She bristled as the sound of horse-steps clopped closer on the road, sounding out over even the keening voice of the rainstorm. As the shady bulk of a horse and rider gradually drew by, she left the slick cropping of rock she hid behind. "You!" the woman cried, laying a hand on one of her swords. "You are following me."

The tall figure atop the dark horse, instantly reined in the animal upon the appearance of the quarry, there on the road. The cloaked and hooded figure stared down at the small woman, waiting on the road.

"Why do you follow me, stranger?" the drenched woman on the road asked commandingly.

The figure atop the horse flung back its cloakhood. "I follow you from Whiterun, my Thane," the person, obviously a woman, answered. "You are my charge, and I shall follow wherever it is that you may choose to go…"

The smaller cloaked, dripping wet woman standing on the road shook her head adamantly. "Go back where you came from, woman!" she shouted over the pummeling rain. "I need you not. So, go away!"

The woman upon the horse seemed to unsurely look away for a moment. "I will not," she replied back over the voice of the storm winds. "You are appointed my Thane, my lady. And I simply cannot forsake my task so easily. Please," the woman uttered, "Let me accompany you this night. I have traveled long and am as weary-sore as yourself. Let us talk together come the morning, my Thane."

The smaller woman on the road stared up at the larger woman upon the black horse. "Do not call me, 'Thane'," the woman demanded. "I am no such thing to you, or any free-person of this land."

The woman upon the horse seemed to nod her wet-head a little. "Even as you wish," she called over the storm, "I shall do it!"

"Well, then I grant you my invitation, stranger. You shall lay with me in my dwelling, and you and I will chat long, come morning, as you have said."

"I am grateful," said the woman on the horse. "Thank you."

The small, cloaked woman began to walk her way up the road which trailed over a slippery, badly cobbled hillock.

"Please," the woman on the black horse called out once more. "Ride along with me, and we shall reach your home the faster!"

The small woman turned around and regarded the woman on the horse. "I have forgotten your name, stranger," she called out inexplicably.

The woman on the horse bowed her head. "I am Lydia, your Housecarl from Whiterun, my lady."

"Spare me the usage of your titles," the woman retorted. "I will ride with you, as you say, Lydia."

The woman on the horse, or Lydia as she was rightly named, nodded her head, then she reached out her hand as the smaller woman approached her soaking horse. "I welcome you, Sumnyot Paitr, in sharing the saddle with me," she murmured cordially, smilingly.

As Lydia pulled her Thane, Sumnyot, easily up into the saddle, the smaller woman sighed contentedly. "How is it that you remember my full name?" she asked. "Yet, I could not even recognise your face, or your horse upon seeing them?"

Lydia clucked her tongue and her horse obediently sidled onwards up the cobbled road. "You are my first patron, lady," Lydia replied. "I shall remember you always! From our first meeting and each point onwards."

Sumnyot, the smaller woman, huffed reprovingly. "God's curse this land's sentiments!" she cried over a roll of deep thunder above. "I have not asked for your services, Lydia, nor did I ever accept them. Do not think I will allow you to stay alongside me longer than this one night!"

Lydia's horse halted for a moment. "Please, tell me where am I going, lady?" Lydia asked upon reaching a fork in the road.

"Keep on," Sumnyot called from behind Lydia, gesturing with her hand dismissively. "I dwell by the river's edge 'neath this little hillock."

Lydia nudged her horse forward again, and she carefully leaned back a little while her horse descended carefully down the slippery, mud-slick and rain wetted hill. Pressed against her patroness, Lydia turned her head as she spoke. "Perhaps I make myself useful to you, my lady?" she yelled over the voice of the driving winds and the pelting rain. "Would you allow me to stay at your side then?"

Sumnyot shook her head to herself. "If you somehow prove your usefulness to me before tomorrow's midday," she offered dully into Lydia's ear, "Then, I shall think about this matter."

Lydia turned her head back round and straightened herself within the saddle. Looking about the heavy darkness, she wiped the rain from her eyes and realised she was, indeed, seeing the night-darkened shapes of a large tent, a soaked and unused campfire and a few other unknowable structures in the distance. "Is this your dwelling ahead, my Thane?" Lydia shouted.

