Hi, y'alls: _______!!! 

It says, thanks for coming, I <3 you.

I liked to go and see what was huntable at this time...'cause I was hungry. I know, right, Desraim? Continue. Now, there was a crab outside Markath, by the river that gave Markath its water. I winced while I was wading in the water trying to find fish and then bent toward the currents to grab my knee because I felt a sting. Slaughterfish. So that's what this river was populated with.

"So both y'all'll be on my plate in a while," I said of that fish that stung me and that crab I spotted less than a yard away. My other hand produced a sword. It didn't catch souls for me, anymore, as I had no soul gems to assist that effort, so I didn't mind it unfruitfully wasting its power on these mongrels. As soon as I raised its blade above me, readying it to strike the mudcrab beside me, I fell forward in the water, however, bracing my blade against soot and stone. The mistake, I'd say.

Because I thought I was a little wise just to get my hands and arms wet, though, those receiving a terrible sting while my stomach stayed in the clear. However, the stupid slaughterfish - I waved it out of the way, receiving another sting to my hand. And the hand was indeed the way to control an opponent - we did so much with our hands; they help us balance for goodness' sake - and yet I did not understand that it would make me fall face-forward into the water, and I now felt my whole body now acquire stings, and me jolt under the even more-recurring voltages I noted now came from more than one fish upon direct, and slippery, contact with my body. Sight blacked out for me.

"You weary traveler, wake up, I say."

"Ugh, I didn't need to know that you had cheese this morning," I said upon his roaring words, my body stiff and the sweats I'd broken into imminent across my form as the winds of outside-Markath caught 'em, making me shiver, but not dulling the hurting I experienced. "Huh, who are you?" I finally opened my eyes to the musty breath after taking a moment to take in my pain. The guard of Markath, I simply noticed from his calloused hands, the same ones any guard had I could remember from my encounters, and from the knowledge they still never fought enough for their callouses to be as smooth as the mercenaries, cradled my head in one of his calloused hands and exhaled on my face some more, though speechless.

The fact that he thought I wouldn't wake up was insulting.
"You're alive?" His words confirmed his belief.

"You're strolling around, lollygagging? How dare you!" I mumble, painfully, but sounding more a hurt little human than a joking camper. So I decided to bring out my power, in front of a Markath guard, I knew. These guards were probably the least tolerant of magic compared to guards among my travels. But oh, well: his ogling wasn't going to heal me. 

Yellow surrounded me, and happily, my body responded by healing my nerves' capacity to feel (and not pain) and welts, yet I was still tense and had trouble moving afterwards.

"Now, don't tell me you used to be an adventurer like me, but - this happened to you. Or something random like that.  Because I'm proof that you can live your life, now, with just a little mag -" I began my little advertisement off the top of my head before he interrupted.

"Did you just use magic?"

"Yes -" Or, duh, stupid!

"That is unruly behavior," he dropped my head from his hand and onto the rocky shore. Since I was still on the ground and the shore was, again, rocky, that really hurt. "Promise me you'll never do that again in the province of Markath."

"After you just dumped my head on the Earth like you're tryin'a crack some mudcrab in half? No way, dude. I'd rather practice my destruction magic here in Markath, on - well, I'm sorry, it won't happen again." It, I whispered under my breath, again, and pierced my eyelids shut from the pain in my head, now. Not my destruction spell, but just it won't be practiced again.

"All you elves are filthier than the last, with your magic. I wish I could report you to the Thalmor, now. Or that guy in Markath asking about Daedra worship. You must pay for your disobedience of the Empire."

"The empire obviously let a Talos-priest preach in front of the steps of Dragonsreach. Get your history right before you speak - you'd known that the only reason the Empire doesn't want it is because of the Thalmor. Nords used magic - college of Winterhold? Yeah. And even worship Talos. He's a god for goodness sake, saved Skyrim! Why not worship him -"

"Scoundrel." The guard kicked the dirt near me. I got up, slowly, eyes on him the whole time.

"It's true. It's nothing to be ashamed if you don't have powers, but you shouldn't berate others for having them. And I'm not a stinking High Wolf, darnnit. I don't do dark magic -"

"Any magic is dark-"

"I'm a WoodElf. Ancestry from Valenwood. Get the facts right, dude."

