Sian's Story part 54 - Do Your Chores
Entry posted by jfraser in Sian's Story
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The next day started dark and early by a pounding at the door to our room that reverberated through my hangover like physical blows. Okay, to be fair, it was only a normal knock, but my head amplified it to the drums of Moria.
I tried to ignore it but it persisted. Then I tried to nudge Kellan awake so he could deal with it but he was either out cold or pretending to be, the bastard. Finally I got up, wrapped my rug around me (even blankets turned into sheer lingerie if I tried using them), yanked open the door, and snapped, “What?!”
Lazhah stood in a crisp uniform looking for all the world like it was the middle of a bright sunny day, not the dregs of pre-dawn. “Good morning, Commander. If we want to beat the Stormcloaks to Korvanjund, we should get started as soon as possible.”
I dearly wanted to rub my head, but I could not do that and hold my rug up at the same time, so I settled on squinting at him. “That’s fine, but surely it can wait until the fucking sun is up, at least.”
“Indeed, I was hoping to leave around then as well. That is why I am coming to get you now – if you start now, your chores should be done by then.”
A wave of cold fear swept through me but I tried not to show it. “What are you talking about, Lazhah? We are going to be on the road today, so my only ‘chore’ should be taking care of you, even though you look perfectly capable of taking care of your own damn self.”
“Ah, but we are not on the road yet. So I’m afraid you have duties to perform at the barracks before we go. The sooner you get them done, the sooner we can be off.”
I cursed under my breath as my groggy mind tried to come up with some reason I could not do what he was asking, but all it could come up with was, “And if I refuse?”
“Well, that’s called Dereliction of Duty, which involves a very unpleasant stay in the military prison…” a colder, deeper fear ran through me at that word, “…and I can assure you, whatever your chores are, they are much preferable to that.”
“Of that I have very little doubt. Fine, give me a minute to get dressed.”
“Of course.”
And thus began my first full day as a member of the Imperial Legion. The other new girls and I got the crappiest jobs (pun intended), of course – lugging filled-to-the-brim chamber pots from the barracks to the river (three trips each with 1,236 steps each way (I counted. That’s about a half mile each way), including three separate staircases, one of which had half of the steps by itself. I was reminded of the scene in Kill Bill 2 where Bill tells the Bride, “Just seeing those steps again makes me ache. You're gonna have a lot of fun carrying buckets of water up and down that fucker.”); scrubbing piles of laundry (fortunately they had an interior basin of water for that, so we didn’t need to lug it all down to the river and, as a bonus, I got to use one of those old-timey washboards); and, of course, the hand jobs.
I was hoping the last part would not be required, on the logic that it was late enough in the morning by then that there shouldn’t be anyone left in the barracks, but I was reminded there was an entire company who had been on duty all night long. Fortunately, it was literally all hands on deck for that part, so we each only had five or six dicks to stroke. As Rikke (who was there with us) had said, using both hands sped things up. The oil they provided smelled faintly like lilacs, which was my mother’s favorite flower and used to be one of my favorite smells but now makes me ill. Okay, not literally ill, but it gives me unpleasant flashbacks of stroking the dicks of grabby assholes who begged like children for more. I was very grateful for the thick rug, which kept most of my body covered and therefore kept most of their groping to a minimum.
Honestly, except for the soreness from the miles of walking up and down stairs and the stench of the chamber pots and the forced hand jobs (and, of course, the whole misogynic powerplay behind the entire fucking endeavor), it wasn’t that bad, mostly because of the company. It had been a LONG time since I had had, for lack of a better term, girl talk. By the time I finished the last dick and started heading back to the inn, I was all caught up with all the drama of the Solitude court, the rumors of the rest of the noteworthy people around Skyrim, and the massive party being held at the Thalmor embassy that very evening.
It was a particularly eventful morning because Meri, a very chipper Cyrodillan probably a year younger than me, had become engaged the night before. Of course, the possibility of this happening had been all the talk yesterday, so I was a latecomer to the buzz. It started when Meri first entered the room we had gathered in to get our chore assignments. The entire room hushed and turned toward her and it was clear even to me, who had no idea what was going on, that something had happened that she found wonderful. She almost literally floated into the room.
Lenthe, one of the older (by which I mean, about two years older than me) women cleared her throat. “I see you aren’t wearing the amulet of Mara anymore.”
“Aww,” Shildy fake pouted. “He broke it off instead of proposing, didn’t he?”
And then the teasing began: “She must have thrown it in the river out of sorrow!” “She’s clearly relieved, look how she’s smiling!” “He was no account anyway, you’re better off without him!”
By then the entire room was laughing and I had partially forgotten my qualms.
“Of course not, sillies,” Meri laughed. “He proposed!”
Everyone cheered (even as someone said, “You said no, right?”) and gathered around and we were treated to the entire story of their romantic night on the town, with the stops at the best tavern in the city, a concert at the Bard’s college, a stroll through the new museum, and the proposal itself on the ramparts looking over the estuary as the sun set. It was the most fucking romantic thing I had ever heard and I was insanely jealous that there had been people living lives like that while I was toiling away as a fucktoy for the best part of the past six years.
And it got me thinking.
About Kellan.
About the previous night.
About how, maybe just maybe, his little slip had been real and maybe just maybe I felt that way too and maybe just maybe, inexplicably and out of the depths of all the crap I had been through since getting forcefully yanked into this hellhole, there was a chance I could experience some small amount of Meri’s joy for myself.
Maybe.
Just maybe.
I thought I was being subtle with my questions about the amulet of Mara they had mentioned, but I got two immediate reactions: utter disbelief that I didn’t know about it and a whole bunch of teases about my love life. And then, of course, I had to tell them all I knew about Kellan.
So, if you have the same questions I did, here is the tl;dr version: an amulet of Mara is something a woman wears when she is ready to get proposed to. Sort of a pre-engagement gift for oneself.
They had to explain it a few times before I really got it (which was fine because they were all trying to tell me all about it at the same time anyway) because it was such a weird concept to me.
“So you can’t propose to someone if they aren’t wearing one?”
“I guess you could,” was the reply, “but why would you? If she’s not wearing an amulet, the answer is going to be no!”
Which was not really the intent of my question but still somehow answered it satisfactorily. To be fair, it must remove a lot of nerves from the proposers to already know the answer before they ask.
So on the way back to the inn, I took an impromptu detour into a temple of one god or other (incidentally, they look, smell, and feel exactly like churches from Earth, somehow) and came back out with an amulet of Mara in my pouch, where it sat like a lead weight while my brain gibbered with some strange new version of fear. I resisted several impulses to toss the damn thing away.
Don’t feed the bastards. Or marry them. Maybe. I don’t know.
Edited by jfraser
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