How many wood elves does it take to screw in a guest bedroom?
Turns out it’s two. Two elves, one hero’a Whiterun, and one heckova disgruntled housecarl.
So there I was havin the timer me life on my back with these two girls – neither of em even seen a flea the looker em – gigglin as they bounced n ground against me, and I was ten seconds from meltdown when the thin wood bedroom door bangs open and Lydia sticks her head in and says,
“Oh. Oh! My Thane.” She coughs and coughs again t’make sure I can hear her. “Er, sorry to bother you in the middle of, ah, ahem, but your carriage to Riften leaves in five minutes.”
She was near enough shoutin so for sure I heard her, it just seemed right at this moment – this particular moment – I was havin trouble figurin why it mattered. The plump wood elf with the big round hooters ushers her sister aside and slides down on my-
It mattered because-
The skinny elf sits astride me, tangles her sister into a loose embrace, and kisses her as she thrusts-
Because Margeth-
To Oblivion with Margeth! He’d ruined near every other good thing fer us – the whitewashing business, the hunted-goods store, the horse-racing syndicate – he could damn well wait til I was done pleasin these here lovely young ladies!
Lydia sings nervously from the doorway, “My Tha-ane.”
Aw.
Aw.
AW.
“Geroff yer filthy whores!” With a grunt I pull from under the elf sisters. As the girls coo their displeasure behind me, I stagger up to Lydia. My face must’a somewhat resembled a wall sorely in need’a a coater paint. The old bent-up walk weren’t doin nothin to hide anythin. All I say to her is, “Clothes.”
She hands me a pile and a sword. I politely refrain from stabbin her. Her eyes keep dartin downwards. “My Thane, isn’t that – that is – well, I’d heard a man loses control on approach to the event horizon. To stop now must take phenomenal effort!”
I’m no hormone crazed bull, but if Lydia doesn’t shut her mouth now, then Imma flatten her against the door and f-
“My Thane,” Lydia calls with a wave, “You home in there?”
Grumblin, I pull on my clothes. Sunlight streams through the iron and glass window. This one room is the sizer my family home. Though if either of me sisters’d been half as cute as the elf girls, I’da moved outta home six years before I did.
Done dressed, Lydia n I wave farewell to the wood elf sisters. I think what the damn and rush forward and smooch the life outta one and then the other before hurrying after Lydia out the door.
“Oh!” cry the sisters, reaching after me, “Mr Skole, we’re still so hot for you!”
“Forget him, Miriam,” says one as I lament my fate in the hallway, “Come here and let’s finish this ourselves.”
“Oh – oh – oh Vereiam!”
I stare at Lydia as we rush downstairs. She appears not to notice. Farengar shouts as we pass him at the banquet table in the main hall. He seems to be alone in not suffering from yesterday’s party. Accourse he’s like as not t’be pumped up on illegal alchemical recipes. Yep. I’m close enough t’see his pupils are odd sizes.
He smiles. “I trust you’re travelling to the Throat of the World to meet the Greybeards?”
Gods no. I nod. “Yeah. I have a short stop in Shor’s Stone and then I’s be straight on to Ivarstead. Would you like me to pick yer up a souvenir from the Rift?”
He shrugs. “Only some creeper clusters if you pass close to the Marsh. Be careful of giants, ey? Dragons too.”
Lydia shuffles. Okay, so we’re behind time. “Sure,” I tell Farengar, “My love to the Jarl.”
And off we run, Lydia n me, out the castle, down the long stone stairs, fanging right at the upper plaza, cuttin past the Temple n round the Drunken Huntsman, down the stairs where Adrienne Avenicci is loudly protesting not being the bestest blacksmith in all Nirn, through the gates and onto the homestretch to the plains.
Says the carriage master by the coach house as Lydia n me puff our guts out, “Carriage for the Rift, miss?”
Lydia gasps and nods. For a warrior sort she’s certainly outta shape, maybe like bein a housecarl without a Thane has led to her sittin round on her ass all day eatin cakes.
“Right over there.”
Benefits of bein late is the carriage is ready to go, and so’s the driver. “C’mon c’mon,” he piques, slappin the reigns against the sturdy draught mare as we load ourselves in, “Lucky yer the hero’a Whiterun or I woulda left without yer.”
We’re the only people on the carriage. Go figure.
I’m still workin that one out when the driver rouses himself to cry, “All aboard!” and the carriage lurches off down the road. We make ourselves at home amongst the sacks of pertaters n gourds. The carriage bounces over one rut and then another, and by the fifth one we’re used to it.
After a few minutes, the driver says conversationally, “Fact is Nirn is round, and Tamriel is flat, so t’edges of the continent all stick up hundreds a metres outta the water.”
