Denthryd sat on the porch with his head against the wall, dozing. Summers in this stretch of plains came on faster and lasted a lot longer than he was used to in the mountains of Eastmarch. By this time, since he was a boy, people would be in parkas and capes with at least the thinnest Alik'r silk underneath, those who still did not believe a slug of brandyand a laugh would save the fingers and toes from needing the saw. Yes, this sun made the hooded wool cloak a little hot and he contemplated doing what a lot of guys from this part of the country do, and doff his casting robe for a knee-length sleeveless tunic or a studded ranger's harness with the metal disc at the sternum, x-straps over the shoulders, and cuir bouilli skirt with the steel lugs punched through the leg guards, walk around basically barechested. Oh, the aching he'd get from Wys and Zuyi if he did, too. He sipped from a tankard of cold sweet tea infused with mint he had gotten to go from the Cock and Bull on his way back from a morning walk. Denthryd had never thought that the taste of something cold, for Talos' sake, would be so appealing in Last Seed.

"Stressing, as always?" he heard coming closer.

Denthryd opened his eyes, staying put with hands clasped across his stomach, leaning the chair back against the front wall. "Nuuuu," he answered drolly. It was Azuyia wearing a forage sack and carrying a bushy leather sheaf of mountain flowers.

"Ahem ... we did tell Ellmann we wanted to watch him make a frostbite poultice."

"Any farmboy from Eastmarch learns that from sand," Denthryd yawned, "I was only being nice to the old fogie, just wanted him to shut up and sell us the roots."

"I know you know the cold, Den, but maybe you don't know what he knows. Remember what magistra said."

"Stay in the tower, lose any power," he rolled his eyes.

"Yes."

"The only tower I ever set foot in when I was growing up the son of two salters was the watch a few clicks from my village with the rangers."

Azuyia's mouth shifted a bit to one side. "Why are you always such a smart aleck?"

"Like I say," Denthryd leaned foreward onto his elbows and letting the front chair legs rest on the porch boards, "I am the son of two fish salters, and I have never been in a proper tower, so rest assured I know exactly what that lectern splash means."

"My town isn't a Summerset palace either, Den."

"Is there a point to this conversation?" He raised his voice, irritated, standing up and gesturing. "I am tired of flowers, roots, and fungi! He raised both arms with palms upwards, quickly, and let them clap his sides.

Azuyia phased off a minute to a conversation she had had with both parents a few years back before leaving the country. Then: "Okay, but what else is there to do while we wait here?"

"Hunt wolves?"

"Shut ... up!"

Denthryd slouched back down in the chair and leaned back, taking the mug of tea. He sipped, raising his eyes over the edge of the mug, and lowered to chest height slowly. Azuyia saw he was pointing behind her. When she turned around a very tall Nord woman in field leathers with a claymore strapped to her back stood looking straight at them with her arms crossed. She had a thick shock of bright blonde hair pulled up from her face behind a bronze and moonstone circlet pushed back above her hairline, and dark-bronze skin. An iridescent emerald tattoo ran from her right temple to above the eye, wound its way around the eyebrow and underneath the eye, and then down the cheek below her ear to taper off at the jaw. Not knowing the full story behind the symbols without being inducted into her particular field company, both Azuyia and Denthryd recognized the Nord practice of marking an experienced fighter. She had been blooded.

The woman did not look to be spoiling for something. It would have been difficult, the two novices thought simultaneously, to mask that with a build like hers. She was young, quite young, in the face, seeming barely twenty if that. Her arms and legs, though, had that sunburned and roughened look of a life spent sleeping on a stinking, wet bearskin bedroll and calling a few embers in the fire pit dug out of rocky soil a pleasant hearth. She had more of a ranger archer's body than the barges that often formed the center of a Nord column. That could change, though, in the next couple decades given she lived that long. The Nord walked closer to them, and they saw clearly in the daylight a pink scar running from above the left side of her mouth and down her chin.

If she fights with two hands, Denthryd thought, then that could have happened when she raised her blade to the right close in to an opponent with a short blade in the right hand. Maybe she was pushing with both hands around the hilt, rushing, either that or she got incredibly lucky at someone's downswing with an axe or longer blade. Oh, who knows.

