Episode 1: Outlanders

  Chapter 4

  School ended for the day. Daria pretended to read as she watched Quinn plead with Synda, her sister probably spinning all kinds of excuses in some desperate attempt to get back in her tormentor's good graces. Quinn never had trouble making friends. Why was she so fixated on this particular Dunmer?

  Probably because Quinn was as alone, scared, and confused as Daria was. Jane at least felt like a friend by virtue of explaining the place to Daria in a way that made some sense. Could she be trusted, though? If Jane was planning something, there'd be no way for Daria to find out. Not in Morrowind.

  She dismissed this as unlikely. Jane was Dunmer, but she was also a fellow outlander. That put them in the same benighted social stratum. Synda, on the other hand, was an insider.

  Quinn finally gave up and left the school, with head held high but lips quivering. Daria caught up to her and Quinn's lips suddenly straightened, her eyes hard. Of course she blamed Daria for all this, but they maintained a stony silence as they walked home. Inside, the odor of spilled kwama egg lingered in the air. Quinn gagged the moment she stepped across the threshold. No one else was home at the moment. Daria assumed that her mother was meeting some clients.

  Putting her hand over her mouth and nose, Daria braved the kitchen. Dad had cleaned up as best he could, but smears of egg yolk still streaked the tables and floor. He'd tossed the ruined egg in the metal wash basin. Trying to ignore the worsening stench, she looked into the jagged opening made by her father's clumsiness. Sure enough, some kind of gray and fleshy thing coiled up at the bottom of the egg, encased in filmy yolk and other fluids.

  She remembered Jane's comment about the larva. Not quite believing what she was doing, Daria went upstairs and grabbed some clean linens. Taking them back downstairs, she laid them on the table next to the sink, still trying not to breathe too deeply. She rolled up her sleeves, ignored her fear, and then plunged both her arms into the egg. Her hands broke through the cold and oily film, fingers probing the slimy larval flesh underneath. Daria's gorge rose. Her cheeks puffed out.

  If her glasses fell in there...

  Daria gritted her teeth. Eyes watered from the smell and the feel, but she focused. At last, she found a harder surface. Digging in with her heels, she pulled, the larva loosening with a series of wet pops. She lifted it out and moments later found herself cradling a curled pinkish-gray... well, it looked more like a centipede the size of her arm than anything else. A translucent, segmented shell ran along the back, and a half-dozen tightly curled legs flanked the underbelly.

  Daria Morgendorffer: Insect Midwife, she thought. She decided she'd stick with her savant training for a while longer.

  Daria laid it out on the linens and wrapped the thing up as best she could. Then she walked over to the pump and worked the lever to splash water on her slimy forearms, and then mixed in some soap for a second rinse.

  Placing the scrib in a canvas bag, she headed off to Jane's.

  *********

  The endless adobe rows of Labor Town served as a shabby reflection of the Commercial District across the river. Workmen and porters crowded the streets cheek to jowl, trudging under the watchful eyes of bonemold-armored Hlaalu guards. Paupers sat cross-legged on threadbare rugs spread out across the flagstones, tracing the sign of the Tribunal on their sunken chests whenever a coin clinked into the waiting earthen bowl.

  Furred Khajiit and scaled Argonians roamed purposefully in small groups, the Dunmer majority keeping as much distance as they could but letting them pass without comment. Faces looked harder there, worn down by work and cheap food. And cheap alcohol. Daria smelled it in the air, fighting a losing but never totally lost battle against the sour bug stench and the more quotidian odor of trash.

  Not that different from the Commercial District, she reminded herself.

  Daria still carried the canvas bag with the scrib inside. The weight of the thing dragged on her skinny arms. She held it closer to her body as she navigated the narrower streets of Labor Town. Some of the people here looked hungry enough to grab it from her. Was it still good? Did scribs go bad if left in a broken egg for too long? She had no idea what counted as fresh. Jane would know, she was sure.

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  Daria found her destination where Jane had said it would be, a few rows east of the Odai River. The apartment looked like its neighbors, being a two-story adobe building with an exterior staircase running up to a cramped balcony where Jane sat in front of an easel, her red eyes watchful and a paintbrush gripped in her right hand. A wooden sign hung outside the front door below her, marked with what looked like a barrel. Going by the description Jane had given her at lunch that day, it had to be the sign of J'dash, the Khajiit junk merchant who served as Jane's landlord.

