My gait was nippier. I felt happy that the Greybeards welcomed me into their home, after all the worrying I'd fought to reveal myself to them. "I'm really proud of you," Uthgerd told me on the way out, making me even more elated. I actually liked Uthgerd stroking my ego like that. But I didn't smile or anything to let her know that because it took only one compliment for her to start retelling me I'm the Dragonborn, again: which I honestly tried to avoid at all costs from some kind of inward pride of mine of being a nobody; and most particulalry, a woman escaped from the dead, where I'm supposed to be. Thank you dragooooooons!.

We'd trudged through the snowy mountains. "The first time you didn't run away from me when I took to the slopes," I announced.

Now she took bigger strides, jogging and kicking up snow. "Maybe I should. I think I see an ice wolf from all the way up here," her hands moved near and away from her sides as she stumbled down the snow-covered slopes.

I laughed, and restrained my urge to push her and see her tumbling, which would've ended up in more harm than mirth, and so instead sped up to her, racing her.

When we stopped at Whiterun, panting like dogs, one of the guards greeted us with a "No lolligagging," and I pffft'ed at him and pushed open the door.

I stepped through, feeling curious about the group of, when I came closer, masked people that stood close to the entrance. "Hello," I said.

Uthgerd fingered her chin as one of the masked people spoke. "You there! You're the one they call Dragonborn?"

"The Greybeards seem to think so," I responded. I didn't want to hide it anymore, yet I was still cautious of these men, women, whoever that I didn't know. I would therefore give them the benefit of the doubt on my identity.

"Your lies fall on deaf ears, Deceiver. The True Dragonborn comes...You are but his shadow." I raised an eyebrow, searching the 'faces' of the others around her, telling from her voice. I didn't notice they were hostile until a frozen summons shot out from one of their hands, in the shape of a monstrous being, and Uthgerd drew her sword. Their words had not taken root in my mind, however, beforehand, besides in the form of idle conversation.

Uthgerd took on the woman, and I retreated to the monster. I spread fire from my fingertips at it.

It screamed, and squirt ice crystals at me in return. I shook my frosty head. The snow fell off and I continued burning the monste's blue, icy, body, until it died. I went back to help Uthgerd, who'd been holding off everyone else. The female cultist, who'd let others get at Uthgerd now, glared at me. She must've been staring in my direction from dissapointment that I had destroyed their monster-back-up. I charged at her with my ice-enchanted Whiterun Axe - she wouldn't kill me here, not on the soil that had proffessed me Thane.

She raised her shield, blocking my blow. "You cannot escape the truth. You cannot escape the True Dragonborn! When Lord Miraak appears all shall bear witness. None will stand to oppose him!" I nabbed and nabbed at her, not caring if my blows went through or not, breathing hard, and ignoring her words that proclaimed her triumph over me as if I was some push-over to her Miraak master.

"Another offering for the Master," she barely staggered as she blocked and said as an after statement, maybe to buff herself up because she knew there that she'd lost even though she perfectly blocked my blow. Who was this master? It didn't even matter: I knew I was her maker. I swung my axe back behind me, dogding in a twirling motion her incoming blow, and implanted the weapon into her skull after making a full turn. She gaped and her hands raised in horror, sword dropped at her feet; and then I jerked the battleaxe forward, detaching it from her skull; she slipped backwards, then, folding in on herself, and slamming into the ground. I exhaled, lifting up my axe, glad for that one moment of intrusion that I was able.

I bent down, searching her bloody remains. A note. armor.

I speculated the armor, remembering its spikes and strong curves more delicately. She was a cultist: I noticed from having seen the armor at a shop before. Board the vessel Northern Maiden docked at Raven Rock. Take it to Windhelm, then begin your search. Kill the False Dragonborn known as Desraim before she reaches Solstheim.

Return with word of your success, and Miraak shall be most pleased.

