Always Lost, Always Hopeful (27) I Bring Joy and I Bring Tears

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






4-201-09-12 09:03
The Winking Skeever, Solitud, Haafingar, Skyrim


I can see Aurelius is hard. He wants me to suck. I spread my legs and say he can stick it in if he really has to, but I'm not in the mood for physical exercise this early in the morning. So he takes me the conventional way. Maybe that wasn't very nice of me, but I don't feel it's right to agree to oral sex the first night, and besides I'm really not in the mood for straining myself like that the first thing in the morning.

That said, I'm impressed by Aurelius's, er... capability. He has gotten me curious about Imperial men in general.

I go downstairs to have a bath. My followers aren't there, nor in the taproom. Still sleeping, the lazybones! They must have done something exhausting last night. I'll make them tell me everything about it. Yeah, I'll have to tell them too. I know. That's the world we women live in. But it's really a good thing – we can learn not only from our own experiences, but also from many other women's.  :-)

While I'm eating my breakfast, one man after another comes and tries to make conversation, but I can only think of work. You know, the usual routine – improving our gear, taking the best weapons and armor to myself, giving the next best ones to the girls and then selling the rest.

On the main street, there are children running back and forth. They invite me to play tag with them, but I refuse as friendlily as I can.

Halfway to the palace, I find this unfortunate dog. I've no idea how he met his death.

Note that every creature's name becomes visible once it's dead – as long as it has a name.
Names have strong magic to them. Every child knows it where I come from... er... wherever that may be.

I meet Jenassa on the marketplace. I say I hope the three of them managed to get a good night's sleep in a double room. Jenassa says casually: "Oh, it was all right. I had the bed all to myself," and goes on examining the carrots and onions on Jala's stall, looking as if she had just given a stranger some directions or something.
I know she's playing with me, but there's nothing I can do about it. I wonder if our timid Rayya did finally get lucky. Jenassa smiles amusedly as we stroll away from the marketplace and I'm so impatient I want to grab her by her shoulders and shake her.
"I'm sorry, Laura," Jenassa finally deigns to say. "I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you. I don't know what happened either."
She keeps teasing me some more, but then I drag it out of her that they all went to the Jana's Flaggon inn in the southwestern suburb where Lydia and Rayya got chatted up by two sailors, an Argonian named Vozei and a Redguard named Fadeel. Jenassa left early, returning to our inn and going to sleep. She says she's pretty sure the girls intended to go upstairs with the guys – she'd guess Lydia with the Argonian and Rayya with the Redguard, but she doesn't know for sure.
When I've run out of questions she doesn't have answers to, Jenassa says: "Say, isn't that Lydia?" pointing with her jaw at something behind my back. Looking over my shoulder, I see Lydia who has evidently been standing right behind me for quite some time.
I make a move towards laughing Jenassa and she jumps back quickly.
Well, to cut the long story short, Lydia informs me that she and Rayya not only went to bed with the sailors, but they actually did it in the same room. On separate beds, though, and each with her guy, but still Lydia saw and heard everything that Rayya did with Fadeel, and she was quite astonished with her skills. As well as his.
While she's telling me all that, I look carefully in her and Jenassa's eyes. I'm still not sure they're not pulling my leg. Lydia goes on telling that she did it twice with Vozei and then they went to sleep while Rayya and Fadeel were still boning like there was no tomorrow. They hadn't yet woken when Lydia and her partner left earlier this morning.
"So where is Rayya now?" I ask.
Lydia shrugs. "For all I know, she could still be with him."
"Indoors," adds Jenassa. She and Lydia burst out laughing again.
Even now I'm not entirely sure this isn't some kind of a prank, but, well, if it's true, I'm happy for them. Let's go shopping.

It's afternoon by the time we're ready to leave for Dånstar. We exit by the southern gate and go to Jana's Flaggon. The barmaid Bojena confirms that Rayya is still here. Lydia says she'll go quickly and fetch her. No, you won't! I'm not staying behind here. I follow her upstairs. When she stops in front of a door that apparently is the right one, I look over my shoulder. Jenassa has remained downstairs.
I see Lydia's hand raised. Before I can prevent her, she knocks on the door. Well, it doesn't matter, because I find the door locked. Lydia yells that it's us. By the time Rayya comes to open, the dark-skinned man whom I presume to be Fadeel has, of course, had the time to hide under the blanket. He keeps his knees bent, so I can't see the state of his penis.
I sit in a chair, stretch out my legs and say in a completely neutral tone: "If you were in the middle of something, then we can wait."
Rayya casts me a playfully angry glance and begins to get dressed. I say "sorry" to the man before I exit the room after her and Lydia.