"I wasn't aware mom had visitors," she said to them in a surprisingly light voice. As she walked up to them, both saw she had eyes of the most astonishing purple hue, a dark blue-violet at least one of them had never seen in a Nord. Curiously, she also had fingernails painted silver that glinted in the sun.

"Um, hi," Denthryd replied, staring. Azuyia eyed him.

"So? Who are you," the Nord asked, striding up the three steps to the porch, unfastening her claymore and setting it down on the round table, lounging easily in the rocking chair by the railing. Denthryd said nothing and stared.

Azuyia cleared her throat. "Yes, we have been staying with your mother on and off these past several weeks. We're novices at—"

"I can see that," she replied without smiling, and not really that sort of almost menace Azuyia had seen enough, just not particularly friendly.

"Welll, see I had a little mishap out on the moor, bonebreak fever, your mom cared for me. I've never been so sick in my life."

"I see. And you are still here, because?"

Denthryd rolled his head to the side and upwards, letting out a sigh through pursed lips, and stood up to walk over to the railing and lean on it, facing out towards the street.

"Den ... Den," Azuyia said quickly, then turning her head back to the Nord woman. "Well, today we're visiting your apothecary Ellmann to study more frostbite medicine. That okay with you?" The Nord woman's face fell a little for just a moment, then she slowly started to smile.

"Of course," she smiled with lips parted and eyes closing to crescents, chuckling a bit, then saying, "I'm dying for company. In on four days' break."

"I'm Azuyia by the way, and my friend here," she stopped, clearing her throat again, "is Denthryd."

"My name is Ryvanni Winters, daughter of Deolli Winters."

"What does your surname mean, by the way, Ryvanni?" Denthryd asked later that night. "Your mom hasn't mentioned it." Azuyia was interested to know this, too, yet had been hesitant about whipping out the note pad and asking about regional Nordic dialect.

Ryvanni took a sip of ale and got a quizzical look on her face. Her eyes narrowed and she stared diagonally towards the ceiling with her head cocked to one side.

"We mean no disrespect," he added.

"Um, yeah," Azuyia chimed in, "just eggheads?"

The fireplace popped for a few minutes, long enough for two fannies to start shifting in seats. Ryvanni sat absolutely still. She ran her finger over the mug handle and breathed imperceptively. Denthryd stood up, put his hands in his pockets, and walked over to the fire, squatting down and staring at it.

"Icebound," she replied, getting up and walking over to the hearth. Ryvanni reached over the mantle to an old wooden frame about eight inches deep at its sides, carved with Nordic tree emblems and long varnished. A scarred but oiled and shiny steel buckler hung in the middle. She lowered her head to look up at the underside of the top piece, removing the buckler, reaching up, then pulling the crimson mounting plaque away from the frame and setting it on the mantle. Ryvanni walked back to the table and sat down with the other two, holding the buckler across her lap. Behind the shield mounting there was another painted wooden plaque, this one deeply carved. "What I am going to tell you," Ryvanni started to say, slowly, "either stays in this room at this fire or leaves your dead mouths as your head leaves your body."

"Alright! I'm outta here!" Denthryd blurted, standing up from the fire and throwing his hands up, starting for the door.

"Den ... Den! Stop!" Azuyia yelled at him.

The son of two salters halted by the door, turned, and looked directly at Ryvanni. "I don't give two septims for macho-bravo, but you!" He raised a hand stiffly, pointing at her. "That was a threat!"

"Damn straight it was," Ryvanni stiffened, moving her right hand underneath the buckler. It took Azuyia's eyesight to notice that Denthryd's pupils had acquired a pinpoint of firelight.

"Cut it OUT, both of you!" she screamed. "There is enough killing right outside that door!"

"Talos," Ryvanni muttered, putting the buckler on the table and getting up, walking over to the ale barrel, pouring a full mug and downing a good bit of it. Wow, both of her conversation mates thought, does she walk like a legionnaire. So young and strong, and then a noticeable draw in her movements. "You're right. I'm sketched. You have no idea what a week on a frontier line will do to your head." The novices understood, now, that neither a joke or a comrade's shoulder clap was in their range of polite responses, that sympathy might get you thrown across the room. They just stood there, waiting for more. She looked at them before finishing the mug. "That's a week on your feet without sleep." They nodded. "Winterwarp," she continued looking up at the plaque, "is a word that our family acquired at the end of the second era when peace was established by Tiber Septim."

