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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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From: (Anonymous)

In the end he takes every coin they have between them. Later, below deck, Freyja shrugs, settling into a pile of straw between crates in the hold. There are no empty berths for them, so it will have to do. “I’ve been poor more than once, but I’ve never been to Thalmor prison. And having seen one, I don’t intend to start.”

They can’t really argue with that. “Cidhna Mine, though,” Thorald says. “Where did you come up with that story?”

“It wasn’t a story.”

“You didn’t really break out of Cidhna Mine!”

"No, I did.” He raises an eyebrow. “What? I hadn’t done anything - it was a cover-up, some arrangement between one of the Silver-Bloods and the leader of the Forsworn. I had to go through him to get out, actually."

“The Forsworn are magic users, and dangerous ones. How in Oblivion did you manage that?”

“With a small, sharp blade between the ribs,” Freyja says, dryly - though she thinks better of it, when Thorald makes a choking noise and she recalls that he remembers her when she was six. “He had it coming, believe me.”

It’s at that moment that Eitri stands, wordless, and walks out. The door shudders in its frame when it slams behind him.

The ship shifts and groans, a small puddle at the bottom of the hold sloshing. Freyja glares at the low tarred beams above them. Thorald shifts awkwardly. “Like I said, he’ll come ‘round,” he says. For a moment it’s silent. “Someone ought to bring him back,” he adds. “I don’t trust these pirates worth a Riften dice game.”

“I don’t think he wants to talk to me.”

“I’ll go.”

“Thanks.”

“I owe him that,” Thorald says, voice low. “His brother—”

“Cousin.”

“Whatever.” His voice is rough. “He was in the cell next to mine. I could see him walk by when they took him for interrogation, the red hair was easy to spot. When they dragged him back I’d knock on the wall, and he’d knock back, on the other side, let me know he was alive – he did the same when it was my turn. I waited – gods know how long, once, before I heard from him, I think he was unconscious, or maybe he just didn’t have the strength. But eventually he always knocked back. They wouldn’t let any of us talk, but we had our little code. It made you want to stay alive. You didn’t like to think of the other fellow knocking and knocking, and not getting an answer.” Thorald swallows. “Well, the guards caught us at it. They chained us up in the interrogation room and left us, and he was already bad, he was dying, but for two days I sat across the room and watched it happen. That’s the only reason I knew his name – that’s the first time we ever spoke. Funny, right? That you can make friends with a man, and never speak to him.”

Freyja stares at him, feeling winded. Thorald just plunges on, as though he cannot stop the words now that they’ve begun to tumble out. “Like I said – he was dying. But they wouldn’t have done that to him, if not for me.”

Freyja finds her voice. “You don’t know that.”

“Of course I do,” he growls. “I told you – they wanted to break me. They would have killed him anyway, I know that. But they strung him up by the wrists and let him die in his chains because they wanted me to watch him sweat and shake and rave with fever from fifteen feet away, and not even be able to give him a sip of water. And then they just left him there to rot. Because they wanted that corpse staring back at me every time they brought me in for another torture session.”

“Divines,” Freyja breathes, dry-mouthed. “Whatever you do, don’t tell him that story.”

“Do you think I’m thick? I just—” Thorald swallows again. “He shouldn’t be alone.”

Imagining him shackled to the wall, left alone with the decaying body of a friend and a festering guilt over the manner of his death, Freyja concludes that Thorald is probably an authority on that subject.

A party of three, and every one of us alone, she thinks, as she settles back against the groaning hull of the ship. Divines, what a fucking mess we’re in.

From: (Anonymous)

Yes! Yes! I do so adore your little story you've got going here, A!A. I'll cry a little when it's finally over, but until then, I'll be reading this like a fiend. Keep it up!

From: (Anonymous)

Thank you very much! I'm having fun writing it, so I'm glad somebody is having fun reading. :)

From: (Anonymous)

And I thought I hated the Thalmor in the game...

From: (Anonymous)

Thanks! I'm glad you think my Thalmor live up to the standard of shiver-inducing loathsomeness set by the game, which is a pretty high one.

From: (Anonymous)

how I only just got onto the bandwagon now, I'll never know, but damn A!A, this is a nice fic :)

From: (Anonymous)

Thank you very much! I hope you continue to read and enjoy it.

From: (Anonymous)

Their first night aboard ship, a storm whips up. All three of them are seasick; the smugglers watch them heave over the rails with thinly veiled amusement while Freyja silently vows never to leave land again, as though seafaring is a vice like Colovian brandy. The remaining two days are calm, but gloomy. The tarry, low-ceilinged hold is oppressive, and Freyja tries to spend time on deck, away from the ribbed hull like the belly of some monstrous whale. Away from Eitri. He has been more subdued than snappish ever since he spoke with Thorald, but Freyja is still simmering over his words. It irks her to see the instant friendship that has sprung up between her companions. Eitri practically hovers over the other man, determined to nurse him back to health, and Thorald engages in constant murmured conversations whenever Eitri seems inclined to brood. Freyja knows the bond is fueled by guilt on both sides, shared grief for a man that neither of them could save, but she resents it all the same. It is not fair that she alone should bear the brunt of Eitri’s rage when she’s done nothing to deserve it.

So she avoids the hold. A few of the sailors aren’t bad sorts, though they’re unmistakably rogues. Sayed the Redguard archer is young and rather talkative, with an impressively colorful vocabulary for describing Skyrim’s weather. Freyja likes him in spite of herself. She keeps a wary eye on some of the others, suspecting they’re murderers or worse, but apparently she herself radiates enough of a dangerous air that they leave her alone. Mostly she just stays out of their way, watching the mist-shrouded coastline to the south and the sea like sullen, rolling iron to the north. Occasionally a pitted chunk of gray-green ice floats by.