"It's actually a good thing you rescued me," says Rayya when we're exiting the inn. "But I hope we'll be in Solitud again someday."

I assure her we will.

We walk downhill along the street that goes towards Dragonbridge. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that a Khajiit caravan, one I haven't seen before, has made camp between the inner and the outer city wall. They seem to be... let's say, used to be mistrusted, but they warm up when they sense my sincere admiration. Which doesn't mean any neglect of due diligence on either part. There's no mercy in trading. But neither is there any need to get hostile. Respect. Attention. Diligence.

Sorry, I'm boring you again with my gabbing. When our business with the Khajiits is completed, we turn away from the main road and go to the shore between the harbor and the farm that is south of the city. We hope to find a private place where we can strip to swim to the eastern shore. (Yes, I know, there's a ferry, but swimming across is less trouble than trying to locate the damned boat. Every local I've asked just says it's down at the harbor and looks at me like I was an idiot.) What we do find instead is a distraught-looking man with a painted face and baggy trousers. His name is Rashid. He speaks with a strange accent and quite a few grammatical errors. But I doubt that even when recited by the headmaster of the Bards' College, his story would make much sense. It's something about him being in great danger and me and my followers should go somewhere where there's a boat waiting and travel to some faraway island and beware of pirates along the way. We take leave of him as soon as we politely can, go a little further and swim across the gulf.

In the east lies a swamp:

Those blue-green things are dangerous. They emit poisonous gas.
I got too close to one today and ended up weak and coughing for half an hour.

We have to choose our path carefully. It's rather tedious and dull. In order to pass the time, let me tell you about the different races all those people in this world belong to. I should have done it a long time ago, I know. I will now.

The humanoid intelligent creatures of Tamriel are roughly divided into three groups – human races (or "Men"), elder races (or Mer) and beast races.

The so-called human races are Nord, Imperial, Breton and Redguard. The Nords are the natives of the Skyrim province. The Imperials predominate in the higher offices of the Empire. I, as you hopefully remember, am a Breton, and so are coincidentally the Forsworn insurgents of western Skyrim (although, if I may say so, I don't feel having anything in common with them). Redguards are dark-brown-skinned people who originate from... Hammerfell, right? My follower Rayya is a Redguard.

The so-called elder races are Altmer or High Elves, Bosmer or Wood Elves, Dunmer or Dark Elves, Dwemer or Dwarves (extinct), Falmer or Snow Elves (semi-intelligent evil creatures who live underground) and Orsimer or Orcs. Jenassa is a Dark Elf.
The grammatical way of speaking is "one Altmer, several Altmer" etc., but in the spoken language it's just as common to hear people say Altmers, Bosmers, Dunmers  etc.

The so-called beast races are Argonian (reptile) and Khajiit (feline). A subgroup of Khajiit known as Pahmar walk on four legs. In some regions, Pahmars are intelligent and can talk, in some regions they're wild animals who try to eat you when they see you. There are neither in Skyrim.
Strictly speaking, you're not supposed to say "a Khajiit woman", only "a female Khajiit" (etc.), but it seems weird to me. I always use the words "man", "woman" and "child" for the beast races too.

Belethor, the grumpy shopkeeper in Hviterun, is a Breton, whereas Proventus the steward is an Imperial, as is Evette the market trader in Solitud. Hulda the innkeeperer is a Nord, and so is Lydia. Well, I think you've got the general picture now. We've arrived in a snowy hilly forest area. Just a little farther to the east is a road that takes us quickly to Dånstar – or it would if we wouldn't make a long stop to wait out a skirmish between imps and storks.

They are not many, but they're all unusually tough (or maybe they have difficulties hitting people in the darkness), so it takes quite some time. After we've looted the corpses, we stop to kill a couple of skeevers (animals similar to rats but much bigger and slightly less disgusting) at a roadside ruin, and arrive in Dånstar late in the evening, dog-tired.

