The Best Pancakes in Cyrodiil

The walk to Chorrol was silent for the most part, the only sounds coming from tiny chirping insects, the growls of the women's empty stomachs and the occasional stream that seemed to chortle at them as they walked by. Taking advantage of the quiet, Shadowmere contemplated all that Saeana had told her about her imprisonment and subsequent escape. Despite all the crimes and unlawful acts she had committed, Shadowmere had never spent a day in prison, though she considered the time she spent in Tavrel's house a worse form of incarceration than could ever have been imposed on her by the guards and legions. Tavrel let her go to the river, but other than that she was trapped inside a dark, dank house, given only a small pallet next to the fireplace and never enough to eat. She would have had nothing to complain about, if that had been the worst of her treatment in Tavrel's domestic penitentiary, but though she no longer had the scars as evidence, the memories of his brutality were still as fresh in her mind as the days on which they had happened. The outrage she had felt as Ilura watched while Tavrel beat and rape her was mixed with the feelings of helplessness as she remembered witnessing Ilura suffer the same indignations made a shudder run along her spine in the blistering heat.

"What was that?" Saeana's voice jerked Shadowmere out of her waking nightmare, a welcome change, as her memories only seemed to bring her more pain.

"Nothing," she lied fluidly. It didn't seem like the right time, if there ever was one, to reveal the secrets of her distressing past. The sounds of the insects and stomach grumblings overtook the conversation again, and Shadowmere was left alone once again with her thoughts, which inexplicably drifted toward the closest thing she'd ever had to a mother.

Ilura. She hadn't really thought of her since the last time she had seen her; her thin, sullen face etched with shock and horror and joy as Shadowmere took the freedom that had been so long denied to them both. Though she hadn't been able to stop Tavrel from inflicting his will upon her, Ilura had always been there after the fact to help her heal the wounds and stop the bleeding. How had she forgotten her? Why hadn't she ever gone back for her? The answer was less complicated than Shadowmere had thought; she had been a horse, her life not her own. There had been no way for her to go on any kind of a rescue mission.

"Except between ages fifteen and twenty." Her thought was a bilious ulcer in her brain. There had been a five year gap between when she had run away and her transformation; she could have gone back for her. Perhaps that would have changed things; perhaps she wouldn't have embarked on the murderous streak that had only ended when Hannibal Traven came into her life. Perhaps if Ilura had been there, they could have made their way in a legitimate fashion; they could have had a small settlement, living as mother and daughter, with a small farm or something. The idea was almost banal enough to put Shadowmere to sleep on the spot and she knew that life, while far more pleasant, wasn't one she could have lived. "But at least Ilura would have been safe."

Her time to dwell on the past was cut short as the great oaken gates of Chorrol opened, the blue crest of an oak tree parting, and Shadowmere and Saeana went through. Shadowmere had never been in Chorrol before and was somewhat charmed by the provincial surroundings. To her far left, beyond a stone fence and small field of grass, there were several small bungalows arranged in a circle at the bottom of a hill. Up the road from the bungalows were several nicer looking houses which led to the chapel, the mere sight of which made Shadowmere roll her eyes. Coming down a slight slope toward the gate where the two women stood were a few establishments, an inn and a dry goods store from what Shadowmere could make out of the signs. Straight ahead of Saeana and Shadowmere was a statue of a woman holding a dying man and up yet another hill was a smith shop and several very large, well built houses. To Shadowmere's right, on surprisingly flat land, was a path leading toward the castle and a small, rickety building with a faded, weather-worn sign that read "The Grey Mare".

"This alright for breakfast?" she asked, motioning toward the run-down looking building to Saeana. She gave a curt nod, evidently still holding a grudge over the morning's events. "It was just rice," she thought bitterly, pushing open the rickety door to the tavern.

The interior was adorned with all the trappings of a small, disheveled bar, yet there was something there that lent a feeling of individuality to an otherwise indistinct establishment. To their right were a few tables where patrons sat eating, drinking or otherwise keeping to themselves. An Altmer woman, who if she had been standing would have been a good six inches taller than Shadowmere, sat at one table, reading a thick tome filled with indecipherable glyphs. In the corner a blond Breton man who, despite the time of morning, seemed to already be drunk as he danced with an invisible partner. At Shadowmere's entrance, he stopped for a moment and whistled.

