Always Lost, Always Hopeful (267) Talk My Mouth Off

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SPOILER INFO
This fanfic novel is largely based on the events that occurred in an actual game of Skyrim I played. Therefore, it's inevitably a spoiler.
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previous day 






4-202-05-13 05:30
Dunparwall Inn, Dunparwall, Hjaalmarch, Skyrim

I had a weird dream. I was flying up Mount Nexus, but from the northern side. I floated towards that fortress one can see from the ground, the one we always assumed to be High Hrothgar. I realized now it's impossible to see High Hrothgar from the outskirts of Hviterun. What we had seen was something entirely different. It was halfway between Riverwood in the west-southwest and High Hrothgar in the east.

Floating closer, I thought for a moment I was seeing Alduin, and then Paarthurnax, and then they were both gone. Don't ask me how I was able to recognize it was them.

Looking at the defense wall more closely, I noticed it went right into the mountain. And the external part was partially hanging in the air.

I wondered if I could fly further northeast along the edge of the forbidding mountains.

Yes, I could. And east-northeast of High Hrothgar, halfway to Hillgrund's Tomb, I found some more stone fortifications, much more human-built-like. They were on two sides of a mountain and apparently connected. Meaning, there were in all likelihood some structures inside the mountain.

I wake up in my bed at the Dunparwall inn. What Hillgrund's Tomb? I've never heard the name in my life.

I go down to the taproom and fix myself a breakfast, leaving money on the bar counter. My followers turn up soon and we explore some more of Dunparwall. After visiting the malachite mine they have here, we find that famous site with ancient carvings on stone walls.

When I look at them, I suddenly see a place in my mind's eye where a path leads up a mountain from the Windhelm–Hviterun highway. Hillgrund's Tomb is up there and it might be a site worth checking out. Then my thoughts wander to that strange fortification on the western side of Mount Nexus. I have an intuition that Alduin resided there, maybe in our time, maybe thousands of years ago, and maybe the mountain had a different shape back then and the fortress was not partially inside the mountain. Or maybe a dragon wouldn't need the kind of space humans would and that half-fortress-half-mountain was just the kind of structure where a dragon would feel comfortable. It no longer matters, because Alduin no longer exists. Somehow I know now he is really permamently dead.

And I have a horrible hunch that after I had physically killed Alduin, Paarthurnax destroyed himself with him on the etheric plane to make absolutely sure Alduin would never appear again to attack Nirn.

I'm not certain about the last point, but if feels very true, at least while I'm standing at this arguably most ancient and mysterious site in all of Skyrim.

We now say goodbye to this nice if harsh town and travel south, passing by Laintar Dale where everyone is still sleeping or at least inside their houses.

We travel towards the mountains on the northern bank of the White River northeast of Hviterun. Short of Alessian Ruins, we witness a virr fighting a very big atronach who doesn't seem to have a master. We help him kill it. He's quite handsome.

We find a place where we have a good view to Mount Nexus. As far as I can tell, everything looks exactly like in my dream. Beyond the plain across the White River with very high steep banks, there's a weirdly-shaped fort on the right mountainside, as well as another obviously artificial structure up the mountain on the left which may or may not be the one I saw in my dream.

Well, there's not much we can do other than head for the city in the west.

When you approach Hviterun from northeast, the first building is The Naked Dragon brothel.

No, my little friend, the Fox Club is in Riverwood and I'm afraid you won't be welcome there either.

We're going to check it out now – using that brilliant pretext made up by Jordis of searching for skooma.

Ghorbash asks if he may wait for us outside. I tell him to feel free to walk around and socialize. In fact, there's an Orc blacksmith outside a house across the street who can be seen working right now.

I enter the brothel with the girls.

Have they no imagination? The only way the statue of a dragon
would make sense in a place like this would be lying on its back with its legs spread.

Now, this establishment is quite different from the others. They don't have any bedrooms as such! There's only a huge room with a pool behind the main hall.

They have imagination all right.

