The gate was without doors, a short stone wall with a wooden walkway on the top. It stretched between the river and the slopes of a rocky, misted mountain. The river grew wide off to the left before being split by a green island dominated by the huge trunks of felled trees. Thatched roofs poked out over the top of the gate, and figures could be seen moving in the street. The town was primarily located at the axis of two paths, the first parallel to the river and housing the inn and general goods store to the southerly side of the street, and the forge on the opposite side. The second street, running perpendicular to the river, had homes past the stores, and little wooden bridges leading to the island of the mill to either side of the forge.
The three approached the gate, and a small, shaded figure separated itself from the stone. "Ralof?" It was certainly a Bosmer's voice, and a Bosmer's self-centered stance, and a Bosmer's tone of honest surprise.
Ralof threw his wolf down at the mer's feet. "We've brought some wolves for you, hunter. Take care of these while I go talk to my sister." The mer cocked his head and looked over the Nord's two dirty, ragged companions with his brows knit up and his nose wrinkled.
"If you say so." He took the two corpses from the Khajiit before lugging them off toward the southerly road. Perhaps he was not so bad.
"It looks like nobody else knows what happened, yet. We'd better find Gerdur at the mill."
An old woman cried out and threw her shoe at, no doubt, her son. "A dragon! I saw a dragon!" Her porch was tucked away under the thatched roof of the town wall, attached to a little hut squeezed between the stone of the general store and that of the wall. Her target picked up the shoe and stepped over slowly, chastising his mother quietly. Jori and S'Rukoh took this opportunity to rush Ralof as they stepped up onto the rickety boards of a bridge, walking over the gushing water before stepping foot on mossy, soft earth.
The mill was tall, and by far the cleanest, most maintained building they'd seen yet. Various people walked back and forth between stacks of chopped logs and hulking, untouched trunks. A few houses graced the northern shore of the river, connected to the island by little bridges, twins to the ones the group had walked over on. A long-haired head bobbed up on the tallest platform of the mill, loading one of the largest trunks onto a rack and pulling a lever. The buzz of a saw echoed across the little niche between mountains as the trunk disappeared, sliding out of view down the platform. Ralof seemed to know his way around, turning at the far side of the mill and walking close to the stones to stay out of the way of the various worktables and log-laden citizens of the town. As he drew close to the end of the mill, he called out his sister's name twice, yelling, then once, as he found her.
The island opened up onto a little clearing, the stump of a huge tree and a slim, still-living cousin next to it on the northerly side of the island. A platform jutted out over the river and a person sat atop it, fishing. Gerdur swayed into view as she twirled with Ralof in a hug. "It's a blessing from Mother Mara… but are you sure it is safe for you here? I heard about Ulfric-"
"Gerdur…" He turned and gestured toward the Khajiit and the girl. "I'm fine. At least, now I am."
"Are you hurt? What's happened? Who are they?" Gerdur spoke quietly and slowly, looking the two over. "These must be your comrades?"
"Not comrades, but my friends. I owe them my life." Ralof held Gerdur's arms gently, and ducked his head to look around. "Is there somewhere we can talk? There's no telling when news from Helgen will reach the imperials."
Gerdur stiffened. "Helgen? Has something…" She turned and gestured to the stump behind them. "You're right. Follow me." The tall, blonde woman then clapped her heavy work gloves together and summoned her husband with a shout. "Hod! Come here a minute, I need your help with something."
The long-haired shadow swung by the end pillar of the mill to hang a foot from the edge of the platform. "What is it, woman?" He brought his free hand up to his hair, then to his big gut, "Ralof? What are you doing here? I'll be right down." Hod disappeared back into the mill.
The Khajiit stood between the stump and the tree, looking at a little shack on the northern shore. Ralof talked behind him, tuned out. Jori stepped up beside him and dropped a rock in the water. A dog burst between them, walking out into the water and beating them with its tail. They turned to see a child walking away over the bridge, and were sprayed with water as the dog gave chase. Hod arrived on the scene, scrubbing his face with his dirty white shirt.
"Ralof, what's going on? You three look pretty done in." Hod's voice was slow, unhurried.
"I don't know when I last slept." Ralof rubbed his face. "Where to start… The news about Ulfric being captured was true-we were ambushed outside of Darkwater Crossing and these two were already in the imperials' cart. We stopped in Helgen this morning, and I thought it was all over. Had us lined up at the headsman's block and ready to start chopping." Jori nodded and sat down on the stump, patting the area beside her, which Ralof took as an invitation to sit down. He frowned and pursed his lips momentarily. "They were going to kill Ulfric, and all of us, without a trial." Jori patted his leg twice. "And then… at the last possible moment… a dragon attacked Helgen."
