I wade in the waters of the Cloud District, watching the prophet, the clouds, and the palace spin around me. My breath is assaulted by the beautiful smell of flowers, and my arms are as sore as my abdomen was a few days ago as I stretch them wide. I let them down, and embarrassingly I fart in the water. No one saw that. I get out, run to the top of the stairs outside the palace, and the guards greet me well. I wave at them. Look down upon the Cloud District and get my butt off Dragonsreach's stairs.

I could use a nice Inn visit as much as I wanted to go into the palace. But honestly? I stopped in my tracks midwalk back to the Inn. Did I want to go there?

I jogged right up the palace Dragonsreach's steps and bustedbtjroughbthe doors, and ran hurriedly to greet my housecarl, Lydia, having given up on deciding. A woman who I haven't seen in...the Jarl knows how long. My documented protector. The fact that I didn't want her around said something about me. 

I panted on my way from acquiring her presence from there and she gave me a weird sideways look. I remembered why I didn't want her around me 24/7. 

But nowadays, seeing that I was a newbie somewhere in something, it was always good to have her critisism, seeming she was better than me at battle. To be honest, it was always good to have someone around and to criticize me, be it her or not. I stopped walking, and she doubled into me behind me. I straightened her with an upwards posture with my hands, then hugged her after I turned around to do that. She grew stiff and gave me a weireder look as the hug progressed (for seconds and seconds). I can tell she wasn't expecting that probably because of our misunderstandings as well. I only gave her an explanation when I got to the city Whiterun's marketplace, already a ways from Dragonsreach, in other words. "I really miss you," I said, smiling. 

She grinned, her crooked teeth making an abstract mural out of her mouth. 

But misunderstandings will be misunderstandings. And she was in the most helpfully relevant place than ever. "Can you take my things out of my paid bedroom in the Bannered Mare and carry them for me?" I then said.

Her smile of joy to see me again and to be with me even for a while turned into a sneer. "Yes, my Thane."

I laughed inside as I saw her go to do to it. I waited, to avoid another of those weird encounters with Mikael, or Farengar's yelling at me for my characteristic unkepmtness of health. Honestly, I did a good job with myself resting after the Cairn project and taking it slow, for my usual behavior. I ate well, laughed well, and didn't have to deal with any spite from any of the members. Aela must've been spreading good words about me there in those few days. And honestly that must've meant she really cared about Vilkas' opinions just as much he hers.

Coming out of the Inn, waddling with all my supplies, she pursed her lips as she walked past me. I kept my grin to myself so she wouldn't feel even more misused as a housecarl. 

We went on our way towards my place: the place I wanted. Falkreath's land.

I could imagine the land was lush: the land was pregnant with flowers and ferns and the evergreens brushed my head as I walked the path.

After hours of the cold air brazing my uncovered portions of my face I thought differently about this place. 

*      *       *

I returned to her with the leg of a goat. "It...um...here." I wasn't going to tell her it took a lot to kill the goat because up these paths, they acted unstoppable like heights were nothing to them, and heights and speed for them were powerful against me when I was wielding my bow. 

She grasped it by the skin and began to slice that off with her iron knife. Which I cringed at (the knife, not the skinning, silly. Iron is so low-value.).  We had hijacked some dead bodies' sleep-out. I didn't mind, but she folded her arms stubbornly until her eyeslids began to droop. We'd both stripped - almost. I stripped entirey except for my underwear to make the slim sleeping bag fit my burly figure, and she wore her clothes maybe for the sake of respect for morality. But I was nothing better than a snow wolf out here in the cold, or really anywhere in the wilderness where I had to sleep in someone else's sleeping bag. I didn't care if there were bears that mauled the corpses, either, because I was so sleepy. In the morning, her annoying snoring I heard through the night didn't wake me, just the sunlight which was surprosingly bright up here even with the clouds, and it reflected diamonds off the snow. When she was done eating the goat, her hands weren't too bloody, which I smiled at, because it meant I did my draining rituals right at the moment I got it. It was raw, though. And so I nearly gagged looking at her (because that was actually more disgusting than skinning something, to me). 

"I didn't know you were that hungry," I covered my mouth because it felt like that was coming up since I hadn't eaten, anyway - straight bile. I calmed my stomach by thinking of sweetrolls. "Oh my goodness, I need something to eat." Thankfully she didn't offer me any of her I-donated nourishment.  She greedily guarded it, and I however took solace in that and in eating my own few ingredients in my ingredients pouch to get me ready for the day: the ingredients to prevent extreme cold damage and diseases from snow tigers and wolves, which the latter at least existed up here abundantly. I didn't have much of an apetite, at now. I wonder why.

