The Leaf in the Wind: Chapter II - All that the Title Accrues

  • Our evening arrival in Falkreath was met with much dismay. At the sight of the bodies, what must have been the entire population of the tiny city immediately swarmed us, firing a barrage of questions. It was Valdr who silenced them.

     

    “Please! All will be told!” he bellowed. He waited for the cacophony to die down. After a few seconds, the silence felt oppressive.  “We were hot on the trail of a bear, followed it into a cave. At least, we thought it was. Turned out to be a huge cavern. Must have been the size of a village. Full of trees.” He paused, and the crowd waited with bated breath. “There were spriggans,” his voice cracked, but he quickly recovered. “They’re dead.” I didn’t think it was could possibly get any more silent, but I was wrong. Even the birds were still. Valdr continued.

     

    “I should be, too, but I had time to run for it while they were… while their attention was on Ari. They’d be spriggan food if this traveler hadn’t happened by and helped me retrieve their bodies.” The suspicious gazes being directed at me softened significantly, and the silence became the soft hum of whispers. “Thanks to him, Ari and Niels can be buried like proper nords. Like they would have wanted,” he said with reverence.

     

    I noticed that people had come out of their houses and were listening from their porches. Valdr walked over to one of the two guards posted on either side of the city gates. “Please, take him to Runil,” he said somberly, handing the body over to the guard, who nodded and strode off. I went to the other guard and handed him Ari’s body with much relief. My whole body ached from carrying it. When the citizens realized Valdr was finished, the uproar of questions began to rise once more. “Come on,” he said tersely. “Let’s have a drink.” This seemed a very odd invitation at the time, but if going for a walk through the horse stalls would get me away from this crowd, I would welcome the opportunity.

     

    After a walk of about ten minutes, we arrived at the closest inn. “Dead Man’s Drink,” the sign read. How appropriate. We creaked our way up three rickety wooden steps onto the deck of the tavern. It was a small, simple, wooden structure, with a straw roof that protruded from one side over the porch. Like every other building in sight, it wasn’t much to look at, but it seemed cozy. The interior was dimly lit by a large fire, and there couldn’t have been more than five rooms available for lodging. The common room was a simple rectangle with a few wooden tables, benches, and chairs around a rectangular stone fire pit. At the far end, there was a wooden counter attended by a brown-haired nord. There were only six others in the inn, and five were eyeing me with suspicion, but the waitress, a pretty young nord woman with intricately braided red hair, was giving me a positively devious smile.

     

    “Shor’s bones--a handsome man in Falkreath,” she said in a heavy nordic accent, feigning astonishment.

     

    I reciprocated her grin. “Afraid my purse is positively empty, so you might as well save your breath.”

     

    She laughed a hearty and genuine laugh. “Why’s that? Will I be using it heavily tonight?”

     

    Very forthcoming, as well. I could get used to nords. “Well, I’m always happy to lend a hand to a woman in need…”

     

    “I’d advise against it, or you’ll be lending much more than just a hand,” Valdr said gruffly, taking the liberty of pulling me by the arm to a vacant table in the corner of the room.

     

    “Oh, come now, Valdr,” the waitress jested. “You wouldn’t discourage chivalry, now would you?”

     

    “Just give us a round of mead, Narri,” he replied with annoyed submissiveness as we sat in two adjacent chairs by the small table.

     

    “Coming right up,” said the barmaid, sharing a conspiratorial look with me as she walked over to the counter.

     

    I turned to Valdr. “Am I to assume you speak from experience?” I chaffed.

     

    “Why don’t we stick to the business at hand?” He said, a stern look of fatherly disapproval on his face.”

     

    “And what business would that be?”

     

    He sighed and took on a quieter tone. “You really intend on keeping that promise, don’t you?”

     

    At first I was confused, but then I realized the promise of which he spoke--I had promised the spriggans their safety. My following laugh was tinged with anger. “Ah, of course not! What have they ever done to deserve our word? Nothing I can think of. Besides, after today, if one thing is clear, it’s that more men and mer need to try their hunting hand with Spriggans, am I right?”

