"Not more than you."

"Ouch! That hurts, old friend."

"We are not and have never been friends."

"Yet another stab through the heart."

(Ruby eats his food quietly while watching these two and wondering if they fuck. He had assumed neither of them were interested in men, and they don't seem particularly interested right now either, but... Something about old married couples.)

They continue to bicker for a while longer, and eventually Enthir has to return to the College for the night, at which point Nelacar shows Ruby to his room. "It's yours for twenty-four hours so stay here however long you like. In the morning you can have bread and milk for free, just ask at the bar, and if you need me my room is the door right next to it."

And then he leaves Ruby alone.

It doesn't take long for Ruby to fall asleep. It's not literally a matter of lying down and going out, but it's as close to that as he can get. He sleeps for a good ten hours and wakes up naturally, slowly, drifting easily out of some dream involving yelling at a fire until it put itself out.

He sits up slowly, blinking the last of his sleep away, and looks around, letting the memories wash over him. He's in a city called Winterhold, this is a room in the local inn. He found a corpse that might belong to some student that went missing from the local wizard college. He has no memory of his past, but he knows some magic, and when he first heard the name of this place he immediately got the instinctive feeling that he should go to the College. A mage from it should be meeting him and taking him there today.

In the morning.

It's probably morning? It's probably morning. So Enthir should be here, soon if not yet.

He washes his mouth with water from the jug next to his bed and spits it out into the chamberpot. Makes use of the chamberpot. Thanks the gods that he just got reminded of a cleaning spell. Not as good as an actual bath and all that but good enough to wash the rest of the taste of morning out of his mouth and make sure he is not... otherwise dirty like that.

ANYWAY let's stop thinking about human waste and go downstairs to get the bread Nelacar said was available and maybe meet with Enthir.

Enthir is indeed already there, drinking mulled wine, eating some sweet cheese and an apple, and reading a book. When he sees Ruby coming downstairs he offers him a nod and puts his book away.

"That's a very useful spell," Ruby says as he takes a seat at the table. "The one where you put stuff away."

"Deep Storage," he says. "Keeping all that we might need or collect on us would be very cumbersome."

The waitress from last night brings a basket with two loaves of bread, fresh from the oven.

Ruby taps the book he placed on the table (with the dagger resting on it) while he grabs the bread with his other hand. "All of my belongings."

Enthir doesn't look surprised—maybe he got the gossip of how Ruby arrived—but does look at the items and says, "I can take them with me if you want." At Ruby's expression he adds, "I will not steal them. This is a tome of Flame Cloak and that is a dagger of frost, neither of which is particularly valuable especially at the College." He nods in Ruby's direction. "That amulet might be more valuable. It's not clear at a glance what it does, if anything. Might be it's only got a protection spell, might be it does something else."

That logic seems reasonable enough, and maybe Enthir is lying but that would be a pretty weird lie, so Ruby offers him book and dagger and they promptly disappear.

Enthir seems to on his own not particularly seek conversation, so he lets it die as both of them finish eating. Once done, his book disappears, and he says, "Let's go, then."

Let's go, then!

...and hopefully Enthir will do literally anything about the fact that Ruby continues to be naked!

He does indeed do literally anything. Once they're outside, he casts two spells on Ruby, then starts walking.

The spells feel... interesting. Ruby can tell that they are much more powerful than anything he's done thus far, but other than feeling the effects themselves he can't discern their magical properties at all.

But the effects are plenty interesting. He is feeling as warm as if he were—well, he's not sure, not as warm as inside the tavern but warm enough to be comfortable. That must be the 'skin' spell. The other effect is somewhat subtler but stranger still, once you pay attention to it. He walks, and he can feel the frozen ground and bits of snow under his feet, but they aren't cold. Not warm, either. Or neutral. They just aren't anything. There isn't a temperature to them, as far as temperature is concerned his body is walking on air, even though he can still feel it on his skin. And the wind feels even freakier, because a deep association in his soul is telling him that with wind this biting he should be lacerated by the cold but instead he's not. His temperature is stable.

Yeah, he can see how you wouldn't need any protective gear with this, at least when it comes to braving the elements. Presumably the spells will run out at some point, but until then he feels perfectly comfortable.

The City of Winterhold

The Frozen Hearth is right by the city gates to the south, while the College is to the northeast, perched upon a rock pillar and surrounded by a chasm down to the frigid shore below. Its only connection to the city proper is a bridge, improbably still standing despite the Great Collapse. Flames and lights of magicka adorn the bridge and the college itself, and with the clouded skies raining snow down on them it's the most visible feature in the horizon.

It's a while of walking to get to it, during which Enthir has to renew the spells on Ruby once, but soon enough they reach the ramp up to the bridge. Under the entry archway before the bridge proper starts there is a circular slab of stone with a strange symbol on it. Enthir walks past it just fine, but when Ruby tries he is prevented from advancing by an invisible force. "Your fire spell," says Enthir, turning around. "Use it on the symbol. Only mages are allowed into the College, save with special dispensation, and staff need to register your magical signature for the wards to let you through."

"Interesting security," Ruby comments, summoning a ball of flame into his hand then launching it at the symbol.

It glows when it's hit, and Enthir casts another spell on it which makes it flash then go inert again. "You should be registered, now. Step through."

Ruby does, and this time there is nothing preventing him from doing it.

The bridge is kind of terrifyingly narrow, especially the bits where the walls on the sides of it are are gone and bits of the floor have broken off. Enthir walks swiftly and confidently, though, and doesn't seem at all worried about falling. He doesn't even look where he's going.

Ruby likes the aesthetic but not more than he likes being alive, so he will instead tread carefully and watch where he's going. And the wind here, with no buildings and other walls to block and shelter, is biting enough it starts to cut through the protective spells. It's not very strong, though, thankfully, because getting pushed off the edge is a very real risk.

Enthir is looking rather annoyed by the time Ruby gets to the gates but he doesn't say anything and the gates open for him. They get to a courtyard circled by an open corridor that has doors to four of the five buildings of the College, one at each "corner" of it. There are two squat buildings decorated with windows in the courtyard, looking to be something like greenhouses. The corridor is broken by the door to the main building, and a stone walkway connects it to the part of the circular corridor with the entrance gates, with a magical light shooting up into the sky from the center and a sculpture of a mage in flowing robes looking at them from behind it, and that's where Enthir seems to be leading Ruby. "I need to find M—oh, there she is."