I winced as I flexed my muscles as she wiped her hands off on a cloth. Sleep made this a normal reaction: getting tense and sore after a fight. And it was mainly because of my wounds and not from the breaking of muscles. I wanted to punch something. I balled up my fists and bent a little to the height level of the ledge of mountain near me and punched at its ice-covered slopiness. I yelled "ah, hah" for about five minutes before Lydia placed her hands on my shoulders from behind me. I turned to look at her and saw her staring wide-eyed at my bleeding hands. I smiled to myself and tucked my hands close to me since I couldn't put them in pockets - I was mostly naked. "I will let you know, now, that I am not normal. Can you dig that?"

Her biting her lip and pulling out another cloth from her bag made me feel like a baby. I snatched back my hand, though it was rash and stupid, because I needed to heal if I was fighting with these girls of mine. "I don't need it. Just needed to punch something, gosh." Yanking at my hair, after her advances ceased, I looked at the sky. My meat was nearly stiff on my bones, and the cool breeze finally picked up from yesterday's stagnant frgidness. I could stand out here and let the bliss of the cold caress me some more, but I knew my plan. And it was gonna get hard, and ddin't include lolligaging. I was just being annoyed at how much and how long it took, and how I was so weak. I never cared this much for my body until Farengar. Until Uthgerd. She messed up things so much.

Now every fight was a chance. Every single swing of my blade was a deathwish, because I could never feel the same, I felt it. Good thing I didn't die from any of my wounds or my recent concussion the Companions' good company helped me over. In fact, the Companions did a lot. Maybe I should go back -

Lydia receded from me and stared at me a long time. I knew she wanted answers. I looked to her, before I began to talk. "I have a lot I need to tell you."

"T-that's relatively new," she looked from my stomach and back up at me as a point. I looked at her stomach and back up at her, to mock. 

"I'm sure you've been working on a six-pack, too? Good job."

Lydia was about to growl when she smiled instead, and her cackle reached the far tops of the mountains around us. "I am amused at how often you tend to take things so lightly. I bet if I stabbed you you would just say, 'that tickles'."

I sported a pout. "That's pretty rash."

She stopped her chuckling short. "Oh. Sorry. Well..." Then she didn't talk for a few minutes later. The air started to freeze my armpits so I let my arms back down. "I know about what happened. I don't know if I've told you before -"

"We haven't talked in a while, and if you do know or did tell me, good job." I rubbed warmth and feeling back into my elbows. 

"You have a serious...friend there."

"Really?" I peered into those brown eyes of hers. Them caring for once. "Aww. You like your housecarl."

"I am a housecarl. You are a -"

"Yes. I know. I forgot." Whatever I was, I was the dominant position over the housecarl, and I forgot what that was but I wouldn't let her know that. Anyway, she was my servant. But I liked her, too, now that I thought of it. She would fight for me no matter what she would possibly like to prevent her from doing it. As weird as I had thought that, it was honorable.

Lydia followed me up the slopes after we packed our things. I shivered in my Dwarven armor, and wish I'd kept all my clothes off. For some reason my body temperature actually had adjusted to the cold, to the point where it was burning energy to keep me warm. Now it was relying on my armor and clothing to do the work and I was feeling as chill as heck. The next place in front of us was quite interesting. I slid my hand along the earthy opening, emerging of a cave, where engraved in the rock and dirt was the symbols "Ancestor's Glade." I looked all around us and there was a pot of warm - oh my goodness - food sitting thee in front of the cave, and before dipping my hand in there and eating it, I noticed there was some beds also nearby, and they also felt relatively warm. "Someone has been sleeping here," I said, amusement tinging my voice and making it rise in octave. "And living here, like it's all good. I wonder if those people have something to do with it -"

"The dead people," she said. Well, yes, dead people could've made this food an hour or less ago and then died a few miles away from this spot, in their beds. Oh well, my perception was extremely faulty. "Let's go in."

Lydia swung her orschish warhammer off her back and it almost made me flinch - I just noticeably tensed up in my neck. "You have one of those, too. Right."