"Damn!" he hooted, apparently forgetting about his partner. "Where's your clothes, lady?!" Shadowmere looked down at her nearly bare body and shrugged.

"I knew I forgot something," she said, feeling a little exposed, despite all her confidence. Still, after spending so much of her life wearing far less than this, it was hard to feel really embarrassed.

"Can I help you ladies?" The proprietress called from behind the bar. She was a Nord, with pale skin that seemed to give off a light of its own, eyes the same azure as Shadowmere's skin, and hair the color of fresh-cut hay. While not as tall as the Altmer patron, she made up the difference in build; she had a strong frame which was accented by well-developed muscles. Yet, the woman was hardly unattractive, in fact her face reminded Shadowmere of one of the stained glass windows of Mara in the chapels.

"What do you have?" Saeana asked, sitting at one of the tables. "Preferably something other than rice." Shadowmere didn't know whether Saeana had seen the vile, congealed blob in the bottom of their cooking pot, but the specific nature of her inquiry indicated that she had. She wasn't surprised to find she also thought the idea of rice was altogether unappealing.

"Barley, bear, beef, boar, chicken, eggs, mutton; you name it I've probably got it and can cook it," the woman said, polishing a glass, the muscles in her forearms rippling with the movement.

"Ham and eggs?" Saeana asked, the woman nodding in response. "Do you have coffee?" The proprietress nodded once more, jotting Saeana's order down on a piece of scrap paper.

"And you?" she asked, looking to Shadowmere, whose stomach still contemplated the prospect of a meal she didn't have to cook in a sooty pot over a smoldering fire.

"Steak, eggs, toast with blackberry jam, pancakes, hash browns and coffee," Shadowmere said quickly, taking a seat next to Saeana. She hadn't had a real breakfast in weeks and it seemed only proper that she take full advantage of the inn's abounding larder. The woman raised an eyebrow as she quickly wrote the order on her scrap paper. "She probably thinks I eat like a horse," Shadowmere thought with amusement, the irony not lost on her.

"Be back in a second," the woman said, hurrying out the door. Since she didn't see a stove or cooking utensils anywhere, Shadowmere had to assume that the kitchen was in a separate building. Left alone with Saeana once again, she ran her brain through a sieve, looking for any bit of debris that might bring something in the way of civilized conversation to the table. Thus far she had yet to pan anything more than a nugget of pyrite. She sighed heavily as her friend examined her fingernails with an inordinate amount of attention, examining each cuticle, each chip and each molecule of dirt as though it was of life-changing importance. It was what she did when she was avoiding Shadowmere, or just in an altogether foul mood. Shadowmere wanted to fight through the tension until the solution presented itself, which was in direct opposition to Saeana wanted to do.

"You're not going to talk to me now?" she muttered, not wanting to draw attention to their table. Saeana looked at her fully for the first time since they left their camp, though her seething expression made Shadowmere's ass clench tighter.

"I think I've said what needs to be said," she sneered. "As have you. You won, we're going to the priory, now just let me be for awhile alright?" Shadowmere rolled her eyes, but said nothing, as Saeana requested. Despite all the hugging and displays of affection after their encounter with the daedra, Saeana had once again slipped back into the mentality of a cranky child.

"What the hell is her problem?" she ruminated, a dour expression fixed on her face. She knew the errand was little more than a courier service, but the fact that it involved the Emperor's amulet elevated its significance. What they were doing was something that could mean something to the people of Cyrodiil, rather than just being beneficial to themselves.

Then again, Shadowmere could see where Saeana was coming from; for them to ever be associated with the Amulet of Kings meant that people would hear about them. It meant they would lose their obscurity, lose the comfort of anonymity. People would recognize them, their names would be known, judgments would be made and rumors would be started.

"It's just delivering a piece of jewelry to a group of monks," Shadowmere said, making sure she kept her voice low as she downplayed the significance of their job. "It's not as though it's a difficult task."