The Nordic fool stepped close to me now that I was standing. "Damn Elf, that doesn't change a damn thing."

I squinted my eyes and wished my mohawk could sharpen threateningly like a porcupine's  'fur'. He was uncultured and ignorant. He didn't know anything and I didn't expect him to pay me any homage to being a being of thought than some scum on his roughed-out shoes. At least maybe I should feel sorry because his city doesn't give him enough money for better shoes, if not for his ignorance brought on by the Empire. Ironically the people I still trusted.

And only a few minutes after I arose to argue with this man did a rock move and chitter, and look at me with red eyes. Yeah, a stupid mudcrab I tried to kill yesterday but might as well not try caring about now, it sitting on the shore, waiting now for something. I wonder what was down its food chain.

So I faltered, little stiff jerky movements, up the bank that I noticed only now with my restricted movement it's steepness, and I got to an area still outside of Markath that was full of flowers, and I began picking. Smelling them, thinking about the next concoction I could muster that will heal stiff joints; the smell of these flowers were already making me relax.

My cure-all potions couldn't cure all, only diseases that were directly from something. But since stiffness wasn't a direct disease, and rather a reaction to pain, I wasn't getting over this without working out my muscles or either making something else to ingest. The chittering noise from the mudcrab - I guess that followed me into this flower patch - distracted my thoughts and made me pull out my sword.

"C'm here, ya little -" I said, swinging the little crab across the sandy path I stood on, and then started to crack his legs off from his body via my hands after resheathing the newbought sword. Then I broke off his claws I could use as crab chitin in my potions. And by the time I did that, threw him in the river again and his valuables into my jingling pouch, and finally winced noticeably at all the pain I concurred, like that nagging underarm muscle soreness from having swung the sword too heartily, I then turned to look at the sky and prayed to Akatosh.

I should've kept the crabby alive. Instead I just mocked the floating dragon while its roars sounded more like a boiling pot of tea that failed to sing the right note. Annoying? Immensely: it sounded so. And it sounded more like a squeal if you didn't notice, rather than an actual roar from something so terrifying.

I looked around for backup (since the crabby I could've made my ally via my animal-charming ancestral-powers was dead, now) before I decided to hide for shelter: a rock. Yes, a rock would defend me well than anything else. Yes. I should just accept my fate now, I thought, scooting behind it. 

Either I was supposed to have been dead in the water already or the dragon flitting above was just really about to rain down its disapproval of mud crab homicides.

Anyways, this beast found me, but not before a guard snapped an arrow in the beast's dark grey, sinewy neck. That - that was the guard that just racially profiled me!

Don't say that was payback, by the way, but the fact that the tides turned for him to help me again did make me feel I wasn't terrible for my smart words to the guard for his ignorance. So I ogled as he took his next arrow out, and lugged it into his hunting bow, streamlining the arrow into the reptile's head. His hate for me being probably gone.

I ducked from my cover as it flew over me to end me - well so the dragon thought it would, and that perhaps that I was weaker - with orange flames. I swung at it in a wide arc in response to its aggression, and therefore landed a dent across the animal's scaled belly.

The dragon invaded the space of the guard, next, knowing I wasn't a coward, now. But I wasn't equipped with much to tackle this beast properly, so I returned to my cover now that the beast was near the guard, knocking him upside his head with its own.

It looked a fierce confrontation between them, but now that the dragon was mounted on the ground, I could shine some of my magic onto the dragon's face - a.k.a., stab it - and I left gashes like footprints in the sand and yelled at the sensation of consequential fire meeting my skin, though I could take it for so long because of my natural resistance to flames, which I felt was getting slightly stronger because of my body's recovery from my most gruesome injury that was still in progress, using it as an extra damage barrier. 

The guard gasped at my bravery and took the moment to pat out his sackcloth clothes now that he was out of the line of fire of the dragon - but pounced back in it and on me as soon as the dragon flew off of the sandbank. If the fire wasn't going to affect me eventually, I did know the reptilian figure's talons could've skewered me if the guard didn't bring me to the ground. 

