Sailor's Repose
There was something distinctly terrible to the redguard whenever she'd discovered broken families, much worse dead ones. Yosa'Min blinked as she stared at a burning fire, the wood splintering from the heat and tumbling into the iron basin. It was nearly nothing but ash, if she didn't tend to it soon, but for the moment she was content with allowing it to use up all its fuel.
Her right hand was clenched around the lip of a wool sack, blood stained through it as the grizzly contents rested within. Blue eyes were settled on the flickering tongues of heat, ignoring the gory skull and bones that were only a few inches away from her body.
She'd discovered the lighthouse on a whim, traveling aimlessly from Winterhold to Dawnstar, when the weather had soured and night had fallen. She'd nearly pulled Archer entirely to the side to seek shelter among some crag of rocks or thick spot of trees, when she'd seen the lighthouse perhaps a half mile away. Upon her arrival she'd tied Archer up besides a what looked to be a garden, but in the dark and so covered in snow Yosa'Min couldn't have been sure. It didn't take her a moment to notice something was wrong when she'd approached the door, and seen blood splattered across the windows, the Dragonborn didn't think twice about entering the home.
Met with the sight of a redguard woman laying dead on the ground, a sword of falmer make straight through her chest, Yosa'Min had quickly gone even further on guard. The brave hero'd drawn her bow and crept around the heavily disarrayed home looking for clues as to what had happened. Obvious signs of a struggle across the main room, especially besides a side door. It'd reeked of blood, slick and fresh blood that made even the hardened fighter's blood curdle. After a bit of looking around she'd discovered the woman was a mother, and that her husband had left to town for traps, an infestation of some sort in the cellar.
A scratching sound and the rapid movement of narrow legs came up from behind a door, Yosa'Min quickly discerned it led to the cellar, but when she'd gone to open it she'd found it locked in a particular way even she'd not be able to pick. The woman didn't deny feeling sick to her stomach peering through their letters and personal writing, the thought of invading their last thoughts and moments almost making her turn away and leave the mystery behind her. But there was no other way for her to know what had happened, and what she must do to right the obvious wrongs. So she'd stashed that resisting voice to the side and peered through the scribbled writings of a family days away from death.
There were several reasons why she didn't want to do it, from the moral standing to the personal ones. She didn't want to know that the children were unhappy, that the son was planning on leaving, nor that the lighthouse had been a dream of the spouses' for years. Knowing those things only made it worse to move past them. When she stared at the corpses of innocents, of average people, it made the woman want to scream. There was blood on her hands but the blood of murderers, cowards, bandits, the greedy, and the selfish. She could accept that fact, she was perfectly fine with that fact. But the hero couldn't stand to see spilled blood of those that had committed no crime but living.
It hadn't taken much from there to convince herself to head down into the cellar where the blood trail indicated at least one of the family members had been dragged down. Fervently she'd given chase after the falmer, expecting to find a group within the stone basement butchering the young girl or boy. But instead there'd been a few chaurus, and a gaping hole leading to what she could already tell was a cavern filled with falmer and their overgrown attack bugs.
Bent on avenging the mother, and potentially the entire family, Yosa'Min'd shot her way through countless blind elves of the deep and skittering, poison spitting insects. In truth, she already hated them with a passion so she found no problem with that part of her self-imposed quest. But when the killing has ceased for a moment and she found a young redguard man, looking no older than twenty, twisted into an unnatural position with his clothes torn and blood covering mushy ground, she found herself stunned.
Yosa'Min wasn't certain how long she'd stared at the young man who'd hardly been ready to move out on his own, suddenly cut short and left to rot in a cave where no one would ever go looking. She'd refused to press on until his eyes were closed, panic frozen stiff in brown orbs, and he laid to rest between stones and covered, marked with a stone she carved his name into.
The woman didn't know many prayers from Hammerfell, but from the letter she'd found she knew that the boy Mani would have liked it. The Dragonborn did not truly believe in her people's pantheon, though she didn't really believe in any pantheon, but she did remember the few prayers her brother had assured she'd known growing up. Yosa'Min had hunched herself over with hands raised towards the sky, speaking out towards Tu'whacca, the god who guided redguard souls into the afterlife on the Far Shores, until the small improvised ceremony was completed and she herself felt ready to move on.
She had pressed on with a vengeance, slaughtering the cave dwellers with a new found hate. Working her way through a complex system of tunnels lined with moss, glowing mushrooms and chaurus egg sacks, delving deeper into darkness and death. It was a blur to her, all the fighting as she adeptly navigated through the corridors, killing the blind creatures and their pets with as much ease as any other skilled warrior and adventurer. Eventually she'd come to what looked almost like an abyss, and after a moment of hesitation the redguard archer had delved within.
