skyrimkinkmeme | Meme Announcements!

Meme Announcements!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: UPDATED 12/16/2017

Happy Holidays, fellow Kinkmemers! I have returned and have no reasonable excuse for my absence except LIFE. I will be working on updating the archives. If anyone sees anything amiss, please let me know.

I am also hoping to find another Mod and an Archivist.

The more dedicated people we have in this Meme the less chance of it dying. I admit that being the sole keeper of the Meme is not great for the fandom. If something were to happen to me, for good, this place would go the way of the Fallout Kink Meme. Let's not let that happen! If anyone would be interested in Modding/Archiving, please drop me a line. Thanks! <3

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They slip into the tunnel before sunup, but they aren’t finished with Solitude yet. Freyja leaves Eitri sitting on the stairs, flexing his hand in the loose open-and-close way that Styr recommended, and goes back to the city for food and supplies. Most shops won’t open for hours yet, so she climbs the stairs to the windmill bridge and watches the sun rise over the sea. When she leans out over the ramparts there’s a coating of frost pressed against her elbows. Her skin glows in the cold. Freyja closes her eyes, and the rising sun paints the insides of her eyelids the color of Eitri’s hair.

She returns to the tunnel with food that will keep, another cloak and bedroll, a simple war axe, and a set of leather armor that she hopes will fit. When she tosses it to Eitri he stares. The leather thumps into the ancient powdery stonedust on the floor. He makes no move to pick it up. Freyja holds out the axe, and he stares some more. She shoves it at him, impatient. “I assume you’ve chopped plenty of logs to feed your forge,” she says. “Men aren’t terribly different.”

“It’s not – I don’t have any coin!”

“Yes, I know. And I do. And you need armor.”

“You can’t just—”

“Look,” Freyja says. “I’m not rich, but it’s not hard to make gold as a sellsword, either. I’d rather spend some of it now than get killed because I’m watching you instead of my own flank. Consider it an investment in keeping us both alive.” She shrugs. “Besides, I traded for the armor – that elven stuff we had was yours by right, you killed him. Pay me back for the axe and the cloak in Ivarstead, if you like.”

“What if we never make it back to Ivarstead?”

“Then I’ll have no need of your money, will I? Now swallow that stubborn peasant’s pride and put on your damned armor.”

He does, shaking his head all the way. “You’re either the most generous person I’ve ever met, or--”

“Hardly. I don’t do a job by halves, is all.”

“I’ve not even hired you,” he grumbles, but he takes the axe when she offers it.

Later that day they pass the lighthouse that marks the spot where the muscular brackish river joins the Sea of Ghosts. After that they leave the road and follow the shoreline, walking along the tide by day, pulling back to make camp under the trees by night. One can learn a lot about a man, when sharing a tent that’s rather snug even for one. Freyja learns that the burn scar on Eitri’s forearm is not from his forge, as one might expect of a blacksmith, but from a spilled pot of stew when he was a child. She learns that he would rather eat a fresh loaf of crusty bread than a sweet roll. She learns that he is just shy of his 34th birthday, and that he once walked the 7000 steps to High Hrothgar (Well, it’s right there, he says, and then, I was helping a friend cart up some supplies, and then, with a hint of awe, I’ve never seen anything like it). She learns that he is astonishingly easy to talk to.

(She learns that he is the sort of man who radiates heat while he sleeps, and that in her own slumber her body seems determined to snuggle closer to that warmth, only to leave her twitching back in dismay when morning dawns.)

Eitri has never seen the sea. Freyja has, but only in the baked-stone ports of Hammerfell, or at the bustling docks of Solitude with a thousand tarred lines creaking and the wind sighing underneath the arch - never this lonely, broken coastline, inhabited by only beasts and birds. It's beautiful in a bleak sort of way, the grey water and dark pines and coarse dark sand. Once they spot a sabrecat, crouched and tonguing rainwater out of a divot in the wet black rock. Every guard hair of its pelt seems to bristle like a separate living thing, silvered at the tips as though with frost. They give the cat a wide berth, along with the occasional ship slotted into a narrow cove ("Smugglers," Freyja says, eyeing the sleek small crafts); sometimes they happen upon the flotsam of a shipwreck, or a tiny fishing camp with salmon smoking over a driftwood fire, but otherwise they are alone.

On the open beach Freyja drills Eitri in combat, the wet sand crunching beneath their boots and the ring of steel echoing back along with the surf and the gulls. Their blades have naked edges. It's a risk, but nothing else handles like steel, and Eitri does not pose a challenge to Freyja who has lived by her sword-arm for years. Nor does he possess the raw unpredictability of a true beginner - he is no warrior, but a weapon sits comfortably in his hand. Freyja would rather run risks now than walk into a fight with the Thalmor alongside a man whose martial strengths and weaknesses she does not know.

"Right," she says, giving ground, catching his blow expertly on her shield. A few lonely flurries are drifting around them today, melting as soon as they strike the ground; such snows are becoming more frequent, as autumn fades. "High. Left. Right. Right. Block."

Their blades lock, trapped between their straining bodies. Freyja has to throw her weight forward to absorb the shock; what Eitri lacks in skill he makes up in the strength of a man accustomed to hammering metal. Despite the cold he is sweating, hair mussed and sticking to his forehead. They're so close she can feel the heat rising off his skin. He tries to press the advantage of his strength and weight, and when she staggers he grins at her, face flushed and eyes alight. Her stomach flutters.

"Block," Freyja snaps. She disengages, swings into a backhand cut that catches him solidly beneath the ribs with the flat of her sword. He goes sprawling.

Freyja steps back, wiping her face. Her own cheeks feel bright with cold. "I told you not to overcommit," she says.

“Aye,” he pants, clutching his side. “That you did.”

“Lose your balance like that in a real fight and you’re dead.” She plants her sword point-down in the sand, pulls him to his feet. He’s still for a moment. The white gusts of his breath drift in the air between them. It takes her too long to realize that she has not let go of his hand.

It’s warm; his palm, so much larger than her own, is pleasantly calloused, and his thumb rests upon the sensitive skin at the back of her wrist. Freyja drops it like a snake. Cheeks heating, she glances up to see him looking at her curiously, before something over her shoulder draws his gaze. His eyes go wide.

A thunderous shriek reverberates down the mountains, so deep it seems to echo in her bones.

