![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Bending of the Light: His Majesty's Cat - Troublemaker
In the series: Thrall, Disbelief, Ghost
Jubal-lun-Sul is a salt merchant. He's been told that his caste, the salt merchants, have fought with a messiah complex since the founding of their house. It's in their blood, so the tale goes.
There's more to it than that, he feels this one in his soul, in his bones, in the way his tail breaks when the phantom-wheel rolls on it and snap-mends with the blink of a star-array. The messiah complex might be in his salt merchant blood, but the tenderly-worn grooves of rebellion on his bones? The curious drive to climb everything he can seize in daggered fingers? All in the moonsweet, forbidden blood he carefully hides away.
Jubal-lun-Sul is also not authorized to go Up. His family is, they're important, progenitors, one of the first Velothiid-born, but all those honors aren't extended to him. Not yet, no, he has to earn what's due to him.
As if they see the other blood that runs in him. But they shouldn't. He hides the mooncat in him cleverly, and his mother was one of the cats that mirror them perfectly, impossible to distinguish from a dunmer, she even trained her Ll'esweyr accent out, dropped the Velothiid accent in, careful not to use the discontinued Nirnic Dunmeris.
Jubal-lun-Sul is scheming to commit a grave crime today, and if the High Alma Jaroon catches wind of it... Well, he won't like it. His heart beats with anticipation, and he feels a shiver drag like the edge of an ebony blade down his midline. He looks at his warded mirror, verifies the anti-scrying runes are all still etched in place, that no Digital has poked and prodded the glyphs off the polished brass. No eyes on him.
Carefully, Jubal shrugs the layers of his bat-tiger kimono off, to hang them on the wall in proper vestment order, and plucks a wire-clamp from the charm-trapped, scuffed box. He smuggled it in from his extra-illegal visit to Ll'esweyr, some vestigial Nerevaris myth rewoven into a storage repository. The Nirnic wire-clamp makes for a good hair-comb, holds his long, dark grey hair up and out of the way as he starts to run a damp mossloaf over his skin.
He washes off the dust-powder to reveal the stripes, same-colored as his hair, that run across his neck, his back, his shoulders, his upper arms, his outer thighs. He unravels his smallclothes and the alteration enchantment it holds, and his tail sways as it stops being a phantom limb and regains reality and substance. He stretches, raising his hands up and pushing himself onto his toes, and groans with pleasure as his spine and tail joints pop, and his claws slide slightly out of their nailbeds.
Bit by bit, Jubal removes the -lun-Sul from his nymic. Another forbidden practice, but it's not like someone will see it under the gear he's going to wear when he takes the illegal pilgrimage tunnels, right? He glances at his reflection in the warded mirror, and it stares back at him with blue cat eyes and a mischievous grin.
Jubal removes the hair-clamp, letting his hair tumble back down over his shoulders, and starts pulling travel-weave clothes, wyrm-leather gauntlets, blackmail greaves, [annuled]silk footwraps, dustrobes and dustscarves, a deprecated chitin cuirass, and resin goggles out of the myth-box. He's been scheming to get out and see what's Up for over a year now, carefully acquiring his items in ways that no one would care or track. It's cobbled together, it will get him in deep shit if he's caught, but he'll be indistinguishable from the other illegal pilgrims who try to travel to the surface outside of Landfall season.
Besides, where would the fun be in an adventure, where would the challenge be in the climb, if there wasn't a good-sized risk to sweeten the excitement?
(He's going to get himself in trouble, thinking like that.)
Jubal very vividly remembers thinking that, later, tail all bristled under his dustrobes, claws out to bite into the moonflesh as he clambers Up, Up, UP with catswift agility, pupils round like moons and his blood hissing delight in his ears. The Worm chases after him in the tunnel, biting and snapping at his tailtip, and each moment he outruns the monster is another victory that drums in him, sugar-sweet even if he pays for it in sweat and salt on his lips.
The tunnel intersects with an official pilgrimage tunnel, full of hide-holes the Worm can't fit in, but he runs on instinct forward instead of ducking into these pockets of safety. He launches into a wild run, as if he was in another story, where a wife chased her fleeing husband like a roaring alit. The Worm is no roaring wife, not half as terrifying, but Jubal doesn't want to be caught at least as much as he doesn't want the chase to end yet.
