Niamh's Adventures in Nirn..., This is a thread featuring a digest of stories about... Options

[PhonAntiPhon]

NIAMH.
But first, who is she?
Well she's a character who I have been acquainted with for a very long time, and with whom I have travelled across many worlds.

She's a Wood-Elf, in Nirn terms - of about 30. She's very much her own boss, and not a terribly pleasant individual. She is, to employ a cliche, "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". She's a hard drinking, promiscuous, authority-hating rebel with baggage enough and troubles enough to fill a volume of psychoanalysts' shelves.

She's maybe 5 feet 8 inches in height, very slender, with pale skin and long black hair and dark, chestnut eyes in deep sockets. She had a predilection for body-piercing and a bad-attitude to personal hygiene. She's a thief and an assassin and pretty much anything else that will garner her gold and a thrill.
In the Nirn universe - (Cyrodiil) - she lives principally in Bravil, but has a shack on the waterfront outside of the walls of the Imperial City, although she spends much of her time in a rather dysfunctional relationship with Jo, one of the local "courtesans", who you will not be reading about on here(!).
In Morrowind she was a loner who pretty much stumbled upon a destiny of sorts more by simply being in a certain place at a certain time than by design; whilst she arrived in Skyrim confused and somehow "altered", more feral and wild, as part of a story arc that started in Cyrodiil and ended back there amidst death and heartache.
Since then she has had a second chance, but is squandering it, reverting once again to type...

Throughout her adventures in Nirn - Morrowind, Cyrodiil, and Skyrim, her character has evolved and changed. She's taken on aspects of each of these variants to become something "other" than what she started as; more rounded, but far more complicated. The ultimate expression of that is in the world that she now inhabits - Varrius, a world created for her specifically, with it's own story arc and characters.
Anyway, that's by-the-by, for the nonce, this thread will have various stories and vignettes that I have written involving her, and the characters that she has interacted with, during the time that she has inhabited the Elder Scrolls universe.
(Only some of the stories are on here, as this is a 13-rated forum, and not everything I write is... suitable. For stories not on here, do feel free to visit Niamh's blog, in the signature.)

I hope you enjoy her stories, it's gives me a lot of pleasure to write them.

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Jan 19 2013, 04:22 PM

[PhonAntiPhon]

(I apologise if this is a little clunky, I literally wrote it straight out of my head...)

It's funny how you suddenly think of things...

She's sitting up against a wall in the semi-darkness of a long-abandoned fort, empty and silent now but for the rustling of small animals and the dripping of water from the ceiling. The walls around her are water-stained and lichen encrusted, grey in the gloom. The air is chill.
The suit keeps her warm, insulating her from the environment, providing her with a sense of security. She's taken her night-sight hood off and it lies now at her side.
Resting her arms on her knees she leans her head back against the wall, feeling the rustle of her long red and black pony tail against the ancient stones. She closes her dark eyes and thinks back to a time two weeks ago.

"Why do you never take me with you?" Said Luciana, her head cocked on one side, standing in front of the door of her house. Niamh, ready and equipped, had been forced to stop; look at her partner.
"Looch," she sighed, "Ye are human."
She had looked at her, taken in her face; the telltale lines on it. Their gazes met, but Luciana's dropped first.

"I'm young enough..." Luciana's voice trailed off. She knew the truth, the Big truth - the one they ignored.
Niamh chewed the ring through her lower lip, said: "Not by ye race, ye're not - ye know it." She placed her gloved hands on the other's shoulders, took a deep breath.
"Ye have 35 summers, Luciana, ye may hae 30 more afore ye're no more." Her dark chestnut eyes stared at the woman's face. "Ai wull live mebbe 400 year, if ai dinnae kill mesel' afore then." She continued.

There was a silence, then, the realisation of time and its weight and the inevitable passage of years and of death and the sheer unfairness of it all weighed upon them. Niamh; bound to a life longer than her partner could even conceive - Luciana, her life but a heartbeat to the Bosmer.
She looked at the floor of her house, stared at the rough-worked floorboards through the fish-eye lens of eyes filled with useless tears.

Niamh sighed, placed a finger under her chin and lifted it gently. "Ai am 30, a babe in mai people's eyes but you, Looch, ye are middling and as such ye are precious tai me." She placed a hand on the other's cheek. "Ai must keep ye safe, Looch. Ye hae a life that is so precious, because it is so brief; a twinkling, but such a light hae ye shined in mai heart."
The Wood Elf fixed the other's gaze and held it.
"Ai wuld'nae see ye hurt, no' fur any money, Luciana, mai Luciana."

Again a silence, then; "D'ye unnerstan'?"
Lucians nodded. "I do, I just..." Her voice was thick with emotion.
"Ai know." Said the other, touching Luciana's forehead with her own. "Ai wull be fine, Loochy, but ye - ai must keep ye from harm because we hae so little time an' ye are so special because ye are so brief."
Niamh held her close, then.
"So ye must stay here, safe." She whispered.

Luciana snuffled against Niamh's shoulder, and the silence following was broken only by the faint susurration of air passing through the whirling blades at the back of Niamh's powered armour; faint clicks from its idling systems.
She looked up at the Bosmer, her eyes red, but a smile on her face. "I understand, but I wish you were at home." Swallowing, she nodded her head, drew strength. "I see that you need to do what you must, but promise me, Niamhy, promise you will always come back...?"

There had been no pause from the other; "O'cause ai wull, Looch. I hae nuthin' but ye." And she smiled, because that was, finally, the truth.
They embraced.
"You have a good heart." Whispered Luciana.
"No ai don'" Said the other.

Looch pulled back from her then, her face serious. "Yes," she said, "you do. You are not to blame for... for that... for what you told me and you were brave and trusting to tell me." Her eyes gleamed wetly in the dim light of the candlelit room. "Your heart is good, but you have been put through terrible things."
She gripped Niamh around her armoured forearms. "It doesn't make you bad, Niamhy. It's not your fault."

"We'll see." The Bosmer had said...

---

"We'll see indeed." Niamh thought.
With a half-smile she pushed herself up from the flagstones, and grabbing her hood crept off into the gloom...