Lun Bori II ~mushroom picking~

• Posted by Hoban January 2, 2016 - 1,052 views

  She awoke suddenly, an early morning sun shining warmly on her face. Her smallcloak and furs were damp from the nights rain, but her feet were dry as were the gauntlets the old elf in Riverwood had given her.

  She hoisted her shaky but rejuvenated body from the ground, grabbing the hilt of her sword and stabbing the point into the soft soil, pushing against it. The weapon stood an inch or two taller than her and she had taken to using it as a walking stick. Lun thought if she were ever to wield it she would have to untie it from her back and hold the damned thing, but she needed the grounds help for that.

  In the Falkreath dry-goods,

  "Solaf, you were a soldier, where did you learn to fight?" Lun asked the young Nord shopkeep, who she had made fast friends with since her arrival in town two days before.

  "I learned to fight because my father taught my brother, and brothers fight, the stormcloaks just put an axe in my hand and showed me how to swing it. You say you were raised on a farm with three sisters, and I think you best stick to what you know. Carrying that sword does not change you." 

  " Stormcloaks it is then" Lun said, with a tone that gave Solaf the certain impression that she did not heed his advice whats so ever.

  "The stormcloaks don't just accept anyone who shows up with a big blade like the companions seem so eager to do , and they wont hear the story of your desertion of the ancient brotherhood well. But you have a way of disregarding common sense that will endear you to Ulfric, I think. Only speak to the king himself, a lower recruiter will never accept you as unskilled as you are, but Ulfric knows strength when he sees it and I like to think I do too."

  "I will go with your blessing then. I am not from this land but my life is bound to it I feel. Did I tell you my father traveled in Skyrim years ago, before he was my father. He spoke little of it but I felt the vast expanses of memory and wonder behind his words. This is the home I saw in my dreams, and I would see it free of Imperial influence, wild and ancient as it's always been." Lun spoke as if to no one, or the air. This was a habit she was told would get her into much trouble by Solaf, who she had told everything to the night she stumbled in to Falkreath, freezing and starving once again. She trusted people, all people, until given a reason not to. She even told him she was wanted in the rift for stealing an imperial soldiers horse when she first entered Skyrim, this endeared her to Solaf greatly, but he only made her promise to never mention that to another living soul. In that moment Lun had earned a lifelong friendship.

  She traded a pound of whitecap mushrooms for a potion of healing and set off on the road north to Windhelm, the point of her blade clinking on the cobblestones as she lifted it and planted it back down for each step. The tip of the blade would probably be as dull as a log by the end of the road to Windhelm, but she would be able to lift it and maybe hear the soft ringing of the blade as it sliced the air, a sound she last heard while watching her father swing it in the fields back home.

  She had a knack for mushrooms, she could pick out the edible from the poisonous by smell, and texture, usually. Today her knowledge did not fail her, she was chewing a hearty, orange, shell shaped fungus when a growl rose the hair on her neck. She silently reached for her blade laying on the ground next to her as she caught eyes with the snowy furred wolf. 

  The next moment the wolf was in the air in a ferocious leap for Lun's neck.

  She gripped the sword flat to her body and rolled out of the way.

  She rolled a few yards down the slight decline in the frosty grass, stopped her momentum by shoving her blade into the ground as she turned her head to see the wolf in mid air once again, yellow eyes bulging with anticipation for the blood-feast it was about to have. Instinctively she raised her arms over her head, pommel of the sword still in hand and point still in the ground, the blade raised up perpendicular to the ground and the wolf flew into it, slicing itself in half from snout to rump.

  Lun's arms dropped and she collapsed onto the ground in a pool of warm sweet smelling blood where she was given a moments respite before she heard more distant howls. She jumped to her feet and grabbed her sword, it truly was her sword now by any law of Skyrim, and she ran, dragging the blade behind her down the cobblestone road. A distant fire, north, and far below her at the edge of a great basin, was the point she kept focused in her vision. The wolves did not give chase, the sight of their pack brother cleanly split in twain may have given them hesitation, they missed an easy meal that night.