     

    He shook his head in reluctant acceptance of my decision (and my sarcasm). “Did you just forget what they did to my best friends? Tore them to shreds like a common wilderbeast. Maybe you’ve gone out for drinks with their kind, tree elf, but over here, that’s what happens when a spriggan gets too close.”

     

    I laughed. “Yes… perhaps not unlike the wilderbeast you were on your way to tear up before they intervened?” he opened his mouth, but Narri arrived at our table with two bottles of mead before he could fire back, setting them on the table, and he gave thanks in the form of a quick nod. Gathering that we were addressing a sobering subject, she considered that ailment cured and moved along to the next one. “Has the irony of killing something because you deem it “too dangerous” ever occurred to you?” I continued. “Is the slaying of any creature by another not indisputable proof that the latter is the greater danger?” I could see his exasperation building as he sipped. “Or did you mean to say, dangerous to me and my own?”

     

    “I get it, alright?” he finally let out, quickly enough to suggest that he meant to cut me off, but I had already finished--always such a satisfying feeling. “You’re a naive tree-hugger who never saw any danger posed to anyone close enough to him to recognize that everything has its price. Haven't had the news broken to you that not everyone on Nirn can get what they want without running into conflict, conflict that sometimes takes more than a round of drinks and a hand-holding sing-along to fix. I hope I’m not around when you see the other side of the coin.”

     

    I had uncorked my bottle and was on the sixth gulp of my first swig when he finished his psychoanalysis. I nodded at him with raised eyebrows and a moderately impressed frown, setting my bottle down with a vigor that would only grow for the rest of the night with each picking up and setting down of a drink. “Not bad, friend. You’re definitely onto something--at the very least, I’m wildly unrealistic. You may have even been half-correct, if a merciless dictatorship hadn’t brutally invaded my homeland, forcing my family and I to flee the province which we barely managed in one piece, after murdering my--”

     

    “For the love of Ysmir, save me the sob story,” he interrupted. I took a long, tentative sip. Satisfaction comes in sparse bursts, I suppose. “This argument is a waste of time, I’m not even going to fight your decision. You saved our hides, you got Ari and Niels back, you handle it how you will.”

     

    “Ah, yes, another thing I was going to remind you.”

     

    He rolled his eyes. “All I wanted to say is, if that’s what you want, I think it’s best if no one else knows what really happened in that cave.”

     

    “So that’s why you left out the part where I saved your life.” I casually observed, smirk halfway on.

     

    “Somehow, I don’t think the people of Falkreath will… see them as you do.”

     

    I took a tentative sip, looking away from him, then returned the beverage to the table matter-of-factly “You want them to think I finished the job,” I said, staring intently at the bottle. So much for being the town hero.

     

    “I’d cut them all down myself, but I respect your decision, misguided or not. But if the people know those things are still still alive, I don’t know what they’ll do.”

     

    “I imagine they’d send the cavalry in full force. One can never be too careful when it comes to preemptive self-defense.”

     

    He quaffed his liquor silently, hopefully in unspoken acknowledgement of the hypocrisy of that notion. I followed suit.

     

    “Well,” I said, setting the bottle down with a resounding thump, “can’t say I’m in love with the title ‘Elwynn the Spriggan Slayer.’”

     

    “Your choice,” he announced seemingly to his drink, clearly tiring of my problem-finding. Understandable.

     

    “Not much of one,” I said, imbibing my body further. “But if it’s between bearing a murderer’s title or committing his crimes, I’ll take the former.” This time, I paused without drinking. Imagine that! “Do what must be done,” I said with a sigh. “One more favor, though. You take my name to your grave.”

     

    “Very well,” he said before taking another enormous sip. He was like a parched mammoth under a waterfall. It had been quite a long day, in his defense

     

    By the time I had finished my bottle, he was on his third. “I think today warrants an extra bottle, friend,” He said with foam on his chin, noticing I had stopped after my first.

     

    “Empty pockets, remember?”

     

    “Ysmir’s beard, after all you’ve done for me this day, the least I can do is fill your cup a few times. Narri! Another round for El-- er, my friend here!”