After some more searching and fighting, Yosa'Min had found herself in a large cave with falmer huts set up around it, a fence of some sort against a wall. She'd stared at the living creatures she hardly considered higher than skeevers, examining the area before her. It had seemed like she'd found herself in a chaurus nest of some type, and the woman's fury was stayed just a bit more by her desire to come out alive.
Shortly after a bit of skilled shooting, she'd killed the occupants of the cave, and walked across to inspect the area. After searching each hut and crag, Yosa'Min had moved over to the cage to inspect it, and had been appalled by what lay inside. The daughter, Sudi, an iron dagger, and two notes, one stained with blood and one clean. She'd cautiously read the letter on the cleaner parchment first. Sudi had written it after she'd arrived down in the cage, stating how she was uncertain of the passage of time and how her father had been taken by the Falmer and put in there with her. When Yosa'Min's eyes and settled on the last sentence, that her father was feverish and had been bit by a chaurus, a pit had formed in her chest.
The second one was stained red, blood dripping from it as the redguard picked it up and straightened it out to read. Between runny ink and red blood, she'd managed to piece together that the falmer had taken her father and killed him somewhere down the cavern, and that he'd left her the dagger. The ending only made the redguard shake with abhorrent disgust. Sudi's implication of suicide, and the clear evidence of the girl's slit throat, the blade only a few inches from her corpse, made Yosa'Min furious anew.
The woman quickly had retreated out of the cage, trying to come to terms with what she'd just discovered. Perhaps she could understand why Sudi had felt helpless, surrounded by monsters and her family slaughtered, but why would she kill herself? To Yosa'Min, it was cowardice, that she should have at least attempted an escape if the same result in the end was death. What difference did it make by who's blade it came from, at least in one way she'd have honor as a redguard. If there had been a small chance for Yosa'Min to have escaped in the same situation, the Dragonborn surely knew she'd have tried to escape. Her brother would have never forgiven her for just giving up and ending it herself.
Scowling even further, the redguard had ventured further inwards into the chaurus nest, traveling downwards to a point there would be a very difficult trip back should she try to climb. Traveling through, she found herself no longer fighting falmer, but instead the monstrous bugs entirely, water pooling at her feet and egg sacks lining every inch of the cave walls. After she'd made her way to the center of it, she had been met with a true monster. Like any other of its kind, the chaurus reaper had been larger than its more common kin, but this one in particular had risen more than two feet above the short Dragonborn.
It had attacked her rather swiftly, Yosa'Min dodging a pair of sharp mandibles, and jumping over a sweeping tail. The beast had attacked her continually like a mad creature, furious by her intrusion so far into its nest. The redguard however, was in no mood to do battle with an insect, and the moment she'd gotten a bit of distance loosed a shout at the chaurus reaper. When the full impact of the unrelenting force shout had hit, the insect had been sent flying into one of the stalagmites growing up from the ground, impaling right through with enough power behind the shout to pierce the thick exoskeleton.
The redguard had huffed with frustration as she'd heard its shrill cries, the insect not quite dead yet. She'd crossed over and driven the iron dagger Sudi had used to take her own life into the belly of the creature, tearing it down and through until its guts spilled outwards and the crying ceased. The redguard had been ready to leave, when she'd spotted a fresh looking skull among the gore on the cavern floor. Normally she'd have just kept on and left, but it didn't take much for her to piece together that it belonged to the father, Habd.
Despite herself, she had stuffed it into a sack and left, climbing out through a series of tunnels and corridors until at last she'd arrived back on the surface, not too terribly far from the lighthouse either. It had become perhaps mid morning by the time she'd gotten back topside. Yosa'Min had made the trek to the home, pausing inside to carry the mother out and leave her in a snow back as she decided just how to dispose of the body.
There were those who preferred burials, others who liked pyres, and some who didn't want to be covered at all. Eventually Yosa'Min had settled on a burial like she'd given the son, finding a shovel nearby in the small garden and using a spell to melt the top snow. After a bit of work the grave was deep enough, and she placed the mother inside with the sword broken into three pieces and placed above her chest. Yosa'Min gave the same prayer she'd given the son, and then covered the mother in earth and dirt.
Now she stood a few feet from the burning fire, Ramati's journal indicating the Habd would have liked his remains placed in the flame. The ex-sailor believed it would allow him to continue to guide ships and sailors to safety. Yosa'Min couldn't help but find it an endearing thought, but she was having difficulty putting the bloodied, mutilated skull inside the flames that were licking at the last pieces of wood.
She couldn't understand why she'd found herself suddenly attached to this family. She tried to make reasons, that it was because they were redguard and suffered such a tragedy like she had. The loss of her brother was so fresh in her mind, hardly more than a month since she'd discovered he'd passed on while she was hunting down Alduin. Maybe it was because she'd been holding out to a lingering hope that one of them would be alive, that deeper and deeper within someone would be still drawing breath and she could rescue them.
