The sack was empty.
The sack was blatantly thin and empty. Like a beggar's gut when he's having a month of a tough break at the shire porch.
Just to make sure, the sack was wrung out, then smoothed out, then turned upside-down and shaken.
The sack wasn't completely empty. There was a smell. Barely a whiff, but acrid and viperous at that.
Dalan, a bandit, a smuggler, a thief and simply an amoral bastard, sat down on a crude wooden chair, very slow and quiet, and stared at the dirty linen in his hands.
Someone had stolen his sweet roll.
The bandit was staring at his empty bag, not really seeing it, and began thinking with an absent mind. He was thinking about cold weather here in the mountains. About how there was nothing to smuggle. About alcohol running out. About how the only food left was cabbage, which by this point no one could look at anymore without an ill stomach. About how they found Groch dead, with so many arrows stuck in him he looked like a hedgehog – and all the while Sissy was swearing and swearing she didn't heard nothing. About wolves that almost killed him, when he was out to get firewood. And maybe, those wolves were also cold and hungry and merely wanted something to eat - but even so, he wanted to live for a little longer. About how those wolves were so starved he could as well eat a log. About how he wanted nothing more than to pack himself into a bedroll and sleep by the warm fire, after eating a sweet roll that was so much trouble to steal.
Sweet roll there wasn't anymore. Some kinda bastard sniffed it out and ate it before him.
Dalan, a bandit for thirty years, whose criminal list was long enough to get him a couple of life sentences at the very least, who could send bears into hibernations from which there is no waking up, was staring at the crude, dirty linen of his sack, with his vision blurring more and more.
He just wanted to eat a sweet roll. He could've said "just like the ones Mom made", but he wouldn't. Because his Mom never made him any sweet rolls. His Mom never made him anything. Fuck, he never had any Mom.
That could've been the very first sweet roll in his whole life!..
The bandit, the smuggler, the thief and simply the amoral bastard, very slow and quiet folded the empty sack and smoothed it out on the table, then just as slow and quiet reached out, picked up his axe, and stood up, blinking off a few angry tears.
The Dovahkiin-to-be, not yet knowing that he was to be the Dovahkiin, grabbed at his sword – a gesture he grew used to very quick – when he heard blood-curling screams in the distance. But, seeing that there were no visible enemies after his Dovahkiin-to-be's life, he shrugged, let go of his sword and resumed picking up mountain flowers.
In the depth of his rucksack, there were a few remnant pieces of a sweet roll, wrapped in some paper and stuck among a small bag of glowing mushrooms, a hide helmet and a few iron ores.