Freyja wheels. The clouds are low and thick, mushy as old sea ice, but inside the grey shroud that noise booms against the hidden peaks once more. Her heart starts kicking against her ribs like a furious horse. "Run," Freyja says, but she's the one who's frozen; Eitri's hand clamps around her wrist and yanks her toward the trees before she comes to her senses, snatching up her sword and sprinting for cover. A thin branch whips across her cheek as they plunge into the undergrowth. Then they are both flat on their bellies, breathing the rich damp odor of spruce needles and lichen and earth.

"Did you see it?" Eitri whispers, after a moment.

Freyja shakes her head. She recalls the wide flare of his green irises as he glanced over her shoulder. "You did."

"I saw something," he says, "but the clouds--"

Another roar.

“Gods," Eitri breathes. "What is that?"

He says it like a man who already suspects the answer, but wants to hear another voice it first. Freyja peers up through the spruce branches. She can still envision the Imperial soldiers glancing into the bright blue sky, shrugging their shoulders and carrying on with the execution while the birds fell ominously silent. She shakes her head again. For a moment neither of them speaks. Another roar sounds, more distantly this time. “Dragon,” she finally says.

Eitri’s voice is hushed. “Have you ever seen one?”

“I don’t know what else it could be,” Freyja says, dodging the question. “Have you ever heard anything else make a sound like that?”

“Do you think it’ll come back?”

“I think I’d rather not chance building a fire tonight.”

They make camp in a deep thicket, cocooned out of sight from both the sea and the sky. The sun sets early - earlier still in the piney gloom of the forest - and without a fire there is no reason to lie awake. They sup on dried fruit on cold meat and retire to the tent, spreading their bedrolls down on a carpet of moss.

In the narrow tent Eitri’s shoulder brushes against her as he wriggles beneath his furs. Get a grip on yourself, woman, Freyja scolds, thinking back to the warmth of his hand around her own. It simply isn’t practical to get so involved with comrades in arms. Tamriel is a dangerous place. Freyja has heard it said that Skyrim is its most dangerous province – and that was before the civil war and the dragons. Take a lover on the road, and sooner or later the odds are good that you will watch your lover die.

She has no desire to repeat that experience. It’s been six years since Freyja fell in kicking, clawing, reluctant, consuming love with Indros her fellow sellsword, and just over a year since his death; she no longer feels his absence like a yawning bloody hole, a ribcage crushed by a battleaxe. But it still aches. If she is honest with herself, part of the reason she rushed so eagerly over the Jeralls when war broke out was to escape the emptiness of Cyrodiil, without him in it.

They were an unlikely pair: their skillsets disparate, their people ancient enemies, their temperaments flame and frost. Born with fire magic in his blood, Indros was calculating, cool of humor; Freyja could stand beside an open window in the mountain air of Bruma in naught but a shift while Indros grumbled at her to come back to bed, but she had the fiery, reckless sort of temper that led to tavern brawls, to victorious grins through black eyes and split lips. Even their lifespans were at odds; at 97 he was both young for an elf and older than she was ever like to get. But Freyja loved him all the more for their differences. She might have married him, if either of them had ever thought to suggest visiting a temple. Caught up in adventure and youth and the gold to be made doing dangerous work, neither of them ever did, but they talked about their future as married people do. They even talked of that long elven lifespan, of how she would grow old while Indros was scarcely middle-aged, of the certainty that she would die before him. They came to terms with it. Somehow they never considered the reverse.

It happened, though. There’s no changing it. And then Cyrodiil buzzed with the news: death, insurrection, the Nords gone to war. For the first time in many years Freyja thought of Skyrim and home in the same breath. For the first time in months she felt a thrill of excitement about raising her sword. But the only thing this war seems to lack is a just cause, and Skyrim is not the homeland she left ten years before. It’s still savage and beautiful, so beautiful she’s surprised she ever left, but Freyja feels like a stranger. In Whiterun – in the scant few hours she spent there, running back and forth to the keep – she strode by people she had known since childhood without a hint of recognition. That’s not so surprising; she wears her hair differently now, and a thin scar crosses her face from cheek to jawline. Another one ticks faintly across the corner of her mouth, and time in the Alik’r Desert and the Nibenay Valley has left her so freckled that her coloring might pass for Imperial at a distance, if her height and build were not so unmistakably Nordic. She suspects she walks differently too, with the easy competence of a tried warrior rather than the eagerness of youth. People move out of her way.

What surprised Freyja was how little she recognized Whiterun. Her parents had their one child late in life and died while she was abroad, so she didn’t expect to find family. But the bustling market town she knew from childhood had changed. Men eyed each other suspiciously in the streets; guards kept their hands on their swords. Travelling merchants from other holds were nowhere to be found, and the local ones apologized for the price of their wares, citing bandits and the war. It always came back to the war. Apparently the Grey-Manes and the Battle-Borns had some sort of political feud going on. The families had been fast friends when Freyja lived in Whiterun; she’d played tag and hide-and-hunt and slay-the-monster with some of their children, growing up.

And then there were the dragons. She shakes her head, remembering Irileth after the fight at the Western Watchtower. I don’t need some mythical Dragonborn, the housecarl had said, and by the gods had she sounded like Indros - that sharp Dunmeri accent smoothed at the corners by travel, the skeptical tilt of her eyebrow. Someone who can put down a dragon is more than enough for me. Freyja hadn’t put down a dragon, though. She’d crouched behind stairs and pillars with all the rest of them and helped fill the beast with arrows, and once it was downed she’d rushed in to strike the killing blow. If she had been less quick or less lucky she might have been roasted or eaten just as easily as some of her less fortunate comrades. On her own, she would not have stood a chance. That’s why she and Eitri are currently bedded down in the darkest thicket they can find. That's why they don't dare start a fire. If she were capable of going one-on-one with a dragon, she’d be the richest sellsword in Tamriel and Helgen might not be in smoking ruins and Indros would not be dead.

“Do you know the words?”

It’s only then that she realizes she is humming under her breath: a bawdy Colovian lay about a goat and a cask of brandy. Freyja looks up to see Eitri laying back on the bedroll with one forearm pillowed beneath his head, listening to her song with sleepy eyes. She wonders how long she has been lost in her thoughts. How long he has been watching her. “You hum a lot,” he says, flushing a little.

“I know a lot of drinking songs.”

He smiles. “Brokkr would like you.”

“Comes of rooming in taverns for ten years,” Freyja says, but her thoughts are on his cousin. It’s odd to be part of a rescue mission for a man she’s never met. She’s done it before, of course, but it was always a job: find my father, help my daughter, save my friend, you’ll be rewarded handsomely. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel compassion for them, but her clients were just that – clients. Freeing their loved ones from highwaymen or necromancers or men with old grudges was rewarding, but it was also something she was hired to do. This is different. Whatever she said to Eitri about the value of elven armor, she is helping him because she wants to. Because it’s clear that he truly does care for his cousin. Because it strikes her as unbearably cruel that a brave man should walk to certain death because he loves his kin too well to give up, even when the odds are hopeless. “What’s he like?” she asks.

