After fourteen months, she returns to the city of Riften to be greeted by a familiarly rugged face. His dark features and cold, gray eyes look at her in their hungry way, though today she is feeling more yielding. Her black-leathered feet pad towards him assertively, and his shoulders turn to her with purpose. One side of his weathered lips turns upward as he detects her new found coolness. She matches this look, her tightly bound feminine figure swaying in its new armor. He licks his lips, consuming her with his steely gaze; she is taller, grown with maturation and enhanced with heeled boots; exposed, the dark leather binds her curves and is cut to expose her cleavage; aloof, her eyebrows have since been groomed and arch highly above her icy blue eyes which have been frozen with experience. She is surely not the innocent daughter of a blacksmith anymore. And, he is not the naïve footpad of the Thieve's Guild. They have both grown tired, and are in search of an easy, though short, release.
What brought them together that night was not the tender warmth of love, but a colder need: one of pure, unemotional lust. It is a hunger between two who possess the looks, but not the feeling. She had grown bitter and disbelieving; he had grown detached and superior. Their actions were betraying their fathers and their Gods; their partners and themselves. In the end, both were satisfied. They lay on the hard stone floor of the city, not embracing, but embarrassed. Their eyes and lips did not meet as they hurriedly dressed; both rushed on by the coming dawn. To both, if the light should rise above Riften's fortified walls and illuminate their faults and their faces, these four: Fathers, Gods, Partners, and Self would become wise to their character and be equally disappointed. So they dressed and they parted as quickly as they had met, but the dark is not as forgiving or as concealing as one would think.
First, their frowning Gods, all knowing, would resolve to give them nothing further than ill-favor and misfortune. Whether by their hand or none, his shadowy Partner would be alerted next. Anger and betrayal would pour down from his Partner's eyes, and her lips would tell Father of his daughter's sin. Then, confronted by their miseries, follows Self. Guilt, pity, anger, and sadness would all gnash their teeth into these unfortunate's souls.
He, further down a path of darkness and possessing a more stone-like character than his partner, would retreat obediently but remain essentially the same, still capable of repeating his past mistakes. He would ignore his Self, apologise to Father, appease his Partner, but remain sinful in the eyes of his Gods as he has not learned from his mistake. She, the becoming age of eighteen and not sure of who or what she is meant to be, will be central to the coming tale, and he will be of little more significance, or perhaps it all.
No words can express the hurt a person feels once emotionally betrayed by their partner. Little trust remains, though a certain type of person may be able to achieve forgiveness, and take back a little of the faith lost. Whether that requires strength, naivety, or this elusive thing people call 'true love' is uncertain. All that can be said is the woman called Vex possessed it. How she forgave her partner, Maul, in his bonding with another woman was beyond most, but it had occurred. This occurrence was not without its flaws; and perhaps appeared futile to the nosy onlooker, but Vex was a zealous woman, and she couldn't let her image be tarnished by the whims of a younger woman.
Her revenge was swift, and, after the girl had left the alleyway to go about her day, Vex immediately appeared out of the shadows and confronted her lover. She presented her ultimatum: 'Continue your business with her, and I shall end her life without remorse.' The choice was clear; this bonding, which had been brief and did not have the obligation of longevity, could be and had intended to be easily abandoned. Little more did he have to say about it beyond that, and he used even fewer words. This news, and Vex's threat, reached the ears of our eighteen year old within the hour, just before she was to retire for bed. It came by the angry fist of her father pounding on her bedroom door some ten minutes before the morning was to break over the city's walls.
"Dee!" His roaring voice bellowed deeply from beneath his twitching chest as he resisted the urge to break the planks of his daughter's door apart. "Get your ass out of bed before I drag you out!"
Svidi's body froze solid before she could pull back the furs that would allow her to dream away the whole event. She knew that he knew she was there, but for the moment she remained still as her mind wondered if he truly knew she had returned. Another thick fist connecting with the door rattled her out of this stupor, and her mind reeled back at her father's rage. How he had learned so quickly about the situation was mystifying, but the consequences were imminent and she was not the gutless girl she was before. As her thumb depressed the latch on her door, she imagined her return playing out in a drastically different way, the way she had imagined it would go not one minute before, before the circumstances had changed it. She could almost feel the strong, muscled arms of her father holding her after a year away, but now she feared they would swing down upon her in their fury.
"Hello, dad." Svidi simpered, her tiny fingers picking nervously at each other as her face twisted up with regret. She had matured over the long months she had gone, but a father was imposing and no mattered how hardened one could become, you were always as threatening as a mouse in front of your own. "I'm back."
