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“It’ll rain soon,” Miraak says under his breath, eyes up on the darkening sky. He seems distracted by it—they had encountered snow, sun, and the sea for most of their travels. Only now have they experienced rain together—his first time since his imprisonment. “Look.”
Arpina was already looking, though more at him than the sky. She eyes the dark, blooming clouds overhead with unease. “I can see that,” she says, tone short. She doesn’t mean to, but she can’t help it—force of habit to keep quiet in uncomfortable situations.
Miraak glances down at her, seemingly surprised. He doesn’t say anything, though, and they keep walking through the woods of Western Falkreath. They were intending to head to Lake Ilinalta to stay for the night, but clearly, they would be detained by the poor weather. It’s not the first time this has happened, but she’ll be damned if, for the first time in a few years, it’s rain stopping her.
Arpina shifts uneasily but continues walking next to him. She doesn’t want to seem scared, not at all. After all, it’s only rain. Nothing more, nothing less, right?
There is nothing (everything) to be afraid of.
It’s not even ten minutes when the rain is lashing down like whips, mud spraying up Miraak and Arpina’s heels as they seek shelter from the rain under a tree. It’s a bit of a reprieve, thankfully—rain no longer hitting them head-on. Still, it doesn’t make the situation any less worse. Arpina shivers, already soaked to the bone, wet hair clinging to her nape uncomfortably. Lucky, lucky her—she’d cast a charm on their bags to keep them safe from any sort of weather. She sets her bag down, rolling her shoulders back to ease the ache—and then a thunderclap cracks through the sky. Arpina flinches so hard she pulls a muscle in her shoulder.
“A storm,” Miraak comments, though more to himself than anything else. “It has been a while.”
“I can imagine,” Arpina mutters, and leans back against the trunk, swallowing back the anxiety settling into her bones. It’s like meeting an old enemy. Someone who was once a friend, their betrayal filling you with anxious, angry dread. She closes her eyes for a second, hoping it will ease her fears—it does not, and it only serves to heighten the rest of her senses.
She tries to keep a shudder down, but it shakes right through her and thr only thing she can do in the moment to calm herself is undoing her soaked-through braids and tying it up, smoothing wet hair away from her face. As she does so, she runs the heel of her palm over her eyes—the rain does well in hiding any tears that may have fallen. It doesn’t do much, but at least it’s something. Even under the tree, she feels terribly exposed.
Gritting her teeth, Arpina sets herself to complete and utter silence.
Another thunderclap. It’s dizzyingly loud, and lightning flashes so brightly, so closely she forgets to breathe as she chokes up with horror. She can see it, the steaming, blackened earth in the middle of the road, the spot they had vacated in favor of the tree.
Arpina swallows back the lump in her throat, mouth dry. Her fingers are so cold, she can’t quite feel them. The lightning—light and darkness swim in and out of her vision, creeping at the edges and swirling before her eyes. Too close. The lightning was far too close. The last time it was that close, it was—
“Fine!” she screams, holding her hands out as she stares up at the gloomy sky, lightning flashing and lighting up the darkness. The scream fades into a hysterical laugh, not at all happy and edging into insane. “Take the damned sun, too! I can’t have anything decent, can I?”
No. Clearly not.
Arpina is tired and utterly exhausted, angry and mad and starving for some control over her life. Maybe she has had too much of it. Pushing anyone past the breaking point would be merciless. To strike them down then is, in essence, murder.
She never does find out if it was fate or a god that delivers that bolt of lightning to tear into her. That flashing, thousand-degree heat that burns her scars into her, the blinding light that had seared a permanent mark on her heart. It had left her stumbling and helpless.
“Arpina.” It is the clarity of his voice that pulls her from that forceful reverie.
She turns to Miraak, face tight in an attempt to keep herself steady as the storm thunders through them. “I—yes?” she asks, voice brittle and weak. She doesn’t sound like herself—there is the absence of the carefree air, no casual note to her tone. Instead, she is tightly wound up, curling her fears—and along with that the rest of her spirit—into a little ball.
Arpina looks up at Miraak, tries to keep her gaze steady to his.
Green. She likes how bright his eyes are. Not dark, nothing like lightning. Green, like magic, like the spring earth.
“Are you al—” he asks, and his voice is soft. It is soft, gentle as though sharpness would break her. Like she is fragile.
Maybe she is. It doesn’t mean she’d like to hear it. But the placid cadence of his voice just tears right through the dam of words she’d been trying to keep in.
“You’ve been hit my those spells, before, right? Shock spells? The ones that are like—the ones like lightning,” Arpina interrupts suddenly, as though desperate to explain, like being unable to speak will kill her. “It hurts, doesn’t it? It hits you, it’s hot, you can’t move—when I was a kid, I got hit with one of those. You—you don’t realize how bad you’re hit until you see after, you get these scars that look like lightning where you’re hit—if it’s magic, it fades, but—”
She only registers the wide-eyed worry on Miraak’s face now, but even as she does so, even as he says her name, asks her to slow to down, to explain clearly—she can’t.
“Arpina,” he says, voice echoing strangely. The rain is quieter. Muted. “You’re cold. Come here.” She doesn’t move immediately, but there is no resistance when he gently tugs her to his chest.
“The scars, they’re like branches, like branching lines. Right in the skin you can see it. I was bruised for—bruised for weeks and I—”
“Arpina,” he repeats for the third time. “Say it.”
“I was struck. By lightning,” she gasps out, dizzy from the breathlessness of panic. “Right—not magic, no—right from the sky. It hurt, I was alone, and I—”
“I won’t let you get hurt again,” Miraak interrupts, fierce in his conviction. Disbelief suspended—he did not even question her words. It quiets her. “You’re right here. In my—in my arms. You’re safer than you were then.”
Arpina takes in sharp, shallow breaths, slowing the pace her fear had set her heart to. “I’m safe,” she tells herself sharply, forcing the words out of her mouth for it to pierce right back through her. “I’m fine.”
“You’re safe,” Miraak echoes, quiet. Soft. It is a distinct contrast to her forcefulness. He is cajoling, gentle even. She would not have believed it had he not been saying the words to her as the storm fell upon the rest of the world. It is quiet suddenly. There is no storm here. “You are fine.”