Who was Miraak, according to this note? And why would the cultists want me? Maybe it was a magic thing. The Dark Brotherhood wanted me for a ritual. I stuffed the stuff in my sack, and ran towards another cultist, jumping up and smashing into him. He staggered with my blade in his chest. I snagged it out of his ribs to see him double forward; giving me time to swing off his head like one'd swing a golf ball. The rest of his body tumbles sideways in the same direction of the head, but sluggishly due to inertia, so it stood upright for a few seconds, causing the blood to squirt into my mouth now that his neck was exposed and level with my face. I wiped off the blood as the body fell to the ground. I closed my mouth that tasted iron and spat, and clanked my axe to the ground shortly. I...just...beheaded a man.

I drooped to my knees and raked my hand along the unidentifiable body. I glanced at the blood spurting from the neck, but then no more at the body. I tried to ignore the blood that was blurring my own vision. The blood blocked any identification, the clothes were drenched in blood. I could barely recognize the leather sack drenched in blood that was in his pokcet...but now that I knew what it was, I clenched my stomach and took the pouch from him, and it clattered as I placed it into my own pocket. I tried to not imagine the blood that I was smearing on my hands as I did that...blood was endless, however...and so I don't know why I was uncomfortable when my hands were already bloody from the kill. After, I looked at my hands, smeared with clear liquid, now. Plop, plop after plop, and then another drop gathered there. My emotions gave me a little sense of purity like these tears that were integrating the blood on my hands now. But people killed for emotions - emotions didn't change what I did one bit.

I dragged myself along the block, the cobblestones aiding my hands to crawl as my knees were too weak to prop me up. Uthgerd called my name, then when I didn't respond, looked in my direction. She came to my aid. The cultist mask on her face made me avoid looking at her, and I was in tears.

She kneeled, shifting my arm over her shoulder, my limp body leaning on hers. "Are you okay, Desraim? Say something."

My tears noosed my voice tightly. "Are you hurt?" she tried again.

Yes I'm hurt. I can't live with myself anymore. It wasn't like this, killing bandits. I had no idea what he wanted from me, no other crimes he's committed, and he had done it for an honorable purpose. It was clear now what he wanted: to clear the way for a real Dragonborn, for me.

I yelped pitifully, breaking into sobbing. "Aww," Uthgerd scoured my body with her fingers, sighed in annoyance. I had less armor, though, than her, so it was possible that she could find the broken thing if it wasn't myself and my spririt.

She eventually held me in her arms, and yanked my face up to hers. "Desraim," she said firmer this time, searching my eyes. "Are you okay?"

I hiccuped incessantly, stared into her face. I held up my hands. She glared at them, then scanned me, the severed head, and then its body. She laid me down carefully, then traced my helmet, around its eyes, then pushed her hand inside the helmet to touched my cheek. "Desraim, are you okay?" She whispered, and continued to croon to me those words that until I returned back to reality.

Reality was my mouth sewn shut, my eyes wide, my hands, fingers, limbs trembling, my breathing forcing my abdomen up at random intervals, but me okay. I eased my hands up to my metal face, and wrapped my fingers around hers which cupped my helmet now.

She bent closer towards me, whispering those nice words to me again and again, smiling gently, mouth almost close enough to touch mine. I took a deep breath and noticed the space between us fill gradually and I said:

"I am."

She inhaled and exhaled slowly, then, silent. And she raised herself up and pulled my now-completely-clamped-around-hers hand. I followed her, onto my feet, and she led me away from the fight - the death - the blood. And I listened to her call to forget.

* * *

"Let's see what the word is at the Mare," I said, waking up to blurring light. Orange darted across the room, her face a blurry black glob. I reached out to feel her face, something, that could tell me if this was real, a dream?

"You're already there," she said, gripping my hand in hers. "I thought you were gone," she kissed my fingers, and retreated my hand to my stomach. "You didn't answer any of my questions when I brought you here: didn't even look at me. Thought you'd never come back to your original senses."

My vision finally cleared up. Uthgerd was there, her dark flowing hair draped over her shoulders. Her breastplate glistened slightly, her eyes dark and waiting. I broke my stare to eye that cultist mask sitting on the desk next to her then, upset at the sight of it, turned away.

