It is a great honour to serve the Jarl and his family. Hænir is tall, proud and beloved by all his subjects. These days there is more grey upon his head and in his beard than there is gold, but he had been a warrior of great renown in his youth, which has earned him the name by which the whole of Skyrim knows him: The Bear of Eastmarch.

His heir and eldest daughter, Frey, would not shame Talos himself if she were his bride, for she is the living embodiment of a shieldmaiden.

Ulfric is young, true, but he is solemn and shrewd beyond his years. He already knows how to use sword and shield, and is learned in the Way of the Voice, having just returned for a short visit from High Hrothgar.

And then there is Ísalind. The middle child.

She's short.

She's fat.

She spends the whole day in the kitchen, making pies and pastries and candies, or in the east wing, bent over boiling flasks and steamed up tubes, mumbling to herself.

It is unbefitting an occupation for a person of her descent. Galmar thinks she would do better to pick up a blade, and to train in the art of a warrior, instead of that of a confectioner.

Sharing this opinion with Ísa turns out to be a remarkably bad idea.

"Oh really." Her sleeves are done up and she is covered in flour past her elbows. Now that she has stopped rolling her dough the table no longer rocks back and forth with the force of her moves.

He may come to regret the hair-pulling and name-calling one day, but in his youth Galmar thinks that being a housecarl the whole world exists only to admire him and his prowess, and he is willing to spread that belief loudly and boisterously. (Thankfully, he was also young enough to learn better.)

Ísalind picks up the wooden roll, and without a warning, she brings it down on the tips of his fingers.

Galmar can hear the air escape him in a thin, high pitched whistle that the best of Windhelm's warriors cannot wring from him, and then he finds himself in an expeditious retreat that ends with him being cornered and hopelessly overcome, without mercy or the option of capitulation.

Though shorter by a head, Ísa possibly outweighs the warrior and unlike him, she doesn't have the slightest inhibition about laying on him. He might have lost his, had the swollen sausages of his fingers been working, but as it is he is reduced to rethinking the life choices that have led him to this particular moment.

Galmar's regret at his former taunting runs very deep by the time the blows stop, and it is only because the incensed woman is too out of breath to keep up with calling him all manner of names from an unwashed mutt to a tottering, measly turnip-lover, and beating him up simultaneously.

"Now look what you did!"

He looks up from his curled-up position. "S' 'Orry." The repentance is real. He hadn't had his hide tanned like this since he'd been a kid and thought it would be great fun to play bandits and guards and to light a campfire in their living room.

"I'll give you sorry!" she shouts and waves the blood-stained wood under his nose. "Oh, get up, you wimp!" she says, focusing hard emerald eyes on Galmar, who after righting himself, takes a step back. Just to be sure.

"And get out of here, you scoundrel!" He is already well underway before she can finish the sentence.

"And get me a new rollingpin – or if I'll get my hands on you again, I'll wring your scrawny neck like a chicken's!"

His broken nose can wait. The questions of the guards at the gates can wait. The Lady Ísalind Lífsdottir requires a new rolly dough thingy and it is a task of such importance (and urgency) he cannot delay or entrust it to another.

oooo

He is still out of breath when he presents his newly purchased gift to her, held high on the bed of his palms, like it was an offering of great value.

Ísa takes it, weights it in her hands, then slaps the wood against her palm and harrumphs. "Good enough." She sees his expression and laughs, and wordlessly goes back to torturing the dough.

Knowing a bit how it feels to be worked over by her, Galmar feels a brief stirring of pity for the soon-to-be cake, but he also knows he has been dismissed. He departs with a bow he would otherwise only grace the Jarl with, and it earns him a glower – but also the fleeting ghost of a smile.

The housecarl is so lost in thought that out in the hall he nearly bumps into Ulfric.

The Jarl's son takes in the state of his bruised and bloody face with surprising calm. "What happened to you?" asks Ulfric.

Galmar sighs. "I think I fell in love."

"Must have been a long fall," one of the palace guards remarks, and he and his friend break into peals of laughter.

For a moment Ulfric seems perplexed, but unmistakably there is his sister's hum coming from the kitchen, and he leans to the side to look past his housecarl. His brows knit together. "She'll eat you whole," he says, suddenly looking worried.

Ulfric is eight. He doesn't understand why Galmar grins the way he does.