Undoubtedly reluctant to reveal whichever furtive cove they use as a hideaway, the smugglers put them off several miles west of Dawnstar. There’s nothing to do but continue trudging east. It’s a grey, windy afternoon. No snow is falling, but now and then a gust whips up a stinging fog of icy powder from atop the snowdrifts. It’s in the midst of one of these miniature gales that they hear a distant scream of rage. “Thief!”

Freyja shades her eyes. In that moment a fur-clad shape comes pelting over the nearest rise; he skids to a halt when he spots them, rusty iron in one hand and the gleam of jewelry in the other. There is panic in his eyes, the sort of desperation that makes even the scrubbiest bandit dangerous. When he moves to raise his blade Freyja levels her own at his throat.

He hurls the bauble at her face and runs, clearly deciding it isn’t worth the effort. Clouds of snow trail at his heels. Bemused, Freyja sheathes her sword and kneels, feeling around in the snow. After a moment she comes up with a necklace. It’s a silver disk of curious craftsmanship, inlaid with pale, glowing mother-of-pearl. She passes a thumb over its smooth surface. The pendant is still warm.

With a clank of steel a Khajiit bursts into sight, sweating visibly in his heavy plate, ears flat against his head and eyes spitting blue-green fire. “Which way did that landless scum go? Kharjo is going to gut him!”

From: (Anonymous)

Freyja tips her head toward the snowy hills. “He went that way,” she says, dangling the amulet from her fingers. “I assume this is yours?”

“Ah,” gasps the Khajiit, snatching it from her hand. “This was given to me by my mother when I was just a cub. It is my only memory of home in this cold land.” He speaks with the throaty, rolling accent that Freyja cannot help but liken to a purr. It makes her smile. Thorald and Eitri are hanging back a little, wary, but even their lips twitch when he slips the amulet back over his head, with a very contented and very catlike arch of his neck. Eitri puts his hand to his collarbone, where his cousin’s Talos amulet hangs hidden beneath his armor.

“But I see not all Nords are as cold as the snows,” their new acquaintance says, and makes Freyja a Khajiiti bow, with its strange little flourish of the tail. “Kharjo is at your service, Ra’Shurh.”

Khajiit are always so terribly charming when they wish to be. Freyja shrugs, smiling. “My pleasure.”

“You are heading for Dawnstar, yes?” Freyja nods. The Khajiit hesitates. “You will walk with us?”

Deserved or no, the caravans have an unsavory reputation amongst traditional Nords. Her comrades will probably be shocked if she accepts. Let them be shocked, Freyja thinks, rather vindictively.

So that’s how they finally limp into Dawnstar: surrounded by the grey dusk and the warm, incomprehensible sound of the caravan members bantering in Ta’agra. At the outskirts of the city the Khajiit fling down their packs, erecting tents and with the near-magical swiftness of career nomads. Kharjo presses a small coin pouch into her hand. “A thousand thanks, Nord,” he says, with a whiskery grin. As they walk into the city the crackling of a fire and the notes of a strange flute drift after them: a mournful, wavering sound, like the wind moaning through a rocky canyon.

“So that’s a Khajiit caravan. They aren’t like I expected,” murmurs Eitri.

“They usually aren’t,” Freyja says, shortly.

Kharjo’s gratitude won’t make her a wealthy woman, but it’s enough to cover dinner and a room at the inn – a welcome surprise, as Freyja expected to spend half the evening splitting logs to feed the innkeeper’s firepit, in exchange for hot meals and warm beds. It would be safer to spend the night in their tent. But with several hundred miles between themselves and Northwatch Keep, she feels justified in taking a breather – and they need supplies for the road. Their last meal was a sad handful of dried snowberries each, and hunting for their dinner on the road will slow them down considerably. Game will be scarce. Evening Star’s not yet arrived, but the northern reaches of the Pale are already locked in winter’s icy claws.

For an extra coin the innkeeper is happy to heat a bath. Freyja leaves Thorald and Eitri at the bar while the man and his daughter drag a wooden tub into the room they’ve rented. Like those in so many rustic inns it does not have doors, but the tub is tucked out of sight in the far corner and Freyja sinks gratefully into the steam, submerged all the way to her chin. The grime that clouds the bathwater when she’s finished doesn’t bear thinking about. She always feels naked and strange without her armor, but she can’t bear to put it back on when her skin still feels tight and clean; instead she slips into her tunic of blue-grey wool and simple farmboy’s leggings, with their crossed stitches up the sides. Then she slides her boots and belt back on. And her sword, of course.

The men have retreated to a shadowed corner of the tavern, where they sit with empty bowls and half-filled mugs. Freyja is glad to see they’ve the sense to avoid drawing the crowd’s attention. Patrons of village inns often gravitate to travelers, eager to hear the latest news. With its deep harbor Dawnstar likely sees plenty of unfamiliar faces, but the war is bound to have disrupted the trade from Solitude, and with it the steady flow of sailors. Thorald catches her eye and gives her a wordless nod. Standing, he downs the last of his ale and makes for the room, stopping to ask the innkeeper for new bathwater.

From: (Anonymous)

Freyja turns toward Thorald’s empty seat – and then hesitates. Eitri is studying her with a crease between his brows, looking oddly lost. She scrapes a hand self-consciously through her hair, still damp and loose from the bath. It’s very soft, as it always is following the first wash after a long and dirty march. With a jerk she turns for the bar to order her dinner.

There’s an animated argument going on around the firepit. “I tell you, I saw it,” says a craggy old Nord wrapped in furs. “Big as the inn, and as black as a storm. It flew along the ridge. Up into the mountains. Ask Sorcha, she’ll tell you.”