Sumnyot shook her soaked, cloaked head behind the Housecarl. "For the love of, Y'ffre!" she yelled back over a lightning strike. "Call me not, your Thane! I am not this thing to you, do you understand?"

Lydia remained dismally quieted for a moment, then she finally responded. "I...understand," she mumbled dejectedly, barely loud enough though, to hear. "You call upon the old Bosmeri god, Y'ffre…" she hailed politely. "Are you a disciple then, of this heathen-idol?"

Sumnyot nodded unperturbedly behind Lydia as the horse beneath the both of them drew ever closer to the tent in the distance. "I am of Bosmeri-blood myself, woman," she answered bluntly, "Aye. I owe the gift of honest blood and the wisdom of my mother within me, to the Wood Elven peoples. My allegiance and honour is to their gods, though I do not know what that it is worth from me. And yes," Sumnyot added, "This is my dwelling-place ahead, here."

"But you have a distinctly Imperial surname, my lady," Lydia pointed out wonderingly.

"Yes. I am the cast-off, the dross of a bastard Imperial child, Lydia," Sumnyot spat plainly. "My would-be Imperial father left my Bosmeri mother pregnant and destitute. And he left her to raise me alone as well. A half-breed child ridiculed and mocked, dishonourable simply by birth!" Sumnyot laughed heartlessly behind Lydia. "Here, am I still your wonderful Thane in your heart now, Whiterun-woman?" she asked.

Lydia remained quieted once more, but only for the scant moment of a passing heartbeat. "Your lineage matters not, to me!" she answered sincerely. "I was merely curious as to how you procured such contradicting names, my Thane."

"Announce me your Thane, once again," Sumnyot menaced easily, "And I shall cut your throat! I am no man or woman's lord here in these lands!"

Lydia turned her head concernedly and nodded. "I am truly sorry!" she yelled over a sharp clap of white-lightning. "It is only that all my life I have been habitually trained for these moments. But, please forgive me my incompetence against you, my lady."

Sumnyot waved out a hand. "Ah!" she grated. "You are stubborn even still!" she shouted. "How shall I possibly keep you with me 'till dawn, while you vex me so? Treat me not like your lord, lady or patron, I beg of you! I shall not repeat myself again, either!"

Lydia silently slowed her horse then, and Sumnyot gracefully jumped down from the saddle. Then stalking off towards her tent-dwelling, she left Lydia without a single word's notice. Lydia stared at the small, lithely retreating figure of her patroness, a little dumbfounded, while she herself dropped from her saddle. Then, with a shrug of her shoulders, Lydia began unsaddling her horse and unpacking her traveling things.

While Lydia relieved her horse, it seemed Sumnyot took to go about lighting her lanterns within her large tent. And soon inside, Lydia could see, with her cold bones starting to ache and her frigid, fatigued body shivering yearningly at the sight of heat, Sumnyot also lit a small cooking-fire within the tent as well. While Lydia fixedly stuck in to her work, at last lifting the wetted saddle and blanket off from her horse's sweating back, she saw a shadow flit alongside her.

"I will take your bags and things on into the tent," Sumnyot suddenly shouted over the keening wind. "You may dry your saddle inside as well, and there is a bundle of rope I will give you for your horse to be tethered with for the night."

Lydia, marvelling helplessly at her master's stealth, simply nodded her head. "Thank you, my lady," she murmured, confoundedly holding the saddle in her strong arms and staring as Sumnyot traipsed past, carrying an armload of satchels and haversacks that Lydia would have thought impossible for the littler woman to carry all at once.

But, Lydia simply shook her head, then followed her patroness on, into the large, warmly lit tent. Lydia laid her horse's saddle down upon the grassy floor within the tent-dwelling, then she laid down her horse's blanket and the wetted reins. Sumnyot, off in another corner, still shrouded in a soaking night-blue coloured cloak, was dropping Lydia's remaining bags rather unceremoniously onto the ground.

Sumnyot ambled off into the darkness after, leaving from the opposite opening of the tent, and she reappeared again a moment afterwards, unexpectedly behind Lydia.

"Here is the rope to tether you horse," Sumnyot mumbled. Lydia started and turned around to face the short, very quiet-footed Imperial-Bosmeri woman.

