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The Conclave had been defeated and the dreugh now patrolled to keep the Coral Heart safe. The threat seemed to have passed, but Lieutenant Galyn could not leave. She had requested of her superiors to be stationed at the Coral Heart as a constant guard. They had not thought another attack likely, with the Conclave so thoroughly defeated. At the initial denial, she had unbuckled her sword and placed it on the table.
“Then I must resign. I will guard the Heart myself, without your backing, if need be.” Her superiors had glanced around the table at one another, sheepishly. She had helped thwart the Conclave gain control of a Brother of Strife. It would look bad on the Pact for such a hero to leave. The citizenry needed its figureheads to believe in.
Captain Noris handed Galyn’s sword back to her. It was so heavy, heavier than she had remembered it just a few moments ago, as she reattached the scabbard to her belt. She packed a kit, no different from the ones she packed for deployment. No personal items, only rations and necessities - flint and tinder, a whetstone, bandages. Any sentiment she had was already locked away inside the cave with the Heart.
The tide had gone out when she began her trek down to the cave. She walked across the estuary field, shells and sand crunching beneath her well-worn boots. The dreugh, mandibles and chitin clacking as they ambled about, paid her no mind. The Heart told them she was no threat. She wondered if Sings-with-Reeds told the Heart that she was a friend.
The coral covered the walls of the cave, bioluminescing in the dark. The Dunmer woman’s eyes adjusted to the soft orange glow, although she hardly needed sight to locate the Argonian she was searching for. The Heart itself was massive, glowing in the center of the room, softly expanding and collapsing, pulsating like its namesake. The coral was growing slowly, by less than centimeters but still enough to tell. Sings-with-Reeds was imprisoned in the center, the Coral embracing and growing around her. Sings-with-Reeds would never have the luxury of being alone again.
Lieutenant Galyn nearly called out to her. She could not tell if she was sleeping or conscious. She hoped she was alive. A half-sound, the start of a name, pleading, escaped her lips. Not much more than a sibilance. In the half-light, Sings-with-Reed’s head jerked up, and looked right at her. Galyn couldn’t quite tell, but perhaps the Argonian’s lips curved back in a toothy smile.
“Lieutenant Galyn, is that you?” Sings-with-Reed’s voice was quieter than normal, cracking on upswings.
“Who else would it be, my friend?” Galyn stepped forward, treading further into the cave.
A small laugh from Sings-with-Reed echoed on the cavern walls.
“I have been waiting for the Pact to send in someone to question me, to try and control the Heart. A visit from the Ordinators, perhaps?” Sings-with Reeds paused, and Galyn thought she heard a sharp intake of breath. “That is not a task they have given to you now, is it?”
Galyn was close enough now that she could clearly make out Sings-with Reeds and the way the Coral encompassed her. Fronds and tendrils covered her limbs, and wrapped around her torso, holding her upright. Her hands and feet were completely enveloped, the rest of her was clear enough that Galyn could see the way the coral burrowed into her skin. Her arms were outstretched above herself, and Galyn tried not to look too long at the places where fingers had once been, the stumps that had erupted with coral nodules. Galyn almost wished Sings-with-Reeds was more enveloped, so as not to have to see the way the Argonian’s scales had buckled and been pushed aside to make way for the Coral. Her scales had been so lovely, once.
“No, I am not here to question you. I am here to keep you safe.”
Sings-with-Reeds blinked once, slowly.
“The Coral is already keeping me safe, my dear friend.”
Galyn nodded, and left the Argonian, not wanting to look at her broken scales anymore. She wondered if the Coral would extend its tendrils into even Sings-with-Reed’s bones.
Lieutenant Galyn set up camp in the portion of the cave that was darkest, farthest away from the Coral’s growth. In the dim light, she could make out rounder shapes than the coral heads. Sings-with-Reed’s eggs, given in offering. The Coral had grown through the membrane of the shells, but slowly, over time, so the contents of the eggs did not spill out. The coral had grown inside, into the embryo and yolk, becoming something else with the sleeping beings inside. Galyn shuddered, and looked away, intent on making her camp, all the focus of a soldier.
For months, Lieutenant Galyn kept up some sort of watch. There was no need, ultimately, as Sings-with-Reed had said. The dreugh were there, and the Conclave had moved on to other schemes. Sings-with-Reed needed no guardian.
Galyn hated the cave and the coral. At the same time, a selfish hope grew inside her chest. A hope that the war would go on, that the lines of conflict would continue to be close by. She could not imagine that her superiors would allow her flimsy positioning in the cave much longer, should the war front be pushed further back. She did not want to leave Sings-with-Reed alone with the Coral. Every day the growth overtook her body a little more - Sings-with-Reed swore it was a symbiosis, but Galyn suspected it was parasitic. If she was not there to speak to Sings-with-Reeds, to keep her awake, to remind her of who she was, what was to stop the Heart from consuming her entirely?
Galyn finished up her morning routine. She drank the last of her coffee, extinguished the small fire she used to make her breakfast. The coral nearest her paled briefly at the smoke as she kicked dirt over the fire, before snapping back to a vibrant orange. Sings-with-Reed’s scales used to be so vibrant.
Galyn would need to do physical training, and go on patrol later. Stop by the nearest Pact camp for more supplies, desperately low on coffee as she was. Keep up the charade that this was a real posting and not languished pining. But for now, Galyn went to greet Sings-with-Reed. And the Heart.
“Hello, are you awake?” Galyn tried to keep her voice tender, to keep creeping gruffness out of it. The Heart pulsed, and Sings-with-Reed tilted her head up. The tendrils attached to her neck rippled.
“Hello, my friend. Another day, is it?” Her voice had changed, gone even raspier than typical of an Argonian. A cough, a sickness left to fester, that had ravaged her throat. Galyn wondered how many coral branches now crisscrossed the inside of her companion’s throat.