"I won't wake you," she scoffed at my willingness to stay awake and just lie there, minutes later. "Get some sleep."

Okay. I must not have been asleep that long...

I did drift back, though, I was so tired. I doubted I had any wounds from battle, though: I was a precarious fighter. Didn't know if she checked to see if I had any scars when I first got here, either. It didn't matter; I'd manage. But when I woke up once again, she did have her mask on, above all else. Something that hurt me even more than fleshly wounds. "Wha! - Uthgerd. Please. Not in here," I said in a serious tone.

She tilted her head questioningly, then quickly removed her helmet, noticing why I was all squeamish. "Sorry. I thought we were getting going, now."

So. That didn't mean she got to keep a cultist mask. I leaned back on my pillow. "Not yet," I answered, sighing. "This beeeeed...is soooo..." I didn't know what else to say about the bed but nothing, because it was so relaxing I didn't want to speak.

She came over to me. She exhaled, having left the mask on the table. Had said, something speculatively, "What I want to do to you -" she began, I believe, and leaned over me with her palms on either side of the bed. Her armor glistened again in the light, and the designs as well as the grime was imminent, between the designs. We needed to wash our armor. I noticed then my own smell - ghastly. I shied away from her physically and mentally since she was so close she might smell me. "Um, you might wanna take your armor off so we can wash it while we're at the inn."

"Hm? Yeah, I guess that's sensible," she said, taking off her armor a little showily. "You like?" she winked.

I stared at her very voluptuous body, and I shivered from something unknown...I scooted under the covers, afraid she'd see me, even though I was fully dressed. She'd see my incompetent body, my lumpy breasts, my love-handle sides, my fat thighs through my armor. All I could see was her dressed self, but not having seen her in anything but armor, her body's curvaceousness was magnified...and also her beauty. Her face was a nice color...one I haven't been able to see clearly ever since I gave her a helmet. Plus, we haven't washed up for days, so that grime on her face always caught in the shadows. Now, with shadows not being cast over her face via a helmet, I was able to see the yellow-tanned skin, the curves...

"I can now do it since we are in private," she disrupted my thoughts, grinning with a complete chuckle. I put the cover over my head. "Uthgerd," I managed to breathe, "You're freaking me out."

"I kinda want to do more than that," she said, lifting the covers to look at me. I screamed. "Uthgerd, stop being so nasty..."

"Oh, okay. That's fine." She dropped the covers. I shivered, and could barely breathe. This is why you don't lodge in with strangers. "And do you even like girls?"

"Yeah," she said after a pause. "I mean, I like you."

I gasped. "Really? I like you, too."

"Then come out," she laughed.

"I don't want you to touch me."

"Sure won't. Not if you don't want me to. I was just...playing with ya."

"No..."

"Yes. Really."

"Nah. You were for real serious trying to one-night-stand me."

"You want it to be for two? Or three?"

I breathed hard. It was so uncomfortable. She could hear me. Anyone already heard the scream I just made when Uthgerd found me under the covers. I don't want anyone else to hear me make weird noises that just came out, embarassingly and neither did I want to give them the wrong ideas. I hoped even my own breathing wasn't too loud for them to hear.

And I just wanted...space.

"Uthgerd, can you leave me alone?"

She didn't say anything. After a minute, I was paranoid and peeked above the covers. Uthgerd's neck lain craned in the direction of the helmet on the desk. I gaped as her breathing bobbed her head slightly against her chair - she was asleep. "I'll be dogged."

I got up to look at her, touch her. She didn't move. "Maybe I do need to go to sleep, too," I crept back up into my bed. I only slept for about two hours, I know, because that's how my body clock was if it wasn't too dark. I never got a full nap, or sleep, until nighttime. And it just happened to be that now - which meant I had a whole night with this girl. What was wrong with her?

I woke up to her sitting right above me in her chair. I jumped, smacking her in the face. "Ouch. You must really hate me after last night."

I stretched my fingers and looked at her, fully. "Oh," I said after analyzing that red mark on her cheek. "I'm sorry."

