Author's Note: Thanks to SundayWinterChild for taking the time to review this little project and any who read this, check out her Skyrim fanfic: Wind Guide You. It's a wonderful mix of feels and deep, emotionally charged scenes. It's beautiful.

I hope you enjoy this next bit. Read and Review!

Best,

G.P.

"Hold on," The ginger thief urged for the fifth time, following the elf as she readied her horse, "You're giving the book you just stole back?"

"Yes, I believe I mentioned that," Neph was growing impatient and irritated with the Nord, "I've already made a hefty profit for it, and I have no further gain by keeping it in my collection. I have the transcript, I can make more. What is your point?"

Running a whetstone across his sword nearby was the Argonian, watching the argument with a mix of amusement and pity for his friend. Sigaar atop the carriage shot him a sympathetic look as he munched a hunk of bread, for the sight of these two bickering was common. He didn't understand how Neph put up with him. Huszh knew what Brynjolf really considered the Dunmer to be, and despite all his best efforts to warn her, Neph didn't mind being seen as an asset more than an individual. It was the only way someone of her skills earned a living.

Brynjolf ran a rough hand through his tangled auburn hair, his eyes on the every twitch of her hands. "I'm saying that you've only done maybe two of these operations, and I cannot bail you out if something goes wrong."

"I'm amazed you would doubt me, Bryn," Neph didn't sound hurt, but the way her eyebrows pulled together gave a clue to her annoyance. "Look, I have a job from Delvin to do in Whiterun hold anyway, and Huszh will be in town if anything goes wrong."

"This isn't how we do things, lass."

Neph didn't have to do much brainwork to figure out just how reliable Huszh's assistance seemed from the Nord's viewpoint.

She tethered her quiver to Malcolm, finishing her work. Neph turned to glare at the other thief, "Don't you 'lass' me. This will bring in more coin for the Guild, one would think you'd be pleased." She drew her black hood over her head, and her eyes sharpened beneath. "I don't think I need to remind you that I don't answer to you, and the man I do answer to gave me the go-ahead."

The elf sighed. "Look, I know you're concerned. But there is not much to worry about."

"Sure, there isn't," Brynjolf muttered, not the least bit convinced, "Just be careful, lass."

She hooked a foot in the stirrup and heaved herself up into the saddle, shifting her bow. Neph gave one lasting look at Brynjolf and then clicked her tongue, the stallion beginning to walk. Huszh rose from his stump and sheathed his sword. He moved to follow her, ignoring the stare he could feel on his backside from the Nord.

Passing the Khajiit camp close to the stables and the farm which the road cut right through, the beautiful summer wilderness laid out before the pair like a sheet torn off a painting. Green trees, dewy grass, and water sparkling with the yellow morning sun further proved to Huszh why he loved Skyrim, where he grew up, and reminded Neph why she stayed in Skyrim, where she took refuge so many years ago.

Being a water-breathing Argonian was an immense advantage to Huszh when travelling, as many roads in Skyrim were accompanied by a river or a stream. There were fewer aiming to kill you in the water, though the slaughterfish were a headache he always was careful to avoid. It was almost instinctive to the pair, then, that Neph would keep to the road alongside the shore on horseback and Huszh would swim along the waters. The dark elf kept an arrow notched on her bow at all times, but the air between the two travellers was not tense. They had journeyed these roads this way many times over the years, and were well-acquainted with its dangers and wonders.

Huszh streamlined his body in the water, using his tail both as a rudder and as means to propel himself forward. His nostrils and eyes just above the surface, he scanned the hills above where Malcolm trotted for Frostbite spiders and ahead of himself, for slaughterfish.

A number of minutes later, Huszh's reptilian earholes heard a distant scuttling, followed by a whizzing. Lo and behold, a Frostbite spider had been there but Neph had seen it first and dispatched it before the arachnid saw her with a neatly placed Orcish arrow.

He treaded water while she dismounted to retrieve her arrow from the carcass, the arrowhead lodged in one of the spider's beady black eyes. Huszh chose to break their careful silence, but the words that tumbled messily from his mouth weren't the ones he wanted to say.

"So. Dragons in Skyrim…Have you seen one yet?"

"Three days ago," She recalled, using a foot braced against the spider to yank her arrow out, "I was returning to Riften from Winterhold and saw one circling a peak above me...Don't remember being that scared….You?"

