A Skyrim tale - Vengeance and Redemption, Eilidh MacAuley's Tale Options

[PhonAntiPhon]

HELGEN

"What's your name, Elf?"
The shouts of soldiers and the clatter of weapons echoed around the windblown courtyard. Someone's discarded linen shawl blew between the legs of the small group of guardsmen standing lazily to attention beside an old and scarred desk set up in the middle of the wide space.

Behind this desk, holding a quill pen poised over a ragged sheet of parchment, sat a hard-eyed and angular woman of maybe 50 summers, bedecked in the regalia of a captain of the guard.
She sighed, and waved the quill at a soldier standing behind the prisoner.

With a grunt of acknowledgement the soldier lifted his spear and slammed the butt end of it into the small of the captive's back.
She fell to her knees on the hard dusty ground, sucking a pained breath in through between dirty, clenched teeth.
"Your name." Demanded the captain once again.

After a moment longer, the prisoner looked up at the captain behind her desk; regarded her with large, nearly black eyes set in a gaunt face framed by lank, straw-coloured hair from which protruded the pointed tips of distinctive Elven ears.

The Elf opened her mouth and said in a low, cracked voice; "Eilidh."

The Captain regarded her a moment longer.

The Bosmer - (who, incidentally smelt... well she smelt terribly, but she also smelt like a wolf or a bear; slightly "meaty" and "musty"; sour and rotten. All her kind did, it was as distinctive as it was unwholesome; a result of their twisted diet. And yet, the Captain had to admit to herself, she found this one more than a little fascinating) - The elf's face and body betrayed no small degree of history and hardship; thin she was and yet beneath the ragged sackcloth shirt her body was nevertheless sinewy and bowstring taut, the compact muscles hard and surprisingly powerful; at least one of her men had found that out the hard way when they had attempted to capture her.

Her skin was heavily freckled, beneath a layer of greasy filth, and marked by innumerable abrasions, pocks and marks of all shapes and sizes. She was heavily tattooed with any number of vulgar designs.
But it was her face, more than anything, that told of the hardness of her life until now, it's end.

The left side of the Bosmer's face was a mass of scarring, the damaged skin pale and livid against the dirt that covered her. Dark warpaint was smeared across her cheeks and the sockets of her eyes, which were black and moist; vastly deep like some animal's and rimmed with a livid red as of an incipient infection.
The woman's mouth was set in a thin hard line, the lips bloodless.

But enough of this.
She sighed, waved the quill again and once more the butt of the spear connected with the kneeling Bosmer, hitting her shoulderblade with a crack barely muffled by the thin material that covered her.
"ALL of your name, bosmer." She said, spitting out the last word like an insult.

"MacAuley, Eilidh MacAuley." Said Eilidh finally, her dry voice heavily accented.
The captain grunted in satisfaction and carefully wrote down the name on the parchment, poking out her tongue in concentration.
When she had finished she looked up at Eilidh again, saying; "So, bosmer, have ye anything to say in ya defence, afore I pass my judgement?"
It was a pointless question, and she knew it.

Eilidh knew it too.
"Téigh gnéas féin agat soith..." She hissed through yellowed and gritted teeth.
"Speak Imperial!" Snapped the Captain. Eilidh winced as the guard behind her applied his spear to her back once again.
She glanced hatefully at the woman behind the desk and then, a cold half-smile flickering across her lips she said; "Go **** ye'sel' *****."

There was an audible gasp from the men around her at this display of blatent insolence, and for a moment even their leader looked taken aback.
The Captain gathered herself.
"Even if you were not already dead, bosmer, now you are for sure..."

Silence held sway for a moment and Eilidh, naked but for the thin cloth shivered a little in the chill air blowing through the garrison's courtyard.
She ached all over, or at least more than usual. Her brains were pounding in her ears and her mouth had a dry and phlegmy taste in it. Her condition was not helped in any way by the fact that she had not had wine for some 3 days now.
More though, was the pain of what that pig of a legionary had done to her.