But then she'd found the notes, the letters, the bodies and the bones. "Would life be even worth living when everybody you knew was dead? Everyone you cared for and loved?" Yosa'Min wondered aloud as she at last added wood to the flames, the fire instantly burning up the timber and feasting on the offering. As she lifted the sack that was so heavy with the blood and what remained of Habd, a thought suddenly trickled into her mind. It didn't sound much like her own voice, but instead some part of her she'd kept hidden for years.
It wouldn't.
The woman gingerly placed Habd in the fire, instantly the bone started to crackle in the flames. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, but Yosa'Min hardly noticed as she found herself lost in thought. She was suddenly comparing much of herself with the crumpled family, wondering just why this sudden death was their fate. She'd fought countless beasts and people, from the lowliest of monsters to a world-eating dragon. She practically went looking for death, danger and trouble.
But that family hadn't asked for any of it, instead they were trying to live happily in Skyrim. Yosa'Min couldn't wrap her head around why it seemed the most terrible of tragedies befell innocents, families, the young. There were more people out there that deserved to have their families torn away from them, that deserved to find themselves crushed underneath some random rock slide, any sort of pain and misery inflicted onto them. But instead it seemed as if the gods of the universe preferred to make those who had done no wrong suffer.
She gritted her teeth, fingers curling into tight fists. "Vastin didn't deserve to be lamed!" She suddenly was screaming into the air, tears welling in her blue eyes, "He didn't deserve to suffer for ten years before being killed for what I am! He didn't deserve to have to raise me on his own, to try to teach me what was right and wrong in a corrupt home!"
A fist brought itself against the stone pillar. "I'm sorry I was revolted by you Sudi!" She broke into hysterics, "You lost everything, didn't even know if you were going to make it yourself. At least you knew your suffering would end." Yosa'Min whispered hoarsely, turning away from the flames and facing the empty arches allowing the fire to guide ships along the coast. It would have been rather easy to just step right over it, the redguard feeling the sudden pull at her heart, the sudden temptation. Hands grabbed the edges of the gaping holes, blue eyes looking out to the sun rising in the east. She wanted the pain she felt to stop, and it seemed like the easiest way to do it, just one small step over the edge.
"It's not like anyone would miss me," she muttered glumly, "I've got no one left." Half a foot was over the lip of the stone, the redguard glanced down at the soft white snow covered ground, gazing across to the Sea of Ghosts before she suddenly felt a sensation of horror run up her spine. Jerking back, Yosa'Min stumbled until she fell onto her rump on the cold stone floor, blue eyes wide with what she'd just about done.
Tears flowed anew from her eyes, shame, and grief in her voice. "I want so terribly to join you brother, but you'd never forgive me when I arrived at the Far Shores if I'd done it myself!" Agony filled her chest, sapping any strength she had. "I don't even deserve to see you again, though I miss you terribly brother."
She buried her face in her hands, frame shaking constantly with pain and sobs. "What would you have me do to see you again Vastin? Killing myself, you'd never accept that." Sniffled Yosa'Min, "But I don't deserve to live for what I've done, for abandoning you." She muttered, looking at the burning skull. "There is no point in living when everybody you love is dead, when you have no purpose of your own. I've lost you because of what I am, Dragonborn," she sneered the title, "with almost all the power in the world and yet I am powerless to have stopped your murder. The only person I care about., and you're dead."
Slowly she got to her feet, the remains of a father gone. "I suppose no one is supposed to understand," she whispered to herself, "the world is weird, evil, good and bad. I've done what I need to do, and now I have no purpose. The only family I have ever had is dead, because of me, and these people are slaughtered by mindless chance." She balled her hands into fists with anger, looking at the flames intently. "We're told there are gods who watch and care, that we have purpose and worth, and yet so many are cut short before they can begin. Are they a sacrifice? Are the ones who are made to suffer only made for others to take strength from? To have a purpose themselves?" The redguard woman ranted into the air.
"If you are my gods, whichever you may be, then you are selfish, cruel beings," she hissed, "but of course others will say that I'm being a blasphemer, that I'm an ignorant bitch, that I'm just angry with the world," she paused for a moment, "and I am. I'm doomed to walk this world with power and be unable to save those I love, and to be unable to meet the only one I care for by my own hands, aren't I?"
She started to walk down the steps to leave, "I hope this family has found peace, because I certainly haven't."
AN: So, this takes place after Yosa'Min killed Alduin by one month, so just under two years before Two Thieves and a Lioness starts. I've always found the Frostflow quest was a rather depressing, heart breaking story. The other night I got the idea of what Yosa'Min would be feeling about it though, especially shortly after she'd lost her brother. Really, this was just a character piece, but I hope you liked it, and I'd love to hear what you think in a review! Thanks for reading!