#just keep hollowing yourself out. out of some kind of misguided attempt at mercy

[everybodyknows-everybodydies]

On a day that isn’t one, Sheogorath tries to break into Aetherius.

It’s just a matter of going there, really. Going places is easy. So she does.

The great golden dragon is waiting just over the threshold. THIS PLACE IS NOT YOURS, it says—or rather, the words exist where they did not before, because the dragon wills them to. Its mouth never even opens. Show-off.

“No,” says Sheogorath with a smile. “But I’m everywhere else. Why not?”

ECLOSING ONE, HALF-DIGESTED THING. YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE.

“I belong where I am. I am everywhere but here. Now I am here, so now I belong.” She starts forward.

The great head lowers to block her path, eyes ticking brightly. WHO ARE YOU?

“Sheogorath,” she says, as her mouth tries to form another name. “The eyes want to see; I brought them to have a look. They’re here, aren’t they?”

THEY ARE ALL HERE, SAVE THOSE WHO ARE NOT. The dragon blinks, sidewise. She mimics, just to see if she can. YOU ARE NOT.

“But I am,” points out Sheogorath. “I’m right here. As you see.” And then, from her mouth but Before, “Please.”

DOES IT HURT?

“Oh, no; I’m done hurting now, thank you.” She tilts her head. “Did it hurt when you ate him? Was it—the same?”

YOU UNREMEMBER THE ASCENT. IT DID NOT HAPPEN THAT WAY, IN YOUR TIME.

“Didn’t it? Opened your great big jaws and then snip-snap! Just you, and no more of him. I was there, you know. I saw you.” Sheogorath taps her temple solemnly. “But that’s fine. It doesn’t have to be the priest. I don’t think the eyes want to see him anyway, the liar. Someone else, just to look. The last one told me ‘closure’—or it might turn out ‘closer’; I haven’t decided yet how it went—”

WHO ARE YOU?

“I told you already. Pay attention.”

SPEAK TRUE OR NOT AT ALL IN THIS PLACE. The wings unfurl—the dragon blots out the void above, rumbling dangerously. AND YOU CANNOT. YOU WILL LEAVE, UNWINDING ONE.

Sheogorath does not move. She listens, instead; it’s becoming increasingly difficult to pin down the Before thoughts, the ones bound to the name she doesn’t use anymore. It was the Before that wanted to be here, where the blurred faces came. The words of the dragon are, she identifies, making the Before thoughts sad.

“I see,” she says knowingly, and discards the sadness, as she has done. “We’re done with all that, you know.”

She gives a sweeping bow. The realization flits through on butterfly wings: Sheogorath doesn’t remember why she came here. Just to see if she could, more likely than not. She’s always doing things without a why. “Well. I have places to be that aren’t here, and better conversation partners to engage.”

The dragon only looks at her, silent.

This is the correct way—the only way—for it to end, of course, she acknowledges as she turns: no matter how else it went, the dragon was always silent, at the end.

But this is a Before thought, so Sheogorath puts it away.