The first time he met her, she was a visitor.
Her arrival was heralded by her scent, which lanced through the dank smell of mildew in his cell and the acrid tang of unwashed bodies and discarded food from the barracks above. She smelled like sweet woodsmoke, traveler's sweat and traildust, and something he couldn't put his finger on but that crackled across his tongue like lightning and settled in the back of his throat to smolder like embers. He would later learn it was the smell of dragonfire.
It had taken some time for her to be allowed to visit Falkreath's most infamous prisoner, and Sinding could hear the muffled voices of the guards interviewing her through the floorboards above him. She was finally granted leave to the cells in the basement, and when the door closed behind her, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and the deep ache of primordial fear settled in his stomach. He was cloyed by the uncanny burning smell, and it made the beast bear its teeth and snarl and tuck its tail. This was not a person who might bring him water and pity and grace. The guards had shut the door to the barracks for their own protection; they thought they had locked the woman in with the beast, allowing her to risk death and worse if he got loose of his cell. The guards were wrong though, Sinding knew, watching with the eyes of a trapped rabbit as the visitor approached his cell. He was locked in with her.
She leaned against the bars of his cell door, looking at him with mild interest. Her face was calm, neutral, not quite pretty with its deep indigo warpaint and a single, ragged scar that started at her temple and ended at her chin, tearing a small crater in the tender flesh of her lips, though Sinding kept his distance as his heart thumped a rapid tattoo against his ribs. He recognized her almost immediately, as if anyone in any of the holds could mistake her; the Dragonborn. She had the imposing build of a Nord, as well as the wheat color of the hair, swept up in a multitude of tights braids and knots. At her side, an unadorned sword, well-maintained and well-used. Her left hand, clutching the iron bars of his cell door, showed the wear of magic use, the fingers blackened and frost-bitten with wielding cryomancy. Spellswords were not well-respected by Skyrim's indigenous people, and the jokes and jabs that Sinding had heard in pubs came unbidden to his mind.
It was the eyes, he realized, skulking to the back wall of his cell when he caught her inspecting him just as he had been her. He felt exposed and vulnerable with her eyes on him, ice-chip blue and considering him, calculating his pitfalls and how to exploit them and searing with the knowledge of eons. Predator's eyes, he thought, though no sabre cat nor fellow Wolf he'd ever known had such a commanding gaze. For the first time since he had been bitten-years ago, a decade or more-he was not the most dangerous creature in the room. He could feel the ache in his skull as the beast rankled at this new threat, unsure of what to make of her.
"Did you really kill that little girl?" she asked suddenly, after endless minutes of silence. It startled him, and he was about to snap back at her, tell her it was none of her business, but what poured out instead was his entire testament, the story from the very beginning to where he was standing ankle-deep in the fetid water of Falkreath's prison-well. When he would think back to it, Sinding would not know why he told her; perhaps it was some byproduct of his muted panic, some Kynareth-determined response of a lesser beast submitting to its superior, perhaps he just wanted someone to believe him and this drifter seemed as likely as any. So he told her about the stealing of Hircine's ring, how it had helped at first. He told her about the woodcutter's generosity, giving a stranger food and clothes and steady work. He told her, shame and anger lilting his voice, about Hircine's punishment for his sins, how the transformation had taken him in the middle of his work with poor, sweet Lavinia sitting nearby, keeping him company as she liked to do on sunny days. He told her about how he awoke, naked and confused and covered in sticky-sweet gore, surrounded by guards with swords at his throat and the sound of Mathies's wailing and Indara's wracking sobs ringing in his ears.
"I didn't mean to," he begged, approaching the door of his cell, "it was nothing I wanted. I was trying to keep everyone safer, with the ring, and by the Nine I wish I had never taken this accursed thing." He grasped the bars of the door, expecting her to sneer and recoil. She stayed slumped lazily against the door, the fingers of her frostbitten hand picking at the rust of the bars, and up close those fearsome eyes looked like they belonged in the hallowed eye sockets of some terrible Whispmother. He had to stop himself from looking away; everyone in all the holds loved the Dragonborn, he heard she's slayed Dragon Priests and picked lettuces for farmers and everything in between, surely she could help him, the bedraggled rotten soul he is.
Her gaze dropped down to his white-knuckle grip on the iron bars, and slowly she brought a frost-blackened fingertip to caress the ring on his right hand. A small token, a simple iron band with a carved wolf's head, its eyes inset with two garnet chips. The cool kiss of her cryomancer's hand made him shiver as she prodded at the ring and the skin of his finger around it. Perhaps she was checking it for bad magic, perhaps she was just admiring it. He didn't know, but he held his breath as she looked back up at him, taking her hand away from his.
"I could help you," she said, as breezily as one might when they offered to help muck stables. "I could return it to Hircine, ask him to bestow his favor on you."
"Would that you could," Sinding gulped, trying to quell the bubbling brook of hope that burst at her offer. "The Daedra don't take personal slights lightly. Asking won't help, even if you say please. He requires payment, with interest."
She snorted then and rolled her eyes, and the childish response was so misplaced on a warrior of her caliber that it irked him. "I would ask that you don't try to tell me about the Daedra," she said dryly, and Sinding wondered about those far-fetched stories of the Dragonborn meddling in the affairs of Meridia, of Malacath, of Clavicus Vile.
He apologized and told her about the Great Beast that would win her an audience with Hircine, a magnificent white stag that had evaded hunters for centuries, if the old stories could be believed. She nodded once, and held out her hands to him, cupped to protect the precious artifact that had been his undoing.
With shaking hands, he slid off the ring-and to his mild surprise it came off easily, no longer bound to his finger with the strength of old magic, perhaps eager to leave poor, weak Sinding and find a stronger host in the Dragonborn. Reaching through the iron bars, he dropped the accursed thing in her palms and covered her hands with his, closing her fingers around it. The startling contrast of the warm flesh of her sword hand and the chill of her magic hand was apparent under his palms as he beseeched her to be careful.
He felt the Beast, finally free of the bounds that Hircine's artifact had wrapped it in, begin to flex its power and vie for control. It was with barely-won clarity that he saw her slip the ring on and gasp softly from the power she no doubt felt thrumming from it.
"Thank you," he half-spoke with a bestial garble, even as he felt his flesh melt and tear to yield to the coarse black fur of the Wolf. He tasted blood as fangs sprouted from the roots of his jaw, forcing his blunt human teeth out of their places, was enshrouded in that noxious black aura as his change overtook him completely until it wasn't him peering at the woman through the bars of the jail, but the Beast. Even with the all-encompassing need to run and rend and feed after so long locked in that flesh-prison, the Wolf could taste the crackling burn and leveled with those icy blue predator's eyes, and knew that an easier meal waited for it. So, with claws that clacked and scraped the soft brick, it scaled the well and burst through the grate at the top. Amidst the screams of terrified towns, the startled squawking of birds, the hoof beats of pursuing guards' horses that could never hope to outpace it, the Wolf ran and ran and ran and left Falkreath far behind.