A dark scrap of a huntress in the corner looks irritated at being made the center of attention, but she confirms his story. “Dragon, all right,” she says, shortly. Then she goes back to shaping an arrow, with a decisive flick of her horn-handled seax.

“It’ll be long gone by now,” barks another man.

“And if it’s not?” A woman in miner’s clothes plays nervously with the handle of her tankard.

“Best start praying to Akatosh,” says another. “No walls, no catapults, and everything’s made of wood.”

“Don’t forget Skald sent half the guard to fight for Ulfric,” mutters a third.

“Divines’ sakes, all of you.” An elderly woman swivels in her seat by the bar, where she’s been chatting with the innkeeper’s daughter. “That pass is thirty miles away, at least, and the dragon much further than that. It’s probably flown off toward Mount Anthor.”

“We could use another Olaf One-Eye, if that’s the case.”

“And the Greybeards have called the Dragonborn,” says the woman. “Even my old deaf ears heard that, Leigelf.”

“Bread and stew,” Freyja mutters to the innkeeper, while an Imperial scoffs. “That’s naught but a story. Age-old Nord nonsense!”

“Did you not hear it, then?” says the old woman.

“We all heard it. But who’s to say he answered? Who’s to say there is one to answer?”

“They say the Whiterun guards slew a dragon.”

“Well done them – doesn’t make’em Dragonborn.”

The argument continues as Freyja tosses a coin on the bar and slips back to the corner table, head down. She’s so lost in her thoughts that the voice at her elbow startles her. “Did you hear it?” Eitri murmurs.

“Hear what?”

“The Greybeards,” he says. “When they called the Dragonborn.”

Freyja pauses, spoon hanging over her bowl. “I heard it,” she says, after a moment.

“I thought it was thunder, at first,” he says. His elbows are braced on the table, one hand rubbing at the nape of his neck while he looks off toward the fire. It’s the first time he’s begun a conversation with her in days. Freyja is not sure what to say. I knew it wasn’t thunder. I thought Whiterun’s gatehouse would come down around my ears. I’d just helped slay a dragon and I could still taste hot metal and raw power at the back of my tongue.

It’s me they summoned like some kind of fabled hero, and I’m nothing but a sellsword.

From: (Anonymous)

She settles for saying nothing. It’s probably better that way; if they spoke she might say something she’d regret, still quietly furious over his refusal to see reason in her decisions. Instead Freyja fills the silence with a mouthful of horker meat. It’s incredibly rich after weeks of trail rations, swimming in a thick broth of roast tomatoes and garlic and its own grease, and the steady way she spoons it down is due as much to real hunger as to the desire to avoid conversation. By the time Eitri goes to take his turn in the bath she’s mopping up the stew with a heel of bread.

“Hungry, were you?”

Thorald slides onto the bench beside her. When Freyja turns to greet him she raises an eyebrow. “You look…better.”

He looks like a different man, in truth. Still too thin, with greying yellow bruises splashed in a lurid circle round his left eye and cheek, like Reachman war paint. But his hair is clean and unbraided, his skin free of filth and sweat. The stark angles of his cheeks and the fading black eye make him look a bit disreputable, but no longer pitiable.

“You should have seen yourself,” Thorald says, teasing.

“No doubt.” She takes another bite of bread.

“It isn’t you he’s angry with, you know.”

With her mouth full of the dense, crusty loaf, Freyja has to chew deliberately before answering. When she does her voice is flat. “Really.”

“He told me about how you freed him. Took on three justiciars, he said.”

Freyja shrugs. “He got the third himself.”

“Still.”

“And I’m supposed to be glad – what? That he knows I saved his life? He’d be an idiot if he didn’t.”

“Gods, woman,” says Thorald, suddenly terse. “His only family is dead back in that—”

“He’s not the only one who’s ever lost someone,” Freyja snaps. “And he wants me to be something I’m not. He’s alive because I’ve spent the better part of ten years selling my sword arm all over Tamriel, and I’m alive because I don’t hesitate when something needs doing. He can’t have it both ways. I’m not some sort of noble wandering heroine out of a ballad.”

“No one’s asking you to be.”

Freyja looks up at the bar, where the patrons are still arguing about dragons, and snorts.

“Look, just give him a chance,” Thorald says. “It’ll be a long, silent walk back to Ivarstead if you don’t.”

“He can find his own way back, according to him,” says Freyja, mulishly, but her heart isn’t in it. She’s got to go to Ivarstead anyway, if she’s to finally heed the Greybeards’ call. A stubborn fool Eitri may be, but he was right about one thing: no one else would have looked for his cousin if he had not, and wishing her fate on someone else will not make it so. She should have gone to the Greybeards a long time ago. And she’ll be damned if she’ll let the man be recaptured by the Thalmor, or even fall to a bandit ambush, after the effort she’s put into keeping him alive. So to Ivarstead it is. Freyja shakes her head, sick of talking about it.

“Or you could come to Windhelm with me,” Thorald says.

From: (Anonymous)

Freyja looks up quickly. Thorald tilts his head, regarding her, elbows braced earnestly on the table. “You’re going back to the Stormcloaks, then?” Freyja asks.

“Aye. I swore my blood and honor to Ulfric’s cause, and that was before...before.” Something raw and haunted sparks in Thorald’s eyes, so close to the surface that he blinks and swallows it down. Freyja nods. She’s heard some deeply unsettling things about Ulfric himself, but the idea that the Legion would simply hand over a prisoner to the Thalmor – however reluctantly – is troubling too. She can’t blame Thorald for being angry. She’s even half-tempted by his proposal, but it would only be another way of running from her fate.

