"Elyna! Get over here!"
Grelod's voice rang out loudly across the wooden hall, startling the children. They all stood beside their bed with their eyes lowered on the floor. Grelod stood at the end of the hall, wooden stick in hand.
"I won't ask again!"
Slowly, a small girl nervously walked up to the fat mistress. Grelod tapped the stick impatiently in the palm of her hand and scoffed.
"Do you know why I called you up here?"
The girl sniffled and shook her head. Her eyes were staring her barefoot shivering against the damp floorboards. Grelod scoffed again, louder this time, and motioned at the young man standing beside her.
Sven stepped forward and raised his arms forward. In this hands were a tangle of freshly knotted fishing nets. He spread a particular section of it and showed it the girl.
Terror crept into her eyes when she saw it.
"That's right," Grelod said, "you've made the wrong knot in the net, again! How many times must I correct you before you can do this properly?"
She cowered at her booming voice. Grelod's fingers toyed with the wooden stick.
"Your hands!"
Elyna raised her thin arms and showed her the palm of her hand. Smack! Grelod mercilessly brought the stick down onto her wrist. Elyna bit back a sharp cry.
All of the other children winced at the sound as Grelod hit her again and again.
"If the nets are not properly knotted…*smack*…then the fishery won't buy them! That means there will be no coin to feed… *smack*…your hungry little mouths! Do you understand, you little brat? Do you want to go hungry, is that what you want, eh?"
Elyna shook her head.
"What was that? I didn't hear you!" Grelod shouted again.
"No…mistress," the girl whispered, her voice breaking.
"Good. I'm glad you understand. You are not going to sleep until you properly fix your mistake, do you understand me?"
"Yes mistress." A stray drop of tear rolled down her face but she quickly wiped it away.
Grelod walked menacingly towards the row of children standing beside their beds: her fat overweight body lumping forwards, her narrow beady eyes inspecting everything, her hand swishing the stick in readiness.
After looking over each child and satisfied with everything, she reminded them again:
"Tomorrow there will be an envoy from Solitude visiting. Everyone is to be on their best behavior. I want everything cleaned and tidied up! Is that understood?"
"Yes mistress," the children answered in unison.
She looked around one last time and narrowed her eyes menacingly.
"…and if anyone speaks ill about Honorhall Orphanage…I will make sure everyone is punished accordingly! Do I make myself clear?"
A cold shudder went down the spine of the children.
They all remembered what happened last time. An envoy had asked a girl what she would do during the day. Not knowing what to say, she had replied innocently that she "made nets".
Grelod was able to convince the envoy that she was just a strange girl who liked to make webs out of cotton string, as children sometimes do.
Later that night they could all hear the muffled screams as Grelod beat her again and again. The next day there was no trace of her. But a couple of the children had to mop up a big stain of blood in the basement...
After that, the children were not fed for three days; it was their punishment.
What the envoy didn't know was that the girl had meant literal nets.
The children knotted and repaired fishing nets for the Riften Fishery, for which Grelod pocketed the fee. Their small nimble hands could make tighter, narrower nets. It couldn't be done with the thick calloused hands of Nords or the webbed palms of Argonian fishermen.
It was also a lot cheaper to hire these children.
This was all illegal, of course.
But then again, what isn't in Riften?
Grelod gestured at Sven and he grabbed Elyna roughly by the arms. He led her out towards the courtyard where all the nets were laid out. The children crept into their thin straw beds as Grelod blew out the only candle stand in the hall, plunging it into darkness.
They say the guards had found her first.
She was a girl whose blonde hair was so light they seemed ashen. They found her wandering amidst the foggy woods of the Reach, her blue eyes blank with emotion.
Nobody knew where she came from, or what happened to her. The girl would simply sit and stare off into the distance as if she was in a trance. It seemed as if she could not – did not know how to – speak.
But she was not special, hardly so.
For there were thousands of street urchins crawling about Riften. Perhaps her family was attacked and killed by bandits. Or maybe they were enslaved by necromancers to a life of cold eternal servitude. Or perhaps a forest troll caught them and ripped their limbs apart.
It matters not, for tragedy and death was a fact of life in Skyrim.
So the guards simply gave her to the orphanage. To Grelod. Still she did not speak, but she did what she was told.
The thin girl swept the floors, cooked meals and knotted nets. All this she did with an indescribable emptiness in her gaze. Even when she was beaten, as she curled into a ball on the floor, she did not make a noise.
Not a peek.
Sometimes, sometimes the other children would catch her staring at the sky. With furrowed eyebrows. They would whisper amongst themselves about her.
About this automaton…this thing.
For hours at a time she would sit, completely still, staring at a corner of the room.
It was as if she was trying to…remember.
One day, as the children were outside playing in the courtyard, a heavy torrent of rain suddenly fell upon them. They all hurried out of the rain into the safety of the house.
Watching through the windows at the raging thunder, a boy suddenly called out:
"The girl! The girl!"
And there she was!
She stood alone out in the heavy rain, absolutely motionless, with her head staring upwards at the sky. At first they thought she would eventually come in, but she did not. Evnetually Grelod had to venture outside to get her.