"No...I was in town when the guards yelled up the Cloud District that a dragon was at the Western Watchtower a month ago," Huszh watched her climb back up onto Malcolm and he flipped onto his back, slowly paddling with his feet. "I didn't understand why the Companions didn't lift a finger to defend Whiterun…"

"Likely didn't want to get their swords wet," Neph said flatly, then amended once Huszh shot her a look. "Alright, alright... I understand that your lot are a fraternity of warriors and I respect that a great deal, but even being a good-for-nothing thief, I would have at least tried to join the effort if a dragon was trying to burn Merryfair Farm to the ground."

Huszh attempted to picture Neph in the presence of a dragon and drew his eyebrows together. She seemed so small...How did she stand a chance against something so large? An uncomfortable twinge of his stomach reminded him of another unpleasant proposition. How did he stand a chance against a dragon? Even with Neph, an outstanding marksman but a tiny thing, and he, a twin-swords specialist, going to put up a fight? It was a reality, and with the times changing even faster since he heard the Shout come from the Throat of the World...they would likely have to face it soon.

He was thankful for the trees in the Rift; if a dragon did come this far southeast, it would have a hard time finding a place to land.

"And then there's this Dragonborn running around…" Neph often liked to read his mind without realizing, and when he glanced over at her, she had her face scrunched together in thought. She used her bow to move a low-hanging branch as her stallion trotted. "A man with the soul of a dragon…"

"To think you nearly ran the poor fellow over," Huszh quipped, a smirk twisting his scaled lips.

"I did find this book the other day in the Arcaneum at the College of Winterhold - shame I didn't bring it along," The dark elf lamented as her friend snagged a spadetail fish from just below him, "All about the Dragonborn. I managed to read some of it over breakfast this morning. Went on and on about the origin of the word 'Dragonborn' and the Septims."

"Seems like something you'd read."

"Har har," Neph said lowly, "The only Septim to ever turn my gaze is kept in a rich man's purse."

The Argonian valued moments like these. Be it a thief, Companion or anyone else, the Dunmer woman was a composed, well-spoken library of knowledge. An information spitter. But with him, she showed some signs of a personality beneath the mask of indifference. A laugh here, a smile there and Huszh had hope he might help her enjoy the mannerisms of life rather than making calculations as to the why and how.

He rolled onto his stomach in the water once more, and noticed they were approaching Faldar's Tooth, seeing movement on the upper wooden balcony.

"Neph?" His voice was pure caution.

"Yes?"

"I think there's an archer at Faldar's T-" Neph heard the whizzing of an arrow, raising her bow and searching for its origin, her eyes going wide as she saw red in the water beside her. When Huszh breached the surface again, an arrow was shot in his shoulder between two plates of his armor.

The dark elf saw the archer atop the fort and fired a few warning arrows to send them down. She didn't have to miss; if she wanted to kill them, she could. But she was more concerned with Huszh's wound, preparing to wrench the reins over and lead Malcolm into the water, but Huszh shouted before she did, "Go, Neph! I'll be alright!"

She hesitated, her expression one of pure desperation. He roared again, "Run, you stupid elf!"

He slipped under the water as more arrows were fired and there was a call of "Let the wolves have them!"

"Dammit," Neph was about to dig her heels into Malcolm when the horse took off on his own, charging the oncoming wolves with squeals and grunts.

She knew this horse, and she knew he hated wolves.

She flipped around in the saddle, knowing that the snarling animals would give chase and there were still the archers on the balcony to handle. But her mind was a blur of instinct, adrenaline and worry for Huszh. She readied her bow but lost an arrow as Malcolm forcefully plowed into a wolf, running it over and trampling it with his hooves. Neph winced as she heard crunching beneath her and whining, lifting her bow to aim at the archer. The millisecond her sight lined up with the shoulder of the archer, she released. A cry of pain rewarded her ears, as she turned her next arrow upon the pursuing wolves.

Despite the constantly shifting in the saddle due to Malcolm's thunderous gait, Neph managed to put dwarven arrows into the remaining two wolves. One through the eye, the other through the spine. She rested her head back against Malcolm's chestnut mane, and felt him slow down. Hearing the ground beneath his hooves become hard stone, she realized they were on the bridge to Heartwood Mill.

"Good boy," Neph mumbled, patting her hand against his belly and the stallion snorted in response. She slid off him and rushed to the side of the bridge, anxiously scanning the murky waters for any sign of the Argonian in Lake Honrich. She called out, notes of confusion and worry in her voice, "Huszh!"

She heard a splashing behind her, and ran to the opposite side of the bridge, seeing the Argonian pulling himself ashore by a greenneedle tree.