She keeps her voice soft, deflecting. “I don’t think I’d make a good soldier.”

“It’s not like joining the Legion. Regulations and orders and lists—”

“My father fought with the Legion,” Freyja says, sharply.

Thorald softens. “Aye, and so did mine. So did half the old men in Whiterun, right up to the jarl himself. It was something to be proud of then, but it’s different now.”

“I’ve lived in Cyrodiil for years,” Freyja muses. “It’s been my home. There are fields, in the West Weald, where nothing will grow. Empty far as the eye can see. You’re walking through these golden ripples of grain high as your waist, and then you step over a rise and it’s nothing but cinders and earth. The elves did something to them, with magic. Like sowing salt.”

“And that justifies throwing the provinces to the wolves?”

“Of course not. Hammerfell’s worse, far worse – the Empire’s got a lot to answer for. But they didn’t make the decision lightly.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

Freyja sighs, recalling the nameless dead man in Northwatch Keep. The brief catch of resistance before her dagger drove home, the scalding blood on her fingertips. “Sometimes right doesn’t have much to do with it.”

Thorald doesn’t reply to that. “At any rate, I can’t go back to Whiterun,” he murmurs, after a moment. “The Thalmor know I’m a Grey-Mane – it’s the first place they’ll look. It wouldn’t be safe for my family.” A deep crease forms between his brows. “Gods – they must think I’m dead.”

“Whiterun’s not so far out of the way on a trip to Windhelm,” Freyja says. “Nor to Ivarstead, for that matter. You could get a message in – I’ll take it myself, if you like. We can keep company till it comes time to cross the White.” Thorald gives her a grateful smile.

They retire early. The beds are simple, low and latticed, stuffed with straw and covered in furs; Freyja’s has a broken slat, but it feels soft as down after weeks of lying on the ground. And yet she cannot sleep. Long after the clamor from the tavern dies down she finds herself staring up at the ceiling, watching the light that drifts in from the firepit flicker amongst the rafters. She wonders if the dragon the hunters sighted is still in the mountains somewhere, feasting on goats it snatched from the edge of a crag. Or perhaps it did make its way to Mount Anthor; perhaps even now it hunches vulture-like over the peak, nearly invisible in the dark, slitted golden eyes glaring down at the battlefield where one of its ancient kin met his foe. Freyja wonders if dragons care for their own history, if they hate like men and hunger for revenge. Shivers. She can hear the innkeeper and his daughter arguing softly behind the bar. “She would want you to be happy, father,” murmurs the girl. “Entertaining the guests, and drinking, and making your lewd jokes like before.”

Her father is quieter; Freyja has to strain to make out his words. “…sorry,” she catches. “…Just don’t feel up to entertaining anyone.”

The bed-straw rustles as Freyja turns restlessly, pulling the furs more tightly around her shoulders. He’s not the only one who’s ever lost someone, she said to Thorald earlier. She wonders how the innkeeper’s wife might have died.

“Do you want to talk?” asks the girl, a little more gently.

Freyja can’t hear the innkeeper’s answer, but it must be a refusal. The two do not speak any more. Only the dull clink of tankards and the scruff of a broom remain to lull her to sleep.

From: (Anonymous)

“Nothing kills it!” screams a battlemage, frantically.

Dimly, she is aware that she ought to be afraid. Just a moment ago she was, but now her temples throb with the pressure of a boiling, inexplicable rage: at the dragon, at the panicking mage, at the Legion’s bindings on her wrists and at the Stormcloaks who never thought to cut them. The dragon wheels overhead, gleaming like ebony granted life – and here she is helpless, earthbound, BOUND. A house near the center of town goes up in flames. Freyja screams in fury, and her throat feels empty.

“Please tell me you’re not going to shout ‘Victory or Sovngarde,’” says a voice at her elbow, darkly amused.

She turns. Indros looks back at her, warpaint vividly white against the charcoal of his skin.

“You’re dead,” she tells him. He gives her a silent cipher of a smile.

The smell of cooking flesh makes Freyja look around. A charred body crawls from a doorway, only to collapse in the dust of the street. “I built you a pyre,” she says to Indros, over her shoulder. She can’t seem to look away from the flames.

“I know.” In his voice is the same fond exasperation she remembers. “Stop being a fool and run. You are outmatched, Dragonborn.”
She glances back at him, startled – and comes face-to-face with the dragon himself, red-eyed and glowing blue-black and cloaked in flame. His laugh rolls low and all-consuming as mountain thunder. Freyja grabs for her sword, and remembers her hands are bound.

She wakes with her dagger in hand, panting as though she’s been sprinting. Eitri is looking down at her, very calm and still. He meets her eyes over the cold blade kissing his throat.

Freyja releases him instantly, sits up gasping. “Divines, I’m sorry,” she says. “I was dr—”

“I know.” He steps away from her.

In her freshly-wakened state Freyja misses his proximity; there’s security in seeing a face she knows, feeling a warm body close. “Where are you—”

“Thorald,” he murmurs.

She looks up. Thorald is quaking on the floor, curled into himself, whimpering in an unrestrained animal way that chills Freyja’s blood. For a moment she stares, lungs clenching in her chest. Eitri steps past her without hesitation. As she shakes herself and swings her feet out onto the freezing floor Freyja sees the innkeep hovering near the doorway, looking hollow and unkempt. “What’s wrong with him?” he asks.

“Nightmare,” she mutters.

“Him, too?”

Freyja squints at him, sharply. “Have you had one as well?”

Thorald keens in his sleep, so loudly they both jump. “Not like that,” the innkeeper says. He looks unnerved.