Hers had been a hard life, she had had to fight every inch of the way barring a few brief patches of respite. She looked, she knew, every one of the 173 seasons that she had spent on this Gods-forsaken world.
During her time she had committed... dubious acts, both physically and morally, and yes amongst those had been the auctioning of herself, when money had been tight and survival the only factor.
But that was different, she had been in control; calling the shots she had run the game and come out the victor in those encounters.
Yesterday though, that had been something else entirely, that was evil even by her standards of behaviour. There had been a wrong visited upon her the likes of which should never happen.
Ever.

And then, out of the corner of her dark eye she saw him, standing just behind the guard Captain's entourage he was.
He was a big man, broad of girth; fat, sweaty jowls, and sallow oily skin. He was wearing a helmet and facing slightly away from her but she knew him; his stinking greasy body, his breath hot and sour against her, his little piggy eyes.
Oh, she knew him alright.
The blood in her veins ran cold as ice, her heart pounded against her ribs.

He turned then, and saw her.
His plump mouth spread open in fat grin, the thick lips pink against his pale cheeks. He pointed at her with a stubby finger whilst with his other hand he made a sign, the meaning of which was only too clear to the Bosmer.

The sound of the Captain's voice droning on - a litany of her crimes, chief amongst which was simply of having been born a Bosmer - had long since faded into the distance, to be replaced by one repeated thought:
"HE MUST PAY. HE WILL PAY."
Over and over and over, a cold and hard nugget of vengeance.

Had she been able, she would have leapt at him then and there even though her hands were bound.
Indeed, even as she thought it, her body moved of it's own accord, her mouth twisting into a snarl...

...Then hands grabbed her and lifted her roughly to her feet, through a red haze of bloody murder she vaguely heard the Captain's voice; "...for the crime of being an unwelcome element in the Imperial Province of Skyrim, for numerous

breaches of our laws, I hereby refer you for summary execution."

Her captors walked her across the courtyard to the block that sat lumpen and solid; bloodstained and chipped, in the centre of the courtyard. A mute symbol of oppression and arbitrary justice.
She passed him and their eyes met - his, mocking and leering and hers, hate-filled.
She kept her eyes on him as she was led away, maintained contact even as the tendons in her neck began to creak and ache.

Finally she faced the front, faced her future.
173 years.
He Would Pay. Even if in Death she made a pact with all of the Daedra themselves to send her back, He Would Pay.

173 years.

They forced her roughly to her knees, pushing her head onto the block.
Rage boiled within her.

173.
He Would Pay.

She sensed the headsman raise his sword.
1...
7...

The world exploded into roaring fire, and everything around her went insane.

-x-

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Mar 10 2014, 08:42 PM

[PhonAntiPhon]

RIVERWOOD 1
RECOVERY, LARELLEE MUSES

It was maybe an hour later. Larellee was lying in a tub full of steaming water so hot it had turned her normally pale skin pink. It was in fact the second tub-full that she had been in, the first had turned so murky that, once Delphine had finished bathing her and washing her hair, she had insisted upon drawing Larellee another, shouting for Orgnar to sort out the emptying of the old water and the fetching of the new whilst ignoring his only half-grumpy retorts that he did in fact have other customers to see to. All the while this was going on Larellee had sat on the bed wrapped in a fur, sipping from a mug of wine. For the first time since leaving Helgen she felt safe, it was a feeling she was very fond of, though tempered by thoughts of her brother and of Eilidh.
Once the bath had been refilled to Delphine's satisfaction, Larellee shed the fur and climbed back into it, sinking once again gratefully into the water. Delphine, who had watched the young woman climb into the tub with a thoroughly approving expression sat down on a stool next to her and bathed Larellee's wounded face and mouth, clucking all the time.
"Such a pretty young thing." She cooed. "Such a lovely face, did that Elf do this to you? Tell me child, if she did I will have her drummed out of town or worse, regardless of what Orgnar wants..." Her tone now was darker and angry, with a hint of some past history.