She only smiled slightly. She dug into the shelf of the bedside table and pulled out a book. "I read this and thought about you."

I eyed the cover. I baby barfed all over myself, before I had the motor ability to spill some of my vomit over the side of the bed. It was...a little more than a baby barf. It was maybe the mommy barf at a younger age. Yeah. A teenage barf.

I gasped for air and wiped the spit away. I didn't relocate myself to the middle of the bed beacuse I didn't want to see her. How did she get that?

I slowly got back into the bed completely and then turned over slightly and took the book from her still-upraised hand. I turned over the front cover slowly and massaged the title page. "This is volume 2?"

She nodded, her cheeky laugh pulling me back into the guilt I had been experiencing all week. "Oh, okay, here, you take it."

She placed her hand on the book, and tugged. My hand wouldn't move. She raised an eyebrow at me, but I just snatched the play back. Her hand moved forward, to land on my shoulder, and I saw her look. The look of an untamed beast. The sex that drove me crazy was now riding in her brain. And now I had to remember what my parents had said: get a nice guy that would take care of you and have lots of money. Well, that was better than telling me I should have sex with an unagegiveable woman with bigger boobs than mine.

They said get with a man, though. I leaned in, and my lips brushed hers. I groaned from the pleasure - her lips were so soft, and I smiled at this first kiss. I pulled her on the bed with me...her arm; and the rest of her body, by its own voluntary motion, followed. I wrapped my legs around her, and she laid between me, her arms on my shoulders.

Her eyes were more intense: a transparent blue I never noticed before. Then I thought we were in a fanfiction. I eased my feet down to either side of her on the bed. Then I turned my head sideways, and she didn't get the message so I pushed her away. "No. Not...here."

"The mask is on the table," she said, in reference to what I'd said about it earlier; which was consequently the same words.

"I'm...not talking...about the mask." She sat up near me, mouth open.

"Look, I didn't do that," she justified herself.

"I know. I did it all. I'm just not sure."

"I'm not going to do anything...that you don't want me to."

"And what would that be?"

Her hand scuttled slowly up to my crotch. I stared at her hand, then her. The look on my face gave me the ultimately best reaction I could withdraw from a woman like her - withdrawal. "I'm not welcome in other words."

"N...Uthgerd, it's complicated," I said, grabbing her shoulder. My legs were halfway crossed, and she lay on her thigh, sideways, and we were so close that it could've been mistaken for a sleepover party and a sharing of secrets. "I kinda want you, but -"

"You're a virgin?"

I turned red.

"It's okay," she said, putting her hand over mine as if she was petting my hand on her shoulder. "I never had sex with anyone either."

I could've turned four shades more red. "It's alright. We don't have to have sex," she said, trying to curb her mistake.

"You're just making it worse," I looked dead into her eyes. If I wanted this I might as well take it now. "Let me kiss you," I said, thinking asking would make things better.

"Ow, feisty," she said.

"How," I said, stopping her from leaning in to me.

"You didn't ask -"

"Please?"

"Sure." She looked at me quesitoningly, and then when she was about to lean in, I just stood up on the bed, awkwardly jumped off of it.

"That was a nice make-up session." Another raised eye from her. "Makeout, I mean." Why did I say makeup.

"You think I was mad at you?"

"Um, no. Why would you be mad?"

"What happened on the mountain."

"Look, you can fight, okay. I'm not mad at that. That's my fault I almost died fighting you."

Her mouth twitched upwards at the sides, and so did her eyebrows, in amusement. "So...you mean that I could've won that fight?"

I realized she was talking about the one at the Bannered Mare. "Uh -" she caught me off-guard.

"So yes! Oh my goodness. All hope isn't lost." I groaned at the disappointment I incurred on myself.

"Look, Uthgerd. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be," she stood. "And if you need me to put my armor back on, I will. I mean, I don't want to push you into anything.

I closed my eyes, thinking of something crazy. I lunged at her, and she must've been caught off-guard, too, because she would've blocked that - and I placed my hands on either side of her on the wall. I'd pushed her to the wall that was behind the desk. Now my body was uncomfortable between hers and her legs, but at least I got her into a position that would be liable to work in my favor. Submission.

