I held on steadily to Farengar's stomach as he ushered me from the room on his shoulder. I feel nice to know that there's men in Skyrim with chiseled abs, because I feel safe and not over-prepared against a man. But the women here were just as well-built, I was just saying. You guys held on, thanks, and now you enjoy an awesome chapter. 

I know my legs are as stiff as two wooden poles but I move them, and noticeably with Farengar's supportive hand on my hip, which I know was for less than a sentimental reason since he'd shown no interest in me just helpfulness from our friendship. Oh, well, I secretly (no pun intended to his last name) adored his guts (no pun to the surgery I just endured).

I wondered if I could make more puns while I inched into the Inn's lobby to see happy faces when they saw mine; then, I tilted my head back and smiled. When I lowered it back down, though, upon the opening of my eyelids, I saw them. 

My stomach grew tense at the sight of Uthgerd's hair tied in a ponytail and lingering over her right shoulder and Olfrid in front of her with his greying attributes, stepping like a giant towards me and Farengar. I could see that they were together so maybe Olfrid came with her to talk to me about what happened. I would rather hear him talk smack about Greymanes though...and that became even more clear as he stepped in front of me, and Uthgerd stayed behind the man as if I'd bite her. I kindof liked that sheepish attitude. But not as much as I'd like Lydia to obey me, because unlike Lydia, I didn't want Uthgerd to die.

"We came to see if you're alright," she looked up at me, though, the first to talk. I looked away from her and at Mikael, the man who a few seconds ago, in my peripheral, I noticed was smiling, but now with all the gang in view was more apprehensive with his actions and idled between one foot and the other, leaning on each, and then put his hands in his pockets, and started to pace a bit. I looked back at Uthgerd once. 

And too bad my voice was dry like the inside of a barn. "I don't care." It didn't pack much a punch, because Olfrid put his hand on my shoulder. 

"We came to see if you'er' alright." I shook his hand off me violently, and took a seat with Farengar's help at the bar stool closest to me. Hulda smiled and I gave her a grunt. She turned around to laugh at me under her breath, but if I didn't know she was laughing I'd thought she was offended. But people with a good sense of humor never bothered me, and she knew what had happened to me as well as any member in here knew. Uthgerd poked me in the gut, and now was expecting me to accept her apology. 

She didn't just poke me with that cheap old iron, probably rusted by now (but I knew she took good care of her weaponry, just wanted to insult her in some way) knife of hers.  She'd torn my stomach up so bad with it that my intestines had begun their escape to Sovngarde, ad I onnly had an farengar to help keep them alive.

Surgery had been done to remove the dead ones, obviously. So I was a stitched up (inside and out, actually) bunch of nerves. Grumpy and not even with an appetite, because I couldn't eat or drink anything for a while, besides water. Not that I'd drank more than water on a usual basis, but...

"Hulda, you sell any milk?"

"Oh, hun, maybe I can find some. But it'd be wise to send a friend out to get you a jug from Ysolda."

"You mean Carlotta." My risen eyebrow caught Hulda's attention from just starting to write down orders she just took before mine. 

"Oh. Right. Sorry, Dessy. I keep thinking of Ysolda because I'm wondering how I'm going to sell this place to her." 

"And now you don't even have the capacity to remember my name?"

"It was a nickname I made up just now. You don't like it?" She began preparing the food herself, and I chuckled at my inside joke. Saadia, her original waittress, was still upstairs in her room grieving over the information I told her from the Alik'r warriors I met and hasn't come out since I did. But not that Hulda knows. She thought that Saadia just found a better job. But I really wonder how Saadia is doing. I never went back to her because I thought she was going to kill me when she withdrew her dagger, so I kept my distances afterward. Even though we aren't on the best of acquaintance paths, I should still send my regards to Saadia and hope she doesn't get captured by the Alik'r anytime soon, at least not when on my watch. And that explains even more why she won't come out of her room. I hope she told Hulda what's going on. Because, basically, the Alik'rs come from Saadia's homeland and her just being a Redguard, which is her race, I think makes her a prisoner, or at least makes the Alik'r want to imprison her. A little complicated but I think it's some kind of genocidal cleansing I think, going on where they live, which describes why she would escape there and come here. But the danger's not done with with the Alik'r travelling around. I met 'em in Whiterun and haven't been able to find them since they told me about her and I'd informed her. Now I've just forgotten about it until I saw Hulda's soft, alabaster hands prepare a meal.