"You're nobility," Azuyia said.

"Not so fast, sis. Like I say, my ancestors came from a tribe that lived literally on the northern coast. We're talking the ice floes. Mom has a scrimshaw piece out of horker ivory that's been in our family forever, barely lets me even look at it. It's okay, though. Like a lot of folk my kin have been uprooted, so every last memory is precious."

"I can understand that," Denthryd offered. "Windhelm."

Ryvanni gazed him a moment, then nodded a little. "According to the family stories I heard from my grandma and grandpa when I was little, my ancestors had served in Tiber Septim's armies. Yes, him. Talos. During the chaos of that time, one forebear, a woman named Veraxxa. You still occasionally find girls with that name in the really, really small villages of Skyrim, places where not every birth year produces yet another crop of Tertulla after the emperor's third daughter. She had survived long enough to rise from country all the way to captain of a company. When the dust cleared and the dead were counted, the story goes that she was called to the mansion of the minor jarl whose estate her company had basically saved. At this time, I don't think anyone knows where that estate used to be or who that lord was, so much has been lost.

Mom still warns me about poking around about it. Dad did, too, when I was little. He told me to never go asking about our name, and I did not understand why. But the important part was that he wished to recognize her service in his keep, and he named her thane. The way the story has been handed down, apparently they were from two clans and spoke different languages, so gave her the fief of Winterwarp, icebound. Her company had many from the extreme coast, and they became known for their skill in surviving. They fought in deep snow when enemies weren't expecting raids for months. He gave her the entire coastal fief to settle her company and recognized her as Veraxxa, Thane Icebound."

Now neither Denthryd nor Azuyia had a sudden change of opinion or perspective on Ryvanni. She did not change in their eyes, but this story was one of those their college study had hinted at. Much was buried just under the grains of soil and newest wildflowers all over the country. The Aldmeri war had been only the most recent conflict to displace populations and erase centuries of folkways and traditions.

"Of course, obviously, the Winterwarp fief is no more on the shores between the ...Winterhold and Windhelm. Let's move this along," she exhaled, leaning on the mantle. "This emblem was carved right after the White Gold Concordat ended the war. Look at the style. Ever seen anything like it?"

"I have," Azuyia said.

"Oh?"

"Yes. I, of course, do remember the war. I was young and in school. The Thalmor reserve a special sort of hatred for elves not of their stock, we Bosmer and our relatives the Dunmer. They control the minds of the Altmer nation and indoctrinate them into thinking we are like animals who have overpopulated Tamriel. They hunt us. But enough, I can't think about that," Azuyia stopped, then recovering herself, "Right after the war there were refugees from Skyrim who had not found their place in Cyrodiil."

"That's right," Ryvanni nodded.

"I knew some of them. My own village had a couple of families who had made the trip all the way from Falkreath. It's why I wanted to come here, their stories. They said that, despite the service so many Nords provided to the Legion and its auxiliaries, Imperial City's establishment did not welcome them with open arms. Quite the opposite. Veterans without families or contacts ended up on the street, or worse turning to thuggery if they managed not to sell their blades for food. My family friend, ex-legionnaire, served in a horrible campaign in the far eastern Pale, we're talking spider stories, and he said that a couple thousand even camped on the capitol grounds and threatened to suit up and march. All well and good if you're not suffering from malnutrition and dehydration. Many were by that point into skooma and moon sugar to ease the pain of old wounds or the psychic traumas they had experienced, and many had taken to hard drinking. So needless to say all the ... Emperor had to do was call out some fresh guards, round them up, and they were never heard from again."

"My mother told me about that before I enlisted in the rangers. Didn't want to hear it," Ryvanni's face hardened, "but whoa, man, have I seen its fallout."

"What do you mean?"

"Part of your swearing in requires each new unit to go before a member of the Penitus Oculatus, the Emperor's special police force, and, one by one, enter a small room to sit and be told, specifically, that you are sworn never to raise a hand or by inaction ever threaten the life of his majesty."