"But it's never just that simple!" Though she remembered at the last minute to lower her voice, Saeana's tone was like that of a condemned woman issuing her last pleas. "Do you really think those monks aren't going to ask us to go and find this lost heir or whatever he is?"

"So we take another detour on our never-ending sojourn to nowhere, who cares?" Shadowmere retorted, furrowing her eyebrows. "It's not like we're in a hurry or anything."

"And then, once we go to find that guy, what do you suppose we'll have to do next? Maybe he won't believe us, and we'll have to find proof that he is who he is. And oh, by the way, the Emperor was assassinated! His sons were assassinated! Don't you think there's a slight chance assassins might come after this guy too, if they haven't already?"

"I thought you wanted a shot at them?" Shadowmere reminded Saeana of her words back at the camp. "Isn't that why you joined the Brotherhood." Saeana's eyes widened and she looked as though she had just been pushed and was teetering on a rock, about to fall into the icy pond again.

"Well, it's out of my system now," she sputtered, turning her eyes away from Shadowmere. "I don't want to kill anyone anymore." Shadowmere wanted to strike her, violently.

"You're the Listener, and you don't want to kill?" she asked, her voice squeaking with how hard she had to try to keep from shouting.

"You said it yourself; I'm a paper pusher," Saeana reminded her harshly, a snide look on her face. "I haven't killed for them since I was promoted. I talk to Arquen, tell her who needs killing and smack some people around to make sure I'm still respected in the sanctuary. I don't want any more connections, I just want to be left alone, and doing this little errand is NOT a good way to get what I want." Shadowmere had had enough.

"So give it to me," she snapped. Shadowmere disliked this whiney, 'woe-is-me' side that Saeana was showing. It was childish and inane and altogether intolerable. Shadowmere knew it had been her experiences in another body that had given her an inordinate amount of time to acquire the wisdom that now made so much sense to her; Saeana hadn't been given that opportunity. Yet this wasn't secret knowledge and it wasn't as though Saeana was a child; how had she not learned to grow up by now? "Give me the amulet. I'll take it to the monks so you can lose your connection to me and you can go back to wandering until someone finds your body by the side of the road and buries you in a shallow, unmarked grave." A sudden image of Hannibal Traven's black mare lying dead, her throat slashed by Shadowmere's hand, flashed through her mind, the memory making her chest feel heavy. "It really turns out well for you doesn't it?" she spat under her breath.

If Shadowmere had been expecting to see the hurt in Saeana's eyes she still might have been surprised by its intensity. Her expression would have been the same if Shadowmere had abandoned her by the side of the road with a tattered doll. Shadowmere didn't know how to feel, other than her initial surprise. She was glad that Saeana had at least listened to her, but despite the fact that she had just been furious with her, she didn't like knowing that she had upset her.

"I didn't mean that I didn't want you with me," Saeana murmured penitently, looking down at the table. Feeling upset that she had lost her temper, Shadowmere sighed.

"I know, but come on," she scolded softly. "Do you really think expecting to live your life without having some contact with the rest of the world is realistic? Even when I was a horse I had connections with people. I had more to do with people as an animal than as a person, and the interactions were certainly healthier; for them, if not for me."

"I've tried to be a decent person," Saeana said, her face tight with aggravation. "And you know what happened? I was disowned by my family, forced out of my homeland and thrown in prison!"

"Which led to you meeting the Emperor, which led to you being in possession of the Amulet of Kings." Shadowmere was losing her will to accommodate Saeana's shortsightedness. Though she wanted to delve deeper into the reasons behind Saeana's exile, questioning her past would only give her a desired excuse to change the subject. "Your being thrown in jail means that you get to play a part in history, you stupid ass! You'll be the one people talk about when they talk about the person who was chosen by the Emperor and returned the Amulet of Kings and helped find the heir to the Imperial bloodline!" Saeana crossed her arms and leaned on the table, resting her forehead on her forearms.

"This is why don't want to talk to you right now." Though the sound was muffled, her words were clear as they traveled through flesh and wood to reach Shadowmere's elongated ears.