“Another day indeed. How are you, are you well?” Galyn stopped just short of asking her if she is in pain.
“I had a lovely dream last night.” Sings-with-Reeds lips curled up in a smile. Her teeth were, mercifully, white and sharp as ever.
“Did you?”
Sings-with-Reeds nodded, the tendrils about her head bobbing with her movement. “Yes, Lieutenant. It was lovely. The Ashlands were blooming, once again. The trees, they were so lovely, and everywhere, their boughs heavy with purple leaves.” Sings-with-Reed’s tongue was heavy and black in her mouth, catching on her teeth and giving her a lisp she had never had before.
“Would you like some water?” Galyn interrupted her. She fished around at her belt for her waterskin and held it up to Sings-with-Reed’s lips.
“The Coral provides now, it is all right Galyn.”
“Your mouth is dry.” Galyn didn’t care about whatever symbiosis Sings-with-Reed thought was happening when she could see with her own eyes that she was being harmed.
“It does not hurt.” But Sings-with-Reed smiled again, and relented, parting her lips for Galyn to let the water flow over. She drank, and Galyn watched her.
“But the trees, Galyn, the trees.” The water had helped her, the slight lisp gone. “They bore fruit, unlike any fruit in Stonefalls. They were so sweet, and their insides always cool. You could eat them forever, and never want for anything else.”
“What did they look like?”
“Green. But translucent, like a hatchling’s scales. You could see the pink beneath it, and if you were not careful they would bruise so easily when you held them. They tasted so,” Sings-with-Reed closed her eyes, remembering. “Ah, Galyn, I can not describe the taste.”
Galyn’s mouth was tainted with salt. She washed her mouth out every morning, but the salt-taste lingered, on her lips, in her nose. All the ocean water beneath the cave. Drunk up by the coral. She wanted sweet things again.
Sings-with-Reed kept her eyes closed, the lids shifting as her eyes roamed. Lieutenant Galyn leaned in towards Sing-with-Reed, close enough that Sings-with-Reeds breath puffed across her cheeks. The Coral rumbled, quietly, in time with Sings-with-Reed’s lungs. Galyn hesitated, before kissing Sings-with-Reed’s snout, softly, gently, ignoring the coral beginning to grow out of her nostrils in fine red branches. The tendrils undulated with each breath Sing-with-Reed took.
“It does not hurt.” Sings-with-Reed’s eyes were still closed, so she could not see Galyn nod. But Galyn nodded, unable to find words. It had to hurt.
It would hurt the Sings-with-Reed Galyn used to know. The Sings-with-Reed who had only followed her onto the beach with shoes on, for fear of burning her feet. Galyn had waited, knee deep in the water, on that morning so long ago, for Sings-with-Reed to stop fussing. Sings-with-Reed, who was so delicate with her tail as they marched, not wanting the soft underbelly to snag and catch on the harsh terrain. Sings-with-Reed would be hurt by this, the coral nodules burrowing into her, bones hollowed out and made brittle like a birds’, the marrow sapped out to be replaced with coral. Sings-with-Reed would hurt from this, and Galyn worried that maybe she was not Sings-with-Reed anymore. Grown away, grown into something else entirely.
Galyn nodded again, and went to hug Sings-with-Reed. She couldn’t manage a hug as it should be anymore - there was no way to reach her arms around the Argonian, with the main trunk of the Coral Heart fused to Sings-with-Reed. Galyn could almost slip a hand behind Sings-with-Reed’s head, get a few fingers back to massage her neck. Her other arm she pressed against Sings-with-Reed’s stomach, cupping her side as best she could around the growths. Galyn stayed there, holding her, keeping her weight supported, even though there was no need. The Coral supported her. Sings-with-Reed was so frighteningly light.
It would be easy to cut Sings-with-Reed down from the coral, just a few hacks with her gladius. Galyn could carry her from the cave and lay her down in the sun, and Sings-with-Reed would be herself again, scales vibrant and glistening. Not dull and tepid.
Lieutenant Galyn does not let herself think beyond that part of the fantasy, pressing her face against Sings-with-Reed’s chest. Does not imagine bringing Sings-with-Reed to her small home in the city, laying her down for the first time in a long while in soft, clean sheets. Gently washing out the holes and scars where the coral grew through her body, bandaging up those gaping wounds and the two of them never thinking of the cave. Kissing the scar tissue where Sings-with-Reed’s scales would grow again, tender and new. Lieutenant Galyn does not dream about those things. Senie was gone, blasted away by Ash Mountain. She had no home to take Sings-with-Reed too, even if she was not encased in coral.
She wanted to snap the coral, to watch it wither and die, destroy its cave and rip up its roots so it turns brittle and white in the sunlight. If she made any move against it, the angry dreugh would carry her away, into darker tunnels brimming with salt, where they could tear and eat her limbs. And then who would keep Sings-With-Reed company, save for the bleached bones of the coral and the scuttling dreugh?
Sings-with-Reed kept her eyes closed, and hums. She tilted her head downwards slightly, the small spikes on the bottom of her jaw resting on the top of Galyn’s head. Galyn did not reach for her sword. She kept her hands on Sings-with-Reed, and they rise and fall steadily with the Argonian’s shallow breathing.
It hurt Galyn to hope that Sings-with-Reed was still Sings-with-Reed and not some new, foreign thing. If she was still herself, Galyn suspected she could not survive apart from the Coral anymore, so entwined was it in her body and blood. Sings-with-Reed had already sacrificed so much, Galyn could not make it worse by tearing away the coral that has replaced her bones.
Sings-with-Reed dreamed of trees. Galyn eyed Sings-with-Reed’s eggs, nestled in the Coral Heart and wondered what they would hatch into.