Hello guys. I'd like to start with this funny thing I typed up when Wattpad was down a few weeks ago: 

Honey, is Wattpad back on? ^^

Yes, munchkin cup, it is.

Okay, I'm gonna publish another chapter. 

That's fine.

By the way guys, my last chapter was 3131 words. A coincidence, much C: This one is 1924...anyone born that year? Anyway...

Immediately, the smell of baking bread, which I believed was a native inn smell despite the liquor, made the walk towards this blonde, muscular man as dreamy as me being in a grandmother's house if I had a grandmother. I'm sure it's a place of homeyness and care...and I could see this strong man caring for me one day, if I'd just learned a bit about him. The armor and the way it set around him as he sat just made me wonder - mercenary, right? A strong man almost capable as me. And oh my...I said dreamy, already. There was no other way to describe this Nord. Maybe Nord was the utmost beautiful a being could get - yet there were some equally ugly Nords as well. There needed to be more beautiful elves and Argonians...and speaking of, I still haven't seen an Argonian, but maybe it was best for me not to. 

"'ey, lass. Looks like you could use some muscle."

Well, I was very strong but there was a muscle I didn't have. And maybe I wouldn't until my condition bettered.  But if he was implying I wasn't strong enough, "This isn't good enough?" I asked, smacking my bicep. 

The big porcelain smile that earned triggered a giggle in me - his smile was white as an ice troll's backside. City boys for ya. "I like your style lass," he took no time in replying. "Travel alone." Seemed like he had some dark intentions in that statement, "That's how you make it out here. I would, too, if I weren't trying to make a living protecting others."

"Why not try smithing?" I raised a brow, now sure he just wanted to hold a heart-to-heart conversation on our sacred art...and really didn't mean anything weird by his original statement of travelling alone. By the forehead wrinkles and the frown lines on his mouth I could tell travelling with others has been a stress for him - I've felt the feeling of not being strong enough to handle bandits on my own, nevertheless for someone else, and the feeling that a human may lose someone was the worst. But if someone was only getting paid by his or her protectees, I didn't think it made the load less important, if human lives were unconditionally important to the protector. 

Something about my "I don't give a care" feelings today made me grab the edge of his leather vest, admiring both him and it...it suited him nicely and was a nicely sewn vest to go with the fur loincloth he sported. Enough to only hold back iron arrowheads, though, I said to myself and laughed. He heard me, and to pump himself back up from that deflating comment after I kindly felt his bicep, he said, "Like that? Heh, I'd be more muscular if I did," he referred to the smithing I said earlier, "but I like being muscular all-'round. So what's your name?"

I laughed again. I was all up on this guy without any identification, but would he really understand who I was if I told him? "Desraim." I gave him a very sarcastic wink. "You know me?"

The furrowed brows of his soon ironed out smoothly. "Nuh....no. And it's really ironic, because you look like one of the finest in Skyrim...in mercenaries."

I cracked a sideways smile and showed him my scars. The burns I received from a dragon on my upper arm. I raised the dress sleeve and for some reason though, they weren't there. Dang..I guess when my mom used to tell me I was immune from any form of fire, she was correct. And being the Dragonborn, born to defeat dragons, I guess that made my skin from my ability to heal from the burns almost an impenetrable by fire shield. "Too bad, I was going to show you my dragon burns."

"Dragon, eh?" he fascinated himself in my absent of proof burns. Funny he believed me, even without the burns. Almost as if he believed I could heal from them that well. "You know, there's a dragon up these mountains. Big grumpy one that I almost woke up while I was travelling city-bound." He confirmed my bubbling belief that he'd seen any on his mercenary ventures, which is why he believed me so well.

I skirted the edge of his chair and leaned on one of its arm rests now that I was comfortable. "Yeah. I saw it, too. Had to leave it alone, though," I pulled out a green dragon's scale outta my sack...yeah, I had one in there because I always took one with me for the sake of remembering my undeniable strength. 

"Whoa," he said, taking it in his hands without my permission. 

"Dragonborns kill dragons," I clarified my artifact's origin for him if it weren't obvious already my talent...

"How'd you do it?" He turned it around in the tavern lights.

"Well I," I began, sitting down on his armrest and telling him the story. I pulled out my battleaxe, wary of any of the eyes that could possibly be on me right now. "I stuck this into its stomach." I spoke of the dragon I killed by Dragonsreach. Haha, I noticed how funny that was. 