She raised a familiar gesture and I simply ignored the eyebrow and pushed my way through the cave opening...it was kind of tiny for my amount of armor. But it got big, so big that it looked like...there was a garden in here! I gasped and I comfortably set my foot on the wider ground and the dust, a sign of dirt, and life, and I grazed my eyes along the walls of the cave we entered - before almost falling forward at the blinding blur of blazing red spectrum that clouded my vision. 

Lydia cried out at that and began to swing her sword wildly. I wasn't that mad; I was actually scared out of my freaking mind. However, she didn't swing out of nowhere: she actually hit the threat, and the red color stopped. I knew she hit the threat because I heard hard contact. Ironically, it was wood.

I opened my eyes. The woman that vowed to protect me was now at mid-brawl with a...tree. I felt offended, and pulled out my large mace (I wanna say large because I want to feel good about its small-compared-to-my-axes-size) and began pummeling the opposite-from-her tree. There was two trees. And as she sighed hard I knew one of them was beating the heck out of her. 

I didn't know why it took so much to fight one, but I ended up caught between a cave wall and the tree with its threatening, raised branch. Its torso glowed green (ironically, right?) and I just felt that this was some fairy-tailed crap that I didn't need. Honestly, I'd never seen a growing, fighting tree in my life, and before I tested if it could talk, I hit it lethally - in the gut.

It squealed or something. I felt a bit of resistance against my blade as I hit it, and ironically I thought I hit the opposite tree, and I did: it screeched at me from behind and striked out at me. I dodged it and sliced its branch off. It tried hitting me with another one. I ducked and plunged my mace through its heart. 

I looked behind it and as it fell, Lydia stood there, holding herself. I rushed to her, and I noticed a long gash along her side - along with a big plunge-wound at her stomach. I looked to her and the blood that was on my mace. It definetely wasn't just tree-blood. I set her down on the floor and watched her wheeze, a little silently, because it hurt to wheeze, and it's something that I knew. And surprisingly, I didn't even notice the oozing blood from her side until she'd stopped breathing. Because I looked into her eyes the whole time. After her breath no longer existed, her blood stopped pooling. I pulled her along with me, and it was hard because of the things she and I were carrying, but I managed her to the entrance. 

I opened my mouth to force out a cry, but it didn't work. I decided it was best it didn't. I knelt to her side, pushing pressure onto her dead body. There wasn't anymore pooling blood, just fresh blood ready to dry up. The trail led there to where she now was was fresh, too, but the snow blended the clolor to something more deep and rusty, and less fresh looking. 

I dared not to touch my mace again while I was here. Even tough I felt frightened and wanted to hold it close, though I may have been the only threat up here on the heights of the glade. Whatever the glade was, I wasn't visiting it today.

I touched her, and purple surged into her spirit and body. It animated her, and she rose, like a draugr with all its flesh and original character. I led it along, and then pulled out my mace finally when a tree began to follow me from inside the cave. It was also not alive anymore. I wanted to do something with her, not it, but I guessed both the bodies would do, and trudged down the mountain.

I fell downwards and rolled, getting nudged in the back and shoulders by rock after jagged rock. The blood that emerged from my wounds felt warm. I got up, and noticed the dead following me, but down a different rout. Be cool if they could lead me down. I was already in the warmer area of ferns and flowerns now, however, I walked, and when I walked, I saw an annoying tree. I took no time to rid it and walked into the little tree trunk that wasn't an enemy, whcih I saw to be full of flowers. I'd gone by this area with Lydia before we got to the mountains. I was suprised it was this close.

I told Lydia to lay down. She only stood and moaned. I asked her again. When she didn't, I threw her down, and then I took my blade to the tree-ganism again, and it fell forward. I pushed it down, too. This was the thing that Lydia killed. Everyone would know it, everyone would marvel at the beautiful death she garnered. I would leave fast. 

I couldn't even touch my mace anymore, now that I didn't need to protect myself. I'd probably change it, honestly, and maybe would never wield a mace again. How could I kill me own friend with this, so carelessly? At least I didn't have to see anything, like I didn't know until after. Friendly fire was...rediculously horrifying. It wasn't a joke, just a mistake, and I'd let this happen. 

The annoying trees slept in their graves, near Lydia, and I left all my valuables on her. I couldn't steal from the dead and nor could I carry enough to steal from the dead: I had to leave, and I had to go now. Or else I didn't know what to do, or if I could go back to a normal mind when I returned to Whiterun.