"Why? Because you can't think of a decent argument because you're an idiot?" Slumping back in her chair, Shadowmere closed her eyes, keeping her newer thoughts to herself. As much as she hated the silence between the two of them, she didn't think filling it with angry and spiteful words would be any sort of an improvement.

Looking around the inn, she amused herself with watching all the other patrons. The Altmer woman had closed her book and gone and had been replaced by a white haired old man who bore a worried expression on his face as he walked behind the bar and thoughtlessly filled his tankard before sitting at a table. The drunk in the corner had retired from his dance and was settled at the table, humming as he played an imaginary piano with one hand and drinking from a tankard with the other.

"Flyin'! Flyin' in the sky!" His sudden burst into song made Saeana jump and Shadowmere raise her eyebrows. "Cliff racers fly so high! Flyin'!" Shadowmere couldn't help but chortle at the ridiculousness of the song. "Hey!" the drunk yelled over to her. "Hey!" Getting the impression she would regret her actions either way, Shadowmere slowly turned around.

"You need something?" Shadowmere asked, amused at the fact that she had managed to gather the man's attention when he had been fairly oblivious to just about all his other surroundings.

"Yeah…why're you laughing?" His indignance was obvious, despite being accented by slurred words. "I'm expressing the ma-jesty of the cliff racers through song, i's not funny!" Shadowmere tried her best to hide her smile.

"I'm laughing because cliff racers are as annoying a creature as any that have ever walked the surface of Tamriel," she said, crossing her arms. The pale, blond man pointed at her and let out a loud, honking laugh.

"Shows what'chu know!" he hooted, his reaction almost instantly making her laugh. "Cliff racers fly, they don't walk, you stupid…stupid!" A smug smile crept across his face. Shadowmere just shook her head.

"Alright, you got me, cliff racers fly," she admitted, turning her attention back toward the table as she tried to think of more ways to make Saeana talk, though the drunk decided that their talk wasn't over yet.

"Damn right!" The drunk yelled, clearly not ready to relinquish the conversation. "Hey lady! Lady! Lady!" He was just shy of screaming at that point, and Shadowmere decided that, to avoid creating more of scene than had already been created, she really ought to pay attention.

"Yes sir?" Shadowmere asked, using the title loosely as she turned back to face him again, resting her elbow on her crossed leg and her chin on her folded fingers. The man crawled over the top of his table and sat on the edge, facing her and swinging his legs playfully.

"Lady, I got to tell you- lady, you listening?" Shadowmere did her best to avoid laughing as she nodded. The man smiled at her words and leaning forward and emphasizing heavily with his hands as his elbows rested on his knees. "Okay, lady. Lady, lady, lady, lady- you still listening?" The old man at the nearby table shook his head and sighed noisily to express his annoyance with the situation, though the drunk didn't even notice. His attention was entirely focused on Shadowmere which, while mildly flattering, was perhaps a little more disconcerting.

"In fact I am," she reassured him all the same. She knew what it was like to feel that no one was listening.

"Okay, I've got to tell you about the- lady, you listening?"

"Yes." It took a concerted effort for Shadowmere to hide the exasperation that was creeping into her mind and threatening to spill into her voice.

"You've got to pay attention lady, 'cause I'm going to tell you something. I've got to tell you about the pancakes here." Listening intently, she was simply glad that the point had finally come around, but her joy was struck down by an irritated sigh from the old man.

"Damn it Reynald, no one wants to hear about the pancakes anymore!" he snapped, glaring over at the younger man, who audibly growled back.

"Hey! This is important stuff!" he yelled indignantly. "She ordered pancakes, she should know what she's getting, you horse's ass!" Hoping to avoid an incident, Shadowmere spoke up, trying to bring the man's attention back to her.

"Go right ahead, tell me about these pancakes," she insisted. The man grinned smugly at the old man, brushing a hand out from under his chin in an obscene gesture.

"Okay, here's the facts," he said, dusting off his hands from the imaginary effort. "Lady, you still listening? 'Cause I don't want to say this twice."

"Still listening," she said, already regretting her decision to engage the man. He nodded, taking a long swig of his tankard before proceeding.

