The Nord and the Four-Eared Khajiit, About 20 years after Martin's death, as crimes are spreading, a No Options

[sford564]

Okay, I already posted this on fanfiction.net, but I've revised it a little now. Soooo... here it is. It starts out a little dark and gets lighter as it goes.


Chapter 1: Fulfilling a Promise

The Nord made his way through the forest toward the traveling entertainers’ carts. There were all sorts of low lives of every race in this little gathering. Some of the scum wanted to see the bear baiting or to bet on the pit fights. Others wanted to buy slaves. Others still came to have sex with or buy some of the kidnapped girls the travelers had with them.

Sure, slavery was illegal, but it didn’t matter as long as you didn’t get caught. After Emperor Martin’s sacrifice, everyone’s attention was focused on cleaning their world up again from the Oblivion scum and rebuilding it again. Then, when things began to settle down, the talk of the new emperor exploded into several skirmishes, until most citizens didn’t care who ruled, as long as the deaths stopped. Now that the new High Chancellor took over rule, things were peaceful again for the moment. Alas, though, with all the strife that had taken place, the High Chancellor didn’t have enough time or man power to take care of every problem across the land, which meant that slavers began to rise up here and there in various parts of the world.


The Nord shivered a little and pulled the cloak further over his head so that no one could see him as he rode up to the camp. He had promised the dying Khajiit that he’d find her daughter, but he never expected to find her in a place like this. Still, though, he didn’t have as hard a time finding her as he had expected. It seemed that the sight of the four-eared half breed Khajiit made a lot of stir in every town she was brought to.

As soon as he entered the camp, he was surrounded by a group of dangerous looking men. “I’m looking for a Khajiit half-breed. Four ears,” he informed them.

“We have nothing like that here,” one of the men told him, not liking the looks of the Nord.

“Ahhh, so you’re the one asking around, are you?” another asked.

“What do you want, stranger?”

“I want to buy her,” the Nord answered.

“She’s not for sale!”

“She will be,” the Nord assured, slipping off his horse next to them. The vagabonds backed away a little, as the Nord towered over most of them. “Take me to her,” he demanded. No one moved.

The Nord slipped off his hood, and everyone backed away even more, horrified. There was no real face on the Nord; instead, there were two black eyes and two ears in a mass of scarred and torn flesh. He looked inhuman enough to be one of the Oblivion spawns he had hunted many years ago.

“Now,” the Nord growled. The group instantly spilt away from him and one vagabond, too scared to disobey, made his way through camp – nearly running to get away from the Nord – to where the Four-eared Khajiit was locked.

There was a small group of laughing, jeering people in front of the cage. They didn’t even notice as the Nord walked behind them.

This post has been edited by sford564: Sep 5 2010, 07:12 AM

[sford564]

Chapter 11: Punishment

It rained all that evening, so the Nord set up camp in some old ruins. Mara didn’t say much during the trip, but broke into tears frequently. Now that they actually stopped, she just sat by the fire pit, watching the flames, her ears flattened against her lowered head.

“Stop sulking,” the Nord told her as he took the saddle off his horse so it could eat.

“Yes mas-Nord.”

“Eat something while I get more firewood.”

“Yes.”

The Nord disappear for a little while but soon came back with another arm full of wood. He added some of it to the fire and put some of it a nice distance away to add it later on. He then sat down across from the Khajiit and began to eat.

“This bread is good,” he commented.

“Master mad at Four Ears?” she whispered, still not daring to look up at him. She softly ran her hand across her tail in a petting motion. Her ears still hugged the side of her head.

“No, the Nord isn’t mad at you.”

“The Nord leave in forest?”

“No, I’m not going to leave you in the forest.”

“Nord hit?”

“No, I’m not going to hit you. Mara!” she cringed as his tone rose in aggravation. “I’m not mad at you any more. Relax.”

“Yes master.”

The Nord looked over at her, skeptically, as he continued to eat. “Mara,” he stated as he finished his big chunk of bread. “Come here.”

