S'Rukoh rolled onto his back. Hod and Gerdur's house was a bit cramped with three people sleeping on the floor and the prankster, Frodnar, dropping sand in their blankets at every opportunity. A figure from the big bed at the end of the room got up and carefully stepped over the menagerie of legs and tail laying about, tiptoe-ing their way over to the hearth. They poked at the fire, added some fuel, and the light revealed Hod. He squinted toward the Khajiit, and after a bit of effort, noticed he was looking right back at him. He gave a little wave, just to make sure, and the Khajiit returned it slowly.
"Have you visited Lucan, yet, for clothes?" Hod whispered in his slow way.
"Khajiit has not. That one is at the big building, yes?"
"Yea. I've got a cloak for you until then, but I'll have to find it. Come to work at the mill for as long as you need so you can get something warmer."
Gerdur appeared in the ring of firelight. S'Rukoh had not noticed her walking over. She pulled an apron off a ring in the kitchen and pulled it on over her head. She whispered, as well. "We like to let Frodnar sleep in sometimes, he's just a little boy. But now is when the day starts in Riverwood. Let your friends sleep for a while, yet. It was a rough day, yesterday." Gerdur gestured for the cat to get up and come to her. "Come here, I'll let you help with the stew. Chop those carrots on the counter."
Hod slipped out of the door and into the dim morning light. S'Rukoh stepped up to the counter and reached out of the firelight for a proper knife. Surely the family would not want dirty claws cutting their vegetables. He cut whatever he was told, however he was told, made little stars and circles out of meat to 'make it fun for the boy.' He hauled the water, poured it in, and lugged the pot up and onto the hearth for cooking. Gerdur stood by for a while, but eventually stepped quietly around the corner, and the faint opening and closing of drawers and dresser doors could be heard. After a while of searing meat at the hearth for a meal earlier than dinner, somebody stirred in the dark.
Jori jerked up with a gasp and hit her head on something, cursing slightly. Gerdur silently appeared and helped her up, then foisted a handful of clothing into her arms with a friendly pat. The mother then quietly walked back into range of the firelight, and out the door. Jori thrust her head into the clothing and bumped into S'Rukoh blindly. He tugged her new shirt down for her with a little 'hmm' and flipped the salmon over in the pan. She danced into some long, thick pants before standing up and breathing out a 'thanks.' S'Rukoh looked her over. She looked even smaller and younger without her armor. They must have been clothes from when Gerdur was younger, as they had a few ruffles and frills. A number of scars stood out on Jori's face and neck, some long and ragged, others short or circular, breaking the illusion of a perfect youth. Despite these, her skin was still smooth, her eyes big and dark, and her hair even darker. It was uneven in places, no doubt from roughness-fights and fires would easily rip and burn long hair. She stuck her hands into her pockets and adjusted her sleeves before quietly patting the cat's shoulder and stepping out into the morning.
For a brief moment he paused, then he stepped into the dark part of the house and crouched over last night's used bathwater. He picked up a mirror and gazed into it, acute eyes letting him see more than any Nord would, at the least. He had the face of a big cat-jaguar man was not so inaccurate-with light and dark patches of fur on the red of his body. He looked down to his tail and feet, which slowly became black the further down the limb one went, a shorter, more abrupt but similar fade on his forearms. Several scars marred the expanse of the bridge above his nose, a pattern which glinted slightly in the distant firelight. He noticed something wrong, very wrong. His eyes had no pupils in the mirror's image. Not a single color interrupted the pink of his eyes, and they glowed faintly. He knew his eyes certainly were not glowing at all, as they cast no light on his paw when he raised it to his face. He frowned and set the mirror back into its box with shaky hands, and turned to finish his cooking.
The family, once all were awoken, gathered near their table for the salmon the cat had prepared. When complimented, he remarked that all else it would have needed would be a little dash of moon sugar. Gerdur stiffened, but Jori laughed. Frodnar laughed, too, even though his face betrayed he did not know what moon sugar was, or that it was associated with skooma. Ralof and his sister's family spoke freely on a lot of things-how the mill had been, whether Camilla Valerius had gotten married, if the bread oven was still working in the Sleeping Giant. At every subject Ralof widened his eyes and gave a happy laugh through a mouthful of fish, even if the topic had been proven to be the same as before he'd left. It would seem to the Khajiit that nothing ever happened in a settlement that was not nomadic-that idea was reinforced every time he visited a new place. 'But these people are not Khajiit,' he would think to himself, 'They do not have the blessed Elsweyr to walk upon.'
Not long after Ralof had exhausted every question he could about Riverwood and the goings-on, Gerdur pulled her work gloves out of her pocket and slapped them on the table. S'Rukoh startled at the motion, Jori slammed her palms down on the table, and all the rest got up and moved immediately for the door. Hod stayed behind.
"I'll get the dishes and find that cloak for you. Head down to the mill and ask Gerdur what needs doing." The cat nodded at the orders and ducked out the door. To make his arrival a little more fun, he swung up onto the roof, jumped onto the roof of the Inn across the street, and leapt to the tree out front. From there he swung onto the roof of the forge, then briefly landed on one of the two bridges to the island before jumping back up to clamber up the side of the mill and onto its platform. Somebody on the other side of the saw from him laughed, and he looked up to see that it was Gerdur.
