In the Academy we were expected to settle our own problems. That meant no running to the teachers if someone picked on you. Homicide was frowned upon only if done messily and without style. The tests and trials were designed to bound people together, to form relations and make us understand life. The teachers didn't much care what we did, or who we did it with, so long as we turned up for the skill examinations.
That's how I met Ondolemar. We were a group of five - the cream, as it were. Hardly children at the average age of about fifty, we still pulled pranks on the students of the more common variety. We laughed about stupid teachers and generally hung around together and occasionally got drunk on the finest wines Alinor could offer.
We didn't love each other. How could anyone love someone as snobbish as him? It wasn't even the default racial things that humans credited to us. He took his vanity up to another level. We just had a ... thing. A physical thing.
And then one day I caught him with my best friend. Not that I was jealous, just a little upset. So I dropped out and went to help mother with her work, which largely entailed getting rid of undesirables until the war started. But that's an entirely different story.
Nothing disturbed us on the track as we walked. The landscape bathed in golden sunlight which gradually became whiter, so unaccustomed to me after the endless mists and fogs of the Reach. As the sun rose higher I asked him to take back the cloak, so hot it was getting. We walked on still, passing a mill on the way, until I was almost dragging my feet and feeling generally tired, thirsty and fed up with walking in the beating sunlight.
Half an hour after we passed the mill, I spotted a moderately comfortable looking log in the shade under a bristling pine tree and went and sat down against it unceremoniously. Ondolemar stopped and looked at me incredulously. I glanced up at him and yawned deliberately. "What?"
"What are you doing? We have to go." He insisted, despite looking a bit rough around the edges himself.
I quirked an eyebrow at him. "We? What do you mean, we? Last I checked I was still a captive. I am tired and I want something to eat and a good sleep. I'm only sticking around to see what mad plan you are going to pull off."
He puffed an exasperated breath and sat down beside me. He did look very tired close-up. Even though I didn't want to admit it, I still got the butterflies in my stomach from him close presence. Seventy years had done little to mar his looks, not to mention my very graphic memory.
I slowly laid my head back onto the log, not caring at the moment what dreadful things might get caught in it. My eyelids just fell and unimportant little thoughts about butterflies and birds singing lazily crawled across my mind. Next thing I knew, I was being shaken roughly by Ondolemar, who was kneeling in front of me with a concerned look about him.
I grunted and yawned again, and feebly tried to push him away, which wasn't easy to do with bound hands. "Yes, yes, I'm alive and awake. What is it?"
"Come, we have to go. You've had your rest." And he was up in an instant, all apprehension wiped from his face.
"Would you mind?" I stretched my hands towards him, and he in turn promptly jerked me to feet. Getting up with bound hands without help is a rather kinky affair, with much turning over and inching one's posterior upwards. I was certainly not going to do this to Ondolemar's face, especially since I had a suspicion he'd pinch it.
"How long did I sleep?" I asked more for something to say as we stepped on the road again.
"Half and hour. I was starting to get worried."
"Oh, how sweet of you."
"Don't get sappy. You might be a means to an end, but you're the only means to that particular end, so I don't intend to lose you in any way."
A particular means, eh? That would surely mean something to do with Elenwen. But we were going the entirely wrong way then. Unless he was thinking something entirely different.
It was time for me to get a little freedom. "Now I have to see this through," I began enthusiastically, "and if I promise not to run away, will you take these off?" I raised my still bound hands. "They're starting to chafe." Actually, the binds had stopped chafing long ago. Now there was just a damp numbness, interrupted by brief flashes of sharp pain.
He looked at me with a scrutinizing look, but must have decided I was harmless enough, since in a second a knife appeared out of nowhere in his hands, and after a moment the binds fell away revealing sore skin and angry, red welts. The elf raised a quizzical eyebrow at me. "Starting to chafe?"
I made a grimace at him, resisting all temptation to massage the wrists, which would have surely resulted in screaming. Once I get my hands on something sharp, he will regret not telling me everything.
He made a grab for my arms, a healing spell flashing to life in his palms, but I avoided him, mumbling, "I'll be fine." I never liked the touch of others' magic. It felt like something greasy, like metal on the tongue, cold and foreign. He gave me another hard stare and shoved me forward.
Altmer are considerably more resilient than the other races give us credit for. Even tired as we both were, we made it to Falkreath a few hours before sundown. The pitiful little town's residents were just as pitiful, scurrying on their various jobs and tasks, hardly giving us a glance. Some of the guards did give us strange looks, but no one stopped us.
Ondolemar guided me to what looked to be the town's only inn - Dead Man's Drink. How depressing, I thought. As we passed the alchemy shop I'd noticed the name of that place too - Grave Concoctions. Hardly inviting. The whole place seemed to be stuck in the past, living off death. I didn't even bother to understand, what was this strange piece of epiphany my mind had thrown up again.
As we stepped in the inn, Ondolemar instantly looped an arm around my waist, and in my shock, almost half-dragged me to the counter, where he wasted no time in greeting the pleasant-faced innkeeper and saying, "Your best room please, and a meal, for me and the lady."
Oh, by the Eight, what's got into him? I nearly screeched most unbecomingly and resisted an urge to untangle myself. While I was reasoning with myself whether to slap him here and now, or wait for some privacy, Ondolemar pulled a pouch full of gold from somewhere in his armor and paid the innkeeper. Then he guided me to the nearest table, where a buxom tavern wench was already serving our meal.
No one else was too bothered about us. The men drinking were probably the town's residents, in for some relaxation. A dreary place like this could hardly attract visitors at the best of times, and there were almost no travelers now with the rebellion and everything. Except for us of course.
We ate in silence, as I had resolved not to speak, as it would most likely have resulted in screaming and violence. When we finished and got to the room though, I was in for a surprise.
"What is this?" I asked pointing to the terrible thing in the middle of the floor as soon as the door had been closed, "And what was all ... all that, outside?" I gestured in the general direction of back at the main room.
"It would have been suspicious if I asked for one room for both of us without 'all that'." Ondolemar mimicked my gesture with an annoying look of smugness. "I need to keep you under watch, as you surely understand is appropriate in the circumstances."
"And that?" I pointed again insistently at the abomination. "You expect me to sleep in the same bed as you?"
"Why all the shock? If I remember correctly, you used to do it with much satisfaction and shall I say, 'whim and vigor'?" Oh, he was just unbearable.
I snapped my open mouth shut, took off my boots and pounded my way across the room, where I climbed into the bed without bothering to take the clothes off. I heard Ondolemar chuckle, a rustling, and a moment later the blanket moved as he slid in beside me.
However, my rage couldn't keep me awake forever, and soon I let my mind drift off to sleep.