"You walk the night like a demon, my lady," Lydia breathed with a smile, reaching out a hand for the proferred bundle of rope.

Sumnyot simply seemed to stare, as Lydia could still not quite see her Thane's face, because of her vacuous, enshrouding hood. "It is very loud this night," Sumnyot explained. "Any fool could sneak about unheard in such weather, really. If he or she so wished..."

Lydia smiled feebly, then she pressed her way past the half-breed woman to go and tie off her horse to some nearby tree, hearty shrub or bit of rock somewhere. Sumnyot, twisting, quietly watched her would-be Housecarl fade away into the night's darkness and its powerful rain. "Hmm…" she burred to herself. "As blindly loyal as the hounds of Markarth," she whispered pensively. Sumnyot pulled her cloakhood back and began unbuckling her sodden cloak's securing bone pin.

Lydia reappeared shortly after, as Sumnyot uncaringly cast her slop-of-a-cloak onto the grassy ground. Lydia had forgotten what the small, odd woman looked like, and she found herself staring furtively while Sumnyot Paitr, her half-breed Thane, began stripping off salvaged pieces of simple fur and foresworn armour. Lydia vaguely remembered the woman's strangely angular face, so unlike a true Imperial's. Her large blackish coloured eyes, full mouth and long, black braided hair. And there was the faint white face-paint, shaped like a large triangle spanning, but not dominating, the woman's alluring, somehow mysteriously bemusing face.

Sumnyot smirked as she began unbuttoning her fur jerkin. "Are you staring at my ears, Lydia?" she mumbled interestedly.

Lydia, still dripping wet with rain herself, blinked her green eyes. "Ah…" she whispered awkwardly. "No, my lady, of course not." But now that the small, boorishly undressing, woman mentioned her ears, Lydia found herself helplessly looking at them. And she understood then, why Sumnyot was seen in Whiterun, always wearing a fur hat or a hood. Her ears were indeed a little strange. Ever so slightly longer than was usual, very nearly on the verge of becoming pointed at the top. But, Lydia mulled, it was such a subtle thing, she doubted anyone ever truly noticed if attention was not drawn to them specifically.

Sumnyot stripped her jerkin from off her body and, flinging it aside too, she began slipping off her fur greaves and skirt. Lydia, blushing for her patroness' sake, turned her head, but not before idly glimpsing a look at Sumnyot's lean, toned body, her small, firm breasts and muscular thighs. Lydia shook her head, water dripping from her long, dark hair as she did. She found herself bending then, before the tiny fire inside the tent and she eagerly stretched out her slender hands, warming them near the flickering, small flames.

"Why did you follow me?" Sumnyot asked lightly from behind Lydia's bent, cloaked back. "Did your Jarl send you to chase after me?"

Lydia smirked at the question. She flexed her strong swordswoman's hands and pushed them out, just a little nearer to the flames of the fire. "No," she answered calmly. "I pled for the Jarl to allow me to leave him. I came after you of my own accord, my lady."

"Why?" Sumnyot asked, her voice was suddenly sounding out directly behind Lydia. "Why did you do this thing?"

Lydia, recoiling once more from her master's sheer quietness of foot, glanced over her shoulder at the very nearly naked woman. Sumnyot nimbly, soundlessly ushered past Lydia and sat down next to her on the grassy ground, clothed only in her scant underclothes. Lydia, heart bucking, looked away. "I chose to follow you, my lady, because I felt it was my only chance to fulfill my duty as a Housecarl." Lydia frowned softly as she gazed meditatively into the burning, red coals of the fire. "I was trained all my life to become a Housecarl to a Thane," Lydia murmured quietly. "I was at last ready, my time came, and I was finally given, into your service." Lydia's glimmering green eyes darted while she thought. "When you refused me, I…" Lydia pointedly chose to look over her shoulder at her listening patroness then. "I simply felt I had to follow you, nonetheless. It is my duty, my want, my lady. That is all and nothing more." Lydia's gaze roved over her patroness openly.

And Sumnyot, holding her Housecarl's stare in kind, nodded curtly. Her small black braids flicked over her bared shoulders and muscular arms. "I understand this feeling you have," Sumnyot replied. "But I still do not wish to have a Housecarl, nor a companion of any suit, at my side..."