"Nephethys!" Huszh yelled the loudest his labored lungs would allow, "Neph, where are you?"

Oh, you lucky lizard, you. A breath of relief rushing past her teeth, she swallowed hard and made for him. He was on his back, a hand going up to break off the arrow in his shoulder and his blood was trickling down from the wound, a glaring red reprimand. The wood snapped in two with little pressure from Huszh's palm, and once Neph reached him, she was ripping a strip of her cloak off to bind his wound without thinking, without speaking.

"Neph, I-"

"Shut it," Her voice was stern.

Whistling for Malcolm, the horse came straight to them. The elf quickly rummaged through the bags in the saddle, finding a jar of salt. She unscrewed the top and brought it back to her injured friend. Huszh watched her face as she compacted the salt with her fingers, "Neph, I'm sorry, I-"

At those words, she packed the salt none-too-gently into the wound, the sharp pain sending white across Huszh's vision and he uttered a rough "ow!".

"I said, shut it," The Dunmer repeated, and fastened the cloth over the wound, knotting it tightly. Once her work was done, she glared hard into Huszh's tawny eyes and growled, "You ever ask me to leave you behind again and you make it…" She stopped herself from finishing that sentence, looking away from him and rubbing a hand over her face.

"Nephethys," That got her attention, and her red-and-white eyes went to him, his face a sincere apology. He patted her shoulder, forcing a smile on his face through the pain.

She did not smile, but it was all in her eyes. She straightened from her crouch and offered him a hand to help him up. As the Argonian stood, the morning sun filtering in between the branches blinded him in the eyes and he lifted a hand to block the rays. The light turned the edges of her hair red until she pulled the hood over her face tighter.

Slowly, Malcolm nudged Neph's elbow. The elf sighed, but did not react to him. Determined, the stallion put his whole snout behind her back and shoved. She rolled her eyes and patted his nose between the nostrils to appease him, a slight smile curled her lips. Huszh glanced back to the lumber mill, where the Nord who lived there was just starting up the splitter. He also saw that the worker was casting the pair of them wary looks.

"Let's get on the main road," The Companion said, gingerly moving his wounded shoulder. "My good arm is alright enough to swing a sword, just not very hard."

"You ride Malcolm, then," She insisted, releasing her quiver from the horse's saddle and fastened it across her torso. "If you've only got one strong sword hand, you'll be able to make passes and still be effective."

Huszh didn't have the heart to argue with her, knowing that she would only become angrier with him; silently, he hoisted himself up into the saddle of her horse and nodding respectfully to the family as they were leaving their cabin, the two got onto the main road and continued west.

…

In barely comfortable silence, the two travellers and friends followed the main road westward. They did not turn for Ivarstead, as the road north around the great peak of Skyrim known as the Throat of the World was craggy and riddled with cliffs and waterfalls. Giants, bandits and bears were in abundance there as well. They would face bandits when they reached the burned settlement of Helgen, of course, but Huszh promised he had a way around that.

Neph had not spoken a word. The typical Skyrim wilderness had not thrown any additional wild cards into their way. Huszh cast a sideways look at her, watching how quiet and brisky she walked and wondering what she must be thinking under that hood. He knew why she had been upset at him...And to be honest with himself, something he usually failed at, he didn't blame her.

"There it is," The elf said hollowly, leading her horse down an unseen path to a small shack. A structure of wood and reinforced with iron, the place would weather a Skyrim storm just fine and due to the leaf-litter, trees and the fact that few knew it was here...it was virtually undetectable from anyone on the road to Helgen.

"The Alchemist's shack."

"Who?" He asked, gingerly dismounting and adjusting his trousers with visible discomfort.

"Number of years ago I found this by accident," She said, resting a hand on the shadowmark she had carved on the log that made up the left side side of the door. A square inside a circle, ladder's lines cut across it. "The dark elf that conducted research here's been dead for a while, so I repurposed it to be a safe haven for any thief on their way west...or home."

Huszh led Malcolm by the reins around back, where a small fence enclosed a garden. He tied the reins to a section of the fence so the horse may graze, but not close enough where he could have a go at the nightshade. Neph came through the shack to the outside garden, to fiddle with a leather roping above the door so high up that she stretched up on her toes. The Argonian noticed a long section of rolled-up hide, he guessed it to be, and as she got it free, it unrolled into a makeshift awning that protected the garden and Malcolm easily from the elements.