And me...I submitted to my desires, tired of not letting anyone have me. If she wanted me, I was here. "You're not pushing me into anything!"

"...You don't have to yell -" I kissed her nice lips that moment, and then she smiled, pulling away from me slightly. "Oh, I see," and she pecked me again on the lips after retracting away.

"See what?" I detached them again.

"I see that you really want me and you don't want to admit it. What's wrong?"

This time her eyes got very serious. I slipped away from the tight space I'd stuffed us into - between the desk and the perpendicular back wall. "I - I don't know." I leaned against the bookshelf that decorated the back wall. Not so much as stalling than breaking into bity pieces. But it was stalling our interesting love fest. "I just..." and my wonderful tear plopped out of my wonderful lacrimal duct, no warning.

"Oh," Uthgerd put her hands on her hips as she walked towards me...that walk alluring, my mind spinning, but still..."I don't want to do this...love."

"I'm understanding if there's someone else -"

I looked up from my hands that I'd pasted on my face. She stopped to hear me say "No one."

She dragged her words out, as if unsure they'd hurt. "So...what's...the matter?"

"I'm...claustrophobic," I said, emitting a forced-sincere-look-of-empathy from her. I said,

"Look, you don't have to know what's wrong with me -" still aware of my stalling from this.

"Yes I do," she said more firmly. Then she held my elbow. "You're my friend, Thane."

"I'm neither." I looked to her out of cloudy eyes. "And you should...stop messing with me."

Her face never looked so shocked and hurt at the same time - I guess it's because I never made her feel either way. I turned away, pitying myself. I just made her cry. I knew it. If not visibly, inside. I sat on my bed. I looked up. She hadn't followed me until I said, "C'mere," really low and patted the space beside me. She sat there, looking down at the floor. "Don't do that," I said, and brought my hand to her face, lifting it up. "it's got nothing to do with you."

"I understand," she said, her eyes flickering past me. I didn't want to know what that gesture meant. I knew of micromovements, and what they meant. Things unsaid. Things the doer probably didn't understand that they felt about something. My micromovement was the shivering of my pinky under her chin. The rest of my hand caressed her face, eventually. She looked into my eyes, once again. "I hope you tell me." Those words and her eyes, mixed, delved deep into my soul to where I was naked.

"Okay," I scooted up further on the bed. She didn't move but her eyes followed my movements. "You are beautiful, if you were wondering," she said.

"Ah, none of my problems have to do with self esteem, just with what I want," I said, truthfully. "And my parents - what they'd have wanted from me." Her eyes widened in interest of my story.

"What happened to them?"

"They...they got taken away for being Stormcloaks. I was on the wagon with them, actually. It's the only reason I was caught - not wanting to leave them."

A glaze came to her eyes. I didn't want her to cry or anything. "It's okay," I said. And after a minute of getting myself together, I said, "I just want to honor them with everything I do, especially since they died for me." That's another reason why I'm so befuddled by dragons. I'm to kill dragons, but yet, if the dragon came a little earlier, my parents could've lived. But instead their heads got lobbed off one by one. I'd closed my ears and eyes; saw none of it, only the remains of my parents once I opened myself to the sound of a screeching, looming dragon. One who's wings were green, and mouth razor sharp. And yet it all seemed like a Godsave to me. A thing God sends to save.

That God was probably Akatosh. Looking down on me, summoning his dragon servants to help. I wanted to owe dragons everything, but something in me wanted to kill them; especially when they ruthlessly attacked villages I frequented. I couldn't stay out of competition with those gods of air.

I looked back to her after having noticed that my sight had went blank; my eyes closed. I was thinking the whole thing back through my head, the whole event of the dragon, the attacks I've been through, my parent's bodies that were piled on one side of that guillotine, mine awaiting the same fate. Then, I began crying.