     

    “On your tab again?” she replied.

     

    “You know damn well where it goes, woman.”

     

    “You’d better not be planning on skipping town.”

     

    “I’ll never escape this gods-forsaken forest, you know that!”

     

    She smiled to herself as she turned to walk away. “Counting on it!” she called from the back, fetching another bottle. I could get used to nords, I thought. Belligerent as they were, there was something endearing about them. Perhaps it was my own belligerence feeling a little less out of place. Either way, their honesty was comforting as it was jarring.

     

    “You can, and you will. I won’t watch you go thirsty after what you did for me.” He was silent for a second, before speaking a little more softly; “besides, I can pay that tab just fine.”

     

    I raised my hands in surrender. “Very well.” Narri set two more mead bottles on our table. “To Ari and Neils,” I said, raising my bottle.

     

    “That, I can drink to,” replied Valdr, doing the same. We both chugged our bottles, he drowning his sorrows and I my thoughts. “You know how to hold your liquor,” he remarked. “Thought you tree sap folk didn’t drink mead.”

     

    “Your thoughts are correct, but I am far from tree sap folk, my friend.”

     

    “You a city elf?”

     

    I wasn't sure how to answer at first, but settled on keeping it simple. “Technically.”

     

    “Don’t hunt like one.”

     

    “Well, it’s a fairly recent development.”

     

    “Ah. So, what are you doing here?”

     

    I paused for a long sip of mead. “My friend, do you really wish to discuss me at a time like this?”

     

    “I don’t know what you did in your forests, or your big cities, but out here, we haven’t time to feel sorry for ourselves. Ain’t what they would have wanted, anyway. Soldiers die every day, and the battle goes on. You’re not doing them any favors by losing the battle so you can cry like a milk-drinker over their grave. We carry on. Not in spite of them, but for them.”

     

    “You make drowning your sorrows in mead sound very romantic,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t take offense to my criticism of his coping mechanism. I’m sure he knew I was equally guilty.

     

    He just gave a monotonous chuckle, having inferred from my tone that I understood the tenor of his monologue. At least he was self-aware. “Comes with the territory,” he said. “So, ya gonna answer, or just nitpick what I say?”

     

    “If you must know, I arrived here two days ago. From Cyrodiil.”

     

    “Figures you’re a newcomer. But what brings you to Skyrim?”

     

    “The tenacity of my pursuers, I suppose.”

     

    “The law?”

     

    “If you can call it that.”

     

    He laughed. “Any enemy of the Empire is a friend of mine.”

     

    “‘Enemy of the empire’ is a bit idolatrous for my taste. I tend to find myself the enemy of whoever is in power, no matter where I am.”

     

    “So what’d you do? Don’t sound like you were exactly given a fair trial.”

     

    I sighed, staring intently at my bottle. My wall of humor had suddenly crumbled. “I put my pride before the safety of my family. I got no more than I deserved.”

     

    “I thought you might have been compensating for something.”

     

    His candor was both refreshing and stinging, but I was giving as much as I received. He didn’t question my predicament beyond that, and for that I was thankful. For the rest of the night we talked about this or that, mostly the current state of affairs in Skyrim and Cyrodiil. He informed me of the unrest of his people towards the Emperor for “disrobing Skyrim and bending her over for the Thalmor, (I let him know that “enemy of the Thalmor” was a title I had no qualms with) and I told him about the egregious class system of the Imperial City, with progressively dwindling coherence. The last thing I remember was sharing an infectious, incapacitating laugh with Valdr. Over what, I can’t remember.

     

    In the chronology of my mind, I then awoke from a slumber that could have really been my death and reincarnation, except I felt like shit.

     

    “Uuuugh,” I groaned, only daring to subject a tiny slit of my left eye to the vicious torment of the daylight.

     

    “Ah, there he is,” said a familiar voice. “Here, drink this. It’ll help.”

     

    Forcing my eyes open, I saw that it was the woman from the Inn, Narri. She set a cup on the dresser next to my bed. “Where am I?” I asked through a yawn.