Now here’s a guy who’s never seen the ocean.
Lydia leans eagerly forward. “Does it? Wow!”
“Yup.”
Lydia pulls a face. “But then, how do the ships pull into port at the Bay of Solitude?”
“Well that’s simple,” replies the driver. “Solitude’s merchants had the presence’a mind to hang great long ladders over the edge into the water. Sailors tie their goods to ropes t’be hauled up, then off they hop up the ladders.”
“Wow,” Lydia breathes. Her bright eyes settle on me. “Isn’t the world an amazing place, my Thane?”
It sure is.
Shor’s Stone rolls into sight into the early afternoon, its few small buildings cresting the long hill sloping south to Riften.
It’s funny, bein here. The feeling starts soon as we come off the tall ridge overlookin the red booger pit that is the Eastern Marshes. Feeling like I know this place – accourse I do, I was born here – but more than that, growin as we drew closer, as if I’m a dollop of blood rushin through the body that is the Rift, like the trees n the earth n the water is my flesh, as if I was once a gleam in Paul Bunyan’s eye and now’ve come home to see Pappy.
Well I’s have come home to visit Pappy, though he sure as dog shit ain’t no Paul Bunyan. The carriage driver has been paid ahead; we call him farewell at the toppa the hill and off he rolls to Riften.
“This is your home, my Thane?” quizzes Lydia, glancin nervously about her.
I’ve had three n a half hours of my Thane yes and my Thane no, and I’m just bout ready t’drown meself before I have t’hear it again.
“Look Lydia,” says I, catchin from the corner of my eye that shit geezer Odfel peerin at us from his window, “M’name’s Skole. Skole. Got it?”
“School,” says Lydia.
“Skole!”
“Scald?”
“Skole! Skole, near the same as skull! Talos be damned, it’s a Nord name! Yer a Nord, aren’tcha?”
I’m so outta breath it takes me a minute to notice Lydia is smilin. She looks at me lookin at her, and says, “Skole.”
By the Nine. “Yes. Thank you.”
“You are most welcome, my Thane.”
-!
I glance at Odfel’s place again. He catches my eye this time n jerks away from the window. Well, whatever. My eyes slide over a circle of chairs round a fire pit outside my old place. You’ve gotta be fuckin kiddin me – they still do that? Bitchin by moonlight, s’what Margeth always called it. Unbebloodylievable.
The house what I was born, raised, and (if life is truly horrid as evidence leads one to believe) will die in is the first on the left. Ya can’t miss it. Just listen for the geezers whinging and follow yer ears.
Flesh of my flesh...
I stop Lydia short of the door. “Before we’s go in.”
She gazes at me all expectant-like. “Yes, Skole, my Thane?”
I’d take it. It was a start.
“It’s just – nothin. Aw.” I lay hand to the doorknob. “It’s just my folks.” I glance at her, make some motion between us which ends up bein indicatin between her and my crotches, “We’re just friends, right?”
Smilin like glass, Lydia provides, “Not even. You’re my Thane, I’m your housecarl. You’ll need an Amulet of Mara before I peel away the body for the soul.”
But I could have the body any time? Could I? Really?
I sigh. “The thing is, housecarl, my rents have been convinced fer a while now that I’m homersexual, and I’d kinda like t’keep it that way.”
“Oh?” Lydia blinks, “Is that so?”
“Uhn. I tmakes it easier to explain why I don’t have a girlfriend.”
She nods, understandin. I push the door open. Immediately somethin strikes me as wrong. The smell. The whole place stinks of-
“Spit-roast goat?” The girl by the fireplace holds out a loaded plate. “No? I overdid it with the salt again, unfortunately. Father’s recipe said only two tablespoons, but I’ve simply got so much damn salt... you’re not Grogmar.”
“And you’re not me mother, father or sisters,” I say, comin towards her. The girl is small and dark haired, of an age ripe fer pickin, and about ready to fall from the vine the way her pert, tight little body-
OKAY OKAY I got jilted, okay? My balls are heavy as bruised grapefruit in my loincloth.
Lydia, sensing drama or perhaps a salutation culminating in a rape, slips between the girl n me. “Lo and behold the Thane of Whiterun, the hero, Skole. You may now bow in reverence.”
I do, and Lydia thumps me with her elbow. “I mean her!” she hisses.
“Me?” says the girl, and bows. “I’m Sylgja. Um. Nice to meet ya, yer Thaneness. Um. Are you lost?”
“No.” I push Lydia aside. “This is my house. My family home. So where’s my family?”
I look left, I look right, I look down and even up. Maw, Pappy, Bodilla and Froda fail to transmogrify from bedside cabinets.
