Walking changes everything. On horseback, the world slides past you in big, forgiving chunks -- distance collapses into a dull ache in your thighs, hills become inconveniences, forests become obstacles you barely register. On foot, the land refuses to be abstract. Every incline makes itself known, every stone has an opinion. The wind doesn’t just exist; it negotiates with you. Constantly. Even if your slutty magical outfit makes you inured to the cold.

 

Of course, neither is a nice as a car, and I would have given anything for a solid SUV right then. Or, really, at any point in this stupid story.

 

We were heading south from Fort Hraggstad toward Solitude along a road that cut through mountains that grew steadily lower as we went. Kangme kept the pace -- efficient, relentless, maddeningly correct -- while Kellan and I fell into our usual pattern: long stretches of silence punctuated by comments that served no purpose beyond confirming we were still people and not particularly well-trained pack animals. I bitched about how we should have taken the horses at least a dozen times, and every time Kellan reminded me we hadn't because we couldn't afford Nigel anymore. Turns out looting ancient crypts only pays for so much.

 

Perhaps it was because I was thinking of those crypts that I noticed the variation in the terrain, because it is the sort of thing I normally would have passed unwittingly right by. I slowed and said, “Wait a minute.”

 

They both stopped. Kangme turned immediately; Kellan followed my line of sight, squinting into the pale winter light and said, “What?”

 

I didn’t answer right away -- I was staring at the hillside to our left trying to decide if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing or if it was just a trick of the eyes. Snow and scrub covered most of it, but beneath that was stone shaped in a not-very-nature-looking squareness. Something, in short, that looked suspiciously like the remains of a broad stair, half buried and stubbornly refusing to vanish. I frowned at it.

 

"Does that look like old stairs to you?”

 

Kangme tilted their head, eyes narrowing just enough to be unsettling. “Artificial structure. Construction predates current road by a significant margin.”

 

“Translation,” Kellan said, glancing at me, “you’re about to drag us uphill.”

 

I shrugged. “We said every place like this -- every ruin, shrine, or vaguely ominous pile of rocks that looks like it might have a word wall.”

 

“I know. They just usually turn out to be dead ends.”

 

This was true. We'd developed a rhythm over the course of our travels: see a ruin, investigate it, hope for a Word Wall. The ratio was terrible -- nine out of ten were just collapsed stone structures of indefinable previous use full of spiders and disappointment -- but the tenth made it worth the detour. Unless there was a fucking dragon as well. Then it was just plain scary.

 

The climb took longer than it should have. The trail, what there was of it, wound through switchbacks that seemed designed to punish optimism. By the time we reached the plateau, the sun had slid behind the western peaks, leaving the sky bruised purple and orange behind the statue.

 

Oh, right, have I mentioned the statue? It was of a woman and it was at least fifty feet tall (I am terrible at estimating these things, so that might not actually be accurate. It was taller than ten feet, because that’s basketball hoop height, so if I picture some of those stacked up, it would be…fucking huge, all right?) It rose from the stone like a declaration -- pale, radiant, wings spread, arms lifted skyward in a posture that suggested benevolence while reserving the right to obliterate you for insufficient enthusiasm. Snow refused to cling to her; the air around the statue felt sharp and alert, like a room where someone had just stopped talking.

 

“Which one is this?” I asked, and Kellan and Kangme answered as one in super eerie minor-key harmony, “Meridia.”

 

I nodded, although that was a name I hadn’t heard before. “Subtle.”

 

Kellan snorted and we turned away.

 

The Word Wall sat fifty(-ish -- apparently everything looks fifty feet to me) feet to the left of and farther up the hill from the statue, half-buried in drift, the carved letters dark against pale stone. My chest tightened as the familiar pull, the hum that vibrated behind my sternum before I'd even read a single word, kicked in. I was already walking toward it when Kellan called my name. I glanced back with my attempt at raising an eyebrow, even though I knew it never worked.

 

“Look, um…” He stopped and an unexpected blush fell over him. “We...know what happens at these. Right?”