Lydia looked away dolefully at her Thane's words. "You yourself said, that I may still prove my worth, my lady…" Lydia reminded gently as she gaped absently at the fire before her. "Do you digress upon our agreement made on the road? If so, I shall leave you now, rather than later."

Sumnyot smiled at Lydia's words. "Dare you grow so suddenly flippant with me, stranger?" she mocked delightedly. "Here now, that is no way to soothe a soul you wish to sway!"

"Please, do not tease me," Lydia uttered, a little red-faced and shaking her rain-wetted head. "Tell me true, my lady, does the offer you gave me still stand?" Lydia turned to look into her patroness' dark, glimmering eyes.

And Sumnyot's smile deepened hearteningly after a silent moment between them. "Yes," she answered with a deep nod. "I am a woman of my word, Lydia. Now then, you must attend me. Take off your cloak, this tin-suit you have on and dry your hair. Then you may come lie down with me." Sumnyot stood up then and nakedly made her way off, over to a darkened corner where her bed laid out upon the grassy ground within the tent.

Lydia, suddenly bemused, faltering and unsure, simply sat for a long moment. Then cocking her head, she decided to ask just what the half-breed woman had meant. "My lady?" she questioned feebly. "Would you not prefer that I kept watch over the entrances of your house, while you sleep?"

Lydia heard Sumnyot laugh over in the darkened bed-corner. "I shall hear any mischief-makers and pad-foots long before you do, Nord!" Sumnyot called plainly. "It is I who has been sneaking upon you, and watching you all this day, is this not so?" she asked, with the notes of a smile lingering in her voice. "Why, by Y'ffre, do you think I would bother to ask you to watch over my house, when I can do so myself and with far more competence?" Sumnyot laughed again then. "Now, as my guest, do as I have asked and come here, woman!"

Lydia's pretty face pulled into wondering frown. And, begrudgingly, she took off her cloak, then began obediently stripping off her steel armour piece by piece, until she stood only in her loose jerkin and pantaloons. Sighing unsurely, and blushing quite profusely, Lydia stalked over towards the bed-corner that her patroness had retreated to. Sumnyot laid bare in her underclothes upon the many thick bear furs covering her pallet, and she smiled at Lydia winningly when she at last drew near.

"Come," Sumnyot offered easily. "Lay alongside me, and we shall sleep warmly and long together. It has been far too many-a-night I have slept with the hard, hot stones taken from the fire. I will enjoy a body next to mine, if anything."

Sensing her would-be Housecarl's stubborn uncertainty, Sumnyot sat up, reprovingly clucking her tongue, and she grasped at Lydia's warm, slender hand. Sumnyot carefully pulled Lydia down into her bed, then laid herself down. "Ah," Sumnyot sighed, pulling the fur coverlets over herself and Lydia. "Do not worry. I shall not bed you, Whiterun-woman," Sumnyot murmured tiredly. "But, you must still prove yourself to me as you said you so wished to. So, come closer."

Lydia carefully sidled in a little closer, until she could vaguely feel her patroness' naked body heat emanating against her own full body. "Ah...this is all very unusual, my lady," Lydia whispered.

"Again," Sumnyot chided quietly. "You are stubborn still. I am not so sure you would make me a fine Housecarl, Lydia. You are already combating me upon nearly every turn I produce to test you with…"

Lydia, flustered and a little deflated, boldly moved far closer to her patroness than she would have dared to have done before. The taller Nord woman fitted herself easily into Sumnyot's slender body, and was unsurprised when Sumnyot reached back and took hold of her arm, wrapping it round herself. Lydia held Sumnyot close, as she was wordlessly bade to, close enough that she could smell the rain in the half-breed woman's braids, and upon her lissom, warming elfin body.

"I was never before warned of this happenstance, my lady," Lydia murmured against Sumnyot's bare, sun-kissed shoulder.

"Ah," Lydia's patroness sighed, lacing her fingers between Lydia's, whose hand laid selectively upon Sumnyot's slim belly. "Quiet, my little fire-stone," she whispered. "And sleep."