#inspired by the time my bf ate babybel cheese with a fork and i roasted him so hard he never did it again </3 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wispstalk · 2 years

Text

plural

The Dragonborn eats her cheese with a fork. Sheogorath looks on in mute horror.

Very few things can shock a Madgod — that goes without saying, so he doesn’t. Instead he watches the woman at his feast table, dicing a perfectly serviceable wedge of smoked Eidar into tiny chunks before impaling them with the tines.

Aside from that, she seems to have a good head on her shoulders. Enough sense to show a flicker of fear when she realized that clingy worshipper of his— old whatsisname, with the face— entreated her to seek out a dangerous immortal rather than some puffed-up noble patron. And the quickness of mind to show him deference after that. Not the sort of company he usually keeps, so he’s pleased to discover that there’s something— a tiny something, but still— deeply wrong with her. Who the hell eats cheese with a fork?

The Dragonborn arranges the cutlery neatly on her empty plate and rises from the table, dropping into a stiff bow. “Thank you,” she says, “for… um. Well. Will you return to Dervenin?”

“Who?” Sheogorath reaches for a hunk of Craglorn goat cheese, and pointedly stuffs it in his mouth with his fingers. “Oh, right, in time. But there’s a protocol to these things, you know.”

“I wouldn't know, actually.” Her placid smile does not reach her eyes.

He gestures to the Wabbajack, which she laid at the far end of the table, as far as it could get. “A gift. Only fitting for the helpful young hero who ruined my holiday.”

She makes no move to take it. “You’re very generous, but what use would I have for it?” she says. “I suppose I could turn dragons to sweetrolls, and save myself some trouble.”

Sheogorath rolls his eyes and snatches the staff from the table, following her to the hazy edge of the dream.

“Why would it turn into a sweetroll? Bread first, then cat, then bucket, flame atronach, and so forth… I have a system. If you think for a moment, it all makes perfect sense. You haven’t the faintest idea what you’re doing, do you?”

"No." A spark of humor in her voice, now. “No, Your Grace, I do not.”

“ ‘Your Grace?’ Ha!” His harsh bark of laughter rings through the dreamscape, and she flinches at whatever she hears in his voice. “I’ve known one ‘Your Grace’ in all my days and I’m certainly not him. I’ve about had my fill of your manners, mortal, so take your damn prize and we’ll be off.”

“We?” The woman’s head jerks around at that, and it’s then that she passes through the veil, blundering into her own sleeping body, sprawled on a moth-ravaged carpet. She gapes down at herself in confusion, just before her dream-form bursts apart in a flurry of butterfly wings.

“Yes, we,” he continues as she sits up and rubs at her head. “It’s clear you’re out of your depth, and it happens I know a thing or two about Dragonborn. Or… Dragonborns. Dragons-born?”

“Where’m I?” She blinks blearily around the abandoned wing, and her expression crumples when her gaze lands on him. “You’re still— oh, gods.”

“Just one. Madgod. Stay focused, now.” He reaches down to help her up— the hand is grey-skinned, rough, nicked with scars from hard living. That hand surely belongs to someone else, someone long-dead, made of flesh and blood and other trifles better left behind. “Which is it, then? What’s the plural of ‘Dragonborn?’ ”

Her defeated sigh is barely concealed as she leads him out of the wrecked hallway, toward the door. “Does it matter?”

“I reckon it doesn’t,” Sheogorath— no, that won’t do here, he’ll have to dredge up some other name— offers her a crooked grin. “You’re all alone in the world, aren't you?”

The Dragonborn glances back over her shoulder, impassive as ever, but a shadow haunts her posture. More than one soul looks out at him through those brown eyes: ageless, proud, angry beings trapped and beating against the bars of their fragile mortal cage.

But light streams in as she opens the door, and the shadow evaporates, and she offers up a tired half-smile.

“Less so than I was, I guess," she says, and follows him out through the Blue Palace.

#inspired by the time my bf ate babybel cheese with a fork and i roasted him so hard he never did it again </3 #last dragonborn #skyrim #elder scrolls #daedra #oc: crabigail #oc: tanis #ray writes

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