I don't usually eat here, however. I eat anywhere. I come here for conversation. And as soon as I was done talking to Hulda I noticed Mikael as energetic as ever lean against the items shelf with apprehension while he watched the two Godforsaken Nordic bulls come up to me and try to strike more seemingly harmless conversation.

"I care." Uthgerd resurrected the dead, not-so-much-of-a-conversation we had just had. She leaned on the bar counter with both her hands.

"Leave," I placed a hand on one of her wrists, my eyes still glued to Hulda. Then I looked to Uthgerd once Olfrid started talking. 

"I do, too," he said rather lamely. 

"Me alone. Now." I continued my previous sentence, my eyes leaving her afterward. She bit her jaw and turned from me, and Olfrid, after staying there for a few seconds, soon noticed that his stubbornness wouldn't make the situation better. 

So with both of them departed from me, and the imprint of Uthgerd's hand in mine, I remembered what I was really mad at - not having any true friends. Not the fact that she harmed me out of self-defense, but that she would do that, anyway. And that before the moment I was stabbed at her, I was also fended away with an axe. That I bought her, but an axe, nonetheless. Without explanation or a moment to even redeem myself, just because Hilde's stupid chicken and family was killed long ago in another friendly accident (well rather hungry accident, and no laughing, reader), and Hilde wanted to get back at me with thugs. Not to mention that that didn't help Hilde not get hurt anymore, because I accidentally hurt her while trying to murder those hired thugs she sent after me. And that is what sent Uthgerd in a rage to cut my head off with that orchisch axe as soon as she could, without even consulting me first, since it was my axe and she was my follower and she should follow my orders. 

So yes, I did get angry and try to kill her when I saw her at the Mare, when I finally decided to go back here because she practically lives here and so I've tried to avoid it since the (I must say more recent) harmful incident with innocent Hilde that she couldn't forgive me from. The Mare was simply full of many other faces that would've been kind enough to help me when I happened to collapse at the Mare from exhaustion, but Uthgerd instead had to show her rather ugly-sunkissed face to help me up off the floor that day...it was a little juvenile a move for me to strike at her in return, but when someone gets appalled at my behavior and runs to kill me, then comes to give me a hand off the ground as if that someone and I were on good terms a few days later really ticks me off if you know what I mean. So that was the day she had no other choice than to gut me with her Companion-like-sharp knife that we stole off a dead body sometime during our looting sessions together. And it makes sense that her weapons were in top condition like that as if they came from the Companion's Skyforge smelter because she used to be a Companion-in-waiting, which is why I can see why she and Olfrid are so goody-goody because he hates the Greybeards (who contain a load of Companionship) with zeal, so she's a chip off that old block of his. 

But anyway, I didn't really care why she'd be with Olfrid to try and convince me to come back to friendship with her (what a wuss for her to do so anyway with him instead of alone) as much as I cared of having a good time and forgetting about them. God, they're back, though? I'd have loved to avoid them the day I get a chance to get some fresh air.

Hopefully I could get out of this Inn as soon as possible so as not to see them. Maybe I just came back to this area, because maybe they've always been in this Inn once I had to go to the operating room (a bedroom I paid for, hilariously) and I am just now coming to see the light. Literally - the brighter Inn lobby for its licking fireplace and its wall sconces whose light dances around the walls and throws shadows on everyone else, yet still makes the lobby a little brighter than the two wall sconces Farengar and I had to his use in the bedroom, though his mage-like lights that he'd brought from up in Dragonsreach helped him see fine during my operation. I was sewed up now, and a week later from that surgery ready to go and have Farengar escort me like a princess. I gave Hulda some money when she stopped serving the food to her customer or so and she said she'd book me a room for my stuff to stay inside of the Inn for a complete week while I was out and going. I may need the Inn room to rest a bit, but I was going to keep my belongings in there for sure.

Great. Because I didn't trust the Companions with diddly squat even though they'd given me a bed to sleep on in their headquarters, and coupled with that I rarely visited them because even though they were like me in their mercenary efforts, like people repel, and Njada was a pain in the buttocks along with the slightly annoying Aela the Huntress.

So the Companions' hideout was a no. This place would have all my stuff. And the rest of Whiterun would be my playground until I got better.