This isn't why I cried out there yesterday, on the ground, for having killed that man. It was something different, yet everyday out of my parent's care, I suffered some unprecedented event that rocked me out of my comfort zone. My parents were everything I had. Though I was twenty-three, I still had ties to them as strong as hide, and my dependence was utterly high, because they didn't want me to work. They only wanted me to know how to protect myself, because they felt workers never became warriors, a certain someone they'd need when the house was ever under attack - and they were right. Where was I now? Inside an inn with no house, with no other title but Dragonborn, a job I wasn't sure yet how to fulfill and so wasn't really doing. They Greybeards had a job on their list for me to do to pursue this path, and I hadn't lifted a finger towards it.

Uthgerd was doing a good job waiting there. I don't know - I shouldn't have been so hard on her, because The Lusty Argonian Maid could make anyone horny: it also showed the depths of beings' want for sex, because I didn't see anything particularly sexy about an Argonian, though I've only seen them through rumors. Broad, carved muscles, if they had it like that, and a thick, muscular, veiny tail. Very bright, straight teeth (Because they didn't have many to crowd up - their teeth only existed on top, because they didn't really eat meat...they ate...insects, and some meat, like frogs and snaked and other amphibians or reptiles...things that were similar to them, like humans and elves ate things that were similar to their animalistic anatomy. I don't know what was up with it, but I didn't assume to pursue the reasoning...and what's more, I made it up off the top of my head and the more and more I think about it, it doesn't make sense, because we eat things that aren't neccessarily mammals...).

I thought about her, though, and the hurt she must be facing. "Does it ever bother you," my natural ability for shunning and deflecting took over once my mind returned to the intensified subject at hand, "that you can't ever enter the Companions?"

"Nah," she said, brushing off invisible lint from her shoulder. She then looked at me deeply, "I'm sorry, I," she said, "didn't know you...had it like that."

"Don't be," I said, wiping away another bulging tear. "I wouldn't be the Dragonborn without it."

"So that is what it is to be the Dragonborn," she scoffed. "I guess you aren't to feel like you have a home. This world is to be your home, so you can be amongst everyone and save them all. Be one with the people. I kinda like that idea, but I'm more of a homebody, myself. It's why I did this adventure with you," she nodded to Desraim, "because I wanted to get out more. Now I see - it really is a wonderful place to behold."

I smiled, happy my misfortune could make someone's day - in a good way. I laughed - it was some random belt that came from deep inside me. A belt over being able to feel better about it all. I crawled over to her, and said, "C'mere," sexily, and she leaned back as I advanced over her body to kiss her moist lips like I'd been married to her. Something I would like to be, if she could be trusted. Or maybe she could just be my steward for when I adopt children into my soon-to-be-mine-house, the one Falkreath's Jarl wants me to have, if I do him some favor, I noticed that one little addition that I never knew before was one the page just now. I'd have to look at it again, to make sure. And find a way to fit that 'favor' into my schedule.

My lips melted into hers, and while I think I'd touched her spirit...her joy tapping into mine, because I definitely had some of my original feelings of it, now. And just being able to share something as easy to come by as someone's own physical warmth, it was beautiful. I lay with her in cuddly intertwindedness of our limbs and more and combed her hair back from her face. It looked funny like that, covering her eyes, and I laughed. She smiled, too, trying not to, I know, because she wanted to enjoy the moment, silently, that I finally gave myself fully to her. Not just as much physical contact as I could bare, but also the baring of my soul, and as I awoke with my body almost smothering hers, me fully out of my armor, though, as to not have crushed her, I noticed happily, I also noticed, shyly, that she was still very generously clad with all the shapes that my body tended to neglect, besides wobbly, awkward curves and a stick-like nose, while hers was as curved as a baby's bottom. And I just couldn't deal with it anymore. For not being one put down self-esteem wise, I had got off of her, and frowned. I took my time showering and got into my clothes, and I felt the disappointment of my cherry not being popped, but at least I had some intimate time with my best friend and did not just make a relationship more complicated than it had to be. She was just a friend with the benefit of a good time, and nothing else; by the way, sex ain't that awesome, anyway.