 

I frowned. “Um. Yes. I get an incredible orgasm and a shout.”

 

“Right, that. Um.” He coughed and I started to worry.

 

“Are you all right? You look like you’re getting sick.”

 

“No no, I’m…fine! I just…” He stopped once again, then visibly settled himself. “Look. Lane said it was best for you if…you didn’t do that alone.”

 

I nodded. “I admit, the times you have been there were much easier. I could almost think clearly instead of being in a massive black hole of…”

 

“Right,” he interrupted with a hasty wave of his hand. “So, I was thinking, maybe we should…prepare. Since we know what is going to happen.”

 

“Prepare? What is there to prepare?”

 

“Well, you know…” the blush deepened and I tried very hard not to laugh -- he was so cute when he was acting weirdly shy! “We could…be naked before you get there. It’s…a little hard to get your armor off while you’re…you know, convulsing all over the place. And mine takes a while to undo. So usually I’m only…helping you for a bit of the end.”

 

“Oh!” The idea had never crossed my mind, but as soon as he said it, it made perfect sense. “That’s a good idea! For walls, anyway, not for dragons. Unless they are very polite dragons who agreed to wait for us to…”

 

“Yes,” he interrupted again, “not dragons, of course. I don’t want to fight those naked!” He laughed then turned and grabbed something from his pack. When he turned back, I saw it was his bedroll. “You stay here. I’ll go to the wall and get ready. Then you...you know, take off your armor and come to me.”

 

I nodded. “Let’s try it!”

 

Kangme, standing a few paces back, let out a long breath that fogged in the cold air. "I will build a fire. Some distance away. Where I cannot hear…anything." They were already moving, gathering dry branches from beneath an overhang, pointedly not looking at either of us.

 

Kellan crossed to the wall (where nothing happened, the lucky bastard) then swiped away snow with his feet before laying down the bedroll. After a moment’s hesitation, he took off his armor, then his clothes. He was already shivering as he turned to me and his dick looked like had decided to become an innie, so I wasn’t sure how well this plan would work after all, but when he gestured, I reached for the straps of my armor.

 

When the straps came loose and the metal fell away, the cold hit me like a slap. It wasn't gradual -- there was no gentle transition from warm to cold. One moment I was comfortable, the armor's subtle heat doing its Sanguine-granted work; the next I was standing naked in a Skyrim winter and the air fucking bit like a bucket of ice-cold snakes chomping me all at once. My skin went tight all over, my nipples peaked so hard they ached, and my teeth started chattering like one of those plastic wind-up toys we always inexplicably got in our stockings (and not-so-inexplicably tossed in the trash soon after). I couldn't stop it -- the sound filled my own ears, a rapid click-click-click I couldn't control.

 

"F…fuck," I managed, wrapping my arms around myself.

 

Kellan gestured. "C…come here."

 

I didn't need to be told twice. I crossed the frozen ground on numb feet and dropped to my knees on the fur just as the wall started to caress me.

 

Su Grah Dun. The knowledge poured into me like water into a dry sponge -- the shape of the concept, the weight of it, the way it could be shaped and pushed through the throat and spoken. But alongside the understanding came the heat. It started in my groin and spread outward, up to my chest, down my arms, between my legs. The building pressure that demanded release, that coiled tighter and tighter until I thought I might split open. The cold of the air disappeared in a snap and I gasped. My hand gripped the fur of the bedroll, trembling, and I just managed to squeak out, “Kellan…”

 

"I'm here."

 

He was behind me, somehow; he must have lifted me, though I hadn't noticed. His chest pressed warm against my back, his arms around my waist. I felt him, even through the haze. I pushed backward into him, desperate for contact, for something to ground me.

 

The first wave hit, crashing through me like a breaker and my vision went white. All surrounding sound faded to whispers as every muscle in my body locked tight. I cried out, or tried to; what came out was a strangled sound, half moan, half plea. My fingers dug into the fur and my back arched. The pressure demanded an exit, demanded release, and my body was trying to give it, clenching around nothing, pulsing against empty air.