Eitri shakes his head, fondly. “Well, I told you – he’s been known to shoot off his mouth. Hot-tempered, like they say redheads are. Impatient. I think he’d lose his mind, bent over a grindstone all day putting new edges on dull axes.”

“You need patience to stalk a deer,” Freyja points out.

“That’s different. You’ve got to keep alert – it’s exciting, even when you’re standing still. Brokkr hates to be bored. Always has. I remember when we were children, there was one winter we had so much snow you could scarce step out of the house - you can’t imagine the mischief, after being cooped up inside for a few weeks. Talked me into helping him ice the tavern steps while everyone was inside drinking one evening. It’s a wonder no one broke a neck.”

Freyja laughs. "Your cousin sounds like me. Divines, what a terror I was."

"No - I bet you were a sweet kid."

Freyja snorts. "I bloodied the neighbor boy's nose because he told me girls weren't supposed to play with wooden swords. Once - you've heard of the Gildegreen?"

"The sacred tree, aye."

"Well, I climbed it," Freyja says. "Right to the top. The branches up there could barely take my weight, they dipped six feet every time the wind blew. The priestess of Kynareth was furious. So were my parents - though I overheard my father say it was a strangely fitting form of worship, for the sky goddess."

Eitri swallows a chuckle. “Did you drag anyone else up the tree with you?”

“Not that time, no. I was good friends with one of the Grey-Mane kids, though, and we got into plenty of trouble.”

He stares at her. “As in, Eorlund Grey-Mane?”

“His daughter.”

“You grew up playing with lords’ children.” Eitri looks rather awed. “You know Eorlund Grey-Mane.”

Freyja knows the man is a fine smith, but she thinks of him as Olfina’s rather gruff and inscrutable father. She supposes it makes sense, though, that a fellow blacksmith would revere him so. “They’re not all that different,” she says. “The Grey-Manes were as poor as the rest of us, even if they had a famous name. The Battle-Borns weren’t, I suppose, but children are children. We all played tag together just the same.” She shifts her shoulder out of a divot on the ground. “What about you – what was it like being born and raised in Ivarstead?”

“Not born.”

“I thought you said you’d lived there all your life?”

“Well – not all my life. Almost as long as I can remember, though. My parents and I lived in Northwind. Little mining camp, on the border of Eastmarch. It’s not there any more. When I was three there was a cave-in. Killed my father and mother both.”

“Do you remember them?”

Eitri goes quiet, considering. “I remember my mother’s laugh,” he says. “And I remember my father smelled of stonedust. Not much. I was too young, I think. My aunt and uncle are the ones who raised me. I was lucky – they didn’t have much, but they wouldn’t hear of sending me to Honorhall. Aunt Hrefna borrowed a neighbor’s horse and rode out to get me herself. She and my father were always close, I guess.”

“Sounds like a good woman.”

“She was,” he says. “My uncle too. He was the village blacksmith – most men would have wanted to hand down the craft to their trueborn son, but Brokkr never had an interest in it and my uncle never insisted. I wasn’t his blood, but he never treated me that way. And Brokkr – he was no older than I was when my parents died, a few months younger, actually, and suddenly he had to share everything. Toys, sweets, his ma and pa. We even slept in the same bed for a while. I don’t think it was easy on him, at first, but he never treated me like an intruder. We were best friends growing up.” He smiles wryly. “Course, he may just have been happy to have someone to get into trouble with him.”

Freyja smiles with him. She can see why he cares for his family so. When he yawns, she settles back into her bedroll and closes her eyes, smelling moss and the strange heavy smell of the hide tent. “Good night,” she says.

The coast unspools slowly beneath their feet. To their left the mountains rise in ever more jagged ridges, but they don’t see or hear sign of any more dragons. To their right the Sea of Ghosts laps steadily at the shore. Occasionally a small lone iceberg drifts by. Some days it is bitterly cold, with winds that whip Freyja’s hair into a salt-filled tumble and stab like a blade, sliding between armor plates to find the heart. Other days a wooly fog coats their fur cloaks like dew. Once the day dawns clear and they walk most of the morning in silence, staring up at the peaks etched impossibly stark against the sky, or out at the endless silver sea.

Most days, though, they chat as they walk. Eitri is a good companion: eager to listen and quick to laugh, with an easy, self-deprecating humor. Freyja wonders if she can call him a friend. At the very least she’s glad to know she bedded a man she still likes, once she’s gotten to know him.

The further they travel, the more their conversation turns to the possibility of finding his cousin. "If we find him - what then?" Eitri says, brushing a snowflake out of his eyelashes. It’s the first substantial snow they’ve had: small, slow flakes that gather thinly on the ground, so thinly that the outline of every stone is visible underneath.

"Assuming we can break him out without getting ourselves killed? We run," Freyja says. "As far and as fast as we can. The way I see it, we have two options. We can go over the mountains, into the Reach - I've gotten to know the land some, and it's rough country. Easy to hide in, but crawling with hags and Forsworn and every other foul thing that would just as soon kill you as look at you, and the Dominion has quite a presence in Markarth. Or we can follow the coast back east, maybe get passage on a ship. We'll make better time, but so will anyone coming after us, and I don't know the terrain between Solitude and Dawnstar. We'll hit the Stormcloak side of the map sooner, though. Not that the Thalmor can't follow us into Stormcloak territory, but at least they're forced to operate less openly."

For a moment he is quiet. “They’re not going to stop hunting me, are they?” he asks.

“No,” Freyja says. “They’re not. Not if we manage to find your cousin and free him, at any rate. They don’t take that kind of thing lightly.”

Eitri rubs at the scar tissue on his palm. The movement in his fingers is coming back, but his grip strength is still meager; Freyja loaned him her shield for their last practice session, and he dropped it every time her sword connected.

“I’d go to Hammerfell, if I were you,” she offers. “It’s not bound by the White-Gold Concordat. No justiciars, and plenty of old soldiers who hate the Dominion.”

“You’ve been there, right?” he says.

“You could say I cut my warrior’s teeth in Hammerfell. The Great War went on for another five years there – the country was in pieces by the time it was done. It was a dangerous place for a long while, but that meant a lot of work for a sellsword.”

His voice is distant. “What’s it like?”