I didn't have it, so I didn't know what else to believe. And now that I could get over that, I could move to better things...like her birthday. What would I give her? I saw her smiling, eyeing me, my clean self. So she had gotten up about the time that I did. Her grimy sweatiness shown all over her...from last night, her dirt streaks had been smeared. And though the sweat had dried, that was the very example of proof that she had sweated. Why did I care much that she had sweated?

"I had a good time," I mumbled.

"Yeah. Now we can have less time thinking that we're partners and more like we're companions."

"I was thinking the same thing," I said, surprised, but my focus on my socks not giving my voice enough umph. She smiled some more. a bigger one than she was giving me on the bed.

"Now, what do you say?"

"I don't know what to say."

She paused. "You know, you're right. Thank you."

I grinned. "Haha, you're welcome, I guess."

"I love your personality."

I didn't know what to say to that. I got my bag, and even though she wasn't even dressed, I was ready to go. "Now, don't just go up and leave me," she retorted.

"I want to do that. You don't know how badly, either. But..I mean, you're the only one that knows about this, so I might as well stay with you and learn who you are as much as possible."

"I can keep secrets too, if you have any information trust problems."

"Um, thanks," I looked up to her, from having my head hang drearily over my shoulders. I dind't know what to do with my life, but the realization that i didn't have actual sex made me so exhausted. It's like I was still waiting for it, and it was morning. Maybe...later. With dildos and the what not. "I'm not reading The Lusty Argonian Maid, anymore."

"Sure thing," she said tossing it in the fireplace upon my words. "No!" I yelled.

She giggled and with a cute little smirk, just went into the bathroom. I rapped on the door. "Yes, Desraim?"

"Can you promise not to let anyone know my parents were Stormcloaks? I don't want to run into any problems during the war."'

"Um...sure," she said, and I heard the chaffing sound of her clothes against her skin, that were now dropping to the floor.

I turned away, and put my head in my hands and cried the duration of her shower, on the bed.

She didn't even say anything to me as she came out, because I was too sad to even notice her. But we can make it, even if she can only be without me, because I don't know what to think or feel, and neither felt comfortable seeing another loved person die. We left for Riverwood.

I tried to ignore it all, really, as we went down Whiterun's cobbled streets. "Did you drag me into the Bannered Mare and demand they pay the Dragonborn?" I said, mocking her hilarious housecarl-like allegiance as we walked down the cobbled streets. I eyed the dead cultists from meters away. She could've let me sleep on the Skyrim dirt.

"I paid it with my own money, in fact. Just a lousy 10 gold."

"You only have 15," I said, matter-of-factly.

"You've only had fifteen hours of sleep in the past week," she respawned her dignity.

That explained me not wanting to get up.

I quivered in my most intimate parts and with that, felt a cool sensation in my underwear, despite all my efforts...to just forget. Curse this armor for letting in drafts. I bit my lips, drowning out the night we spent. It was now dawn. That fact alone made me sick since we'd arrived at Whiterun at 7pm, yesterday. I slept like a pig - er - horse. I stopped in my tracks, causing Uthgerd to pause. "You stopped. Something wrong?"

I - I just didn't know what to do. I wasn't ever sexually, or even romantically, active. Maybe that's what was wrong. I wasn't generally fond of women, either. But I never ever loved a man, either. This whole relationship, if it was friendly or girlfirendly, was wearing my nerves already. Maybe it had already been doing so before yesterday - yep, I could remember me making the slightest of advancements at her, and she was doing it towards me, too, since we'd barely met. Well, we got what we wanted. But was it too much? For me to possibly fall in love with her within a week? I mean, we did kick bandit tail. But I could only think we were too early on in our relationship, whether or not this was her first, to know what love was (because, I mean, neither of us were in a long-standing relationship right now), and I nearly puked again for remembering that I had wanted to marry her yesterday: what really was up with me?

It was good to have a companion, anyway. I let it all shrug off me like I'd do my robe, back at home. I missed home. Man, would I ever see my parents again in Sovngarde?