     

    “What do you think, you were kidnapped? Still at the Dead Man’s Drink.”

     

    “No, but I tend to get around on nights like the last one. Did that stubborn fool rent me a room?” I said, unenthused and strained.

     

    “That, he did not. This is mine.”

     

    I looked around, seeing no other bed. “Did we…?”

     

    “No,” she laughed. “I doubt you’d have been much use in your condition anyway.”

     

    “You’d be surprised.”

     

    “Well, you can surprise me another day, now drink up.”

     

    I smelled the cup. A bit odd, but not a particularly strong scent. I took a sip, and spit it out immediately. “Y’ffre have mercy, what kind of witchcraft are you practicing?!”

     

    “Oh, suck it up, you big milk-drinker.”

     

    “No, thank you. I’ve recovered from many a night of merrymaking without the assistance of goat piss.”

     

    “If you’re trying to impress me after being bested by the contents of an unpoisoned cup, you might want to try something else, o brave spriggan slayer.”

     

    “Indeed, well, you might want to try getting over yourself.” Valdr must have told her what “happened.” So much for avoiding the title.

     

    “Oh, man up and drink the damn goat piss.”

     

    Having been reduced from valiant feller of beasts and guzzler of mead to stubborn child, I gingerly lifted the cup back to my lips, scrunching my face as if wading through a lake of dung, and managed to suppress the gag reflex enough to swallow the first tiny sip.

     

    “There you go!” she said in an exaggeratedly maternal tone as I choked the rest of it down, gagging a few times. “Was that so hard?”

     

    “I should have you fired. Who knows what kind of debilitating epidemic you could start, being trusted with people’s drinks?”

     

    “By Shor, are all elves this melodramatic?”

     

    “No, some of their tongues remain unassaulted by caustic acid.” She laughed. “Where’s Valdr?”

     

    “No idea. Probably out hunting. He’s always said it soothes him.”

     

    I understood the therapeutic effects of hunting, but I wish those of other races could grasp the “only out of necessity” concept. Perhaps they aren’t as susceptible to guilt. “Well, aside from the attempted bowel-cleansing, it has been a pleasure, I said, taking on an air of sincerity for at least the last clause of the sentence. “Thank you for what you’ve done for me. And what you didn’t do.”

     

    “I’m insulted!” she quipped. “And what do you mean, ‘has been?’”

     

    “Well, I should be going before I become the most interesting thing in town.”

     

    “Very mysterious,” She said sardonically. “Something to hide?”

     

    “More like a measly shred of dignity to preserve.”

     

    “Well, I don’t know how sneaking away after such a happening has become the normal thing to do, but somehow, Valdr thought you might try to slink off. He told me to tell you that he wants you at the funeral.”

     

    My heart sank, and then sank again from the guilt of being so insensitive. I just didn’t want to be around any congregation of people who wanted to arduously praise my spriggan-slaying prowess.

     

    “And you can cut the holier-than-thou act, Mr. wear-me-like-the-smooth-soft-silky-white-lambskin-that-I-am. I’ve seen how much dignity you’ve really got.”

     

    My stomach jumped into my throat. I thought I had had my share of Nord mead back in Cyrodiil--I guess the real stuff is something else. “My word, my vision must have been severely distorted.”

     

    “More like your head,” she said as she strode out of the room.

     

    “I would never do that!” I called after her. “Lamb skinning is deplorable!” She was already back to her duties. I was less mortified about my libidinous words to her than the fact that I had clearly forgotten saying them. Those are always the words that turn on you. By Y’ffre, could I really do no better than lambskin!?

     

    I resolved to attend the funeral of Ari and Niels. Having not known them in life, it seemed imprudent not to learn everything I could about what they were like.They had had very few close friends; everyone but Valdr seemed to be little more than an acquaintance, but everyone could vouch for their good character. Seeing how Nords handled the idea of death was fascinating, and, in the grand scheme of Tamrielic obsequies, not bad at all. A priest of Arkay recites a prayer, requesting safe passage of the fallen to Sovngarde, and those closest to them reminded the rest of us what we were missing. It was honest--it acknowledged the flaws of the dead without speaking ill of them, with no moral absolutism. It was a genuine account of what the person brought to the world. Finally, it ended not on a note of forced positivity, or of mournful wallowing… what I detected was the spirit of defiance. They confronted the cruelty of the world, of the taking of life, and walked away with the burning desire to keep fighting the good fight, to further whatever progress the dead had made.