The Khajiit caravan is there. Kharjo is already sleeping. I wake him up and give him his amulet. He offers to become my follower. I don't need to be asked twice. Jenassa, I'm sorry, but it's time for you to go. No more than three followers at a time. That's the rule.

Actually, she can replace Kharjo as a caravan guard if she wants to. No, she doesn't. She's going home to Hviterun. But she will travel along with them a part of the way southwards. That's the sensible thing to do. We hug her farewell. It's sad actually. We were a good team. But I want Kharjo. I will surely be seeing Jenassa again, because I'm bound to be in Hviterun a lot.

I can barely move my feet now, so I go to the inn to get some sleep. So does Rayya who evidently didn't get much rest last night. Lydia says she'll go to say hello to Bjarne and join us shortly. Right, shortly.  ;-)

Lydia looks slightly offended and I hurry to apologize. I didn't mean to insult her boyfriend. I was being ironical, meaning to insinuate I didn't believe she'd return very soon. We hug to make up.



next awakening






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Always Lost, Always Hopeful (21) Am I Too Harsh on My Fellow Humans?

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SPOILER INFO
This fanfic novel is based on the events that occurred in an actual game of Skyrim I played. Therefore, it inevitably reveals a lot about the game.
———————————————




previous day






4-201-09-06 04:33
Windpeak Inn, Dånstar, The Pale, Skyrim


We wake up and have an unhurried bath. I take the opportunity to improve our gear before the blacksmith comes to work. Then I sell our excess loot. This time I didn't bring any weapons or armor better than the ones we're already using. Just stuff to sell for money.

And coming back to something I mentioned about a week ago...

See how some armors make people look incredibly fat down there?
Then again, many men actually like big bottoms. Weird.

As we're ready to depart for Hviterun, I notice the tent of a Khajiit trader next to the town gate.

Now I finally have an opportunity to get rid of all those stolen things I've been carrying along for heaven knows how long. (Regular traders don't buy stolen items, but Khajiit caravans do.)

The merchant is a middle-aged woman named Ahkari. She tells me she has an unfortunate talent for getting herself involved in misunderstandings with the law, and it's a pity the Nords are most unfair to the Khajiits, calling them thieves and smugglers. She says she's glad to see I'm not like that. Mind you, she doesn't say she isn't a thief and a smuggler, and I don't ask.

Ahkari's entourage includes a young woman Zaynabi and two men; Kharjo is the younger one and Dro'marash is the older one. The one I have to tell you more about is – you guessed it – Kharjo. I'm dying to have sex with a Khajiit man. I mean, just close your eyes and imagine it for a second – a cute furry cuddly cat, only big enough to actually lie down on top of you and penetrate you down there. What more could a woman want? I don't know if we can have children with them. I suppose we can't, and even if we could, we'd maybe better not, as the result might be not too great. Yet, what better bed-warmer could there possibly be?

My girls don't share my Khajiit fascination and tease me about it, but they just don't have an idea. Do I, you ask. Well, I don't know. I don't remember. But I've gotten carried away again, telling you about irrelevant things. What I actually started to say is that Kharjo has had an amulet stolen from him. It's very precious, because he got it from his mother when he was a child. A touching story. Fortunately, Kharjo has a magical bond with the amulet, so he can show me on the map where it is at this moment. (I learn that the Khajiits are familiar with maps, but they don't need them much with their superb navigation instinct, unless in completely unknown regions.) For that matter, it's been there for quite some time, so he presumes that's the place where the thieves permanently reside. Unfortunately, he can't go after it himself, because due to the said magical bond, the person who has the amulet in his possession can always tell where Kharjo is, so the bandits would know he is approaching. But I together with my followers might well be able to find the amulet and get it back. It's halfway between Northkeep and Granite Hall, and we are headed roughly that way.

Yes, I will get you your mother's amulet, Kharjo. And then we are going to spend a lot of time together. I mean, I can't today. I really can't. But we'll see each other again, I swear.

Now the girls and I head for Hviterun. The highway passes close by Duskglow Crevice, which is the location of yet another one of those Welkynd Stones. We drop in while we're here and kill some bandits and Falmers, who coincidentally are fighting each other as well.

We get the stone, but the difficult part only begins.