"Khajiit wishes to work, what must be done?" He laced his fingers together over his chest.
"I need somebody big to load these trunks over here," she gestured to the pile behind her, "Into this rack" She gestured to the space between them and the curve of a wooden rack around the naked saw blade. "And then to pull this lever." She tapped it once with her gloved palm. "Over and over again. Or, at least until Hod comes out and does it." She winked and moved for the ramp off the platform. "Then you can chop smaller logs with Sven and Faendal. We'll pay you for honest work." S'Rukoh watched her go, then walked around the rack to look at the lumber.
The Khajiit had only done very small work with mills-chopping things, cleaning things, running errands. He had never done this before. He was not sure how to tell which log was good for this, and assumed that all of them were, since they were in the pile. He also did not know how to lift it properly, if there was a way. He sidled up next to one of the logs on top of the pile and hefted it onto his shoulder. He tried to drag it closer to the rack, but he only succeeded in twisting it sideways. The cat frowned. He dropped his end and moved down to roll the other closer.
"Do you need help?" It was a Bosmer voice. The cat turned. His face grew tight. It was a Bosmer, crouched on one of the posts of the fence keeping the lumber on the platform, with a little axe in his little wood elf hands and a little smile on his little wood elf face. Khajiit greater and wiser than he probably started wars with the cursed Bosmer over insults lesser than this. He stood for a moment. Still and quiet, in thought. His dead heart kept its eternal pace, his face relaxed, and his tail whipped once as he stepped back and gestured to the log with an honest smile. The Bosmer jumped off his perch and landed on the log. "You do just like you were doing, but you don't roll the other end closer. You pick it up," Faendal gestured with his arms, "then you sling it over your head so that one end of it goes into the rack. The rest should go in on its own. If it doesn't, you may need Hod to show you." The cat nodded and Faendal jumped off the log to watch him from a short distance away. S'Rukoh moved back into position, hefted it up, and slung it over his head, this time with only a slight error. One end of the log did not go completely into the rack, so the Bosmer stepped over and kicked it in. "Good job. Just keep it going, make a rhythm of it. I'm going to go back to work."
With that, he disappeared. S'Rukoh chastised himself for being so negative about Faendal. Even though he was a Bosmer, he let Tsirabhi stay in his house. He took the wolves that S'Rukoh brought with Ralof and Jori yesterday. He gave honest directions. Though a bit suspicious, the Khajiit made a resolution not to react so badly to one little Bosmer.
After some time of slinging logs into line and dooming them to the blade with the pull of lever, the Khajiit grew sore and tired. Even with his strength and physique, it was a hard job. Hod appeared at the ramp with a little whistle. The cat turned to greet him with a little wave.
"I found that cloak for you. It's not much, and it's got a hole here and there, but if you use that little pin and slip your arms through these slits here, it should stay on alright." Hod handed it over and S'Rukoh put it on quickly with a nod. "You'll have to ask Lucan about proper pants and underclothes. You're just a bit big for our closets, is all." Hod walked to the end of the platform, slow as always, and peered down at the pile of sawn lumber. He walked back with a broad smile. "That's a lot for one morning. Be a good lad, go chop logs. There's an axe…" He thought momentarily before gesturing over the side of the platform toward the fishing platform.
S'Rukoh leapt down and found an axe laying on a table. There were many, many piles of unchopped logs, and he looked around for where he was supposed to be working. He walked upriver on the island, toward a shack at the very tip. There was a stump and piles of cut and uncut logs. He took to his work quickly and set a pace to work at. After a long time, a little old furless person stepped out onto the porch of the shack he was working in front of, and started cleaning fish next to him. He looked up occasionally, around, at the person or the shack, up the river, down the river. He took in deep breaths and found Riverwood to be simply beautiful. He smiled and increased his pace of work. He could have died. Well, he could have died many times, yesterday, or even in the days before that. He could have died on the mountains. He could have died being captured. He could have died on the long, bloodless ride to Helgen. His musings on how weak he truly was lasted until nightfall. The wood elf tugged on the cloak as the cat lifted his axe to cleave a log. He whirled to look, but dropped his weapon.
"Tsirabhi is down by the bridge again. Don't keep her waiting after you get paid." The Bosmer jingled a little brown bag about, septims clinking inside, then walked toward the bridge and his home on the other end of town.
Gerdur approached, clapping people on their shoulders and passing out septims out of a big bag. She came up to the Khajiit and counted the piles of wood he pointed out as his own. She opened up the pocket on the cloak and counted out two hundred and fifty septims, in little bags with painted labels, and dropped them in. "There's a good lad. The stew should be done soon if you're hungry. Don't forget to see Lucan about some pants sometime. I hate to see a friend in holey rags in Skyrim, of all places." She gave him a little pat to his elbow and walked off to do one more round of checking the mill.