In her mind Larellee told Delphine everything, how the Bosmer had stabbed her brother, how she'd been knocked senseless and bound, how Eilidh tried to blackmail her with the promise of safety in return for Larellee's silence; how she'd fought to save her from her hysteria and from the wolves, checked to see - albeit uncouthly - whether she was alright, and how she'd kept her word and led her to safety in a place that quite evidently did not welcome her.
"I don't remember." Was all she said in reply, softly.
"I'm not surprised Poppet." Replied Delphine, looking critically at the bruising on Larellee's face. "It must have been an awful time. From Helgen, you say?" The woman was a full conversation all by herself. "How did you end up with the MacAuley woman? She's trouble she is..."
Suddenly she stopped and put a hand to her mouth.
"Mercy! Here's me prattling like a washer-woman and you hungry and barely recovered, you poor thing!" Her bosoms heaved with a sense of mortification.
Larellee could not help but smile.
"No it's fine, Delphine, I'll tell you if you want to know."

And still she wanted to, wanted to let all of it out and let the smouldering nugget of grief and pain that burned in her chest flame up with righteous anger and her own sense of injustice but again, when it came to it, she found she could not. Despite everything else the fact remained, cold and hard and graven in stone, Eilidh had spared her and led her to safety though she had really had no reason to and in fact, with the benefit of even a little distance the pair of them, Atticus and herself, had been at least partly responsible for the events that had unfolded.
And so she told Delphine that she and her brother had escaped Helgen only to be set upon by wolves in the barrens to the north of the ruined town. Eilidh had rescued them but in the melee her brother had been killed - (by wolves) - and she herself had been wounded. Eilidh had led her to safety. That was all.
Delphine was still seated by her, the sleeves of her dressed rolled up to the elbow, her hands resting on the rim of the bath. She looked at Larellee with a dubious eye.
"That doesn't sound much like what I would think of the Elf as doing..." She said. "I would have bet good gold on her being involved more than that, and not in a good way, neither; more the cause of your misfortune than you rescuer - if you follow me."
Larellee shrugged, the water sloshing around her petite body.
"That's really all I remember." she lied. "I was senseless for much of it." This much was at least true.
Delphine wrinkled her brow.
"Hmm..." She was clearly still doubtful, but then she gestured with a hand as if perhaps dismissing for the moment at least her concerns with Larellee's tale. "Well Poppet, whatever happened you came through it and that's the main thing it seems to me. But," she held up a warning finger, "don't you go getting involved with that Bosmer, child. She's trouble everywhere she goes she is and there's not a one around these parts from here to Whiterun and probably beyond even there for all I know, not a one who won't say the same." The older woman nodded sagely and folded her wet arms across her chest.
Larellee opened her mouth to speak, but Delphine shook her head and holding up a hand to still her said; "Enough questions now Larellee, and enough of her - she's out the back with the animals where she belongs, deep in her cups to boot I imagine. No." She laid a stubby-fingered hand upon Larellee's head, gently stroking her wet hair. "You have a nice bath and when you're done come out to the commons and I'll fetch you some food; you'll be hungry by then, if not now."
Larellee, her curiousity about what Delphine did and did not know about Eilidh held at least temporarily in abeyance through the sheer force of the innkeeper's motherly tendencies, could only nod and thank her.
"Oh pish." Fussed Delphine as she stood up and made to leave. "I would have done the same for just about any person in your place. I'll be back soon." She was at the door now and paused, one hand on the latch. "I'll tell you this once more though, Larellee - you stay away from that Elf. She's not to be trusted, her kind can be trouble true enough but she's the worst of the bunch in my experience. Spend any time around her and you'll end up dead or worse."
And with that she was gone out into the commons, shouting for Orgnar to see to the customers.

++++

So here was Larellee.
Lying back in the tub she gazed up into the shadows of the roof, the beams and planks darkened further by years of sooty candlesmoke.
"Why did I lie to Delphine?"
Turning her gazed downwards, she studied her toes where they protruded from the steaming water, wiggling them a little. Delphine had fragranced the water for her and the mingled scent of mountain herbs and forest blossoms was strong and sweetly cloying in her nostrils.
"I should hate her still, and yet..."
From beyond the door she could hear the sounds of raucous laughter and singing. Someone was plucking out a tune on a lute, accompanied by the distinctive rythms of a finger-drum. Larellee waved her submerged hands languidly, sending hot currents tumbling over her belly and breasts. She waggled her toes again.
"She did what she had to do. She could have killed us both, finished me off with less than a thought; but she didn't. She stayed her hand and then... then she saved me."
A small bead of sweat ran down over her forehead. Blinking, she brushed it delicately away with a wet finger.