Eitri kneels quickly, pulls Thorald into his arms like a child, and angry with him as she’s been Freyja is still struck by the gentleness and surety with which he does it. He would make a good healer. Or a good father, she thinks, and then wonders where that thought came from. “Shh,” he murmurs, looking pained. Thorald shudders, choking terrified open vowel sounds against Eitri’s shirt.

From: (Anonymous)

In the end it doesn’t take long to quiet him; once he’s been prodded into wakefulness Thorald blinks at the tentative gazes turned his way, a dark flush creeping up his neck. He drops his head, rubbing at his temples. “Shor’s bones,” he mutters. Trying to give him some privacy, Freyja tugs the innkeeper aside and spends their last few coins buying trail rations for the journey. It won’t be enough – they’ll have to shoot the odd rabbit for dinner – but it’s better than nothing. When she returns Thorald is in a chair with his elbows braced on the little table. Eitri sits on the edge of the bed, looking worried but giving him space. Freyja starts to divide the rations between them.

“Is it morning yet?”

She looks up at Thorald’s hoarse question. Freyja nods. “Must be two hours or so till dawn. I’ve got the supplies – we can catch a bit more sleep before we set off, or—”

“Let’s go,” Thorald mutters, not quite looking at her. “Let’s just go.”

“We’re already awake,” Eitri concurs. Freyja shrugs her pack on wordlessly, rolling her shoulders under the added weight. Thorald slips past her with his head down. The fresh tight braids curtaining his face are all that remains of the rejuvenation of last night’s bath. For the first time, he looks defeated. Freyja sighs. What do you say to a man who’s escaped torment by the Thalmor, only to encounter it again from his own sleeping mind? She is good at solving problems with sword in hand, but Thorald’s ghosts cannot be slain with steel. And even if she were blessed with compassion by Mara herself, she isn’t sure he would welcome it. They leave in silence.

The inn’s wooden porch is dusted with spindrift, fine and light as sugar; it’s too early yet for foot traffic or the innkeeper’s broom to have swept it away. Their tread sounds crisply against the cold planks as they file down the steps, leaving clean-edged bootprints. The morning star for which the port long ago took its name winks above the sea.

They keep to the road this time, grateful for a beaten track no matter how obscured by blowing snow. In the distance the Pale’s thick taiga is a deeper black against the morning sky. But the hilly, barren coastal plains are drifted in rolling waves, flowing downhill toward the sea like a frozen mirror of the surf, and in places deceptively deep. At one point Thorald steps off the edge of the road and finds himself thigh-deep in powder. Eitri has to seize him by the wrist to haul him out. The open palm he extends is far from threatening, but Thorald still wrenches back before swallowing, hard, and taking the proffered hand. “Fuck,” he grits out, as Eitri pulls him floundering from the snowdrift. “I’m sorry.”

From: (Anonymous)

“You should be,” Eitri says, lightly. “You’re carrying the mead.”

And just like that, Thorald’s blank, cornered expression melts into a tentative smile. “Oh, I see how it is,” he murmurs, with a light shove of the other man’s shoulder. When Eitri jostles him back he raises his palms. “Easy now – I’m carrying the mead.”

“Just wait.”

“Promises.” He flaps a mocking hand in Eitri’s direction. Freyja actually stops to watch under the pretext of fiddling with her shoulder straps, eyebrows climbing as the men stroll past trading comradely insults. She marvels at Eitri’s ease. With a joke and an open hand he’s banished the nightmare like so much morning mist. She thinks of the way he gathered Thorald in his arms back at the inn, not a hint of awkwardness or hesitation. He made it look as natural as breathing.

It’s odd to her, such gentleness in a man. But then for many years her experience of men has been mostly other mercenaries: aging rogues and one-eyed veterans, the lean, tough gristle of humanity. Not everyone keeps such company. And not everyone was fashioned to be a warrior. Eitri is gentle, but he isn’t soft. He can shrug off a grueling day’s march that leaves both Freyja and Thorald strung out like scraped hides; he fights with an earthy, dogged fierceness that makes up for a good deal of his inexperience. And he would have walked to his death with a clear-eyed courage that still astounds her, rather than leave his cousin to his inevitable fate. That’s more than she can say. When faced with a hopeless quest and an unwanted responsibility, Freyja dropped everything and ran.

She watches Thorald pelt a snowball at his head, and smiles faintly. A stubborn fool, maybe. But a kind one. At the moment she can barely find it in her to be angry with him.

By evening they’ve reached the deep forest cloaking the foothills of the mountains, and found shelter. It's not really a cave, just a grudging overhang of rock with a great drift of snow on the windward side and icicles clinging to the lip. But the ground is dry. And it blocks the wind, as the snowdrifts prove. They pitch the tent and build the fire, then eat what feels like a feast: chewy dried venison, slightly soft apples from the inn’s root cellar, and buttered potatoes baked directly in the coals, tasting slightly of ashes. Then they wash it down with the much-joked-about bottle of mead. It’s flavored with snowberries.

It’s Freyja’s turn to take the first watch; she feeds the fire as night draws its cloak around them. Gazes into the darkness. The wind has been picking up all day, and now the huge black conifers creak with it. We Nords were born of the wind, she remembers her father telling her on a childhood hunting trip, round a campfire very like this one, while an autumn blast hissed through Whiterun’s tundra grasses. Kyne breathed upon the land to form the first men – thus we name the mountain Throat Of The World, and thus you have a measure of safety that the most hardened Imperial general does not, little one, even from the bitterest winter chill. She remembers his wry smile, just visible in the dark. Though it’s good to have a fire, no?