The walk to the bridge was a short, uninterrupted one. Tsirabhi was waiting in eir chair, with a bag on the ground in front of eir paws. Ey reached up toward his cloak and closed eir fingers twice. He slipped out of the dark garment, taking his gold out of the pocket and handed it to em. "This will not do for such a pretty cat. Open this bag and bring this one scissors."
S'Rukoh sat down next to the wooden chair and held the bag open within reach of the dagi. Ey did most of eir cutting and sewing by magic, faint purple glows around the items ey controlled. The red cat didn't watch very closely. He trusted Tsirabhi enough not to ruin it, at the least. His eyes looked down the river, a steep and trecherous path, then across it. Several trees and a stone path led up the hill to the mountain.
"Does Tsirabhi know where 'Whiterun' is?"
"Ey do! It is downriver, across a north bridge. It has many farms outside the walls and is very hard to miss if one stays on that road." Ey looked over at him. "But if a big Khajiit were to turn onto the rightmost bridge, instead of the one ahead, he could creep through the rocks and find places where bandits sleep, to take their secrets."
"Does dagi have a map of Skyrim?"
"Ey do!" Ey fished in their little bag, but retracted eir paw slowly, empty. "But cathay-raht will take Tsirabhi to Anise, first. No disappearing!"
"This one will take you to see Anise… but where is Anise?"
"Upriver, on the northwestern bank. Anise was fool enough to tell Tsirabhi where she was going before she left without em!" The dagi's dark paw went back into the bag, and came out with a deep red fluid in a glass bottle. "This is a present. This one promised it."
S'Rukoh held the bag in one hand and looked over the bottle. It was sealed tight and filled to the brim. "Potions do not agree with this one, Tsirabhi, but Khajiit thanks you."
"It is not a potion. Tsirabhi knows a secret about S'Rukoh, remember? Take the others out of the bag, budiit must work."
His ears perked and he smiled. "Is dagi really a budiit?"
"Ey was. This one stepped out of the forest often to make and sell budi and scarves and pretty things." Ey looked up at the big red cat. "But ey never went to the desert. Khajiit should have."
"Yes, Khajiit should have. The desert is… oh it is the loveliest place S'Rukoh has ever seen. The warm sands, the chilly nights, all of the slarjei leaving trails through the dunes." S'Rukoh lifted his free hand to gesture his fondest memories. "Best of all are the Khajiit. S'Rukoh was born in the desert to M'Neji, with one of the greatest Clan Mothers. He knows every story and remembers every kitten, this one does. The clan itself is special out of all Khajiit-we have the finest slarjei and the best acrobats and the most wonderful secrets and stories."
"What was it like, with slarjei? Camels? Are they big? Drink one of your presents!" Tsirabhi asked quietly.
"Slarjei are very big to most Khajiit. They are only a bit big to this one, and little to senche-raht. They are brown and rough-skinned, with great humps on their backs. They can walk the whole desert without drinking a drop, this one thinks. He has read books about what others do with camels, but to Khajiit's family they were food and shelter and tradegoods. Our tents were made of their hides, our food was made of their muscles. Our kittens rode on their backs." He uncorked one of the dark red bottles and his eyes went wide as the scent of blood met his nose. It wasn't exactly warm, but it was just as appetizing as always. "Khajiit only lived in deserts of Elsweyr for twenty years before something bad happened and S'Rukoh had to go."
The dagi looked over to him with eir yellow eyes. "Drink, drink. Tsirabhi knows bad things, too. When this one was little, ey could only climb with some of eir fingers. Sometimes, things would catch on fire or float away because of little Tsirabhi. Ey were not the favorite kitten to play with and feed." Tsirabhi turned eir work about in the air with magic and dropped eir scissors and sewing supplies back into the bag. S'Rukoh tilted the bottle against his lips and drank it dry. "Sometimes, eir tribe would leave em behind when spiders or Bosmer or centipedes came to take food. But this one survived every time."
S'Rukoh sat the bottle down on the edge of the bridge and frowned. His ears pressed back and he set the bag down. Tsirabhi used eir magic to fling the finished budi onto his face. It still had holes here and there, but it was a proper budi, with the braid up the right side and the loose fit. "S'Rukoh wonders why Khajiit would be so cruel to one another. Kittens cannot help what makes them… them."
"Tsirabhi knows. Tsirabhi was a waste of food, always sick, always hurting. But ey knows better, now. This one is stronger without a weak clan like that, so willing to turn on one of its own." Ey watched as S'Rukoh tucked the little bags of gold back in the pockets, then pulled it on over his head. "Budi looks good on cathay-raht. Dark colors make his fur stand out."
"Sometimes S'Rukoh wonders if all of his clan would take him back if he came, or if they would know about… the blood problem." He frowned. "This one always knew them to be wonderful and loving and clever… but if other Khajiit can do wrong… maybe they were never really perfect."
"Nothing is perfect unless one accepts every one of its problems as a part of the thing." Tsirabhi waved eir hand and picked up eir bag. "Tsirabhi is perfect, even if poor and battered. Maybe S'Rukoh is perfect, too." The wheelchair moved back a foot and turned to move down the bridge toward town. The dagi left the clothed cat on the bridge in quietude.