The battleaxe stuck its nose up under the mercenary's. Unafraid, he touched it, with the words of "It's still got blood marks on it," on his tongue. Yes, the magnificence of an enemy's blood on your weapons. He put the dragon scale down on the other rest and took the battleaxe from me and into his hands. "And it's from Whiterun," he moved his hand down its hilt, caressed the dull end of the blade. 

"Yeah, I'm Thane there."

"You're not Thane there or - " he began at about the same time I'd said the statement I just did. Then he looked directly up at me; "No way," he smiled. 

"Yeah, way," I said, pushing his hand at the handle up higher for the purpose of posture. I blinked slowly as his eyes took me in. I leaned in a bit...and he grabbed my nape and pushed me closer, into his kiss. It was exhilarating kissing other people...or was there something wrong with me? He stacked my weapon aside him by the chair and I leaned in, grabbing his side now that there was room for me to. And his hand not on my face smoothed down my knee..down my leg...toward my ankle, and encircled around it, pulling it closer to him, and me closer to him in turn. 

I eased myself down near him in the chair and wrapped my fingers in his golden hair, extracting a side-smile from him. I could only think of navigating his mouth with my tongue, now, for the first of the seconds we'd been kissing. It was a few minutes before we stopped. I wrapped my arm around him and laid on his chest, laughing inside at the iron armor against me; still was funny.

I put my hand in his lap, and let him ease his hand around me until he could pull me to him via my shoulders. I almost fell asleep his embrace was so comforting. 

But he woke me up with a caress of my forehead - the hair in front of it was scooted behind my ear. "Wake up, maiden," he said. 

Shoot. I sleep in the lap of a prospective partner, when I do. I arched my back in a way that I could sit up and when I look back at him, he's laughing at me. "Long day, eh, miss?"

I smile, an encroaching laugh sounding groggy from my un-warmed-up throat. "I guess so, lad." I got up, carefully, and he placed his hands on my hips to steady me as I stand. He got up as well, then decided to walk me out of the Inn. To bad it was only two hours passed - that's my nap limit - and not a whole day, or sleep. I was really wanting this place to fade away like a dream. 

"You're a sweet woman. Trusting, too. But I guess it's because you can knock the dog smut out of somebody."

I laughed, gingerly. My mind was too early awake to understand him. "What's dog smut?"

"Dog dirt. Most likely poop. Off you go, lass," he said, tapping me on the near-butt. I knew he wouldn't actually hit me on the butt, because I'd be pretty irate if he did anything as such without my own advancing. 

I turned back to look at him, my eyes dazedly blinking. "I should've stayed asleep longer." He laughed at my statement. 

"Any longer and I'd have to deny your position as a mercenary and not something else." He grinned with a little chuckle. "I have many of those."

"Oh, really?" I asked, turning my body around to face him more fully, since I'd been facing Markath's streets more than him. "I wouldn't mind being an extra, warm pillow. I need some of that stuff myself."

He wiped his lip as if there was something on it, but maybe it was an alternate of scratching his chin - "Yeah, that's mercenary life for ya. Hope you don't go into those depths. But anyway, I had a good day. And anyway, I am a hopeless mercenary - you actually have a life most of the time, it seems. If I had one, not getting work only ever so often, I'm sure I wouldn't have a lot of time to sleep with ladies." He waved, and I barely processed it, until I swayed delirious, and fell into a guard. 

"Watch yourself, Elf. No lollygagging," the guard began to me. 

"Yeah, and up yours," I said, waddling onto my next venture.

The next was surprisingly some...slavery. I think. I opened my eyes wider as I neared some mining equipment, the typical smithy collection of a smelter and coal...well, it wasn't extreme smithy. Workers banged the coal deposits so loud my brain went into some form of shock, and I stopped walking, just stared at them until my ears stopped ringing, and adjusted to the sound. This wasn't a ruin, Dwarven or Markath, just a mining area. "Just two guys?" I wondered as my eyes flanked to the two, not equally muscle-clad men toiling with stained clothes on and carrying coal in shovels, and who were the only men there. They happened to catch my attention so well though that the orc - the only orc there - that was standing asides surprised me. "Oh!" I balanced myself by leaning on the smelter. "Ug-ly," I thought of the orc. My actions caught one of the toiling guys' eyes, whose were darting, now, from his partner to orc to Wood Elf, and I could tell he was worried about guy that didn't look very worried - the Orc. The orc must've been their master.

What a change of racist caste, I thought to myself as I mustered up a conversation with the eye-darting man. "Can't talk. Mulush will beat me if I stop working," He whispered at me. 

"Hm," I said in return. 

"You're not one of my workers. What are you doing here?" The orc looked at me and I laughed.