Madness
3. No One Seems to Hear
They call her Mad Martina, and she wanders the streets of Bravil.
That isn't her real name, of course, "Mad Martina." They call her after the last of the Septims, the bastard one, the one whose two-minute reign and grand apotheosis heralded the end of the Empire. That was so many years ago now that nobody alive remembers it. Not even Mad Martina remembers it. But she's so incredibly old, and the rumors say she was alive when all of it happened, so people call her Martina. Nobody knows her real name. Not even Mad Martina knows her real name.
As for the other part, well, she's mad.
A lot of beggars were beggared in the last three-quarters of a century since the Oblivion Crisis, and Bravil has always been an asylum for them. Even more so now, as it's got good thick walls around it, and anybody with any sense these days holes up in a walled city. In any case, Bravil is full of beggars, and full of old beggars. Two things make Martina stand out amongst the rest: first, she's older than all the other old beggars -- and looks it -- and second, she never asks for money.
She found her way in here about three years ago, her skin sunbrowned and wrinkled, tough and thick and taut, stretched over her bones like old leather. At first she didn't do much. Didn't speak. Just wandered around, gaze fixed piteously into thin air. Sometimes people would spot her rummaging around under houses, or splashing around in the filthy water, or examining the stones in the city wall.
Eventually, she must have run out of places to search, because she has since turned her attention away from Bravil and now instead focuses on the people in it. She approaches you hesitantly, almost regretfully, and in a hush of a voice she asks, "Please, child, please -- have you seen it? Have you seen the door? Please tell me where to find the door."
Of course no one ever has an answer.
Like most beggars, she lives a simple existence. She eats what she can, sleeps when she can, makes her rounds through town to fill the gaps in between. The other beggars protect her, take care of her. As they would take care of a grandmother. As they would protect a child.
Sometimes people come and give her trouble. The Terentius boys, mostly. The Terentius boys are that way with everyone, sons of the rich and powerful set loose in a poor, powerless world. And as the poorest of the poor, Martina makes a good target.
But the other beggars stand by for her. They drive away the Terentius boys, the army of beggars, brandishing fists and rocks. And people learn not to pick at her, the poor thing. She never hurts anyone, just stares and sleeps mostly, sometimes toys with a ring she keeps in her pocket, and asks for the door once in a while.
One night, in her sleep, she finds it.
A/N: Sorry about the wait and shortness, I have a fat paper of fatty fatness due this week and school comes first, I'm afraid. :(
On the plus side, you get two chapters for the price of one, so yay for this.
Change to present tense here might be random and/or uncalled for, but I felt like it fit.