Gerdur shifted to stand with her weight in one hip. "You can't possibly mean a real, live…"
"We were there, and we can hardly believe it. If it weren't for that dragon, we wouldn't have been able to slip away. Funnily enough, it saved our lives…" He froze momentarily. "Are we really the first to make it to Riverwood?"
"Nobody else has come up the south road, today, as far as I know." Gerdur hugged herself slightly, and Hod stepped over to hold her with one long arm.
"Good. Maybe we can lay up for a while. I hate to put your family in danger, Gerdur…"
"Nonsense. You and your friends are welcome to stay here as long as you need to. Let me worry about the imperials." Gerdur gave a warm smile and approached Ralof for a hug, then turned to face S'Rukoh and Jori. "Any friend of Ralof's is a friend of mine." She slipped off her left glove and fished about in her apron before pulling out a key. "Here's the key to the house. If there's anything else you need, let me know."
Jori raised her hand slightly before shyly asking, "Do you think you have any clothes that might fit me?"
Gerdur looked the three over. "Maybe not the big one… but you I can take care of. We'll get you a bath once we get in the house." She stood back slightly and raised her hands. "There is something you could do for me, all of us here. The Jarl needs to know if there is a dragon on the loose. Riverwood is defenseless. I need one or both or all of you to send word to Jarl Balgruuf to send any troops he can. If you can do that, I will be in your debt."
"Thanks, sister. I knew I could count on you." Ralof reached up for another embrace from his sibling, and received a tight one-armed hug.
"I ought to get back to work before I'm missed… did anybody else escape? Jarl Ulfric?"
Ralof gave a little laugh. "Don't worry, I'm sure he made it out. It will take more than a dragon to stop Ulfric Stormcloak."
"I'll show them to the house, where everything is." Hod nodded quietly.
"You mean help them drink up our mead?" Gerdur giggled and hugged her husband before walking toward the mill, backward at times to look back on them.
Hod turned, quiet again, and walked back across the bridge, glancing back every now and again. His face had a somewhat permanent look of surprise, eyebrows raised ever so slightly, and forehead lined with age. He was a big, strong Nord, at least the size of a cathay and at least a tenth as furry, with a bushy moustache and hair sloppily pulled into a ponytail. His hair was snowy, perhaps it was just that light, perhaps it was a mix of grey and blonde. They passed the forge, and the child and dog had found a little girl to play with on the main street, darting back and forth and hiding from one another. They took the road between the inn and the general goods store, passing a house with a small farm to the left. A little dirt path behind the general goods store led to two well-lit shacks behind the largest he'd seen yet in the village. Hod gestured to the house over the short fence. An ox and several chickens meandered about in the yard, pulling at thistles. Hod opened the door and stood aside, motioning for the Khajiit to duck as he approached.
The house was an unbroken room, an L-shaped home whose entrance opened right onto the hearth and kitchen. A table for four stood off to the left, the other side of it a lightly-decorated wall. The cottage stretched off to the right, then curved. The kitchen broke off into a small storage area with a slim bed at the end of the hall-like home, and walking around the corner with Hod led to a small bar and table, and the couple's bed behind it at the wall. Hod reached up for a big, rounded tub on top of a wardrobe, hauling it down and passing it to Ralof, who passed it to Jori, who passed it to S'Rukoh.
"For the bath."
S'Rukoh perked his ears then ducked back out the door. He walked slowly down the street, tail whipping and feeling altogether too naked in nothing but ragged, burned pants and a shirt so ripped it only hung from one shoulder. It wasn't that he felt ugly or helpless, but more out of his cultural need for clothing. It was disgraceful for the bipedal Khajiit to be seen bare-chested, or without a proper budi on their naked body. A budi was essentially a shirt so common that tailors in Elsweyr were called budiit, those who budi. Budis were typically made like a poncho or loose-fitting shirt with short sleeves and a braid up the right side of the torso. Some cats were fashionable, and embroidered their budi, some wore the braid on the side that had the strongest hand. Some wore budi without sleeves, or very tight on the body, or with a hood. S'Rukoh missed most of all the bright colors and soft fabrics. He remembered very distinctly his first budi, as a young kitten. He was the biggest and the fastest kitten, but he would hide the smaller kittens under his budi to 'keep them warm,' his mother had told him when he was older. He asked for longer and roomier budi until the kittens were big enough to crawl out. His mother, M'Neji, was kind and sewed a new section onto his blue budi each time he asked, until it was essentially a dress of many stripes of color. They were not the richest tribe, so S'Rukoh wore that budi until his shoulders were so big they burst out of it. The big red cat shook himself from his happy day dreaming and realized he had barely moved fifteen feet from Gerdur's front door. He stood outside the fencing, near the dirt path to the other houses.