Four naked girls are sitting in it at the moment. (The rest are in the main hall fully dressed.) This is so fantastic I'm having real difficulties resisting the urge to throw my clothes off and jump in with them. But I must hold myself back, with the proprietor, a very serious-looking old man, standing right beside me. Not entirely without sarcasm, he says he assures me nobody is hiding any skooma here.

While checking the rest of the brothel, I can't help asking where would a customer go when he fancies a girl. I learn that he'll have to do his thing on one of the four large soft mats in the corners of the pool hall.

So technically there is no privacy as such here, but the girls have strict orders to mind their own business rather than stand around the couple commenting and giggling. There's also an unwritten rule that the customers act like they're not even seeing the other customers. It's a well-established system by now and everybody knows the customs and it works fine. Still, whenever someone wants guaranteed privacy, he can reserve the entire pool hall for himself or take a girl away, in which case he'll pay in advance for the time in addition to the sex fee that is paid afterwards like everywhere. If he uses more time than he paid for, there is double fee for the additional time. However, if he uses less time, he'll get no refund for the unused time, so he'll have to estimate in advance as precisely as he can how much time he'll need.

Of course the services are provided to men only, as I know without needing (or daring) to ask.

Yeah, and we find no skooma.

Among all the brothels I've seen, this is the most snobbish one. The personnel shows no friendliness towards uninvited curious female guests whatsoever. The women in the main hall are, however, very cordial with the male guests. There was no one having sex in the pool hall while we were there. The four girls who waited there looked quite content.

All in all, I can heartily recommend to all men who might be reading this to check the place out when you happen to be in Hviterun. Or even better, find a woman wherever you are and make her happy. [grin]

Well, enough of that. We exit the brothel and walk around separately now, exchanging news and such. On my way to the city gate, I run into Borgakh on the street. She lives with the blacksmith Lerguk now who has a modest house right here in the eastern suburb. They intend to get married. Borgakh actually wanted to get married before giving up her virginity, but he kept insisting on having sex first, and finally she gave in. But she tells me that should he dump her, she'll kill him no matter what the consequences. There are no indications of that, though.

I'm happy for them. Borgakh and I sit and chat for a while and then I head for the marketplace.

It's not a very busy day on the market. On the right, in front of The Bannered Mare inn, is the stall of Fralia Gray-Mane,
the mother of Thorald and Avulstein. The woman with the hood is the priestess Danica. Jenassa's ex-boyfriend Anoriath
has left for a moment. In front of his stall stands Brenuin, the beggar who in the past helped Lucia over the toughest times.
You can see Ysolda walk up the stairs towards the temple square. And the stall on the left is Carlotta's. She is here,
just outside the frame. Behind me are Belethor's general store on my left and Arcadia's alchemy shop on my right.

Lucia and Mila accompany me on a leisurely walk up to the palace, overflowing me with the latest gossip.

I show Faralda's magic book to Farengar and ask him if he knows what that cryptic description means. He says he'll think about it and I should come back later. I can tell he knows and he intends to demand sex in return, but he doesn't want to say it with the children listening.

We hear loud cheering. Mila dashes to see what's going on and comes back running ten seconds later with the news Jenassa has come to visit. I must say I'm not too surprised. She has even taken Nelacar with her. I show him the magical book and he says the description sounds like Skybound Watch that is in the region of Helgen and Riverwood.

Awesome. We leave Nelacar talking to Farengar and I look meaningfully at Mikki who is passing by, and point at Lucia. She gets the hint and invites Lucia to come with her. Lucia looks at me and I tell her: go ahead, we'll be right here. Mila leaves with them. Now I can withdraw into a quiet corner with Jenassa. I ask her if she's still available and she assures me she is. I tell her all about Ghorbash and how we have some plans with him, so I won't take Jenassa back right now, but would it be possible for her to stay in Hviterun for a few days? She says it's no problem.

Before the actual party begins, I find Lucia and tell her I'm going to have a bath in The Bannered Mare.

Wearing one of my beautiful yet decent dresses, I return to the palace around five o'clock.

Those two children look like they're up to some mischief.  ;-)

After being thrown in the air and receiving her congratulations and presents, Heidi takes us to a hike, climbing up and down the city fortifications.