“Hot,” Freyja says, after consideration. “During the day, at least. There are canyons where the rock breaks off in squares, like castles walls turned all to red stone. Sandstorms. Sometimes the sun is so bright on the desert it looks like snow.” She smiles faintly. “And then, along the coast, everything is green. The merchant ports are always crowded. You’d swear no one ever sleeps. There’s a street in Sentinel that’s nothing but a market – spices and fruit and bolts of cloth in every color you can imagine.”

He seems to mull over that for a long time. When he speaks his voice is hesitant. “It sounds beautiful,” he says. “Did you ever…”

“Ever what?”

“Get homesick,” he murmurs.

I was never homesick for Skyrim until I came home to it, Freyja thinks, but even in her head it sounds like nonsense. “Not really,” she says. “I think you have to be lonely to be homesick.”

His face is serious. “You ought to go yourself. They’ll be looking for you, too.”

It’s a surprisingly tempting notion. Freyja did love Hammerfell, while she was there: the desert so hauntingly barren, the port cities so vibrantly alive. For a moment she contemplates running far away from Skyrim and its problems. Looking up comrades from years ago, testing her sword arm in lost desert canyons, maybe even settling down. Maybe even settling down with a fellow refugee, says a whisper in her head, one bound by common experience, with broad shoulders and bright hair and gentle hands. And yet something in her shuns the notion. This land has a stronger hold on her than she ever guessed. And buried at the back of her mind she can hear that rolling echo of DOVAHKIIN, and the softer one of Eitri asking her who else?

She swallows. One impossible task at a time. Eitri doesn’t seem to notice that she hasn’t answered; he’s watching the snow, his full lips quirked in a sad little line. He’s homesick already, Freyja thinks. She doesn’t blame him. The man’s lived in one village since he was three. For most of her adult life Freyja has made a habit out of cheerful rootlessness, but now she even envies him a little. “Tell me about Ivarstead,” she says.

“What is there to tell?”

It's the warmness in your voice I want to hear, she thinks. "Just tell me about it."

He flexes his hand, bites his lip. "It's...quiet. Well - no, actually, it isn't. The Darkwater River has its source in Lake Geir, and the town's built inside the first bend, by a little set of falls. It's never quiet." He shakes his head. "The first time I left town overnight – a trip to Riften, for supplies – I couldn't sleep, for the quiet."

"And you swam in the river, growing up," says Freyja - knowing it's true, somehow. "You and your cousin."

"Aye," he says. "The current is strong under the bridge, but Brokkr was always jumping off it. No matter how many times my uncle thrashed him."

"And you jumped, too?"

"Sometimes," he says. "Brokkr was good at talking me into stupid things."

"Water was cold, I bet."

He laughs - a curious, brittle sound. "By the Nine, yes. It comes down off the Throat of the World - in the height of summer it's like a knife. On hot days at the forge sometimes I dunk my head in the river after lunch, and let me tell you, if you stay under more than a moment you’re like to think someone put a dagger through your temple. It’s that cold.”

That paints a vivid picture: Eitri bent over the glowing forge, hair shaggy with damp, river water trickling in streams over his bare torso. “You said your uncle taught you to smith?” Freyja asks, quickly.

“He did. Good teacher.” Eitri smiles faintly. “Brokkr used to tell anyone who would listen that I was going to be the best smith in Skyrim, when we were small. He was always pretending to slay monsters, but it was always my blade he was using to do it.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the Rift.”

“Autumn’s the best time – the leaves are even brighter. When the wind combs over the treetops they chime and whisper like little sheaves of gold.”

“It sounds beautiful,” Freyja echoes, quietly.

“It is.” He shakes his head. “It’s strange to think I never saw them turn this year. They’ll have gone to rust by now.”

A sudden sound makes them both glance up, but it’s no dragon’s roar. A herd of ponderous, tusked creatures is gathered by the shoreline, inching along on tiny flippers and snorting thickly. Freyja grins. They’re even more absurd in life than they are in books.　

“What in…” Eitri says, a slow smile tugging at his mouth. “Those are the strangest animals I’ve ever seen. Now I know what they mean when they say clumsy as a drunken horker.”

Freyja watches the ungainly beasts lolloping along the shore. “I read somewhere that they can be aggressive.”

“Imagine telling that story in the tavern. One moment I was strolling beside the Sea of Ghosts, the next I was running from a horde of angry horkers...”

“I think a fast walk would suffice.”

Eitri laughs aloud. It rings in the cold air. One of the horkers trumpets an abrupt, startled bellow at the sound, and the sight of the creature attempting to scurry closer to its fellows illustrates the point so neatly that Freyja starts to laugh as well. “Horker Attacks,” she snorts. “Some scholar was desperate to sell a book, or else some old Nord had an interesting sense of humor.”

There is snow settling on the shoulders of Eitri’s cloak, a few flakes sharp white in the red of his beard. His teeth gleam white as well. Suddenly Freyja is sick unto death of caution and planning and good sense. She bends at the waist, scoops up a bit of snow. It lays so thinly on the beach that she has to scrape a patch of ground bare before she can get a proper handful, and there are bits of dark sand packed into her snowball. By the time Eitri has cocked his head curiously at her she is already tossing it into the midst of the horkers.

The snowball hits a rock by the shore and flies apart. Horkers rear and scatter. A few head for the sea, a few scoot further away along the shore, but one fastens beady black eyes in their direction. With an enraged bellow and a determined thump of its tail it begins to waddle towards them. Taking note of its plodding charge, the others turn and follow.

“Oh, gods,” Eitri says, starting to chuckle all over again.

“A horde of angry horkers.”

“We probably should run.”

They do, sprinting further up the beach and dashing nimbly past the horkers, which pile up in a confused mass and then hop slowly around on their flippers to follow them. Freyja and Eitri leave the creatures far behind, running and slipping along the stony shore until they are winded by their own laughter.

“There’s your tavern story,” Freyja gasps, red-cheeked with cold. “You can tell your cousin. Some bard will make a song of it.”

Eitri is bent double, holding his ribs. “That wasn’t very nice,” he chokes, once he can speak.

“I kill bandits for money. Who said I was nice?”

When he leans an elbow on her shoulder – an innocent, comradely gesture, steadying himself as he laughs – Freyja does not shrug it away. She claps a hand on his shoulder instead, brushing the hair out of her eyes. Grinning, she looks around and gets her bearings. The mountains have almost crowded out the shoreline here, leaving a thin ribbon of stone and sand to snake around the foot of rapidly steepening cliffs. Freyja wonders if the strip of dry ground disappears when the tide is high. Further west the ridgeline bends inland, leaving a more respectable amount of land on which to camp. Suddenly she stiffens. Fades back toward the cliffs. Eitri looks up.