     

    It was war.

     

    So deeply was I ruminating on this topic, that I didn’t even notice the small group was dissipating, and a lanky young man approaching me.

     

    “Ah, there you are,” he said, striding toward me as if we had scheduled a meeting.

     

    “Might I ask who you are and how you know my whereabouts? or whoabouts?” I replied with a skeptical squint and slight turn of the head.

     

    “The wood elf, right? Jarl Siddgeir said you would be here. He wanted me to give this to you.” He handed me an envelope with sealed with an elaborate insignia stamped in scarlet wax. I examined it for a second, wondering who in their right mind would name their child Jarl Siddgier.

     

    “Guess that’s that, then,” I muttered to myself, peeling off the seal and unfolding the contained letter.

     

    To the Elf who Felled the Spriggans, it read. My name is Siddgeir, and I have the honor of being the Jarl of the proud and ancient city of Falkreath. The feat you’ve allegedly accomplished yesterday was most impressive--as it happens, I’ve been looking for someone with your talents for a particular issue in the hold that needs taking care of, and for which you would be handsomely rewarded. If you continue to prove useful, you would be considered for the role of Falkreath's thane, which would entitle you not only to all the honor that accrues to the title, but a personal housecarl, and eligibility to purchase a plot of land within the hold. I would very much like to meet with you in person. Please visit me at my longhouse, south of the barracks, so that we may discuss further. I look forward to meeting you. I remain, Jarl Siddgeir of Falkreath

     

    “The Jarl! Son of a...” How could I forget what a Jarl was? I looked up and desperately searched for the courier, wondering what it would cost to get him to tell the Jarl I had already departed the city. No luck. He was probably already in his master’s lap, informing him I had taken the letter from his very hand. Hopefully no one was in earshot of my groan, because they would have seen a smirk on my face a moment later had they looked over. Can one day just go as planned?

     

     

    Chapter I                                                                                  Table of Contents

     

Comments

4 Comments   |   The Wing and 1 other like this.
  • The Wing
    The Wing   ·  November 27, 2016
    This was so well worth the wait. XD Things are just not going poor Elwynn's way. That banter was ingenious and also adorable. I also really appreciate that little debate between Elwynn and Valdr - it's refreshing to see a conflict of opinions that is actu...  more
    • Gabe
      Gabe
      The Wing
      The Wing
      The Wing
      This was so well worth the wait. XD Things are just not going poor Elwynn's way. That banter was ingenious and also adorable. I also really appreciate that little debate between Elwynn and Valdr - it's refreshing to see a conflict of opinions that is actu...  more
        ·  November 27, 2016
      Thanks Wing!!! Sorry this one was pretty much all dialogue, I got kind of carried away with it as you can see--the next one will be non-stop action. I too am a devout team hippie member, and that's what's led me to know the anti hippie perspective so well, bahahaha
      • Gabe
        Gabe
        Gabe
        Gabe
        Gabe
        Thanks Wing!!! Sorry this one was pretty much all dialogue, I got kind of carried away with it as you can see--the next one will be non-stop action. I too am a devout team hippie member, and that's what's led me to know the anti hippie perspective so well, bahahaha
          ·  November 27, 2016
        This is the expression of Elwynn's I was trying to describe when Valdr was roasting him lol http://i.imgur.com/MbaQr.png?fb
        • The Wing
          The Wing
          Gabe
          Gabe
          Gabe
          This is the expression of Elwynn's I was trying to describe when Valdr was roasting him lol http://i.imgur.com/MbaQr.png?fb
            ·  November 27, 2016
          HA!!! I think a 'moderately impressed frown' does a good job of representing that face! I'm really excited about this non-stop action chapter coming up! :D