The big-eyed Khajiit slowly approached, her tail tucked. As soon as she got close to him, she fell to the ground in a fetal position, covering her head.

Raising an eyebrow, the Nord sighed and knelt on the ground in front of her. “Sit up,” he instructed.

She slowly rose, kneeling in front of him, with her tail still tucked and her arms covering her face.

They sat there for several minutes, the Nord just staring at her, waiting for her to look at him, and the Four-eared Khajiit just cringing, expecting to be smacked around. But it never happened. Her tail slowly began to move, and her arms slowly, ever so slowly began to slip from off her head. They rose again when she saw that the Nord was looking directly into her face, but then they came down again. Up again. And then, finally, down again, completely. She sat there, waiting for him to hit her.

“Look at me,” the Nord instructed. She slowly raised her eyes to meet his.

“You don’t like my eyes, do you? Why do you always look away from them?”

Cringing once more, she answered. “Eyes scary. Pure black.”

“So you can’t tell what I’m thinking or feeling? If it’s any consolation to you, most people were afraid of my eyes. Now it’s my face they don’t like, but… the eyes don’t help, either. Please put your arms down.”

The Khajiit slowly obeyed.

“You seem to think that I’m going to punish you for what you did. I suppose you’re right: I really should. Ah – put your arms down. When I went to the temple when I was younger, they used to take a little rod and smack your hand if you were bad. That is the method I will use.”

The Khajiit slipped her hands under her armpits. The Nord took a long, thin, freshly shaved rod from beside the pile of wood that he was storing. “I made this from a branch,” he told her as he picked it up and swung it next to her. The rod made a loud cracking noise through the air. He swung it several more times, watching her cringe at each hiss and crack it made.

“I’m sorry Mara, but there’s no way to get out of this. Now make it easy on yourself and show me your hands.”

The Four-eared Khajiit slowly brought her hands out, though it would have been a little hard to hit at something that shook that much.

“I am going to give you the option of five or ten hits. Which do you think you deserve?”

“Ten?”

“Probably, but would you prefer if you only got five?”

“Yes master.”

“All right. Then five hits it is.”

He dropped the rod into her hand. She opened her eyes and looked up at him.

“I am acting as your guardian, so I will take your punishment this time,” he explained. “You have to give me five of the strongest hits you can.”

Mara, her eyes huge, just looked down at the rod in her hands.

“Mara! Concentrate! Look at me. Thank you. Now take the rod in your hand. Yes. Now hit my hand with it.”

The Four-eared Khajiit shook her head no.

“Do it Mara. Now.” Again she shook her head. His voice rose, “Now! Do it now!”

She had been taught to obey, no matter how much it hurt or could hurt her, so as soon as his voice began to sound threatening, the rod fell with great force across his large hands. She gasped with horror when she realized what she did.

“Do it again!” he yelled, cringing slightly at the sharpness of the blow. She smacked him once more, without thinking.

Realizing that as soon as he yelled at her she would do as he said, he ordered her, “Again! Again! Again!”, each time receiving a hit just as hard as the other. His thick skinned hands were red and puffy, making him wonder what would have happened to her little hands had he actually been beast enough to hit her like that.

The Khajiit just stared at his hands, horrified. She was one part horrified and remorseful at having just hurt him and another part terrified that he might retaliate after all that she just did to him.

She stood there, shaking, tears welling in her eyes. The Nord wrapped his arms around her and brought her to his chest. “There,” he whispered, “You’re not going to steal anything again right?”

She shook her head in agreement against him.

“Then there’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing to be worried about. Everything’s okay.”

The Khajiit shook and cried in his arms.

The rain began to get heavier and heavier, and soon it was pouring out of the sky. After several moments of hugging her, she finally began to calm down. Still not fully calm, though, and shivering from the fatigue of crying so hard and from the cold rain beating against them, the Nord picked her up, wrapped his cloak around her, and held her in his arms.

The whole night they stayed like that, the Four-eared Khajiit wrapped tightly in the Nord’s arms, jumping and whimpering every time a lightening streak shook the earth and illuminated the sky.