“I think we found Northwatch Keep,” Freyja says.

I am loving this story so much. Can't wait for the next part.

In absolute love, A!A. These are the fills I love: the ones with that end up being this epic story. Now commencing F5 spam.

This story is not abandoned, I promise. New job is kicking my butt, but I am steadily chipping away.

Even behind fat white snowflakes, the grim upthrust of an old stone tower is unmistakable. It’s maybe two miles distant, but there is precious little cover on the bare shelf of land that makes up those miles. Freyja flattens her body against the cliff face and considers boulders, driftwood, lone spindly pines. Getting close without being spotted is going to be a chore. For a moment she and Eitri stand with their arms still around each other’s shoulders, eyeing the keep through the falling snow.

Eitri shifts beside her. “You’re sure that’s it?”

“I don’t imagine there are many old fortresses way out here.”

“So how do we get inside?”

“Easy now,” Freyja warns. “We’ve got to scout the place, first. And before we can do that, we have to get near it without raising an alarm – which looks like it’s going to be as much fun as a barrel of frozen mead. A skeever would have trouble staying under cover out there.”

“We’ve got to try.”

From someone else Freyja might take offense at the suggestion that she would quit, but the stubborn set of his jaw is rather endearing. She flashes him a grin. “Don’t worry. I’ve already told you that I specialize in doing things I shouldn’t.”

Three hours later, she’s feeling less brash. The two of them are crouched near the shore, behind a boulder crusted in salty rime; Freyja intends to make camp on the mountainside, but they’ve gotten as close as she dares in daylight. Her every muscle aches with the effort of creeping by inches across the barren snowfield. Black water laps occasionally round their boots, and the same sea-spray that has coated the rock with ice is dampening her armor and freezing in her hair. Worse than the physical strain of their cramped position is the mental one of being pinned down in such a place, constantly on the alert.

There are a lot of guards. They’re not idle, either; from the glimpses Freyja has caught they seem to be patrolling in front of the compound, the dull gold of their armor glinting occasionally beneath the monotonous white of the sky. “I’ve never understood why they wear such shiny armor,” Eitri murmurs, shifting beside her. “You can see them a mile off.”

“If you were a snotty elf who thought you were the Divines’ gift to Nirn, what color armor would you wear?”

Eitri snorts.

“They’re not ambush fighters,” she says, more seriously. “Doesn’t matter whether you see them coming if they can roast you before they’re inside the reach of your arm. I’d rather fight a big brute covered in plate than a mage with a good grasp of tactics.”

“How do we fight them, then?”

“We don’t,” Freyja says. “Not if we want to live. I’ve cut my way out of some tight corners, but these are well-trained soldiers, not bandit riff-raff. We have to get in and out without being spotted. Killing a few sentries is one thing, but any kind of pitched battle will bring the whole garrison down on us.”

Eitri’s brow furrows. He darts a rather worried glance around the edge of the boulder, and Freyja can’t help but agree with the sentiment. She knows how she would take a keep with Indros – Illusion spells and slit throats, dirty and brutal and quick. She’d be less worried if it came to crossing blades; they’d still be terribly outnumbered, but there’s nothing like a mage at your side when fighting other mages.

This is different. If they get caught, they’re dead; a blacksmith, however determined, and a single sellsword – however experienced – are no match for a fortress full of expert and ruthless magic-users. Eitri is a quick learner, but a week of sporadic practice with a secondhand axe never made anyone a warrior. Nor is Freyja as comfortable working in the shadows as she would like, not for this kind of job. She’s fairly light on her feet, and good at picking locks, but she’s not a professional sneak. She has always been the type to charge in swinging.

“Hey,” she says, to herself as much as Eitri. “Tombs and keeps and what’s inside them haven’t killed me yet.”

“Aye,” he says, and his cold fingers steal up to squeeze her own.

Finally, once it is dark enough that they will not be silhouetted between the snow and the falling twilight, they pick a torturous path up the boulder-strewn slope. It’s covered in little cliffs and slick with ice. Once the shaky grip of Eitri’s weak left hand nearly fails him. Once Freyja curses after sending a loose pebble clattering down the rock face, and for a long time after they lie prone and breathless on the cold stone, afraid to give themselves away with further noise. When they finally reach a good vantage point they’re both sweating. They start to shiver as it dries, but there is little they can do; a fire here would stand out like a beacon. Eitri finds a sheltered space beneath an overhanging rock and they crawl inside, drawing up the hoods of their cloaks and crowding against each other for warmth.

As night deepens they huddle in their hollow on the mountainside, watching specks of orange torchlight make their steady rounds beneath. Freyja follows the movements with a critical eye. “Six guards on patrol,” she finally says. “And a few more at sentry posts. They’re standing four-hour watches, which means there’s around thirty men down there. Probably more, if they’ve got prisoners inside – they’d need a guard on those, too.”

“That’s a lot of Thalmor.” She feels his answer rumble through his chest, pressed up against her shoulderblade. The moisture in his breath ghosts over her ear and makes her shiver. Even sharing body heat, wrapped in cloaks and furs, Freyja is glad of her Nord blood. The storm has cleared, and the night sky is like concentrated ink. The air is stark and cold as a knife to the throat. Light winds are skating down from the peaks, sending new snow scuffing across older crusts of ice.

Eitri shifts behind her. “I still haven’t worked out why you’re doing this.”

“Doing what?” Freyja asks, sleepily. He’s warm, and she’s beginning to nod off against his chest, exhausted by the day’s travel.

“This.” He gestures down at the ominous glow of the torches. “You said it yourself – the Thalmor will be hunting you the rest of your life. And that’s if we make it out of there alive.”

I’ve apparently got an appointment with the World-Eater, she thinks. The rest of my life may not be very long. “Glad to hear you’ve got so much confidence in me,” Freyja says, aloud.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

It does seem crazy, she supposes – taking on the Thalmor to aid a chance acquaintance. Freyja hasn’t fully examined her motives herself. She just knows she doesn’t want him to walk blindly to his death; perhaps she saved his life, but she feels as if she is the one that owes him something. She recalls his sad, steady gaze, as he asked her who would search for his cousin if he did not. Because you reminded me what courage is, she thinks. Her shrug ends in an involuntary yawn. “Look, the gods practically dropped you in my lap,” Freyja says. “I’m not going to leave the job half-done.”

He elbows her gently in the ribs. “The gods dropped me in your lap, did they?” he asks, shifting pointedly beneath her.