I glanced at the room Farengar was in, the bags of my loot on its floor. I couldn't sell it until I got better, I thought longingly. I couldn't improve any of my weapons either on the grindstone until my muscles got used to my knew intestinal look (a much shorter tract than before). I looked at Farengar again and noticed that his hood fell off while he was picking up the unused gauze (I'm surprised there was any left), and bottles left over from my consumption a few days past, as well as from other potions he didn't quite try on me, yet, which I was glad for not having happened because I didn't really wanna be his guinea pig anymore after the surgery. I was done being tested on. A free woman.

"Hey," Mikael said, parrying the edge of the counter to come and rest an elbow on the counter near me.

"Hey," I said off-guard, so mimicking his word choice. I even blushed and chuckled a bit. He always got me when I was feeling the most serious. But I did come into the Mare and ask him to sing regularly so I could wind down. He was a Bard, or in other words, a singer, like a mage is a magician, and so on. On second thought, I said "Fus!" and the door to the room Farengar was in closed from the force of my voice. 

The Inn residents looked at me, and I held up a hand to the best of my ability and said, "Hey, I'm about to sing a song, which is much better than what you guys are thinking of doing to me right now over Fus Ro-ing a door." The retort worked, and the group of residents eventually turned away in a matter of seconds to continue what they were doing. "So Mikael, what's up?"

He blinked a bit and looked down before responding, as if I'd caught him off-guard, too. It could've been over my fus. I don't usually use my Thu'ums in the vicinity of non-hostile residents. Because usually the guards fuss with me over anything resembling magic, even though this is obviously a gift as only the Greybeards can do it besides me. "I was wondering how you were feeling," he lifted his hand on the counter and opened his palm.

I thought, maybe this is a "high five", but then I secured my own hand in his after my mind processed him correctly; then tightening my fingers around his I said, "Ready? Go." And I chuckled as his arm beefed in size and veins emerged while he tried to push my hand down. It was a good two minutes in, and he just gave me a jagged smile, and I raised my eyebrows. A good five minutes in, and he said, "I'm fine." 

"When are you going to sing?" Sinmir asked, downing his drink before asking again. "You guys have been mingling like ants since we've heard anything about your performance."

"Uh -" I said, then Mikael pulsed his hand down and to the left. My hand thumped to the counter, and I roared in disbelief as he sat back and laughed, then clapped his hands in amazement. 

"Finally. Well, I've got a treat for you, Desraim. Your favorite song."

"That ain't no treat. We're supposed to sing. Buy me a sweetroll."

"Nah - ah. Not unless you're my lady," he swung from his seat and notched his quietly-countertop-sitting lute onto his finger, and through the opening that I guess you carry the lute by. 

"You're not even the winner -" I said stupidly, just forgetting. "Danggit." I get him all the time, so this accidental win wasn't taken easily by me. I'd get him to do something for me by the end of the day or week. I needed some favor-buddy anyway while I was healing. I glanced at the door Farengar was in. "Hurry before Farengar finds finds me singing and comes out of the room," I say, and Mikael began to strum a warm-up.

"I'm fingers ahead of you, friend," he answered, and began to sing. I leaned against one of the posts of the building, and began to sing with him. His dark eyes swam into my soul, meanwhile, as if he was trying to find something favorable, there, for him. I admired him but he wasn't my type, honestly, for a romantic relationship. He also tried to get with every girl in Whiterim, once, a bulls-eye for him if he just happened to procure me, too. But I really didn't know what he was thinking as he sat there, staring into my eyes while his lips danced to the song, my favorite, that he'd play upon my request almost every day I came here.

"We drink to our youth, to the days come and gone. For the Age of Aggression is just about done. We'll drive out the Stormcloaks and restore what we own, with our blood and our steel we will take back our home." The girl I usually see wandering in Dragonsreach, Sinmir, the brother who's sibling was taken away from him and I'd vowed to return (sometime), and a woman whose legs just wouldn't shut, no offense because I shouldn't judge how people sit their bodies on benches, all happened to be there and got in on our song, the chatting and all miscellaneous actions halted. 

And I finally boasted the part of the song lyrics that meant the most to me, when they came, now that everyone was listening: "Down with Ulfric, the killer of kings! On the day of your death we will drink and we'll sing. We're the children of Skyrim and we fight all our lives, so when Sovngarde (no many times I say it, I'm still not going there, ever) beckons, every one of us dies." Every head in there clapped and cheered (and if you know my language by now I didn't literally mean every skull, but if you want to think of clapping skulls right now, be my guest), and we just had a good time. It was the most fun night ever. Or so I believed until the very next unsuspecting night of my recovery.