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Stepping into her new life


DirtySlut

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This blog entry may contain some adult themes and language. Please don't click the spoiler button below if you think that this might offend you.

 

 

 

The winds sliced over the ice choked bay, streaming up over the lip of the skiff and tearing violently at the wool cowl of her cloak. The boatsman, silent as he had been for the past two hours pulled hard on the oars in a steady rhythm. For her part, Nyova had kept similarly quiet, nestling her body into the cargo and holding her legs close to her body to fight back the biting cold. Two hours of the sounds of the wooden hull plowing and dragging through slush and chunks of ice. Two hours of frigid buffeting winds that bit through her clothes at her tender, pale flesh. Two hours wondering if the man was taking her to where she paid him to, or just to someplace remote and quiet where she would be discretely robbed, used and ultimately disposed of. She spent this time trying to stay as quiet and invisible as possible, and whether through her efforts or the scruples of the man she had paid her coin to, she was nearing her destination intact.

 

Surely it was past noon, but the clouds overhead choked off any hint of the sunlight, casting everything in a dull, grey luster. Everything was colorless and bleak. It was only the distant trumpeting horkers that gave the scene any sense of life at all, and their gutteral bleating sounded alien to Nyova's ears.

The skiff turned inland, making it's way up the wide mouth of an inlet. Through the haze of flurries, the dark shape of city walls could be seen, and accompanying the sight came the faint smell of smoke, fish and shit. As her eyes traced the outline of the towers of Windhelm her fears shifted from the immediate to the longer term. After all, she had no money to speak of and knew no one here in Skyrim. She carried with her every thing that she owned in this world and the prospect of making a brand new life for herself in this foreign land was terrifying. The Nords here had a reputation for being gruff and bearish. It was said that the men customarily walked around nearly or completely naked as a display of their manliness, even in weather like this. The tales she'd heard about Windhelm told of a stubborn city full of intractable merchants and true Nords.

 

Snow began to fall again in earnest for the third time since she'd been aboard the boat. Big, fluffy puffs of snowflakes whipped and zigzagged in the air as the wind cut through them like a dancing ice wraith. As the skiff got closer to the docks and maneuvered into position, the snow intensified, coating everything with a thin, white powdery shell and cutting the visibility down to the city walls some 50 feet away. Soon the boatman was standing, shouting to the dark shape of an Argonian on the docks who came closer, caught the mooring ropes and swiftly tied the ship off with practiced hands. The reek of fish almost brought tears to her eyes.

 

"That's Windhelm." said the boatman. He inclined his snow crusted hood towards the walls of the city, and looking now, Nyova could see the stairs leading up to the city gate. The dark, wet stones of the city walls were rooted stubbornly and plastered with ice patches, every window shuttered, every heavy door closed snug in it's frame. "Mind the step, lass."

 

Nyova collected her small bundle and stood, checking her pockets to make sure that she had not forgotten anything. The revelation that she had little to leave behind was at once disheartening and reassuring. Looking up, her gaze met the eyes of the Argonian, who demurely lowered his eyes and lumbered back to the work he was doing elsewhere. The docks were low enough for her to simply step out, and when she did her cheap boots crunched the rock salt coating them.

 

This was her first step on her journey. This was to be her new life.

 

 

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