“Mmhm,” she says.

The sun casts wavering pink tendrils across the sea long before it climbs over the mountains. As it breaks across the shore below them it colors the crests of the waves like bloody foam, sends flame lancing from the pauldrons of the Thalmor sentries. The elves who arrive to relieve them from their watch exit the keep by a door near its western side, behind the heavily guarded gate to the inner courtyard. There is another, smaller door by a forge in the yard, but it doesn’t seem to be used. A lookout stands facing the sea just above it.

Their vantage point on the mountainside reveals that the keep is half in ruins, settled crookedly into its sandy foundation, topmost tower open to the snow. A wooden stockade fence covers a gap in the northern wall, by the smaller back entrance. That’s encouraging, but Freyja also fears there will be no secret tunnel, no hidden door. The drunken list of the fortress walls suggest it is built on shifting, waterlogged sand. Tunnels need bedrock. At the very least, soil. They’re going to have to sneak in the back door, under the watchful eyes of a half a dozen guards.

They try to sleep much of the day, all too aware that motion may draw enemy eyes. Another frigid night falls. Masser and Secunda hang low and huge on the horizon. Freyja looks at the moonlight on the fresh snow and shakes her head. If they move from their shelter tonight, the Thalmor sentries will spot them in minutes.

Another morning dawns. Another night falls. This night, the Divines are with them. As dusk begins to fall so does the snow, and by the time it’s fully dark it’s coming down in sticky wet clumps. “Let’s go,” Freyja says. The storm will play havoc with the guards’ visibility – and assuming they get out alive, Nords will make far better time in a snowstorm than any elves coming after them. Eitri swings his pack onto his back. Freyja draws her sword, sheathes it, draws it again – an old ritual, reassurance that it slides cleanly in the oiled leather. Satisfied, she returns it once more to its place, looking at Eitri. He gives her a grimly determined nod.

Kiss for luck? breathes a dark sly voice, so close in her ear she nearly starts. Freyja can almost feel teeth nipping her earlobe, slender bony fingers gripping her waist. It’s another pre-battle tradition, and it makes her want to curse. Not now. Not now. She glances at Eitri’s full lips, framed neatly by his dark auburn beard. In another hour they could both be dead.

It easier, in the clarity that always comes before a fight, to admit to herself that she wants to taste him again.

No, Freyja thinks, but it’s lacking the usual heat. She’s grown too fond of the man. Not now, she compromises. After we rescue his cousin. To seal our victory. “I’m going to try breaking in the back entrance,” she says, to distract herself. “By the fence at the gap in the wall. There’s fewer sentries on that side. If we move fast we can mostly stay out of sight.” Eitri nods. “Once we’re inside I’ll take the lead. We’ll probably have to kill a few guards, but I want you to hang back unless I get into trouble. This is all about speed and silence. I don’t want us getting in each other’s way.”

They pick their way down the mountainside and then swing in a wide arc around the keep, trusting the snowfall to conceal them from enemy eyes. On the slender spit of land just north of the fortress, they both pause. Freyja takes a deep breath, eyeing the dull orange glow of torches, the rowboat docked just offshore, the watchman squinting through the storm to the growling black ocean. As they crouch in the slush behind a lanky grove of fir trees, Eitri catches her hand. “Freyja,” he murmurs. “If we don’t—”

“Don’t tempt the gods, man,” she hisses, and returns to contemplating the lone sentry. Freyja is a passable archer, but she does not dare to take the shot in the dark and snow, with gusts of wind roiling in off the sea. She gestures towards the watchman, puts a finger to her lips. Eitri nods.

They’d have no hope, without the storm. The sentries atop the walls are huddled inside their cloaks, hoods drawn up like great fur blinders, too miserable to really patrol. Eitri boosts her over the wall and Freyja lifts the latch. They ghost to the door and flatten themselves against it as Freyja works at the lock; it seems to take a long time. Aside from the wind it is quiet – the eerie, muffled quiet that only a heavy snow can create.

Finally they slip inside. Freyja brushes snowflakes out of her eyebrows, gaze darting about the room. The shadows are very dark. A low doorway yawns ahead of them, above steep stairs leading still lower underground. Echoing back along the stone is the plop of water. The sound is strangely greasy, mealy-mouthed, as though dripping into pools soft and slick with slime. The place smells of decay.

She glances up in time to see Eitri swallow thickly.

Freyja puts her mouth directly against his ear. “Stay behind me,” she reminds him, so quietly it’s more vibration than sound. Then she draws her dagger and pads down the stairs, into the bowels of the keep.

For a time it’s quiet: the echo of water, the creak of her leather armor. Eitri’s soft breathing at her back. Then the rhythmic, gentle clink of armored boots on stone. Freyja peers around the wall, watches two guards pass in front of one of the L-shaped corners so favored in defensive fortifications. Notes the steady pattern of their patrol. Her hand tightens around her blade.

Freyja has known adventurers who seemed made of night and water, who could cut a man’s throat at table without spilling the wine he sipped. She’s never mastered that sort of elegant shadow dance, but she knows how to kill – and she knows how to do it quick and quiet. The first guard dies before he knows she’s there. The second hears the soft clatter of his armor against the floor and comes to investigate, but the torch in his hand leaves him blind to movement in the deeper shadows. He screams into her hand when she seizes him, struggling, but Freyja buries her blade in his throat and his voice dies away in wet gurgles. Her knees threaten to buckle under his dead weight; Eitri helps her lower him to the floor and then they both pause, listening hard. Nothing. One room cleared.

As they round the corner something crunches beneath her boot. Freyja looks down. There’s a knucklebone on the floor. Behind her Eitri takes a swift breath.

Cells line the walls, the inky darkness within the bars swallowing the torchlight. Eitri shoves past her, peering inside, calling softly. Ragged ghosts stir within. To Freyja’s right a Breton woman stares out at her, the whites of her eyes shining like crescent moons in the black cell, pupils huge in her wasted face. Freyja looks to Eitri, who’s reached the end of the hall. “He’s not here,” Eitri mutters. She can hear the strain in his voice.

Freyja does not want to take one step deeper inside this pit of Oblivion, but she adjusts her grip on the knife. She would feel safer with her sword clutched solidly in hand, but a long blade is not the tool for cutting throats. “We’ll be back for you,” she murmurs, to the half-starved Breton.

The next room is a small armory, lit by red coals burning low in a brazier. Just ahead lies a small side room. To the left a hallway leads deeper into the keep. Another guard sits at a corner table, munching on bread and cheese. As Freyja creeps toward her she swivels her head, eyes narrowing. Freyja claps a hand over her mouth.