 

And then Kellan was inside me. I don't know how he managed it -- I was barely conscious of my own limbs -- but he'd shifted, lifted me, guided his dick (that apparently had changed its mind and become an outie again after all) into me in one smooth motion, and the sudden fullness was exactly what I needed. I moaned, deep and animal, as he filled me. The second wave crested and broke against his presence inside me. I clenched around him, trying to pull him deeper, held him there like an anchor in the storm. It was like having an itch that you just cannot reach finally getting scratched. Except in magnitudes of multiples. Like having a craving actually be fulfilled instead of just tempering the desire for a time. It was getting everything you ever wanted and having the feeling of emptiness that makes you want even more to finally be sated.

 

Kellan didn't move at first -- he just held me, buried to his balls, his arms locked around my waist, his breath hot against my shoulder. I could feel him trembling -- from the cold, from the effort of stillness, from the sensation of my body clenching and releasing around him over and over...from all of the above or none of them. I couldn’t tell; I could barely keep track of my own feelings.

 

The waves kept coming. They weren't discrete -- they rolled into one another, overlapping, building, receding, building again, like ocean waves that tumble over each other in their eagerness to be the one that touches the beach the highest. I lost track of where one ended and the next began, lost track of all thought. I just felt the heat of Kellan’s chest against my back, the thick pressure of him inside me, the endless pulsing rhythm of my own body milking him through haze after haze after haze.

 

"That's it," he murmured against my ear from a million miles away. "I've got you. Everything is fine."

 

I couldn't answer. I just held onto his arm wrapped around my waist and let the waves take me. 

 

I don't know how long it lasted -- time was meaningless. The Wall had given me a word and I couldn't even remember what it was anymore*. Su something something. My brain caught the words as a cadence and repeated in the rhythm of Kellan’s body within the fog of my pleasure-drunk brain. Something something something somethingsomethingsomething…

 

Eventually, the waves began to space out -- the peaks grew lower, the intervals longer, and I became aware of my own body again, especially when the cold started creeping back in at the edges. Kellan still held me, still inside me and still hard, panting against my shoulder. 

 

For the first time doing this, he hadn't come. I realized that with a jolt of guilt -- he'd been so focused on keeping me tethered, on riding out my storm, that he'd put himself entirely aside. I opened my mouth to say something -- to offer, to apologize, to something -- but he kissed my shoulder before I could.

 

"Later," he said, voice rough. "Let's get warm first."

 

He withdrew slowly, carefully, and the sudden emptiness made me shiver, from loss as much as cold. I heard Kangme's fire crackling nearby, saw the orange glow dancing at the edge of my vision. Kellan helped me stand on shaky legs, grabbed the fur, and wrapped it around both of us as we stumbled toward the warmth. I found my arm-kini (looking like regular Imperial heavy armor, of course) by the fire – Kangme has kindly gathered it – and putting it back on gave me an instant blessed relief, so much so that I almost – almost! – actually sent a prayer of thanks to that fucker Sanguine.

 

I glanced back just as Kellan was pulling on his shirt, and that’s when I saw it – plain as day, small, unassuming, on a plain leather cord, the familiar and distinct looping coiled pattern I had come to recognize all too well.

 

An amulet of Mara. By brain leapt in every possible direction at once at the sight but could not form words to even make an attempt at articulation.

 

Naturally, he seemed oblivious to my stare. Once his armor was fully back on, he turned to me and smiled.

 

“How do you feel?” he asked as if he hadn’t just given me a fucking Rubix Cube wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a riddle.

 

I had no fucking way to answer that question.

 

 

 

Don’t feel the bastards. Feel yourself instead.

 

 

*Su Grah Dun increases weapon speed by adding what I can only describe as a wind buff to my swings. It works with thrown punches as well. I ended up calling it Slicer Dicer.

 

 

 

 

Next chapter

 

Previous chapter

 

Start from the beginning

 

Join the Shae's Discord!