(He may not be right in the head, but this is the best time of his entire life so far.)
Jubal-lun-Sul is a salt merchant. He's been told that his caste, the salt merchants, have fought with a messiah complex since the founding of their house. It's in their blood, so the tale goes.
There's more to it than that, he feels this one in his soul, in his bones, in the way his tail breaks when the phantom-wheel rolls on it and snap-mends with the blink of a star-array. The messiah complex might be in his salt merchant blood, but the tenderly-worn grooves of rebellion on his bones? The curious drive to climb everything he can seize in daggered fingers? All in the moonsweet, forbidden blood he carefully hides away.
Jubal-lun-Sul is also not authorized to go Up. His family is, they're important, progenitors, one of the first Velothiid-born, but all those honors aren't extended to him. Not yet, no, he has to earn what's due to him.
As if they see the other blood that runs in him. But they shouldn't. He hides the mooncat in him cleverly, and his mother was one of the cats that mirror them perfectly, impossible to distinguish from a dunmer, she even trained her Ll'esweyr accent out, dropped the Velothiid accent in, careful not to use the discontinued Nirnic Dunmeris.
Jubal-lun-Sul is scheming to commit a grave crime today, and if the High Alma Jaroon catches wind of it... Well, he won't like it. His heart beats with anticipation, and he feels a shiver drag like the edge of an ebony blade down his midline. He looks at his warded mirror, verifies the anti-scrying runes are all still etched in place, that no Digital has poked and prodded the glyphs off the polished brass. No eyes on him.
Carefully, Jubal shrugs the layers of his bat-tiger kimono off, to hang them on the wall in proper vestment order, and plucks a wire-clamp from the charm-trapped, scuffed box. He smuggled it in from his extra-illegal visit to Ll'esweyr, some vestigial Nerevaris myth rewoven into a storage repository. The Nirnic wire-clamp makes for a good hair-comb, holds his long, dark grey hair up and out of the way as he starts to run a damp mossloaf over his skin.
He washes off the dust-powder to reveal the stripes, same-colored as his hair, that run across his neck, his back, his shoulders, his upper arms, his outer thighs. He unravels his smallclothes and the alteration enchantment it holds, and his tail sways as it stops being a phantom limb and regains reality and substance. He stretches, raising his hands up and pushing himself onto his toes, and groans with pleasure as his spine and tail joints pop, and his claws slide slightly out of their nailbeds.
Bit by bit, Jubal removes the -lun-Sul from his nymic. Another forbidden practice, but it's not like someone will see it under the gear he's going to wear when he takes the illegal pilgrimage tunnels, right? He glances at his reflection in the warded mirror, and it stares back at him with blue cat eyes and a mischievous grin.
Jubal removes the hair-clamp, letting his hair tumble back down over his shoulders, and starts pulling travel-weave clothes, wyrm-leather gauntlets, blackmail greaves, [annuled]silk footwraps, dustrobes and dustscarves, a deprecated chitin cuirass, and resin goggles out of the myth-box. He's been scheming to get out and see what's Up for over a year now, carefully acquiring his items in ways that no one would care or track. It's cobbled together, it will get him in deep shit if he's caught, but he'll be indistinguishable from the other illegal pilgrims who try to travel to the surface outside of Landfall season.
Besides, where would the fun be in an adventure, where would the challenge be in the climb, if there wasn't a good-sized risk to sweeten the excitement?
(He's going to get himself in trouble, thinking like that.)
Jubal very vividly remembers thinking that, later, tail all bristled under his dustrobes, claws out to bite into the moonflesh as he clambers Up, Up, UP with catswift agility, pupils round like moons and his blood hissing delight in his ears. The Worm chases after him in the tunnel, biting and snapping at his tailtip, and each moment he outruns the monster is another victory that drums in him, sugar-sweet even if he pays for it in sweat and salt on his lips.
The tunnel intersects with an official pilgrimage tunnel, full of hide-holes the Worm can't fit in, but he runs on instinct forward instead of ducking into these pockets of safety. He launches into a wild run, as if he was in another story, where a wife chased her fleeing husband like a roaring alit. The Worm is no roaring wife, not half as terrifying, but Jubal doesn't want to be caught at least as much as he doesn't want the chase to end yet.
(He may not be right in the head, but this is the best time of his entire life so far.)