Balimund's eyes were puffy like he had just been violently woken up, and his blonde moustache jerked about as he filtered through his emotions. He was relieved she had come home safely, disappointed she had not written to him in the year she had disappeared, and angry to have found a thief on his doorstep, declaring his daughter's less than honorable homecoming. He stood balling and relaxing his fists, glaring down at his daughter as he decided upon which emotion would be his priority. Ultimately, his anger, curiosity, and his protective nature got the best of him, though the bite in his voice was softened by the timing.
"Can you tell me why you've…spoiled yourself not ten steps from the guards, this morning?" His jaw bunched up with the stress that came from the uncomfortable situation in talking with a daughter about intimacy, and his eyes drifted towards a spot on the wall just above her shoulder. Though intending to look intimidating, his feet shifted uncomfortably underneath his great weight. Even a large man like Balimund felt like running back to his bed where he could pretend to have never woken up, never learned what he had, and never confronted his daughter with these words.
Svidi's fragile composure almost resulted in a nervous giggle had she not possessed more sense. His words were an unusual thing, and she felt childish needing to explain her motivation behind committing the act she had. "It's been over a year since you've last seen me, Father, and I've grown with it." Her father visibly winced, his shoulders shuddering as these loaded words contained more than he wanted to know.
"I should've expected as much, but..." His lips were pressed tightly together, and he willed his gaze to slowly work his daughter back into focus. She was looking up at him with bleary eyes and a weak smile, and as his sleep-clouded eyes settled on her face, he began to notice her dishevelled appearance and flushed cheeks. Quickly, his embarrassment transformed into anger as the reality of the situation solidified in his mind. Not even having a moment to bathe, she was still fresh from the encounter, and the sight of it sent fits of violence throughout the Blacksmith's body.
"You're eighteen, for Talos' sake. Who did this to you?"
Svidi's insides flung from one side of the room to the other as her father shifted from one emotion to the next, and while she was preparing for one response, her father expected the next. Her jaw came unhinged and swung stupefied as her mind searched for an appropriate response, but because her mind was weary from a long journey and tired from her encounter, her mouth spoke before she could calculate the consequences. "Maul…" She whispered, slapping a trembling hand to her lips to stop her voice from further betraying her.
"Excuse me?" Balimund's eyes narrowed icily and his neck craned forward, daring his daughter to repeat the same. In truth, he had heard her as clear as day, but the idea of a sewer rat putting his paws on his daughter was too much for his honest mind to handle.
"Maul." She spoke more confidently, consciously squaring her shoulders to him and mentally preparing herself for the battle which would surely ensue from both her audacity and recklessness. She knew very well not only Maul's former position in the Thieve's Guild, but also her father's opinion of the faction which operated deep within the city's sewers.
"Are you trying to tell me that you've fucked one of those filthy animals?" One of Balimund's strong fingers jabbed painfully into Svidi's chest, and his sharp teeth gnashed together as he advanced on his daughter's much smaller frame.
Whatever semblance of strength Svidi had mustered had disappeared completely as she shuddered away from her father's antagonism. With barely a word forming on her drying tongue, only a small noise escaped her throat as she cowered backwards.
"I don't know what to tell you!" She finally cried, her tiny hands instinctively coming up to cover her face. If she had still been wearing her armor, one or both of the daggers strapped to her hips would have been in her hands. At this realization, she was rendered frozen and silent as she become conscious of two things: Firstly, she was frightened of her father. Secondly, she was capable of drawing a weapon on her father.
Balimund on the other hand, had stopped advancing some seconds before, as he had become aware of the first realization long before she had. The both of them stood opposite for a quiet, awkward minute before Balimund broke the silence.
"Honey…" His shoulders slumped and lost all tension they had during his rage, his face filled with remorse. "You know I wouldn't…"
"Yea..." Her voice was quiet; her tiny fingers twisted the cotton fabric of her nightgown intently. Her teeth gnawing away at the inside of her bottom lip, she willed herself to look at her father, though her eyes met his more out of determination than with any of the softness she had intended. Deeply ashamed that her experience outside of Riften's walls had soured her as much as they had, she could only think of apologizing. "I'm sorry…"
"No, Dee." Balimund's brow furrowed as he worked through his emotions, willing the sudden and unexpected sadness that he felt not to manifest on his face. Chin hardening, he looked at his daughter with moist eyes as he quickly turned to leave the room. "I can't-"Any more words would have sounded broken and revealed the lump which had formed in his throat. He resolved to continue their conversation in the afternoon after their emotions had settled, he had woken up, she had rested and for Talo's sake, taken a bath.