As the woman hopped across the puddles – she was slimmer then – with a cloth over her head, Grelod cursed the eccentric child. Finally she reached her and grabbed her hand roughly.
"You little – " Grelod began but stopped when the girl pierced her with her gaze.
For a moment the two simply stood there, the only sound between them the heavy drops of rain hitting the ground.
The girl opened her mouth slowly and said:
"Elyna."
Grelod stared at her.
"My name is Elyna."
And so Elyna began to speak.
Life crept back into her eyes, and the other children came to realize that she was just another child like them.
She laughed when they played, she cried when Grelod scolded her, and she shivered when a cold wind swept through the hall. She could not remember anything of her past, where she came from or who were her parents.
That ice in her eyes disappeared like that autumn rain under which she first remembered her name.
And so Elyna simply became another child at the orphanage.
So helpless.
Sven's eyes traced her back and the outline of her dress.
Her head was lowered, her shoulders slumped, as she tediously knotted the net. All she had for illumination of a dim candle for it was a moonless night.
She's always like this, he thought, so…weak.
Her eyes were always lowered, as if she was ashamed of something. And she always spoke with squeaky noise. Barely a whisper. As if she was scared of people hear her voice.
Sven had remembered the first time he saw her when Grelod led her through the door. Her eyes were blank with something incomprehensible. It had always vexed Sven, a child of the orphanage himself, that this girl seemed unfazed by everything.
Even when they slapped her, or pulled her hair, Elyna's eyes did not seem to blink. Her gaze always made him uncomfortable.
But now…now she was just another girl.
He creaked open the door and walked into the courtyard. He could tell that the moment she heard him her body froze. Slowly, methodically he crept up to her. Her hands tried to keep knotting but he could tell that her body was betraying her.
He stood over her, towering over her thin body like a giant. Ever since he started working for Grelod he began to put on more weight. He ate everyday like a pig. Now Sven was no longer a skinny orphan boy.
Sven knew that she could feel this imbalance of power.
He knelt down beside her and breathed heavily on her neck. He smiled when he saw her hands beginning to shake uncontrollably. Tears were already clouding her eyes.
"How is your work going…Elyna?"
Her mouth opened to say something but it turned into a startled cry when his hands roughly groped her breasts. She tried to shield her chest with her hands but he squeezed them violently and twisted her nipples with his fingers.
Shame, he thought, if only she hand a bigger bosom.
She struggled feebly to push him away but his strong harms hugged small frame tightly, trapping her.
"Please…" she whimpered.
Sven pulled her closer to him until his sloppy tongue was touching her ears. He bit her ears violently and held it until he tasted her blood. Meanwhile his hands savagely twisted her breasts, digging his nails into them, tearing through her skin.
When he heard her muffled crying it drove him even wilder. He loved the way she struggled to break free of his grip, how he overpowered her and ran his hands across her body.
He knew that tonight might be his only chance. Tomorrow the envoy will be visiting, she might have to…
"You belong to me, Elyna."
He pushed her onto the ground and flung her dress upwards, exposing her bare legs. Elyna opened her mouth to scream but he shoved a thick ball of netting down her throat. Her hapless cries turned into muffled noises.
Her hands frantically tried to push his weight away but Sven simply pinned them over her head with a single hand. He began to untie his trousers when a loud noise startled both of them.
It was the sound of the guard unsheathing his sword.
They both lay there in deadly silence, listening to the commotion unfold.
There was only a wall of cobbled stone separating the courtyard and the street. The guard was telling a couple of drunken hooligans to scram. The drunkards made some vague protests, but when they saw the steel glinting in the lantern's light…they thought better of it.
Elyna and Sven lay there, frozen to their spots, waiting for the guard to pass. They heard a stumble, a couple of knocks of the wall, and then the slow shuffling of feet away from them.
Sven stood up sheepishly.
His trousers were down and his member visibly shrunk.
He hurriedly pulled them up and looked around, as if looking around to see if anyone witnessed his embarrassment. He looked down and saw Elyna with her knees curled tightly together, her hands clutching her thin dress closely to her chest.
He thought to say something, to do something: to reassert his dominance.
But he didn't know what. Mustering what's left of his courage, he grabbed her neck…and shook it awkwardly. Then he hurriedly fled back into the orphanage.
Elyna sat there, within the tangled web of fishing nets, with her head in her hands. The candle stand had long since been toppled and its light extinguished. The tears flowed and flowed out of her eyes like an endless stream.
She sat there in the dim moonlight and silently cried and cried.
A/N
I don't usually do author's notes but in this case I feel compelled to inform you, a prospective reader, of what you may be getting into.
This story is written in the same vein as the novel Justine, also known as The Misfortunes of Virtue by Marquis De Sade. This means that there will be alot of vile, graphic sex (a lot of it non-consensual) within the story. There will be a lot of sexual assaults and rape.
I do not endorse nor condone any of this behavior.
I understand if you are not interested in reading any content depicting this behavior. You have been warned.
However, I would also like to say that this story will not just be a celebration of misery for misery's sake. Even with all the terrible things that happen to her, Elyna is still growing and learning new things at every turn.
Also, please don't take this story too seriously. Just read it as the cheap, poorly-written erotica that it is!