"Okay ... but isn't that a part of every soldier's initiation?"

"Not like this, sister. When you're looking at an armed Oculatus, you know what you are being told. Obey or die, in a nutshell. And then we walk back out of that creepy room, suit up, ride off, and work our butts off in the same Talosforsaken reaches of this country that the Legion always has. Only at this point everyone kinda understands that discipline has an added, invisible layer. It's one reason why Nord soldiers don't trust magic. The only way the Oculatus could know everything it knows without posting a functionary in every last squad in every outpost ... is to scry." Ryvanni ended that last word with a hiss. Opening her eyes back up normally, she continued, "And you were saying?"

"Yes, yes," Azuyia replied, "the Nord families kept to themselves mostly, understandably. In Valenwood they were treated as unfortunate cousins. They were given permission to live, work, and trade under the same laws as any Bosmer. It was kinda funny watching Nords adapt to living in trees," she smiled, the smile falling fast as she noticed Ryvanni straighten up to her full height and cross muscular arms. "Uh-hum, and their children attended schools with us. One of my best friends, Obju, was Nordic."

"Obju?" Ryvanni asked.

"Not a Nordic name, I know," Azuyia explained, "It's a common Dunmer girl's name, actually. Her mother, Riray, had died in childbirth before they got to the border. Doesn't happen as often these days, but like I say her parents had made the journey all the way across Cyrodiil on hard rations, living off of what little coin they had saved from her work in the town market and his military pay. Her father, Tomar, the one who had fought in the Pale, grief took him down badly. He would disappear for several days. Sometimes we'd find him passed out and barely alive. Several of us, myself included, as you know I was already fully grown physically, took turns looking after the baby. Well, one in particular also started to keep track of him, make sure he ate, started staying in his house full time. Her name was Obju, a Dunmer who had emigrated from Morrowind ... seeing as how some elements of Windhelm don't particularly care for dark elves... " she trailed off, looking at Denthryd.

"Hey, don't blame me, Zuyi," he retorted, "for those elements who didn't adapt to change after the war. My mom and dad fought in the auxiliaries and returned to a village completely destroyed by five winters. They had to start over from scratch with a little goddamn septim in their pockets. Fish salters didn't build the Windhelm ghetto. We work sixteen-hour days to bring food to that place."

"What's this, then," Ryvanni asked, turning her gaze from Azuyia to Denthryd, and back again.

"The Nords in the city of Windhelm," Azuyia replied flatly, "want the Dunmer gone. Permanently. They refuse to sell decent property in the city to them, make all kinds of petty statutes. Your typical Windhelm roughneck blames the Dunmer for the economic recession that hit that city after the war, and one that hasn't much been relieved. Never mind that it's just about as far from the Hammerfell and Elsweyr overland trade routes as you can possibly be, and you're not going to find that many Khajiit or Redguard shipping companies willing to risk the kind of perpetual winter gales off the northern coast, not with Hammerfell's view of the peace treaty either. You will find my kind among the Bretons, Argonians, and Nords that sail in to that port, and I suppose the local toughs don't much notice since sailors tend to stick to sailor bars and sailor amusements. And they spend their coin doing it. So ... as Den points out, the common Nord in Eastmarch has a very bland diet and a narrow choice of occupations to take his or her mind off the fallout from the war.

Anyhoo, Tomar rejected much of his Nordic heritage. It was part of his process Obju oversaw as she nursed him. He kept his first name, I believe it had been his grandfather's, but he threw away his surname which I was never told. Obju had a Dunmer surname. Fiolitan. The time they spent together, as is quite natural for people who meet in extremis, found them falling in love. He asked her to marry him, and she accepted. Yet the story goes from what my friend Obju— heh, in Cyrodiilic I'd suppose you'd call her Objulilla— told me, he asked her to accept one unorthodox condition as they made their plans. He asked to take her surname, and name his daughter after her.

The younger Obju grew from an infant to a teenager right before my eyes. That phrase from common Nordic best fits what you would see as a Bosmer. She entered my school, and we became close friends. She's ... the senior adept at Southall Collegium now. So I was invited to stay with them quite often. Tomar was a carpenter by that point. He knew how to make cabinetry and furniture, and their family lived comfortably. I remember some of the tracery on the things he made for their home looking like that," she pointed up at the plaque, "with that sort of color scheme. I also noticed he never made anything with these markings for sale in the shop."