Sylgja starts to look blank and stays that way for about fifteen seconds. Finally, peerin at me closely, smilin like she knows what I don’t which she does cause I’ve no idea what she’s smilin about, she produces with a squawk, “Are you Skole Stone?”
“Thane Skole Stone,” corrects Lydia mechanically.
“Your parents left a note for you here somewhere. You could say I’m house-sitting.” Sylgja wheels round n starts scratchin through chests n drawers n now I’m thinkin about sex again. “I inherited the job from your sister, before she went off to get married. She took over from Grogmar, who was looking after the place for your folks – they’ve been gone a while.”
Lydia nudges me. “How long since you were home last?”
Dunno. Six, eight, twelve years? It’s pretty easy t’think’a ’scuses not to visit when yer mum finishes every sentence with “I’m so disappointed in you I could cry”.
“Here we go.” Sylgja straightens from the drawer. She passes me a shabby, poorly-aged letter.
I dun like to read too often, as I’s heard it rots the brain n figure I’s gotta hold onto what little I’ve got. I hand Slygja back the letter. “Just gimme the gist of it.”
“I can’t read either,” Slygja admits, happily enough. By Talos I’d love to bend her over-
“Dear children,” Lydia announces, snatching the letter. “Your father an mother are left fer Morrowind inna horsecart wiv about ten years a food. They say they’re on holiday but I know an you will too they believe their true people are the bilious Dunmer. If yer sensible at all yerl hope they stay there,
On beharfer Hassellis an Wand,
Grogmar.’
Lydia and Sylgja both stare at me. “Huhn,” I say.
“Hm? Something the matter?”
I glance at Lydia. “It’s nothin. Who woulda thought outta the whole village, an Orc was the only one who could write?”
Lydia doesn’t really think this is funny.
So my folks were holidayin in Morrowind, possibly forever. Bodilla was off blastin out bebbies. Froda?
“Has m’other sister seen this?” I tap the letter.
Sylgja nods. “She calls in every now n then. She’s terribly kind for a woman with only one leg.”
One leg? I dun have no one-legged sister. Least not last time I saw her. Then again, Froda was always the clumsy wonner us. “How’d she manage that?”
Sylgja shrugs. “She said she tripped at the sawmill. Can I fix you anything – cuppa tea? I don’t very often get visitors, you see, and I do get so terribly lonely...”
She looks at me, all the way from my toes up to my hair. Hot damn! Ever since I picked all that deathbell on the Border I has been on FIRE! It must be on account’a I’m so sensitive and considerate.
“Well if yer not gun show us yer tits then we’ll go,” I tell her. “You’ll understand as a Thane I ain’t got all day t’be hangin round bitches not interested in puttin out.”
I stare at her for seven entire seconds and she still dun lift up her shirt, so I take it there’s my answer. I nod to the girl. “Right. Thanks fer takin care’a the place. Please,” I gesture to the goat burnin on the fire. “Continue.”
We, Lydia n me, leave her standin there. Unfortunately our short digression has opportuned Odfel to position hisself on the doorstep. He squints as we see ourselves out the house.
“I thought it was you,” he announces with a growl, “The Stone boy. Didn’t you get the hint last time not ter come back?”
The last hint was so long ago I’ve forgotten it ever existed. I says to him I says, “No. Come, housecarl. We’re takin our leave of this quagmire.”
“But your brother’s funeral arrangements-”
“They can wait til we’s seen the Greybeards.” I drew Lydia past the shit geezer, beyond pleased at his scandalised gasp. “And perhaps once we’ve slain a few more dragons.”
Odfel wheels on me. “You will not!”
Okay, maybe he had me there. Bugger if I know how I’d ever got the first two dragons, let alone anymorer the dopey green bastards.
I was not, however, about to concede that to a man who had once chased me around the house with a leg of mutton. I turn to him.
“Pardon me. I’ll have you know I is the Thane of Whiterun, and you are hinderin the path of moral correctedness. So less you want to taste cold Dwarven steel,” As soon as I say this, Lydia pries the goldy sword from my hands, “Unless you want to taste cold Nord fists, then I suggest you address all your snide remarks in the form of kisses to my ass.”
Odfel ogles after us. I’ve never left Shor’s Stone in such style. Lydia is almost joggin t’keep up with my brisk Thane’s strut.
“Skole, my Thane, your brother-”
“He can wait, housecarl. Now, now, we’re off to see the wizards.”
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A/N: This first part of the story will go on for another three or four chapters, then move onto another part. If it's getting too long and you want it to end soon, or you just want more more more, let me know! I'm sure I'll figure something out.
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