But I got up awkwardly from beneath him and placed my bloodied sword over my head to deflect the flames, though unable to prevent the guard's burns. It was hard to get the dragon at this point because it was circling us but from a higher position, and its fire kept getting in the way of the guard's advances as he dodged the flames, finally. I guess he wasn't extremely crazy and letting himself get scorched.

I took cover yet again behind the rock since the rest of the ground was flat daisies and sand, and I left the shooting to the man.

I eyed his swift movement as he jogged to the monster while he shot, all at the same time as if giving himself an extra boost to the arrow. The arrow struck in the beasts' belly and the beast yelled its words of fire - yes, the beast was talking in fire...wait, it'd be hilarious if that's who the man was cursing at and the beast was replying....hahaha, let me see that as the Dovahkiin can I understand the beasts' cries... 

The guard held the dragon too long in the sky, and God's minion I'd like to call it, weak, came plummeting down to the ground for my finale but I'm sure it thought it was its 'ending the world' finale or something - why else did dragons fly around burning up the place?

The dragon's breath, when the dragon breathed on me, I was glad to have smelled nothing unlike charred flesh - which wasn't more uncomfortable to smell than the guard's breath - and I raged at the beast then. 'Fus', I proclaimed as I rammed my blade into its chest, my word of destruction spoken that the Greybeards like to call: force. The glowing scales (due to reflecting the aura of my thu'um and the still-emerging fire from the dragon's mouth) gave way to a dent, a gash, then blood at my continuous hacking. I let my voice finish it for me...and leaned on my sword as the dragon fell onto the ground. My adrenaline protected me from everything painful right now, and the multicolored wisps emerging as the dragon's soul now overcame me, and I shown like a light in the eyes of the guard that had helped me.

I'd done such before, I panted as I thought to myself; no biggy. But this guard of Markath looked afraid of me now, and mortified of what he'd said to me earlier. It was very plain on his face. "Y-youre the Dragonborn?'

I guess that's what everyone said when they saw me absorb a dragon soul. "Yes, and not some nitwit that wanted to practice useless magic, don't ya see? Magic is actually good for some people. Like me, who have practical uses for it. You should be more lenient."

"Oh, I'm sorry. It's just general protocol."

"Yeah, well at least you were here to help me through a dragon attack." I tipped my head to him. 

"You did the honors, m'lass. In fact without you, that dragon would've terrorized our city. Thank you."

I stared at his weathered smile. I didn't want to do it...but - he did save me from death as well. "Thank you. And in fact, take 5 septims."

The guard looked upon the gold in my hand with uncontrolled delight as well as gratitude...I would've given him a sweetroll or something if I actually did have food on me, instead of my own money. I would replenish my energy after this fight if I had any sort of nourishment - oh, my crab legs. I could eat it raw or just fire 'em up with my destruction spell for goodness' sake as long as they didn't burn completely.

"I shall enjoy it. Should make me feel a little better after fighting that beast." I laughed at that part, because I didn't know what a guard could buy with five septims, if not only a tomato. But maybe the shoe joke just wasn't a joke.

"What's your name?"

"Desraim. You don't have to remember. I won't be coming back that often."

"Well thanks, Desraim."

"You saved my life. The least I could do is save yours," I made sure he heard this last statement with the tinge of gratitude I placed on it.

He nodded his head full of almost-black ( I promise, not because of the fires...I think) hair and pointed an almost equally charred finger at me, "See ya around," and then left. I cringed at his burned guard uniform, however the holes were in very inconvenient places enough to make me laugh, but I was rather wondering if he had a death wish, pulling me out from electrified waters and fending a dragon off almost single-handedly. Like, why wasn't he on city duty? Or was he the only one charted to scan these outer-areas? I wouldn't blame the guard chief-whatever for sending him out here to do it because he's probably the only one that would. 

I'd be twice dead, honestly, if he weren't out here, and if the crab itself had stayed it's chitins: death by slaughterfish and dragon. If I'd went to Sovngarde afterwards I bet no one would believe me.

I bet, besides the fact that I'm not supposed to be there, anyway, since I'm an Elf. Elffff. Damned Elf, he'd said: so does that mean I'm going to hell?

This day wasn't nearly done and I decided to do what was first on my list. Going to Rorkistead to finish this unreasonably-stranded business of mine, of course.