The cold itself is a bright raw smell as she inhales, braided with spruce and woodsmoke and the promise of snow. Through a gap in the forest canopy Freyja watches clouds drift across the faint light of the stars. Skyrim, she thinks, for the thousandth time since crossing the border, is beautiful. She wishes she’d paid more attention to it as a girl. She wishes she could have shown it to Indros.

“Freyja.”

From: (Anonymous)

Eitri’s voice is soft and unexpected behind her, and when she turns his face looks grim. It puts her on the defensive. Freyja sits up, shoulders pressed to the rock. She speaks more harshly than she means to. “What do you want?”

"To apologize," says Eitri. Freyja just looks at him. He doesn't sit - remains on the other side of the fire, flexing his off hand in the way that's become a nervous habit.

"You did right," he says. "But I couldn't stop thinking whether he might have a brother or a friend somewhere, wondering what happened to him."

"I know."

"It's just - they'll never know."

"I know," she says again, feeling very tired.

"I'm sorry."

Freyja shrugs. "Me, too."

Eitri is quiet for a moment. "I do know," he murmurs. "Thanks to you. Don't ever think I'm not grateful."

She softens, a little. "I wish we'd found him alive."

"Me, too," he echoes. Fidgets.

Freyja nudges the cold ground beside her. "Sit down, then. If you're not going to sleep."

He does. Frost-coated spruce branches tinkle against one another as the wind moves, sending a swirl of snow to hiss and sputter in the fire. Otherwise the night is very quiet. Not even a wolf howls. Both moons are hidden behind the clouds of an impending storm, and all the creatures of the forest are bedded down, awaiting the coming snow.

“I’m going with Thorald,” Eitri murmurs, after a long while. “To Windhelm.”

It doesn’t surprise her, not after all the talking the two men have done. But Freyja finds it strange to picture Eitri in the padded mail and mismatched blue wool of the Stormcloaks. They talked of his home so much that the idea of him anywhere else – without the wind in the golden leaves, the sun on the laughing river, the sweat on his brow from the heat of the forge – seems wrong. She feels a sudden pang. She’s going to miss him; even after the chilly silence of the past few weeks, she’s going to miss him. She wonders if he’ll survive the war. Wonders if she’ll ever know, if he doesn’t.

“It’s safer that way,” she assures herself, and then realizes that she’s spoken aloud. “If the Thalmor are still hunting you, you’ll never be safe in Ivarstead.”

“Aye,” he says. Gazes into the fire. “Brokkr meant to join, I think.”

It’s the first time she’s heard him say the name since Northwatch Keep. Suddenly Freyja aches for him. After losing Indros she buried herself in the forest to hunt and rage and weep herself insensible in solitude, but the three of them have been squeezed into such close proximity; Eitri’s only privacy has been during the lonely watches in the night. "It helps to talk, you know."

"I know," Eitri says, but he doesn't seem able to find anything more to say. The wind gusts again. The fire flickers.

From: (Anonymous)

"I had this friend," Freyja offers, suddenly. "Some scholar with more money than sense hired us both for an expedition to Morrowind because he thought he’d found the resting place of some relic. I--" she laughs ruefully. "I hated his guts at first, he was so unbearably snide. I wanted to take his head off. We fought better on the same side, though - right from the beginning we could move in battle like one person, like we'd been doing it all our lives. It was uncanny. After we got back to Cyrodiil I think we spent the next year shaking ash out of everything we owned, and we never quite got rid of each other, either. Worked together - five years, almost." It's a vast oversimplification, but she doesn’t feel up to telling him the full tale. Even now her throat is tight. Freyja swallows, the skin of her face and throat feeling stiff in the cold.

"What happened to him?" Eitri finally murmurs, when she does not continue.

"Bandits, if you can believe it. Only two of them. Stupid ones, too, to attack a couple of armored sellswords, but we were laughing over a joke he'd made and they caught us off guard. He just - missed his footing," she says, through numb lips. "I'd seen him fend off two and three men at a time, it should have been easy, but he stumbled at the wrong moment and this bandit's axe caught him in the throat. It was that fast. It didn't take me more than a moment to finish them off, and by the time I did he was already gone."

That was the part that had stayed with her at the time, gone round her head in dull, incredulous refrain - the suddenness. Even now she can see it happen: a shear of awkward motion, a gurgling yelp, and nothing. By the time she dropped to her knees his pupils were fixed and the dust of the battle was sticking to the glassy surface of his unblinking eyes. There were no last words, no tender touches or darkly-humored quips. Just a slip and a cry.

Eitri is looking at her with too much sudden understanding. "A friend," he repeats, slowly. “Is that why you don’t...?” Then he stops, his mind catching up with his mouth. Freyja looks away.

“He fought bravely,” Eitri finally says. You’ll see him in Sovngarde, is what he means.

Freyja closes her eyes. “He was a Dunmer.” Eitri has no answer for that. “A Dunmer of House Hlaalu, he used to say, the proud bastard, nevermind Hlaalu hadn’t been a Great House since before he was born.” Her throat closes. Freyja watches the sparks from the fire rise into the night and whirl themselves out.

From: (Anonymous)

“Brokkr always loved a campfire,” says Eitri, after a long pause. A moment ago he started to raise his hand, as though to touch her shoulder, but now he shifts and lets it fall. “He loved sleeping outside. I think that’s why he took to hunting. I remember – we killed our ice wraiths together, up on the mountain, and he was insistent on lugging up not just bedrolls and a tent, but enough mead to put us both flat on our backs. So we could celebrate properly as men, or some such nonsense. I ended up carrying it, naturally.” He smiles a little. “The hunt went off without a hitch, but a frost troll came roaring into our camp while we were drinking. I thought we were dead. Nearly set fire to the tent trying to snatch up a branch from the fire, and Brokkr was lucky he had a pouch full of ice wraith teeth to prove himself an adult, the way his voice cracked when he shouted. And then the stupid beast slipped on a patch of ice and went sailing off the cliff. We stared after it for a few moments, and finally Brokkr just looked at me and said, ‘I won’t tell if you won’t.’”

