It wasn't really at the top, though it seemed as much with all the climbing we did. So before we could reach the building, I'd say, there was a few stairs leading to it that first led to a landing, which had a sack full of potatoes, a sack of apples, and an empty chest; nothing of value, yet I took all the apples and potatoes, anyway. And before us, up another flight of about 10 stairs, were two doors. I wondered which to take, happy that my mind could find some fruitful thinking to do rather than about her: more than just light happy thoughts of friendship: I was actually thinking about sex about now. Maybe it'd wear off when I see these old dudes up in this High Hrothgar building, which I think housed the Greybeards; people whom I deemed less than arousing due to their name, and therefore perhaps having a more sobering affect on me and my wishes for something so far from my personality which consisted of: isolation. Abstinance. Even tolerance from alcohol. Being a sex addict was the last thing on my list of bads, and it's sad it took her to get it out of me when I never knew it was there.

        Anyway, moving my thoughts away from her, I wondered who else would have a settlement so far up? I'd beaten frost trolls and spiders to get up here; doubt they'd wanna deal with it to get down from there. And they are the only people rumored to never leave this mountaintop: it was quite weird. They were like no other group of old men, who would rather stay somewhere less hectic.

        Okay, so I had my Greybeard's hideout sitting in front of me in just minutes more of walking. I stopped to breathe, thinking of this: I must've been a thinker, without knowing, because I got relatively good at it within one good day passed of actually beginning to think. Maybe it was the cool air of the mountain, or the intimate kiss earlier Uthgerd and I shared up here. 

        "To be Dragonborn," Uthgerd said, following me up the steps to the left door once I began walking again, because as a left-hander the left was good luck to me, "means that all of our myths about you will come true. And you were destined to come up these steps," she rapped on the door with the back of her fist, then pushed in. Uthgerd was probably being 'all protective housecarl' again doing that: enacting the protocol of "I'll enter first so a lizard doesn't knock your head off."

        I stepped in after her, scared out of my wits for how scary the place looked. It was so dark; why would the Greybeards want to live in such a place? The mosses hanging on the ceiling trapped the dim light from the torches, and the dreary colors made the walls and the ceilings blend almost together, though the ceiling was much taller and arched. The main pallet of the 'castle' was burgendy, the kind a dragon pukes up when you've beaten the scales off it. But maybe that only color was thrown on by the fire within the building and not the actual color of the walls.

        Yet it really wasn't a castle; however it seemed so grand. So far up the mountain, I'd have liked to call it a tower, imagining it stretch through the mountain rock to the top, yet it was level save a few stairs, resting on the top of the mountain.

        In the middle of the main room there was a semicircle of magelike old men, and I shivered, pasting myself to the back of Uthgerd's armor as we walked within the middle of the half-circle they created. I saw a guy, and I went to him, having gathered some guts, thinking he was the person I was to talk to. He greeted me. He talked to me about their culture. He told me what a dragonborn was, in his hoarse, old voice.

        "Dragons have the inborn ability to learn and project their Voice. Dragons also are able to absorb the power of their slain brethren. A few mortals are born with similar abilities...What you have already learned in a few days took even the most gifted of us years to achieve."

      I gawked, and when he said it was time for me to learn how to perfect this gift as Dragonborn, I shook in my cuffed iron boots (yeah, I changed them since last time, y'know, from the regular iron boots. I think they were Imperial. What, I never told you what I looked like? Maybe I should sometime). I obeyed Arngeir, this Greybeard. I learned my first few shouts since forever as he taught. First he taught me the Ro of my Fus (the second word to my shout, in other words), then I followed him so he could teach me Whirlwind outside their palace-like habitat. That was the most awesome shout ever.

        I wondered when I'd need to use it, since I just recently learned how to run with all this armor on. I didn't know it was possible to even run with it, because I never had any reason to, until I got bored of walking and trying to catch up with hares in this heavy armor.

        But the Whirlwind sent me from point A to point B in whirlwind-like speed. I accepted it into my Thu'um-cabulary, and I wondered why this other guy involved in teaching me, too, didn't speak above a whisper for the duration of my training. I remembered the words of the men at the bottom of the stairs of High Hrothgar. The Greybeards could kill me: in a whisper, the men said.

      While I was there, the mage Arngeir told me that his brothers' lifestyle was hard, of the guy Parmuuthx or whatever that guided them in his leadership, and lived on the Throat of the World (liike, what is that? From another map other than mine I last saw, this world didn't resemble a dragon's body or Throat, or anyone's, at all. But I perceieved it'd be resembling a dragon's just because this culture seemed to adore dragons so much, practically worship them, and I didn't know if the place actually was dragon-inspired. That God...the one that was one of the dragons whom I was always talking about, when I could remember his name...for example, it was a dragon. One example of the dragons Skyrim worshipped and really included into their daily lives which probably made my position special as I was one with the dragons).

         I wanted to be like the Greybeards, I said, and he told me not to be so cocky, in so many words. I needed to train much more, and then maybe I could join them, if Paratharnuax allowed (the dragon's name is hard to remember). I liked him. He didn't mind me staggering his old long-bearded brothers or himself when I'd been practicing. Fus Ro-flipping them about four meters back sure was funny.

      I left the stone and magical place to see Uthgerd with this pasted grin on her face as we shielded the snow from our eyes while we were walking down the slopes. I didn't want that to happen, but it was contagious, so I also smiled. "Everyone thinks I'm a hero," I said, a little boisterous.

        "Haha, because you are," she said.

        "They are, too, if they'd just use their powers," I said, keeping it real.

       "They'll kill us all," she made it 150% realer for me by saying it. "You have much control over your voice. Which shows you are the fated Dragonborn."

        "There have been many fated Dragonborn," I retorted to stretch out her plot hole. That's what the Greybeards had said: that there were others; there'd sometimes been more than one at a certain time. But now, in this era, I was the only one, destined to save them. So her story of me being something legendary was make-believe: I was no different from the others given my fate. I have this book titled Book of the Dragonborn or something, so I need to read it to find out about them, what the Dragonborns did, though. I don't want to dissappoint anybody. But now that I was generally revered, like by her and the Greybeards, that's exactly what I really felt like doing. It'd be fun as heck to hear someone say, But the Dragonborn isn't supposed to be this way! hehe, and just be myself. Or maybe act crazy under this alieas: who knows? Then when enough people call me Dragonborn and forget my real name, I'll be unfindable. Unrecognizeable and ambiguous. Pefection. 

        How could I convert this destiny possibly into my own? Personality-wise, how could I show the strength or charisma of the Dragonborn?

        The Dragonborn may not be out of my reach, and I may be more like the Dragonborn than I can imagine. We shall see. Hopefully we'll both be on the same page as one being. Or I'll just continue staring into the mirror looking at a plain late-twenties woman. A woman with a blonde mowhawk and a gritty face and a frown for a mouth and high cheekbones as weapons. And Uthgerd will only see her hero as one that beat her, almost, at the Bannered Mare...if I could be called a hero which, after, she'll find I'm sure I'm not...and that the Dragonborn didn't lose that fight against her, either. I hope she finds all this stuff out. I hope I can be this to her, a true person and not a fairy-tale.