We split up, looking for another exit. I reach a big hall with a staircase leading to a plateau maybe four meters high. There's a bandit up there fighting a flying something. He's shouting combat taunts at the creature as if he expected it to understand. I'm unsure whom I ought to shoot at. Probably the creature. But before I can come to a decision, the bandit falls down, dead, and the thing comes rushing towards me. By the Eight-and-a-Half... Do you remember that picture of a chaurus I showed you? Good. Now, imagine that that thing is not only alive but flying. A flying chaurus. That's what approaches me at this moment. If you think it's not scary, I assure you you're wrong.

The real problem isn't even that it flies. The real problem is that it spits something utterly awful at me. Fortunately, there's only one of them and I have my panic under control. A health potion keeps me afloat until the girls arrive running and we manage to kill the horrorbeetle.

There's no one else who wants to kill us. That's on the credit side. On the debit side (where did I learn such fancy words??) is that we can't get out of this place. There's a closed grating. We can see another large hall on the other side, but there's no way to open the grating. Too lazy to walk back all the way we came, we go over this hall most thoroughly, looking behind every stone and shelf and cobweb. No switch. I'm tired and annoyed and desperate. Should I ask Bardslayer for help? No, we'll go over this place one more time.

This time we find the damned switch. I'm not very happy, just fed up with it all. Soon we're back in open air. Our spirits rise as we look forward to reaching the city soon. Then we get attacked by several giant spiders. No big deal. More like a slight exercise. After killing them and healing myself, I notice there's a settlement nearby. It's a small village called Laintar Dale:

There's an Orc blacksmith couple Azuk and Murzush, a very beautiful warriorlike woman Olava, a middle-aged woman Margarte and probably more people inside the three houses. Overall, a nice place. They allow me to use their smithing facilities and buy most of my excess loot. Then we're off to Hviterun.

That's a quite common (and unaggressive) hare for a change.

We pass by a camp of giants. After a while, a windmill appears in the distance. As we get closer, we see a horsecart on the roadside and a man dressed as a jester. I mean, really, he is wearing jester's clothes, right up to the cap'n'bells hat. I have seen jesters only in books, but this is exactly how they look like.

The man has a weird name Cicero and tells us a woeful tale of how a wheel of his wagon broke and the evil people in the nearby farm refuse to help him. Now, from his high-pitched emotional tone of voice and his fast jerky gestures, it's plain obvious that Cicero is insane. I have no reason to doubt his words about the wheel and having been refused help, but the point is that the man is like an insect I just have to squash. So we proceed southwards, pretending to be disinterested in Cicero and his worries. When we are out of sight, I sneak back and shoot that jabbering hobgoblin dead. You can say what you want, I maintain that I did the world a service. It's like clearing a turd off the street so people won't step in it.

Behind the hill to the west is indeed a farm is inhabited by a Vantus Loreius and his wife Curwe. They don't seem to be too fond of neither passersby nor each other. After a brief and fruitless conversation, me and my followers continue our jorney south. We soon arrive at a Whitewatch Tower, apparently the northernmost watchtower of Hviterun. The guards happen to be in combat against a small group of bandits and we help them kill them. And then, as the dusk is falling, we finally reach the eastern suburb of Hviterun.

We pay a brief visit to the palace.

We took a picture without helmets for you.
From right to left: Jenassa, Laura, Lydia, Rayya and a palace guard.

Having released my followers for today, I go down to the temple to report to Danica. She doesn't even want to touch that dagger Nettlebane. She asks me to travel eastwards to a place called Eldergleam Sanctuary and use Nettlebane to get some sap from the holy tree which is the "mother" of the holy tree in Hviterun. Sure, why not.

About to leave the temple, I'm stopped by a man Maurice who says he's a pilgrim and a devotee of Kynareth and wants to visit Eldergleam, but since it's very dangerous, he'd like to travel along with me. He promises not to get in my way.

Something tells me that man can be big trouble, though, so I tell him I don't travel with strangers.

Was I wrong to turn him down, I wonder as I walk down the stairs towards the empty marketplace. Whatever. It's near midnight and I'm very tired. Just a quick peek into the taverns to see if anything exciting has come up in the meantime (no, nothing has), and I go to my house to sleep. (Lucia generously lets me have the bed when I'm home. She says she's just as comfortable on the mattress on the floor.)



next awakening






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