  Jane said nothing as Daria climbed the steps. Getting closer, Daria saw what her friend had created: an image of a woman painted in sharp black angles, her body contorted into a spiral, and her exaggerated teeth clenched in a rictus grin. Fear and pain leapt straight from the image and into Daria's head. She'd never seen anything like it before.

  "Uh, I hope I'm not interrupting," she said, speaking loudly to be heard over the crowd below.

  Jane looked over her shoulder and smiled at Daria.

  "Oh! I wasn't expecting you. Well, make yourself at home. I usually paint outside so the fumes don't get to me."

  "Always sensible." Daria again felt a faint chill looking at the image. All the artwork she'd ever seen consisted of stately portraits and landscapes. Jane's was different. Pure feeling in paint.

  Noticing that Daria stared, Jane shifted in her seat. "It's a little experiment. Don't worry, I know exactly how to capture the figure of Man or Mer. But sometimes I like to practice with something less conventional."

  "No, I like it," Daria said.

  "You do?"

  "Yeah. I've never seen anything like this before."

  "My attempt to do something new," Jane said. "Traditional Dunmer art has bold black lines and lots of angles, but it's almost all religious or historical. What you see on this canvas is what I see whenever I look at people like Synda or Director Lli."

  "Twisted people going slowly insane under the weight of their hypocrisy and cruelty?"

  "See, you get it! Not that I have anything against religious art. All respect to ALMSIVI, of course," Jane said, briefly bowing her head, "but I think that the Dunmer gods and saints are probably sick of people making the same images of them over and over again."

  "Do you sell these?"

  "I wish. Like I said before, I mostly sell portraits to rich merchants. Gallus got me started."

  "Gallus?" Daria asked, noting the name as an Imperial one.

  "An outlander art dealer in the Commercial District. He introduced me to a lot of my clients, and he's the one who pulled strings to get me into the academy. It's not like I'd have had the money otherwise. Stuff like what I'm painting now is what I do for fun. When I have time."

  "It's unique."

  "Too bad unique doesn't sell," Jane said. "Here, let's go inside. It's starting to get cold."

  Jane opened the door to her apartment, and Daria followed. What looked like all of Jane's worldly possessions jostled for space inside. Pigments and canvases filled up a full half of the room, with other samples of her bold and bizarre personal art laid out on a narrow bench. A rug and pillow served as a bed, spread out next to stacks of neatly folded clothes. Daria barely had enough room to stand. Jane motioned for her to sit down on the bed. When Daria did, Jane moved aside some paints and rested herself on a tiny wooden bench.

  A single narrow window let in the ruddy light of the setting sun. The light fell on a small and triangular stone next to the bed, its surface decorated with a carved robed figure pointing ahead.

  "It's a shrine to St. Veloth," Jane explained. "A pioneer who led my ancestors to Morrowind, always searching for something new. I guess I could relate a little bit."

  "I didn't know you were religious," Daria said.

  Jane smiled. "Not exactly. See, Dunmer religion's different from others. Our gods are right there in the flesh. You don't need to have religion to believe in something if it's standing in front of you."

  "Have they ever stood in front of you?" Daria knew about Morrowind's three living gods, though all the documents she'd read described them as nothing more than powerful sorcerers.

  Jane's piety disappointed her, somehow. The Tribunal Temple didn't think much of outlanders like Jane, so why would their supposed gods be any more accepting?

  "No, they haven't. But my dad saw Almalexia make an appearance at a Midwinter's Feast down in Mournhold. He said when she spoke, you could feel the presence of all the Dunmer generations past in that very spot, back to Resdayn and beyond." Jane's lips twisted into a regretful half-smile. "This was before I was born. I know it probably sounds kind of crazy, but I believe him."

  More likely, her father had just seen some Dunmer priestess painted in gold and covered in jewels. Daria decided to change the subject.

  "I brought you a gift," she said. "But I don't know if it's still good."

  Jane's expression brightened. "By all means, show me!"

  Daria opened the bag, holding her face away to avoid the smell. "It's the scrib from the egg I was telling you about. I don't think anyone in my family's brave enough to eat it, but I thought you might appreciate it."

  Jane gasped, her hands shaking in anticipation. "Appreciate it? Daria, you just made my day! Hell, my entire week. And yes, that's definitely still good. Here, let's take this downstairs. I bet J'dash will let me use his kitchen if we share a bit."

  "Wait, if we share a bit?"

  "You're eating this, Daria, whether you want to or not!"

  Musical Closer -