Freyja barks a laugh.

“He told anyone who would listen that we tangled with a frost troll on our way back down the mountain, too, the rogue. The girls loved him.” Eitri’s voice trails off. “He was my brother, in everything but name.”

“He was my husband by any measure but a priest’s,” Freyja murmurs. She’s not sure where the confession comes from, but Eitri does not look surprised, only sad. He swallows, looking tactfully away. They both gaze into the snowy woods.

Neither of them speaks again that night. But Eitri sits the watch with her, nodding off with his back against the rock. Snow falls outside. And when his turn comes, Freyja never returns to the warmth of her bedroll either.

From: (Anonymous)

Long awaited update doesn't fail to please <3 The story is lovely, A!A

From: (Anonymous)

I’m glad you’re sticking with me in spite of my slow updates, and very glad you’re enjoying the story. :)

From: (Anonymous)

This story is perfect. No seriously, it has no flaws, none whatsoever. Love it and please keep up the good work!

I'm glad Eitri and Freyja were able to reach some sort of reconciliation. Probably for the best he and Thorald are off to Windhelm though. I wonder if Eitri and Freyja will meet again once she's become known as the Dragonborn? I can certainly see her maybe signing up herself with Ulfric eventually.

From: (Anonymous)

That’s shockingly high praise! Thank you so much. I'm really glad you're enjoying it.

Freyja would not get along with Ulfric at all. That said, she might still end up fighting for him eventually. Her loyalty tends to be tied to people rather than causes; with Thorald and Eitri both falling on that side of the fence, and with what they’ve been through together, she’s far more likely to swing that way as well.

From: (Anonymous)

The snows deepen as they climb into the mountains. Even keeping to the road, the three often finds themselves struggling through drifts that have spilled across the track as though from a split sack of sugar. More than once they camp in the deep hole around the base of a massive spruce tree, heavily laden branches drooping to form a natural roof. They meet few travelers. This time of year, the most common signs of life beside their own are the neat prints of snow foxes threading between the trees.

The sprawling forest is far from empty, though. Rabbit stew becomes a common supper as they attempt to conserve their supplies. One day they stumble across a tribe of frostbite spiders, and the resultant fight leaves all three of them shivering and feverish, joints stiff from the foul creatures’ poison. They spend another tense evening listening to the hoots and growls of two male frost trolls arguing over territory. The land rises slowly, but steadily. When nights grow even colder and the enormous black spruces begin to grow smaller, gnarled and stunted by wind, Freyja knows that they are nearing the high point of their journey.

The old fort at Dunstad Pass is inhabited by bandits, who jeer at them from atop the walls; maybe they aren’t inclined to engage with a trio of armed and armored wanderers, or maybe the three of them just look skint. Even so, one of the bandits sends an arrow hissing into the snow near Freyja’s feet. The warning is clear. She gestures obscenely in the archer’s direction, but takes the lead in climbing around, cursing Dawnstar’s jarl.

“What sort of fool lets a gang of cutthroats take up residence in the most strategic fort in his entire hold?” she growls, as they wade through ice and snow on the mountain slope.

Thorald shrugs. “None of the jarls have any guards to spare. When I left Whiterun the old White River Gang was getting bold, and the state of Valtheim Towers is a bloody disgrace. Right on the border with Eastmarch, and neither Ulfric nor Balgruuf wants to be the one to tie down a detachment holding the place. Or antagonize each other by posting men at the border, come to that. Balgruuf keeps paying out bounties, but every time some adventurer comes in and clears the fort another pack of lowlifes moves in.”

“Charming.” Freyja shakes her head.

“The sooner this war is over, the better,” Thorald agrees. Freyja grimaces. He’s right, but personally she can’t see the conflict being anything but long and ugly. And while she’ll likely fill her empty pockets carving up such grubby hideouts, that doesn’t mean more of them is good news. She’s well-schooled in the misery their denizens can cause.

Eitri’s thoughts seem to follow the same path. He’s watching her out of the corner of his eye, a worried little frown dogging his mouth. Freyja shakes her head. There was indeed a time when just the idea of bandits set her burning with impotent rage, when she’d have stormed any fort in her path with the sort of single-minded ferocity that didn’t care for odds; she still carries a long white scar along her ribs from one particularly messy encounter. But every fire blazes itself out eventually, even those of fury and grief. After a year it’s only a smoldering background ache, and it takes more than a simple mention of outlaws to set it flaring to life. To be fair, Eitri’s only just learned that it might be an issue, but his anxious concern is grating. And a bit worrying, quite frankly. The man is too damned kind to fight in a war. “It was more than a year ago,” she tells him. By way of answer Eitri reaches over and squeezes her hand. He drops it quickly, but the gesture still leaves Freyja startled, and somewhat touched. Out of the corner of her eye she catches Thorald watching them with a tiny, satisfied smile. She’s a sudden sneaking suspicion that she’s not the only one he was urging to make peace.

From: (Anonymous)

“Was it strange?” Eitri murmurs, as they labor over a ridge of rock and corniced snow. The fort is grim but small below them, like a carven marker on a map. A frigid wind is dragging strands out of Freyja’s braids.

“Was what strange?”

“Having...” he twists his hands vaguely, awkward. “Being with someone – not human.”

Freyja shoves her windswept hair out of her eyes, wary. “How so?”