"I see," Ryvanni responded. "Well, then from what I know of Windhelm you really ought to listen to this next part. This carving represents my family in the current era. My grandfather made it when he got back from his tour fighting the Thalmor. Had a lot of time to sit and work on it," she paused, "since he lost his right leg below the hip. Gangrene. Filthy Altmer broadaxe went straight through his cuisse and hit the bone. It was in a flight and he was lucky to have been lashed to a horse, otherwise I would never have met him. You can imagine what immobility does to someone used to moving all his life."

"Definitely," Denthryd replied.

"Right," Ryvanni nodded. "So he worked at a bench in the wainwright's barn at the other end of town. It's still there, you've probably passed it. The grandchildren still own and run it. Grandpa was no journeyman in that regard, he had probably just learned how to fix a wagon's various parts enough to get supplies and wounded where they were going. All legionnaires have to learn bits of many trades. He passed the days sanding spokes and sawing parts; he could prop himself up at the work bench and do light work. I know, I used to bring him baskets of ale and cheese from grandma, and he'd sit me on his knee and talk with me." Denthryd thought he saw her eyes go a little glassy, but then: "He would bring home extra wood pieces from the shop. I'd sit next to him after dinner and watch him carve with his wheelwright's chisels very slowly. I loooved the smell of the pine and cedar. That," she motioned to the plaque, "was one of the pieces he made. It represents the Winterwarp lineage."

"Grandpa and mom were not entirely in agreement about how to face the end of the war. Grandpa, he had already survived fighting a long time before the Aldmeri conflict. The White Gold Concordat, though, made grandpa just as angry. I only saw it as a young child, but once or twice he'd get a little in his cups and start swearing about Imperial hypocrisy. It made an impression since his helmet and armor were always there on a stand in the corner, oiled, ready to go. A few years ago, mom sat me down and told me about this carving. Not too many people know what it means, but we keep it covered with the buckler just in case." At this, Ryvanni drew a deep breath, removed herself from the fireside, and paced a bit with her hands on her hips, looking at the ground.

"Yes?" Denthryd asked.

"Den ... not the time," Azuyia said.

He gave her an exasperated look.

Ryvanni stopped and fixed her gaze on the two of them. "It's a Stormcloak graph."

Oh dear.

A loud sigh, sort of, came from upstairs. Something hit the wall with a thump, and then another, then another, smacked a surface hard, then another smack.

"What in ... what's that," Denthryd wondered, "do they keep a pack of hounds up there, or what?!"

This is gonna sting, she thought. "That's Ryv and her boyfriend," Azuyia answered, getting up to turn around and hide her smile while walking over to get more soup. She ladeled the stuff slowly into her bowl, taking her time to replace the lid and turn back around, keeping her gaze above his head as if looking at the wall behind him. Yep, she thought. Denthryd was trying very hard not to look dispirited. He sat still with his hand on tops of his legs, hidden at the wrist by the table but Azuyia suspected they were balled pretty tightly.

When the smacking and thumping (and sighing, which was really gasping) had stopped for a while, the two of them saw a Nord man with a ringed red beard appear in the doorway from upstairs. He wore only a waist tunic of yellow muslin and had a lit pipe clenched between his teeth, sticking rakishly out the left side of his mouth. Azuyia found herself concentrating so as not to lift a hand to her head for any reason. The guy was enormous, easily twenty stones weight, even taller than Ryvanni, forehead and under both eyes in indigo ink, and as he walked over to the ale barrel and filled two of the bigger pewter tankards from the shelves next to the mantle, gripping them in one hand while grabbing the fresh loaf they had just bought. They also saw a red and black Imperial dragon insignia blazoned from his trapezius to the middle of his back. Whether it was the bread or something else, the guy looked at Denthryd as he walked past to go back upstairs.

"What?"

Azuyia conscientiously sipped spoonfulls of soup, looking at each spoonful. Probably shouldn't give him the other-fish pep talk right now, she thought, the major accomplishment that she could actually keep the soup down without snorting it through her nose in laughter.