath Alinor: it was a city beneath his city. He had heard rumors, certainly, but never suspected it was anything as extensive as this. They must have walked miles. But by now he had seen quite enough, smelled more than enough, and all he wanted was his bed. Or death. Or both.
“You don’t have to worry about Yaldunir,” Vaaj-na assured him. “This one secured a Dispensation.”
Alduwae stopped short. “What?” he asked, anger bleeding into his voice.
The Khajiit looked back matter-of-factly. “This one told them we were going on a pilgrimage.”
Alduwae sputtered. “You…you…WHAT?? Do you know how long I’ve wanted to go on a pilgrimage to the Arkayan temple in Firsthold? I’ve put in seven times…seven times…to go and pay my respects. And you’re telling me that you received a dispensation for…for…SWEETROLLS?!?”
A krin touched the Khajiit’s face. “Well, this one might have embellished a little.”
“Wha-wha-…I…what…”
“Be careful, brother,” Vaaj-na cautioned him. “You are getting far too emotional. Try to enjoy the Journey.”
An Altmeri scream echoed down the halls of the undercity.
*
They found Ja’Naatha in a long hall frequented by beggars, addicts, and deserters.
“Vaaj-na was so worried about you,” the Khajiit told her, embracing her and inhaling her scent. “He thought the Thalmor…”
“No,” she said warmly, smiling at him and inhaling his scent. “This one had learned of the suffering of the people of the undercity and knew she had to act. Yes she knows the great sadness this brings to the ones living Above, but there are many pleasures in the sun. Joy must go where it is needed, and so often that is in the darkness.”
“Someone please kill me,” Alduwae mumbled. “I have gold. Just…just cut my throat and end it. I’ll never make it back. I’ll never…”
Two pairs of Khajiit ears twitched. “Don’t be silly! There is an atronach-lift at the end of the hall; it will take you straight to the docks.”
Vaaj-na stared at her in disbelief. “But this one thought the atronachs had escaped.”
“Oh no!” Ja’Naatha waved her hand. “That was a month ago. A very nice mage summoned a new one and bound it to the lift. It was quite compliant after one of my sweetrolls!”
“Do you hear that?” Vaaj-na was delighted. “There is a lift! We can come back any time we like!”
Ja’Naatha looked lovingly on Vaaj-na as Alduwae began to cry.
*
It took them a while to calm the Altmer down, but Ja’Naatha gave him a surprisingly clean blanket and he fell right to sleep – stretched out on the hard stonework. Vaaj-na watched the rise and fall of his chest and listened to his light snoring.
“That one has suffered much,” Ja’Naatha said sympathetically. There was sadness in her eyes.
“We have all suffered much,” Vaaj-na pointed out. “But him…” He looked at her. “He needs more than what even friendship can give him. He needs...Ja’Naatha’s ministry.”
Ja’Naatha bowed her head. “It will be an honor.”
*
Alduwae woke up with a not-unexpected pain in his back, and a stomach screaming in its emptiness.
Vaaj-na sat down beside him. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I slept in a sewer,” Alduwae said, and then grinned. He glanced around at the people sitting against walls, milling about, and talking in hushed tones. “I never knew,” he gestured towards them, shaking his head. “This is a side of the Thalmor dream no one thinks about.”
The Khajiit nodded in agreement. After a long moment he said, “All theologies have their shadow-side. This one thinks the best theologies learn what to do with them.”
“Which is?”
“Not bury them.”
“You boys and your talk!” came an exasperated voice. They turned to find Ja’Naatha approaching with two sweetrolls. “This one thinks you’ve talked enough. It is time for eating.” She handed them each one.
Alduwae looked doubtful, but took a bite anyway.
Vaaj-na watched the Altmer’s jaw work, and then stop. He saw the widening of his friend’s eyes, the unconscious opening of his mouth. He watched the dawning of the Imperceptible Beauty of the Moment. He leaned down to inhale the scent of his own sweetroll, and felt belief-ecstasy swirl through his being.
Alduwae touched his arm. “I’ve seen the face of God,” he said.
A krin spread across Vaaj-na’s face as he placed the sweetroll, whole, into his mouth. “That,” he mumbled through chews. “Is good theology.”