“Just – all the differences. Elves live so long, for one thing.”

Thorald looks curious. “You had an elven lover?”

“Yeah, that part was odd,” she says after a moment, leaving Thorald’s question to answer itself. She’s surprised by her own willingness to have this conversation, but somehow it feels natural. Perhaps because Eitri already knows part of the story; perhaps because she can recall the silent buckling of his face in Northwatch Keep. “He was young by elven standards, and yet he could remember the Great War. I’d barely been born, and he was in Cyrodiil, running supplies to the Legion.”

“He was a legionnaire?”

“No. After the Imperial City fell the army regrouped near Cheydinhal, and his family owned a general goods store there. He worked as a guard for the supply caravans. Dealt with the Legion a lot. I heard someone call it war profiteering once, actually, but he risked his life to smuggle supplies behind enemy lines. Talked his way past a Dominion patrol once by flirting with the commander, some utter flowery nonsense about Queen Morgiah of Firsthold and precedent for Altmer-Dunmer unions.” She shakes her head, remembering the way he could school his angular features into a cuttingly accurate depiction of Aldmeri snobbery, and then ruin the illusion by theatrically batting his eyelashes. “I can’t tell the story right.”

Eitri smiles. “He sounds like a rogue.”

“He grew up in the refugee quarter of Cheydinhal,” she says. “When Red Mountain erupted a lot of Dunmer fled there, especially the disenfranchised Hlaalu nobles. They had merchants’ ties to Cyrodiil, not that it did them much good in the end. Empire was too busy with its own problems. It’s not a bad place, but these days it’s...spare. Shabby. There’s not a lot of extras or kindness to go around. He was a survivor. Knew a bit about most everything, and how to turn it to profit. Youngest of three brothers and the only one not born in Morrowind, the one who worshipped the Divines alongside Azura.” Freyja shrugs. “He was good at that. Finding something he could use, in everything. Which rumors a tavern keeper would want to hear, which flowers would fetch a good price from the alchemist. And yes, he had a silver tongue, when he wasn’t sharpening it on everyone within reach. Which wasn’t often, frankly.”

“You loved him,” Eitri observes, quietly.

“Why shouldn’t I?” There’s a sudden snap in her voice, like a narrow branch whipping back across a path. Freyja is well aware of how some Nords feel about relations between men and elves.

“That’s not what I meant,” Eitri says, just as quietly. Freyja swallows. They don’t speak of it any more.

From: (Anonymous)

The slope of the land beyond the fort is a welcome change after the long, steady climb they’ve made since Dawnstar – although, with her heavy pack, Freyja soon feels the familiar downhill ache in her knees and the backs of her thighs. They make good time, but their hike around the pass ate at least an hour of daylight, and it’s bitterly cold. When the sun begins to settle low in the sky they are only too happy to turn off the path and stomp through the snow to the top of a little hill, where a downed spruce has created a small clearing. They pitch their tent in the natural windbreak formed by the big tree’s exposed roots, and then begin to gather firewood for a long, cold night.

The men spar as Freyja tends the fire, trying to force warmth into their limbs by crossing blades. Freyja frowns as she watches Eitri’s form. He’s improving, there’s no doubt about that. But she dearly hopes the Stormcloaks hand their recruits off to a weapons-master before sending them into the field. He’s not ready for organized battle. Freyja feels a surge of sudden fury at the idiots tearing Skyrim apart for their own blindness, at the Empire’s bloated bureaucracy and the Stormcloaks’ intransigent pride. Even at Thorald, for suggesting Eitri lend his arm to the cause – though gods know the man has his reasons. At the Thalmor most of all, for the way their machinations have rent her homeland along its seams. Good men shouldn’t die for nothing. But she can’t escape the foreboding that after all they’ve been through, the man she’s come to see as a friend will end as just another snow-dusted corpse in a muddied blue tabard.

They retreat to the tent as soon as they’ve eaten. Near midnight, Eitri shakes her awake to take the watch. Second watch is never pleasant – far better to rise early or stay up late than to interrupt a night’s rest – but tonight crawling out of the bedroll makes Freyja curse; the brutal cold rakes its claws over every sliver of exposed skin. The very air seems frozen. Night hangs suspended on the edge of the world, timeless and still, with only the slow revolution of the stars to mark the passage of the hours. Freyja wonders what High Hrothgar is like this late in the year. She’s chosen a poor time to develop a sense of duty. The Throat of the World is further south, but far higher; if it’s this frigid in the western end of the Anthors, the upper reaches of the mountain are sure to be colder than wraiths’ teeth, and buried in snow. She moves closer to the fire, tucking her fingers into her armpits and her nose in the fur of her cloak. At least the chill in the air makes it hard to doze. For long hours she sits staring into the darkness, wondering what the Greybeards will say when the Dragonborn arrives many months late.

There’s a soft crunch of snow. Freyja sits up, alert. The wind moves. Through a gap in the ice-stunted trees she sees the antlers of an elk silhouetted by the moons; when she moves the animal snorts a steaming breath and dashes away. Freyja settles back, relaxing her grip on the hilt of her sword.

A moment later, there’s another soft crunch. This time she slides the blade half out of its sheath, rising slowly to her feet. It may only be another night creature of the forest, but she would not put it past the bandits in the fort to follow their tracks, intending to raid while they are sleeping. Perhaps they even startled the elk from its bed. For a long time Freyja stands in the little clearing, listening. There’s nothing but the wind. Then between the trees, on the road below, she spots the gentle glow of magelight. “Find them,” someone mutters. Ominous-sounding, but it’s not the words that send a bolt of dread down Freyja’s spine.

It’s the smooth, clipped tones of someone raised on the Summerset Isles.

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