Hitherto, Larellee's worldview had been divided neatly into a black half and a white; Stormcloaks and Imperials, Nassika the Head Steward at the keep and Atticus. Atticus... it had been his idea to follow the Elf and pick her belongings, to step over the line that Larellee had so assiduously drawn for herself. She had tried always to stick to her own principles, to keep to the light side. To do otherwise, she had thought, would be a rough path indeed to head down.
Yet her brother had taken that route and she, following him, had placed her feet on the path that had brought so much more calamity to them both. The world had turned to grey the moment they had touched Eilidh's belongings. But their motives had not been selfish, they had been desperate, and had done what they felt they needed to do to survive. As had the Elf, really, she realised now. Upon finding them she had assumed they were aggressors and had done what she felt she needed to do to meet a threat. To Larellee it had seemed catastrophically disproportionate but still...
"She did what she had to do."
Just as they would have done, in their way. But Eilidh was from a different world; a harsher, sharper and far less forgiving one where there were no second chances. She had not been in her company long but it was long enough to realise that Eilidh was a creature who neither gave nor expected quarter. Larellee could see that the Elf lived on that line, the line that seperated the night from the day; a blurred area of dubious morality and cold decisions where you acted hard and fast simply because you did not know what would happen if you hesitated and did not expect to have a chance if you did. You did what was required to survive.
"This much and no more."
Larellee sat up in the bath, water sloshed around her and coursed in rivulets down over the smooth curves of her body, leaving trails that glittered in the flickering candlelight. She looked around her, idly scratching her belly.
"Everyone in your world is a potential threat, I suppose..." Her inner voice whispered. No trust, always an angle to be exploited; punished if you missed a signal, a feint, or an opportunity. She could not imagine how Eilidh must live from day-to-day, on a tight-wire of her nerves; constantly alert.

Eilidh had been right after all. Her, the wolves, Larellee and her brother; all were driven by the same desire, that of their continuing survival. They were all of them caught up in a dance that reeled and flowed from white to black and back again, doing whatever it took and whatever was necessary. "There but for the grace of the Gods go I." She had always thought when watching the poor unfortunates whom the Imperial soldiers had captured being put to death in the great quadrangle within the keep; she had pitied them thinking that their actions, though often undountedly terrible, were perhaps not driven by cruelty but instead by their circumstances and by their need to ensure their own continued existence. Well, the Gods it seemed had run out of grace and she had, regardless of her reservations, blithely followed her brother down the very same road that all of those men and women had set foot upon, many because it was all that they could do, and the only path that they could take.
She gasped at her own naivety.
"What did I expect to happen?" She looked down at the still steaming water, at her slim body in the shadowed depths of the bath beneath the water's surface; overlaid upon it was the ghostly reflection of her face and she watched as the water rippled and the her image broke up and reformed countless times, each time slightly differently; the same but not quite the same.
"And that's it really." She thought. In a way they were the same, but to her Eilidh was a fractured reflection; a possibility composed of pieces of a person formed together differently. But still a person, like her.
The Elf had been alive for longer than Larellee could imagine. What must it have been like, her time, to make her who she was?

Like the surface of the water in the bath, the line between them was forever unstable, wrinkled and rippled. her life had been nothing like Eilidh's, she imagined, and yet given the choice between survival and death she would fight to survive, had fought against Eilidh when she was out of her wits with horror and grief and convinced her own death was upon her. Would she have killed Eilidh if she could have?
"Yes." She said to herself simply, and then; "There's no black and no white."
Standing up, she stepped out of the tub and stood for a moment, fragrant water dripping from her body onto the rug beneath her feet. Taking a chamois leather that Delphine had laid for her nearby she rubbed herself dry, the relative cold of the room prickling her skin and stiffening her nipples.
"I know nothing of her."