The elf leaps to her feet, kicking over the chair; an armored fist slams back against Freyja’s ribs. Freyja’s dagger glances off the cheekguard of her helmet, slips beneath it, sinks into her neck. The dying flail of the guard’s arm sends her plate spinning off the table to clatter on the floor.

“Guard!” snarls an irritated voice from the side room. Strident, carrying tones. A tall robed figure appears around the corner. “I am working. Just what is the meaning of—”

Freyja tackles him: a clumsy lunge that carries them through the doorway and wrenches her shoulder hard when they crash to the stone floor. The mage wheezes, breathless, but when her dagger sweeps toward his ribs he seizes her wrist in a grip like iron. For a moment they grapple, and then his strong long fingers squeeze just right and the blade drops from her nerveless grasp.

A jerk of her knee sends it skittering out of his reach, but now she’s unarmed, and Freyja can feel the magic building just under his skin. When the hand clamped around her wrist flares red with fire it’s all she can do not to howl. Freyja twists viciously, slams a knee up into his groin. For half an instant he goes rigid. She rolls, pins him atop her with both legs and one arm, jerks his head back with the hand she’s clamped around his mouth. The wizard sinks his teeth into her palm. The stormy rush of destruction magic sounds all around her.

“Kill him,” she hisses. “Kyne’s breath, Eitri, kill him!”

Freyja flinches when the axe comes down, a wild stroke that bites deep into the elf’s neck and comes up through his jaw with a jerk, far too close to her own fingers. Her own face. For a moment she lies rigid, pressing her cheek against the floor. Then she staggers up, panting, guarding her burned wrist against her body. Gouts of the mage’s dark lifeblood stain her neck and shoulder. Eitri’s eye are wide. “Freyja—”

“It’s not mine,” she gasps. “Don’t drop your guard now, we don’t know who heard that.”

Eitri’s voice is low. “I think they’re used to noises from this room,” he says, and Freyja, for the first time, looks around.

The room stinks of piss and blood and moldering straw - and death. Beneath the low stone ceiling it's almost smothering. A single torch throws long, sputtering shadows across a torture rack, a noose hanging from the ceiling, a shelf of dusty bottles filled with dark, glutinous liquid. Eitri pulls the torch out of its bracket, and as he turns the weak light sweeps across a corpse rotting in its shackles, scraps of flesh and cloth hanging from its bones. Freyja turns away in disgust. Like most Nords - most anyone, really - she loathes the Thalmor on principal, but she's never felt it so viscerally until now. For a moment she shuts her eyes, jaw clenched with impotent rage.

A weak moan slithers out of the darkness.

In an instant Freyja is standing over the justiciar, sword at the ready. It's Eitri who turns to the corner and raises the torch, and Eitri who starts forward with a cry, dropping to his knees beside the man shackled helplessly to the wall. "Freyja! The key," he says, voice tight with urgency.

The prisoner turns his face to the wall, eyes squeezed shut against the torchlight. "What are you doing here?" he spits. Surprisingly hostile. There’s a bloody knife on the table just beside him.

"Rescuing you," says Eitri, as Freyja rifles the justiciar's pockets. "What's your name?"

The man's voice grates like a rusted hinge. "If this is a trick--"

Freyja fishes out the key and seizes the dead elf's robes, wrenching the body into view. "It's not a trick." The prisoner stares for a moment, blinking suspiciously. He reminds her of someone, though she can't think who. Freyja hands off the key and turns to the door, keeping watch as Eitri sets to work on the manacles.

"What's your name?" he repeats.

There's a long pause. "Thorald."

Freyja wheels. "Thorald Grey-Mane?"

"Yes - I - what in Oblivion-" he looks bewildered to the point of tears, unraveling beneath the shock of his unexpected rescue. Then he seems to master himself. "Do I know you?"

"I used to play with your little sister," Freyja breathes, faintly sick. She remembers Thorald as a boy not quite come of age, with a shock of white-blond hair and bulky shoulders that gave the lie to his youthful leanness. When she was twelve she even went through a stage when she was rather tongue-tied around him, though she doubts he remembers her name - he was a good five years older. Now he's barely recognizable. His braids are clumped and dark with grease and blood, his body stringy like a big man who's lost muscle weight too fast. One side of his face is a mass of half-healed bruising, splotched yellow and brown and blue.

He squints at her through the eye that isn't swollen shut. "With Olfina? Wait – no, Torstein and Sonje's little girl, what was your - Freyja?"

She nods.

"I thought - did my family send you?"

"I didn't even know you were missing. We're looking for someone else."

The man crumples back against the wall when Eitri finally releases the shackles, cradling his arms against his chest and hissing as the feeling returns to his fingers. "Who?" he grits.

"My cousin," says Eitri.

"There's a block of cells just outside," Thorald says. "Two - three guards, maybe--"

Freyja shakes her head. "That's where we came in."

Eitri puts a supportive arm behind Thorald's shoulders, clearly torn between helping and pressing for information. "Where else would they keep him?" he pleads.

Thorald shakes his head. "If he's not in those cells, he isn't here - prisoners are all in this wing."

"But how can you be sure? If they've kept you here the whole time--"

"Because there's no screaming from the other wing," Thorald says, harshly.

Eitri swallows. "Please--"

Something in his voice makes the other man open his eyes. Thorald squints intently at him. "Your cousin?” he says. “What did you say his name was?"

"Brokkr."

Thorald bites his lip. "Red hair?"

"Aye.” There’s terrible hope on Eitri’s face. “Real red, darker than mine. Have you seen him? Is he here?"

Thorald's face closes. He nods stiffly, like an old man whose neckbones ache. "He was," he says, and his voice lingers on the second word.

Eitri leaps up, pacing, fevered. "Where is he?"

Thorald exchanges a pained glance with Freyja. "He's gone," Thorald says. "I'm sorry."

Eitri doesn't seem to register the implication. "Where? Do you know where they took him?"

"Eitri--" Freyja starts. Thorald looks helplessly at her, and then his eyes flick to the skeleton still hanging in its shackles.

Eitri follows his gaze. For a moment he only stares, utterly motionless, and then he sways on his feet.

Freyja catches him under the arm, certain he's going to fall, but he wrenches brutally out of her grip. "No," he says, whirling on Thorald. "He only went missing two months ago, he can't - how long have you been here?"

"Not sure. It was Sun’s Height when they took me out of Imperial custody."