Did you know that this bridge

can be raised up with the help of this mechanism?

While we're outside the main gate, a thunderstorm begins. We all get soaking wet and find it hilarious.

And then we return to the palace, singing over the rumble.

The lightnings are very far this time, so no danger.

We dance some to dry up quicker, and then I find an opportunity to talk to Ghorbash in private and explain her Jordis honestly wanted the best for him, and for a woman to suck a man's penis is considered perfectly normal among humans. Or more precisely, men are crazy about it and women need to overcome some (or much) reluctance first.

We end up talking about all kinds of things. Then Ghorbash says he's been wanting to ask me something, and I say to go ahead, and he says he's sorry if it sounds harsh, but he can't understand how we can have casual sex with men like that (not that he's not enjoying it), and for that matter, how can a man want to marry a woman who is not a virgin.

I think a while how to explain it simply. Then I tell Ghorbash that we don't have the tradition that only the chief gets to have wives. Outside Orc villages, every man expects to get a wife. But since men have the urge to have sex with several women, and the numbers of men and women are about equal, many women end up seduced by men they are not married to. Since you can lose your cherry only once, it no longer matters so much afterwards if you have more sex, as long as you don't act in a scandalous way in front of people. The point is: there simply aren't enough virgins to marry.

I inform Ghorbash there are very big cultural and regional differences. For example, Nord communities outside Skyrim tend to be very strict compared to Skyrim about their girls remaining pure for their husbands. The Bretons, in turn, are very relaxed about it. Thus I, a half-Nord raised among Bretons, lost my maidenhood at 17 and didn't dare tell my Nord mother until much later, while my best friend, a pure-blood Breton, did it a lot younger without any shame, or at least not much. But she still took good care to behave decently in public, and act as inexperienced as possible with the guy she eventually got married to.

I don't know much about Imperials or Redguards, but in eastern Skyrim the Nords strongly dislike men of other races accosting "their" women, whereas in a big cosmopolitan city like Solitud, everything goes.

Especially female mages who can cast the Contraception  spell have little scruples about casual sex. Other women would have to buy an Amulet of Dibella  or have a Dibella statue enchanted. Wearing an amulet of Dibella and praying at any god's shrine, you will get to know whether or not you are fertile right now, and when you are near the enchanted statue, you will automatically know it. Wealthy women tend to have such a statue in their bedrooms. Any halfway decent girl, though, would be too embarrassed to let her parents see something like that. That's why there are hugely popular esoteric teachings that claim that certain magic numbers can reveal exactly on which days, counting from the end of your last menstruation, you might get pregnant – on other days you can safely have sex.

"Yeah, and that's why we suck men's penises," I return to the original topic, noticing that menstruation is evidently not something Ghorbash is keen to hear about. "Firstly because men insist, secondly because you don't get pregnant that way, and thirdly because several days each month, women can't do anything else, so if the husband is horny, oral is the only thing to do because outside Orc villages men have only one wife."

"How many men you've had sex with?" Ghorbash asks.

I make him swear in the name of Malacath he'll never tell anyone, and then I tell him. It's a horribly large number. Well, you know most of them, that is the ones I've been with during my Dragonborn adventure. There were a few back home in High Rock.

I would never let a man know something like that, but I want to avoid at all costs that Ghorbash should begin to think that we are a couple. In the Orcs' world, sex is never casual. A man gets his need for promiscuity satisfied by having several wives, not by chatting up women at inns and such. Admittedly, Ghorbash wanted to leave that world, but he still isn't properly prepared for ours, and he'd better learn from me and my followers who we wish him well rather than get into an awful lot of trouble someday, unable to put up with his first girlfriend leaving him. That's the reason I want him freed from possible illusions. And maybe I still shouldn't have told him. But I already did. Maybe I'm a little drunk. We'd better return to the party.

I go home with Lucia relatively early, because Carlotta wants Mila to go to sleep. In order to not give Mila a reason to complain it's unfair, I take Lucia, her best friend, home as well.

I hope those roofs are watertight enough.
(At least it's good those people have a roof over their heads, says Lucia.)

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