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After a strange set of circumstances involving Ruk’un dropping a hot cast-iron pot on his foot, Mirzan dropping an entire basket full of fish into the fire pit while trying to catch said cast-iron pot, and Washed-in-Hues having to stamp out the ensuing raging blaze with her best blanket, Seeks-by-Night and Rali’na have been sent off to catch something to re-make dinner.
Rali’na, bundled up in his many layers as always, is not exactly pleased to be going hunting on an empty stomach. Hunger claws at his abdomen, and he can tell Seeks-by-Night isn’t pleased either, judging by how attentively Seeks is sniffing the air, looking for something to catch. Neither have eaten since noon, and it was now swiftly creeping up on eight o’clock. The caravan had situated themselves in a patch of wilderness near Solitude, and seeing as it was late autumn, Rali’na didn’t have much hope of finding anything of real substance. Seeks, however, was more optimistic.
“Everything needs to eat.” Seeks muses, his voice gruff and blunt with impatience, “One of the few pleasures a person can indulge in without guilt.”
“I don’t know, I’ve met quite a few guilty eaters.” Rali’na retorts, pulling up a cloth he’d situated under his hood over his nose. Too damn cold.
“They’re fools. No point in feeling guilty for keeping yourself alive.” Seeks waves his hand in the air briefly, as if dissipating smoke.
“Come, I smell fresh water. River nearby. Fish.” Seeks grasps Rali’na by the arm for a few moments and leads him northwest, letting go once Rali’na pulls away and follows close behind.
“Well, maybe they don’t want to be alive at all.” Rali’na mumbles, “I wouldn’t blame them.”
“If they didn’t want to be alive, they would kill themselves. Not waste away feeling guilty.” Seeks reasons, “Careful, large root sticking out of the ground.” He adds, hopping over a gnarled root, Rali’na copying him in turn.
“It isn’t that simple, though. It’s hard to kill yourself.” Rali’na replies, somewhat confused at Seeks’s bluntness.
“No, it’s not. I could do it right now, pull out my dagger and just kkrk! But I don’t, because I like to live.” Seeks stopped walking for a moment, turning to look Rali’na in the eye,
“Tell me. Why do you think it’s hard to kill yourself?”
Rali’na didn’t really know what to say. Rage burned up from his stomach to his face, turning it a deep red.
“You don’t know what it’s like at all! Everybody says that it’s easy! That I must secretly want to live just because it’s hard to kill myself, and I kept failing!” Rali’na huffs, stepping around Seeks, “It’s not easy at all. If you’d have tried to do it you’d know.”
A scaled hand reaches and clasps around Rali’na’s shoulder, “But I have, Rali’na.”
“It isn’t the killing that’s hard, it’s making that decision in the first place.” Seeks steps beside Rali’na, his hand still on the boy’s shoulder, “And you’re clearly having a hard time making that decision.”
“What, are you going to give me a pep talk? I don’t want a pep talk.” Rali’na grumbles, his brows furrowed.
“No. That won’t do any good. You’ve been failing over and over, and you’re very sour about it. I want you to tell me why you want to win, and why you haven’t won yet.”
Rali’na thought for a moment, long enough for Seeks to let go of his shoulder and continue walking toward the river. The two walk in silence for a few minutes, before reaching the riverbed. Rali’na could hear the water hitting some rocks downstream, and could see a few fish jumping up out of the water as they swam against the current. Seeks starts to take off his armor, tossing his cloak and plate aside, until he’s dressed more suitably to start dredging through the river and toss unlucky fish to Rali’na, whose situated himself on the riverbank with Seeks’s dagger to kill the fish before putting them in a basket.
“When I was 14, I tried to freeze to death, but I got saved by a Khajiit caravan.” Rali’na mumbles, “I wanted to die. I’d decided to die, but it was taken from me.”
“Do you,” Seeks starts, stopping for a moment to launch a particularly large fish toward Rali’na, “Resent them for saving you?”
“No.” Rali’na replies immediately, catching the fish, “I’m glad I didn’t die then. I had more things to be doing.”
Another fish lands in Rali’na’s lap, and Rali’na expertly kills it with a cut to it’s neck. Before it can bleed all over him, it’s set aside in the basket, with the rest of the fish. Then another, then another, filling time as Rali’na tries to find the courage to divulge more to Seeks.
“When I was 15, I fell in with an orphan gang, and I tried to kill myself while the leader watched.” Rali’na continued, “His lackey stopped me, but only because the leader wanted to do more with me before he did away with me.”
Seeks stops, looking over at Rali’na, “That’s fucked up.” He says, a perturbed look on his face.
“...Yeah.” Rali’na replies, feeling awkward, “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. This is exactly what you need to be hearing.” Seeks catches another fish without even looking, tossing it over, “Do you wish that guy hadn’t stopped you?”
Rali’na thought for a moment, “...No. No, I don’t think so. I didn’t want to die in front of that useless, lying, no-good—” Rali’na is cut off by a jet of fish blood shooting right into his face. Yelping, Rali’na quickly threw the fish back into the water on instinct, and the still-alive creature raced away.
“That fish is you.” Seeks hums, watching the trail of blood the fish leaves as it swims desperately away, “That fish almost died, and it’s probably not the first time it’s been caught either. Looked old. It wasn’t given a choice, I caught it out of the river and you cut it, without even asking.”
“What’s your point?” Rali’na sputters, wiping his face of the blood.
“You’ve never actually been able to make the choice to kill yourself or not. You’ve always been saved or stopped, at the whims of everyone else.” Seeks steps out of the water, “Should be enough fish for one dinner.”
Seeks sits down across from Rali’na, pulling the basket full of fish toward him, and takes his dagger back from Rali’na. He starts to cut the heads of the fish off, swallowing each one whole.
“Tell me, do you want to die?”
“Yeah.” Rali’na replies immediately, as if a reflex.
“You do? Then do it.” Seeks hums, flipping his dagger around to offer the handle to Rali’na, “It’s your choice. If you do it, I’m not going to stop you. And if anyone at the caravan asks, I’ll tell them exactly what happened. I’ll deal with the consequences.”
Rali’na stares at the dagger for a long moment, before grasping his cold fingers around the handle. He pulls his hood off, the cold nipping at the tips of his ears. He pulls off his face covering, now exposing the entirely of his neck. Meanwhile, Seeks continues to bite the heads off of the fish, swallowing them.
Rali’na holds the tip of the dagger to his Adam’s apple, and sits there for a moment.
Does he want to die?
Rali’na looks up at Seeks-by-Night.
Seeks-by-Night swallows another fish head.
A small bead of blood drips down Rali’na’s neck, and soaks into the collar of his poncho.
A flash of images appears in Rali’na’s mind. Tut’hunli smiles at him, Hues ruffles his hair, Mirzan lifts him up onto his shoulders, Green-Eyes presents him with a shirt freshly fixed, Ruk’un holds out a bowl full to the brim, and…
Seeks-by-Night looks him in the eye.
Tears, without Rali’na’s saying-so, start to pour out of Rali’na’s tortured eyes. The dagger falls into Rali’na’s lap, and the boy grasps his cloak tightly, smashing his face into the fabric to hide himself away. His face burns hot, despite the cold forcing him to shiver. He can hear himself sobbing, but it doesn’t feel like it’s coming out of his numbed, scratchy throat.
Seeks-by-Night leans forward, taking Rali’na’s hood from the boy and tucking it back over his head, adjusting it so it fits around his head.
“Let’s go have dinner.” Seeks hums, “Everything needs to eat.”