"And you're still alive," Eitri says. "That isn't--"

"He was wounded when they brought him in," Thorald says, looking like every word pains him. "I truly am sorry, but if you don't want to go the same way--"

"He's right," Freyja says. "Eitri--"

Eitri is on his knees beside the body, heedless of the stench, poking at what is left of its clothing. He must recognize something, because suddenly his face cracks like new ice. He doesn’t make a sound. He only buckles inward.

“I’m sorry,” Thorald says again, wretchedly.

“We have to go,” says Freyja.

Eitri makes a shaky, desperate little gesture, but she can read it well enough. I can’t just leave him here.

There’s a Talos amulet dangling amongst the bones, and Freyja steps closer, trying to ignore the cloying taste of death in her nose and throat. Picks the amulet free. It’s made of wood, hand-carved, small and rough and vulnerable in her hand. Scooping up Eitri’s wrist, she presses it into his palm. “Eitri,” she murmurs, and folds his fingers around it. Clasps them in her own. “Let’s go.”

He staggers mechanically to his feet, follows them from the room. As they hurry back towards the dungeon Thorald arms himself with one of the elven swords hung on a weapons rack, strips the dead guard of her fur cloak. “Armor?” Freyja prompts, but the man glances down at his wasted body and snorts a laugh.

In the prison Freyja locates a lever that unlocks the cells. “Please,” groans a bearded Nord from one of the cages. “I have to get out of here.”

“That’s the plan,” Freyja says. When the doors swing open the Breton woman comes spilling out, along with an Argonian. But their comrade makes no move to rise. Freyja beckons urgently. “Hurry – we’ve got to move!” He doesn’t answer. Freyja ducks into his cell, wondering if he is injured. “What’s your name?”

The man flinches back, staring vacantly at the wall. He hugs his knees to his chest. His voice is an airless whistle. “I have to get out of here,” he whispers.

Freyja tastes bile. She watches his colorless gaze slide over the bars of his cell, right past the opened door. Then she reaches for the dagger at her belt.

A hand catches her wrist. “You can‘t!”

Freyja looks up. Eitri’s grip is painful, his face deathly white. Freyja’s throat tightens in sympathy, but she shakes her head. “You‘d rather I leave him to the mercy of these bastards?”

He stares at her. “We have to move, Eitri,” she says. “He doesn’t even know his own name - we can‘t carry him to the other side of Skyrim. It’s kinder this way.”

“You would kill a man because he’s inconvenient?” Eitri’s voice is pebbles rumbling over granite; his eyes flash with real anger, a fierceness Freyja has never seen from him. The accusation rouses her own temper.

“I would do what has to be done,” she snaps. “Wait by the door if you can’t stomach it.”

“What if it was his leg that was broken, and not his mind?”

“It’s not the same thing!”

“She’s right,” says Thorald. “It’s a matter of time before they change the guards – we’ve got to get out of here now.” Eitri shakes his head. “It’s one life or four,” Thorald rasps. “We can’t save him. If you want to avenge your kin, we’ve got to live out the night first.”

That makes Eitri snarl and stalk for the door, fists clenched at his sides. “Are you headed for Whiterun?” Freyja asks Thorald.

“Aye.”

“Tell those other two to grab warm cloaks and weapons and get ready to head for the shore. There’s a rowboat nearby, and the border of High Rock’s not far. Most Argonians I’ve known were good with boats. If they row through the night they should make it across the border by dawn, and it’ll be a while before the Thalmor can give chase without a second set of oars. We’ll head east and hope the snow throws them off the trail.”

Thorald nods. Glances down at the man in the cell. “Talos guide you,” he mutters, and turns quickly away.

And then Freyja is alone with a dagger in her hand.

Swallowing, she kneels behind the prisoner. The stone is hard and damp and filthy against her knees. When she puts a hand on his shoulder the man huddles into himself, a tiny sound breaking in his throat, and for a moment Freyja has to look away. “Easy,” she says, pressing up against his back. “It’s all right.” With her thumb she kneads at the taut, hunched muscle of his shoulder, murmuring pointless soothing sounds. A voice in her mind is howling the need for urgency, but she cannot bring herself to drag his head up from where he has buried it in his arms.

Eventually he does lift his neck, although he does not relax; instead he fixes his gaze on the opposite wall, hugging his knees to his chest, seeming to will himself elsewhere. Freyja moves her hand to his matted hair, holding him steady. Rests the blade against his throat. It’s the dagger she uses to dress game, and she keeps it lethally sharp.

"We'll meet in Sovngarde, brother," she says, like a prayer. Gods only know if it's true. Freyja isn't certain that a mercy kill in a reeking dungeon counts as a heroic death, but in that moment she thinks it ought to.

She takes a breath, sets her jaw. Hot blood sprays across her fingers.

EEEEE!!!! THIS UPDATED!

And it's still marvellous and beautiful and raw. Poor Eitri, getting all that way and his cousin's dead. I wonder what he'll do now - that was mostly what was keeping him going. And I love Freyja in this too - so pragmatic and at the same time, still so very human.

Re: Songs for Nomads 4.9

(Anonymous) - 2013-12-21 15:13 (UTC) - Expand

YIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSHH. MOOOOOOAARRR.

(Side note: glad you aren't dead, dear A!A. Don't you dare disappear on us for another few months, mmmmmk?)

Keep calm and F5 on!

Re: Songs for Nomads 4.9

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-04 19:58 (UTC) - Expand

I love this so far! Read it from the beginning in one go. I hadn't seen it before because I used to only read slash (back when the meme was busy enough).

I'd like to offer coherent comments but I'm tired and a bit overwhelmed - it's hard to comment on an entire story all at once. The overriding thing I notice is how much emotion is in the story. This isn't just a sex story, or even a hurt/comfort story - there are elements of both of those and more. It deserves to be posted somewhere other than the kink meme, where more people can admire it.

Songs For Nomads 3.1

Songs For Nomads 3.2

Songs For Nomads 3.3

Songs For Nomads 3.4

Songs For Nomads 3.5

Songs For Nomads 3.6

Songs For Nomads 3.7

Songs For Nomads 3.8

Songs For Nomads 3.9

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Re: Songs For Nomads 3.9

Songs for Nomads 4.1 (finally)

Songs for Nomads 4.2

Songs for Nomads 4.3

Songs for Nomads 4.4

Songs for Nomads 4.5

Songs for Nomads 4.6

Songs for Nomads 4.7

Songs for Nomads 4.8

Songs for Nomads 4.9

Re: Songs for Nomads 4.9

Re: Songs for Nomads 4.9

Re: Songs for Nomads 4.9

Re: Songs for Nomads 4.9