It was true, she didn't. She only thought she knew anything about Eilidh from what she had surmised from the Bosmer's looks and from her behaviour in the brief time she had been aware enough to do so, and that was becoming more of a mystery the more she thought on it. Eilidh's history seemed written in her face and on the skin and in the flesh of her body; every scar and tattoo, every line and mark spoke of hardship and struggle, but the scars it seemed ran much deeper than that. She remembered how tired the Elf had looked; not just from one hard-fought day but from countless days over countless years. She made Larellee with her lily-white skin and nailpaint feel like some still-wet child, inadequate and incapable. The gulf of years and experience between them was clearly the fault of neither but nevertheless when measured against the woman into whose circle she had been thrown by circumstance Larellee felt soft and weak and puny.
That the Elf had killed her brother was still true, and the wound was bright and sharp. From the moment the three of them met by that rock, someone was going to die. It had been inevitable and yet, only one of them had; the one who was the most threat she supposed.
"This much, and no more. It could have been me too, but it wasn't. Only as much force as was needed to stay in control."
Larellee raised her eyebrows. There had been no reason to kill her initially and so she had been spared. Later, when the Elf had her alone, she could still have eliminated her; Larellee could have informed the authorities, and at the time she meant to, and that might have been enough to secure her death ultimately. She shook her head, the Chamois poised against her skin. No, at any point Eilidh could have left her to die and yet she hadn't, even though it would have been easier for the Elf if Larellee had been gone. Survival made you selfish Larellee guessed, and that should have dictated that Eilidh would have looked after herself first and foremost, to the exclusion of all else, and yet again, she had not. She had not only not killed or left Larellee, but she had actively helped her to boot. These were not the actions of a woman who merely regarded another as a neutralised threat, and therefore not worth the effort of eliminating, there was more to it than that.
"Why did you spare me? Why did you save me?" These were two different things, she realised. True enough Eilidh had said she would leave her but at the crunch she had not, even though Larellee had told the Elf she would inform on her.

Dropping the chamois, she crossed to the chamber pot and squatted over it to do her business, using a rag to wipe herself when she had finished.
"But it wasn't just that. She brought me here." She thought, standing up again. "Why? She could just have left me... left me for the wolves."
That was what Larellee could not work out, what was confusing to her. Not killing her was one thing, but actually helping her was another entirely; particularly when for all Eilidh knew, Larellee was going to tell the first person she saw and given the reaction of Delphine and the barman, bringing her to Riverwood was an additional complication anyway. The Elf had seemed resigned when she had freed her from her bonds and Larellee had at first thought that, following a debate in Eilidh's head, she'd simply given up and let her go; but that didn't fit with Eilidh's previous behaviour somehow. She realised now that there had to have been more to it than that, it was not simply that she had let Larellee go because she was tired of arguing.

"Why?"

Delphine had left some clothes for her that she had thought might fit, Larellee's own former kitchen uniform being largely a ragged and bloody assemblage of holes and torn threads. They were simple clothes, and clearly Delphine's from a time when her form had been more akin to Larellee's. The skirt and blouse fitted well enough and the underwear, a simple binding cloth for her breasts and some linen knickers, was better by far than what she had before - namely nothing. The dragon's attack had shaken her from, coincidentally, her bath and she had only had enough time to grab her dress before running to find her brother at the stables.
Finally dressed and with a pair of soft leather shoes on her feet, she felt better now for sure. Crossing the room to the dresser, she peered into the polished steel mirror set upon the wall above it, holding up a candle to see herself better.
Black hair framed an oval face, chestnut eyes and full red lips; small nose slightly crooked from where her brother had broken it in a fight when they had been youngsters. The livid black and purple bruise on her cheek served to make her skin look even paler than normal by comparison. She raised a hand and brushed her face gently with her fingertips.

She was no longer sore, though her jaw still hurt a little and there was an ugly scab on her lower lip that made it look rough and twisted. She opened her mouth and pulled her cheek away from her teeth and gums, holding the candle up. There was a gap back in the shadows of her mouth where a tooth should have been.
"She could have killed me, or left me. I'd have known nothing of it..."
Larellee dropped her hand from her mouth and stared at her reflection.
"She kept me alive the best way she knew how."
She tapped a finger against her lips.
"Hmm..."

-x-