Yesss! I finally managed to beat myself to write another chapter! Shorter than I would like it to be, but we are slowly getting to "nightmares and horrors."

The woman stood in the garden. Above her, the moon shone and its silver light turned the moisture from a quick rain that still lingered on the entwined roots and branches into pure ice.

And like ice the air felt, although it was summer and Falkreath Hold was in the south of Skyrim. The woman felt a strange chill through her thin nightgown. Why had she come down, in the middle of the night, to the hated tangle of plants fighting each other for dominance over this pathetic piece of soil? She didn't know.

Suddenly she heard a sound, soft and quiet, so soft and quiet that she rather felt it than sensed it with her ears. The echo of steps taken long ago, the memory of rustling leaves, the shadow of the ghost of old joy, worn thin by the decades.

The woman turned around. Eyes, filled with sorrow, met her gaze and a voice, barely audible, whispered a single word…

…and she woke up, panting, a scream escaping her lips.

Her husband jerked and raised, eyes wide and searching for danger, but he found only darkness. "What's wrong?", he asked.

"I…I was down in the garden…and somebody was there…"

The man groaned. "You just had a nightmare, my love. Try to get some sleep again."

"Yes…"

But when she rose in the morning, the woman felt like she hadn't slept at all. She barely managed to open her eyes and her answers to her husband's questions were curt and sharp like daggers. They broke their fast in silence, then went to their tasks.

The man brought the furniture in the first floor and on the tops of the small towers. As he brushed the dust from old shelves and hanged some pictures on the walls, he worried about his wife. Something about the new house clearly disturbed her. But they would be finished soon and then everything would settle.

He carefully unwrapped the thick layers of leather around Rythe Lythandas' Sunrise over Kvatch when he suddenly heard a scream from outside. The man dropped the painting and ran downstairs.

The woman had been working in the garden, but now she stared at a small piece of soil which she had been liberating from plants.

A skull was staring back.

Her husband stopped at the sight. "I didn't know they had a dog", he said, trying to act normal. "Maybe the children buried it here." He dropped in a crouch and looked at the skeleton, which was half covered with earth. Still, the bones were clearly an animal's. Pretty big for a hound, but the war-dogs in Skyrim often were the size of a goat or a wolf.

He stood up and turned to his shocked wife. "No need to worry. The animal is long dead. Why don't you take a break for the rest of the day and I'll take care of this?"

The man embraced her and she nodded, eyes closed. "If it's okay for you…"

"Sure. Rest, darling."

After a light meal, the woman went to bed and her husband dug the dog's skeleton from the garden. He decided that the hound ought to stay with its master, filled the bones in a wooden box and walked, shovel in the hand, to the small graveyard in the grove.

It felt wrong here. Last time they had been there, it had been a sad but bright place, full of blossoming plants. Now a shadow seemed to cover the cemetery. Everything looked paler and…fading, worn-out, like something vital had been removed. The flowers hid their colourful blossoms and the former brilliant white stones were rather grey and dull.

The man quickly abandoned this thought. His wife's worries were afflicting him too, obviously. Instead of wondering about darkness and shadows, he dug a small, deep hole, placed the box in it and put the earth back in its place. He finished his work by covering the grave with a few stones.

Back to work! The woman was probably still sleeping inside, so her husband started to repair the old stable. It had enough room for two horses and there were signs for an old addition that had been begun but never finished. For its age, the building was still quite intact. Only a part of the roof had collapsed, but the man was able to fix it until dusk.

His wife had recovered and cooked a soup for him. As on the days before, they shared a bottle of wine on a tower – the western this time, for the man didn't want any more problems on this day.

The forest they were watching was filled with absolute silence.