The only time he broke form was when they neared the crest of the hill that would bring them to Riverwood. Athen was staring up at the mountain again, at the fortress High Hrothgar, thinking very hard about the invitation she'd been given.
"Up you go?" Cicero said. For a moment he was mournful, looking ahead at the road as if he would have to travel it alone.
"No," said Athene. "I'm not going there. Not yet anyway."
"But it calls? It speaks to you? In a voice only you can hear?"
"Something like that. My mother told me–Well, it doesn't matter anymore."
"My mother doesn't tell me anything," Cicero said sadly.
Riverwood looked much the same it had when Athene left it some months ago. A burly man worked up at the mill and his wife stopped chopping wood long enough to give them a curious stare. Faendal, the wood elf who'd helped her with her archery, pretended not to see her. Athene wondered what she'd done wrong there.
"There's a camp over on the other side of town," she told Cicero. "Why don't you head on over and I'll get us some food."
He led his horse away, and Athene turned to the pub, the Sleeping Giant Inn. But as she got near the stairs a Nord she'd crossed on her last visit shook his head.
"You're nothing but trouble."
She wasn't in the mood, so she stepped back and went up the street to the Riverwood Trader. Athene knew Faendal had a crush on a Nord girl who lived there, which was pretty pathetic.
The girl in question was sweeping, and the man who ran the store, Lucan, was grumbling and clearing up debris from behind the counter.
"Did something happen?" Athene asked despite herself.
"Er, yeah, we had a bit of a break in." Lucan didn't seem to want to talk about it, but then it exploded out of him. "There was this ornament, about so big, in the shape of a claw."
"You mean this thing?" Athene had found it on a dead Dunmer in Bleak Falls Barrow when she'd retrieved a Dragonstone for Whiterun's court wizard. She'd regretted the whole thing: not only was the court wizard an insufferable jerk, but the Dragonstone had weighed a tonne dragging it back to court.
"You found it!" Lucan was beside himself. The girl Faendal liked began fawning over Athene and it was all she could do to negotiate for a bit of bread and stew as well as the reward money before she got the hell out of the store.
Small towns, Athene thought. Jeez.
Once upon a time she'd lived in her own small town, understanding the ins and outs of the community and feeling a sense of belonging she hadn't appreciated at the time. Her village, just outside Arenthia in the northern reaches of Valenwood, had been her home as she grew out of childhood. And if she'd been given just a few more years of growing maybe she would have learned archery there from her brothers and sisters, and how to be a strong Bosmer woman from her mother, and all the other things she'd taken for granted she would once get to learn.
Instead, here she was. Skyrim. Forgetting the word Bosmer and calling herself a wood elf.
"If you don't stop feeling sorry for yourself," Athene said, "I'm going to–"
A shadow moved into her path. She'd been so caught up in worrying and complaining that she hadn't been paying attention.
Athene leaned back and stepped sideways, hoping to feint and surprise him as he–whoever he was–tried to grab her. Her hand touched ebony at her hip, she felt the bloodlust rise to her cheeks–
And stopped.
"Hadvar," she said. "By the nine, I just about killed you."
"Er, yes," he said. "I noticed that. I saw you were in town and thought I should… I mean I thought I would…"
"You don't owe me anything," she said.
"I feel I do. I wouldn't have made it out of Helgen alone. And I've heard things… The guard, they say you might be… Dragonborn."
His face, that she could see clearly now in the light from the Trader's shop, twisted as he said Dragonborn. Athene could see it clearly: How could she be? How could a little elf be something so important to every Nord?
"Don't worry, it's probably a mistake," she said as she brushed by him. "No doubt it was a trick of the light."
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't have to. Was there anything else, Hadvar? I have a date with a black door."
He'd grown up in Skyrim and likely heard rumours, as Athene had heard in the last few months, of the black door near Dawnstar terrifying locals. Did he think she referred to that now? It didn't matter. He didn't speak again, and she was left to make her own way out of Riverwood.