"Out of the way, please, this one needs through!" A little gravelly voice spoke up, and the cathay-raht bounced off the path and turned to face it. It was a dagi, some of the smallest bipedal Khajiit, and an even better climber than cathay-raht. This particular dagi was tiny and dark-furred, with big fluffy white eyebrows over mismatched yellow eyes. Ey were in a little wheelchair, gloved paws reaching down over the armrests to wheel emself down the dirt path. "Tsirabhi thanks you, big cat." S'Rukoh clutched the bucket to his chest in an attempt to cover himself. The wheelchair creaked down the path, then bumped down the stairs onto the main road. He had seen such a thing once before, under the body of a rich merchant, trading hundreds of camels at a time. He smiled faintly as he followed Tsirabhi down the road, headed past the inn and out of a gate similar to the one he had come in on.
"Khajiit knows you follow em, big red cat. What does that one want?" Tsirabhi called over eir shoulder. S'Rukoh froze. Tsirabhi wheeled emself up onto the stone bridge spanning the river and stopped in the center, turning to face the town. He stepped back to move away. "This one is not offended… ey just want to know why you follow em."
"Khajiit… has not seen his own kind since coming to Skyrim. It is always a pleasure to see another cat. But this one is of the sands… and thinks perhaps Tsirabhi is of the trees and forests?"
"Ey are." Tsirabhi turned in eir chair with a groan to look up at the cathay-raht. "Fill up your bucket. This one will not stop the busy cat."
S'Rukoh tiptoed away and around the side of the bridge to the riverbank, ducking to fill the bucket with a swoop. There was some charge in the air, something strong and domineering… and very purple. The bucket was pulled out of his hands and moved to hover about three feet above the stone walkway of the bridge. "Tsirabhi… thinks that this is for em, right now." A fire spontaneously formed below the bucket, and the big cathay-raht leaned forward and tried to hide against the railing, eyes wide and ears flicked back. "Ey know something about you that the rest of the town should not know." The wheelchair creaked audibly and Tsirabhi slowly rolled into view at the end of the bridge. "Khajiit is no pushover, or a tired little kitten. Ey will use that knowledge against you." Eir head turned abruptly to stare him down. His tail whipped once then stuck straight up in the air as a sign of social supplication. He crawled up over the railing to lay low against the stone, big pink eyes focused on the dagi. The fire disappeared with a little crackle and the bucket descended. "Faendal does not believe in baths." Ey peeled out of their dirty scarf and gloves, then out of a dark red shirt that was revealed to be budi. "Cathay-raht will lift this one up and put em in the bath. Carefully."
He did so, cradling em in his hands and laying em into the bucket. Ey was very, very small, much shorter than the Nords the bucket was designed for. "Tsirabhi could have just asked S'Rukoh." His tail whipped slightly in the air as the dagi cleaned emself. "Faendal?"
"The Bosmer. He lets this one sleep in his house when he is in the woods. It is kinder than the rest of this town has been." Ey sloshed some of the water over eir face and choked. "Pull Tsirabhi up please, S'Rukoh." He leaned forward and gently set the Khajiit a bit more upright in the bucket. "Ey… apologize. It has been a long time since this one has been able to ask, 'that one do this, that one do that' and actually be appeased. Anise moved upriver years ago and did not take Tsirabhi with her."
"S'Rukoh does not know Anise. How long has Tsirabhi… been like this?" The bigger cat slowly lowered his tail and perked his ears.
Ey looked up at him with a snarl. "This one was born like this, you see! It is not a dishonor to hurt and jerk around and be bound to the back of another." S'Rukoh raised his palms to calm em. "It is a dishonor when others do not respect Tsirabhi, when they think em weak, when they baby this one." Ey slashed at the water and hissed. "Khajiit has showed you what ey can do. Take Tsirabhi to see Anise in her cabin this week. When dagi is ready, you will know." The little black cat pulled emself out of the bucket, and S'Rukoh jumped to pull off his dirty shirt to dry em with. He still moved jerkily out of fear, and shook slightly, but was no longer bent over or actively supplicating himself.
"S'Rukoh must ask, how will he know? Magic?" Ey swatted his shirt away when ey were done drying, sitting back up in the chair and pulling eir clothes back on to ward off the night.
"That is secret. Take your bucket back." Tsirabhi waited for him to pick up the bucket, then wheeled past him back onto the road. "And S'Rukoh?"
"Yes, dagi?" He dumped the bucket out over the side of the bridge and walked a bit upstream to collect more water.
"This one thanks you. Meet em again tomorrow night, Tsirabhi will have a present… for the bonsamu." Ey disappeared under the gate. By the time S'Rukoh collected the water and moved back up the cobbled roads to Gerdur's house, it was dark. Jori stood outside with Gerdur in the yard, the door open to the crackling hearth. The Khajiit respectfully placed the bucket off to the side of the door and waited as they scooped some of it out into pans to boil. The physical memory of the charged air stayed with him, nagging at his whiskers and causing the fur on his back to bristle.