My very first story! I've played Oblivion quite a bit, and I thought I should upload something. It's not much, just a bit of rambling on my part, but I hope it isn't too painful to read. R&R, please!
The birds are chirping loudly in his ears. They scream and sing and swirl around his head, all flapping wings and glittering eyes set in small skulls and grasping talons. The gold birds are the ones he wanted to reach to first: instinctually, he remembers that gold equals light, purity, goodness, kindness. But these beautiful golden birds, with dark eyes and feathers that shine like solid sunlight, are the ones he has to look out for. They screech, and peck, and he knows that they only perch on his thin, curving shoulders to drive beautiful beaks into his scaly flesh. He has learned to like the other birds. They are the polar opposite of the brilliant golden birds that mock him. They have dull feathers, the colour of his homeland's marshlands: a dark, murky tone that seems either tinted with blue or green. Maybe both. They have the same basic shape, with tear-drop shaped bodies and small swivelling heads and carefully tapered wings and tails, but these have spiked feathers lining the back of their skulls. Their songs are more sombre, slow-paced, and he likes how they chase the mean golden ones away with low chirps and well-placed claws. They alight on his shoulders and arms to chirp softly, and he raises his hands to pet them and feed them the rats he catches, the ones that scurry across the floor of his cell. He sometimes sees other prisoners through the iron bars that make up the front of his dungeon, and they catch his eyes and ask him what he's baring his teeth at them for. He isn't, not really: the human term "baring your teeth" has negative connotations, and he is smiling as wide as he can. Argonians, however, can't smile with their mouths, lacking the muscles to do so, so he ends up grimacing at the birds. The golden ones screech and dive bomb him when they aren't preening, and the dark ones settle along his cot where he sits and tell him stories of a beautiful land he walked once, coloured and violently happy to the north and solemn and wet and confusing to the south. He aches for that land: he almost loves it more than his home, but he cannot return. He doesn't think straight anymore. He only ponders the songs of the birds, dodges the claws and beaks of the dreadfully beautiful sun-bright birds, and scratches the images his mind summons when he listens to the dark tales the demented birds spin for him. His walls are covered in jewel-bright tones depicting his dreams. He sleeps little, ignores the gnawing ache in his stomach, and holds out his hands so the ones that share his cage with him have a perch to rest on.