"Alright, first they take a pancake." The man was illustrating his point with his hands and he spoke as though he was passing down family secrets from one generation to the next. "And then they add a layer of syrup. Then, they add another pancake. You with me so far?"

"Yessir."

"Okay, then they add a layer of butter and syrup and then…damnit, what came next?"

"I'm going to guess-" Shadowmere started to give a suggestion, but the man waved both hands frantically and shook his head.

"No, no don't help me, I'll get it. Another layer of…it went pancake, syrup, pancake, butter, syrup…pancake! It's another pancake that comes next. I knew the whole time, I was just fooling you."

"Well played."

"I didn't act, I just thought…wait a minute…Did I get that backwards?…never mind, I'll tell you about these pancakes. They are the best pancakes this side of High Rock. It goes pancake, syrup, pancake, butter, syrup, another pancake and then, guess what comes next?" Shadowmere shook her head, no longer able to contain her amusement as a smile fixed itself deeply into her cheeks.

"I can only imagine," she said, using a great deal of effort to keep her voice from breaking into laughter.

"Damn right, you can only imagine! More butter, and more syrup comes next! I had you completely fooled!" The man suddenly went from being very amused, to practically pitiful. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have tried to fool you. But these pancakes are the best mother-fucking pancakes in Cyrodiil."

"Reynald, language please," the Nord woman said, walking through the door with three plates of food balanced on her arm, leaving one arm free to open the door.

"It was a compliment Emfrid, just take it that way!" The drunk was now indignant again, forgetting the conversation in which he'd been engaged with a woman he didn't know.

"I accept the compliment," she said, setting the plates on the table and turning to speak to Reynald with her hands on her hips. "But could you could say 'the finest pancakes' instead-"

"I see your mouth moving," the drunk interrupted, using his hand to mimic lips moving as he pushed himself off the table and started shaking his ass in rhythm with his words. "But all I hear is 'blah, blah, blah.' It's a good thing your pancakes are so good, and you're so pretty, otherwise I'd never drink here." Shadowmere couldn't help laughing behind her hand at Reynald's antics.

"Yes, wouldn't that be unfortunate," the old man muttered, just out of earshot of the drunk. Emfrid scowled at Reynald, who had just cut in to dance with his invisible partner again.

"Next time you think about talking to me like that Reynald," she threatened wrapping her hand around his tankard. "I'm going to cut you off and call up your tab." Shadowmere smiled as Reynald dropped his partner and grabbed for the ale.

"Emfrid, don't be like that," he begged. "I'm sorry for being rude." The Nord woman furrowed her brow and looked at him with skepticism, while Shadowmere continued her discrete laughing.

"No more smart-mouthing?" she asked, not releasing her hold on the tankard. Reynald shook his head fervently, as though she were threatening to break his fingers. "Alright then." She released her hold on the sweating metal and Reynald brought the vessel to his lips, downing the liquid as fast as he could swallow it, tiny amber trickles escaping from the corners of his mouth. Shadowmere shook her head as she turned her attention away from the Breton, who now stood panting after his face time with the tankard, and pulled the plate of pancakes over to her and began cutting them up.

Popping a bite in her mouth, she was nearly overwhelmed by the soft, sweet taste that danced in her mouth like a true-love's kiss. Putting another forkful behind her teeth, Shadowmere fought against the urge to shove all the pancakes in her mouth at once. She regretted having ordered anything but the food in question. However questionable the man's habits, vis-à-vis, being shit-faced before noon, the drunk did know good pancakes when he found them.

"So…" Saeana started, still playing with her food, speaking to her for the first time in the duration of their meal. "How were your pancakes?" Shadowmere was tempted to ignore her, but she was so relieved to hear some modicum of polite conversation that she barely finished chewing before responding.

"Best mother-fucking pancakes I've ever had," She said without blinking. Saeana nodded, taking a bite of her eggs, chewing them thoughtfully before swallowing. Looking up at Shadowmere, Saeana tried to stifle a laugh, but it came out through her nose, resulting in a honking sound, which in turn made Shadowmere chuckle. The icy tension between them began to melt, making Shadowmere's shoulders relax and the pancakes go down a little easier.