"By the Nine, boy! What happened to you?!" my mother screamed as she looked at me.
My nose was broken and bleeding heavily, blood was pouring down my face like a stream that runs into a river. There was a dark spot over my right eye and my face was covered in cuts and bruises.
"Has that Orc boy Ghorzag been beating you up again?" she asked as she opened a drawer.
"It's not that bad ma, really." I said weakly. The truth was I felt like my face was stabbed by a claymore.
"Oh don't you give me that! Your face is bloodier than an executioner's chopping block! Let me just find a cloth here and some bandages and I'll get you all cleaned up," my mother said as she continued looking through the drawer.
After finding what she was looking for, my mother soaked the cloth in some cold water and knelt down close to me and started to wipe the blood off my face.
My mother was an attractive woman, at least by Dunmer standards. She had long dark hair as black as the midnight sky that flowed down to her back. Her eyes were a dark purple color, which was unusual as red is the standard eye color for a Dunmer. Her face was a slightly paler shade of green than mine. She still bore a few scars that my father gave her which she tried her best to cover with makeup, but they were always still slightly visible. Despite that, her face was still quite refined and possessed a certain elegance. She was just a little over a hundred years old, which is still quite young for my race, and, if going by human years, she hardly looked a day over twenty. She often had a gloomy and sullen look about her though, which is understandable considering what she had been through. She tried her best to hide it, but looking into her eyes I could see a traumatized and broken woman, full of fear and sorrow. Still, she did her best to provide for me, and I can say that she was genuinely a good mother, and I loved her dearly.
"My poor baby," my mother said as she continued to wipe my face.
"Ghorzag has gone too far this time. I have half a mind to go to the guards and get them to make him stop bullying you."
"You know the guards won't do anything ma. You know his parents are close to the Count," I said to her.
"Yeah, I suppose you're right son. With his father being the Captain of the Guard and his mother a noble in the Count's court, I doubt the guards would lift a finger to stop him. Still, it's not right. I hate seeing you hurt so badly. There has to be something we can do," my mother said as she finished wiping off the blood and bandaging my nose.
"I'll be fine ma. I don't know how, but I'll figure out my own way to deal with Ghorzag. I'm not going to let him push me around forever. I'll find a way to stand up to him," I said to my ma in a confident tone of voice, hoping she would feel better.
She smiled at me and hugged me, and I her. Her warm embrace was comforting, and the pain in my face began to subside.
"Stay strong Sargoth. I promise you're going to make it through this, and I'll help you in whatever way I can. I love you son," said my mother, brushing a tear from her eye.
"I love you too ma, and thanks."
"Well, I guess you're as cleaned up as I can get you. It's getting late. I want you to go to bed and get some sleep. I'll be working tonight, but I'll be back in the morning to make you breakfast," my mother said as she was getting ready to leave.
"Do you have to?" I asked, knowing full well what her answer would be.
"Yes, unfortunately I do son. I hate it as much as you do, but there's nothing else for me to do out here. This is the only way I can support the both of us. Every day I pray to the Gods that something better comes along for us, but for now I'm afraid this is the way it has to be. You go to sleep now all right? I'll see you in the morning."
"Yeah, good night ma," I said, and with that she left.
In the daytime, my mother worked as a servant in the castle of the Count of Bravil. She would handle most of the everyday menial tasks such as sweeping all the floors, cleaning the Count's living quarters, assisting the cook with preparing the meals, fetching mead for the guards, and she was also responsible for bringing food and water to the prisoners once a day. My mother hated this job, as it only paid a measly five septims a day. In addition to that, the Count of Bravil was a perverted little weasel. He would grope my mother as she was trying to work and he would make sexual remarks at her. Sometimes he would force her to work in the nude as she cleaned his quarters, and I'm nearly certain on some days he was even making her service him sexually. How she endured that every single day was beyond me. But I guess that just shows how devoted a mother she was. She would do whatever it took to keep a roof over our heads.
As horrible as that job was, that wasn't the one I pleaded with her not to go to. My mother's day job wasn't nearly enough to pay for our weekly expenses, so in order to make ends meet she was also a prostitute by night. A couple nights a week, my mother would sell her body on the streets; several men, complete strangers would violate her and have their way with her. If her "clients" were abusive, she would even come home crying and with several bruises. I begged her all the time to stop doing it and find something else. Anything, anything at all would be better than selling herself to perverts on the street. But she always gave me the same answer every time, and admittedly, she would bring home a decent amount of money, sometimes even several hundred septims.
I laid down on my bed and shut my eyes and tried to go to sleep. I tried to forget the beating Ghorzag had given me that day. I tried to stop worrying about my mother. I tried to forget about our wretched living conditions. I just wanted to clear my mind and fall into a deep sleep. I just wanted a better life for my mother and me.