He smiled. That was the Neph he respected. She could make something, anything work from a pile of scraps. Any and all knowledge was useful, like any random piece of junk was. There were no such things as a stupid question, a useless book - She did not know useless or unsalvageable. Probably part of why she was a great thief. If she couldn't make a profit from it, she could put things together and increase its value.

"Sit," She ordered, setting up a stool for him and then picking a few ingredients from the garden. There was an alchemy lab just outside the door, and as he jumped the fence, she pulled the tops off the blisterwort. "Take the armor off."

He hesitated, staring at her with questions in his eyes. Neph rolled hers. "Huszh, I've seen it all before and we both know you're not the least bit bashful."

"I'm not," He admitted, unfastening his armor with a wince, "But in my defense, you could've knocked."

Once upon a time, the two were in Solitude dealing with separate business but staying at the same inn and enjoying the fruits of the city's many labors. The Argonian had told the elf that he was going to wash up before retiring for the night; lo and behold, when Neph heard a wood-on-wood slamming fro and went to investigate. She saw more of Argonian anatomy that night than she ever wanted to know.

Neph laughed without mirth, and ground the blisterwort with wheat until both made a plaste-like concoction. "I'm a thief. Knocking is punishable by Maven, where Mercer's concerned."

Her voice called back to him as she went into the shack for the last ingredient, "'Exclusively nocturnal professions,' He says, 'are best done in the dark and in complete silence'."

Neph returned with a large glass jar between her blue, spidery hands and inside fluttered four monarch butterflies. She gently set it down on the edge of the lab, by her mortar. She snapped her fingers. "Pay attention, trade secret." She unscrewed the jar, and careful to not crush the specimen she chose, delicately swept her fingers along the wings. Sparkling dust winked at Huszh under the light of the small fire beneath one flask of the lab. "Throwing the whole wing in is unnecessary. You're using the dust to heal, not the wing itself."

"Like when you cook, you don't throw a chunk of salt at it because it's too much?"

"Somewhat, yes." She rubbed her callused fingertips together, the dust falling into the paste at the bottom of the mortar before running her pestle through it again to distribute.

Huszh cut off the bandage from earlier, using a claw to pick out the salt and grimacing as he accidentally hit the wound itself. The dark elf heard his sudden hiss of pain, and finally came with the treatment, swatting his green-scaled hands to apply the healing paste with gentle hands. Her eyes and mind hyperfocused on the task, it took a few tries asking his question till he got an answer. He'd thought it was concentration.

"How come you know so much about alchemy? Who taught you?"

"I heard you the first time," She grumbled, adding more paste and molding it to his scales, "As you know...my father was a mage. He taught me."

"What I'm thinking is that if you know so much about specific ingredients and alternatives," He reasoned, "Your teacher must have been a master."

"He was, my father," She explained, her tone extremely guarded, "And even though he'd studied so much he could make an invisibility potion so strong you could actually be declared missing...it wasn't his best skill. He was also excellent with Destruction magic."

Huszh watched how her always steady limbs now trembled as she spoke of her family, something from her past. Truthfully, he knew only bits and pieces. An event here, a few details there. All he had pieced together is what her parents did, and that the sheer trauma of why she left her home diminished any hope she had for returning unless she wanted reminded of the inevitable: her own death. He did know that she had to leave them behind, at their request, so that she may be safe. And that was why she had gotten angry with him.

"How good with Destruction magic?" He asked after a moment. He watched her unusual eyes soften with something like regret or grief.

"...Very good."

The two were quiet for some time; it did not take long for the paste the Dunmer put on his wound to harden, as it was supposed to. It would form a protective layer over to ward off infection, and as it healed and sealed up, the paste would crack and fall away: a dissolvable bandage. The technique and recipe for this healing paste was an old method, she explained later to him, passed down along her mother's side. A very, very old method.

He could sense her nostalgia, and it turned the grayer parts of her face even grayer so. An hour later, she was to be asleep in the only bed inside the shack and Huszh was perched on the same stool just inside the front door, searching the darkness and keeping watch. Despite all her best efforts, he guessed, he could still hear sniffling from the bed. He understood her reluctance to tell him everything, even after years of knowing one another. He hadn't told her all about himself, and they figured it worked for them. They trusted each other, but not with everything, not just yet.

But they knew that they would safeguard each other, both in body and in spirit.

…

In the dazed hours between midnight and sunrise, Neph felt something being laid down beside her face. Opening her eyes, bright yellow spanned across her vision. A bouquet of yellow mountain flowers. She smiled, and closed her eyes once more.

A grin stretched across the Argonian's face as he heard her faintly say:

"Thank you, Huszh."