The Argonian Maid?...Nope!

You know...I hate myself a bit for this chapter and the next...enjoy

 

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It is hard to keep my thoughts together, I wish it was easier.There are so many emotions and pictures mingling together in my mind. Some make me happy, but with most I feel so...depressed and I do not like the dreams they bring. Dreams that highten this sense of wrongness, beeing lost, alone.~





This time I woke on a softer underground than stone, with a familiar stone surface over me. It was day, but still early to tell by the soft light an the gentle warmth the sunrays projected on my face.



As my head fell to the side, a halfhearted turning I saw Ankotar sitting next to me, reading in his journal and than started to write in it before he realised I was awake.

"How do you feel? You slept through the night..I got worried when you did not came back out, thought maybe something collapsed down there, these ruins are just not safe. Should have given you some advice" he keept babbling on while he helped me to sit up and put a cup to my lips with a bitter liquid, but I felt better after I drank it, not clear enough to question what that was, or for what.

"So what happened to you? I found you after I cast the spell to locate life, stark naked on the ground with your belongings not far away..did you try to take a sunbath in the dark, a spell gone wrong?"



"I...don´t know" and I really could not remember what had happened...well at least not after the pain got so bad I feared to loose my mind and then it vanished in an instant...and I felt so at peace.

A gentle face flashed before my eyes, but then it was already gone again, just a sliver of that feeling stayed a bit longer.

"Maybe I hit my head..." and I really did not want to talk or remember what had happened, still feeling weak and it didn´t need more than a yawn and I sank into a slumber again.



When I woke next it was after midmeal. Oh how I longed to sleep a bit more, but I did not want to prolong my stay and occupie Ankotars bed any longer.

"Hey, how come that you are visible again?"slowly putting my clothes back on while he had turned around.

"Well..somehow my spell failed and I have no idea why, it should have held for another 2 years like I already explained, but  it also has its good sides. It is easier to buy the ressources I need" joking a little "And I can get invisible again...so no need to sheed tears,I just need to research what caused it to fail, maybe the same thing that..'hit' you"





Hit was the right word I guess and I felt a sting in my arms and legs, on other places of my body. Brushing aside my feathers I could make out faint marks,I guess that was where they tried to drain me.

The feeling of my blood leaving me made me shudder and the mage looked questionly at me to what I only shook my head.



"When I have meet all my requirements and can enter the university, I will come back and visit you. I bet we will have some interesting things to talk over..thanks for your help"



We shook hands and it was a good feeling that he did not seem biased. All that nonsense between the different races about who is better was getting on my nerves..how refreshing to meet one of the 'betters' who did not point out how much better they were.





The stallion was rather restless when I came back. The small corall was not made to keep such a big animal happy and he was eager to run off some of the cumulated power.

And how he did run it off, I guess the bandits on our way who tried to ambush us, hadn´t ever the chance of a snowball in oblivion to follow us. It was rather funny to hear them scream and huff when the horse galloped along, not stopping for them and they tried to run after us.



But the fun of the run soon turned sour, the higher we went the colder it got and when we were only a couple of miles away from Bruma, already dark night no matter how fast the horse had run, it snowed.



I do not remember if I ever had seen snow before, but I realised I was not prepared for the cold. Shivering I clinged to the stallion who just went on till we reached Bruma.



My teeth clattered as I brought the horse to the stable, I really did not want to go further, to finish my assignment..I already had lost a day and a night. One more or less did not matter to my freezing body, stumbling through the street and through the entrance of the nearest inn.



The nord from which I bought a room just sniggerd slightly...yeah..so no one had warned me how cold Bruma was,was that my fault? But the inn was warm and the bedding was too, even when rather coarse.

I only wanted to go to bed and gain my warmth back during sleep, but I could not sleep very long.



Lound singing woke me, if you could call it singing. Drunken nords love to sing, but at least I was warm again.

And because I never could go back to sleep again with that...deep and loud ..entertainment, I stood up and jawning made my way into the taproom where a real party was going on.



At least with the standards of a nord. Met was flowing, as was ale for people with a smaller knapsack.





But as soon as I came down the small staircase, the singing stopped. Ales, halfway to bearded and beardless lips and raised eyebrows greeted me together with the ankward silence.





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Skeptic eyes skruntinized  the newcomer, men and women, mostly nord and the odd imperial or rothwardon who had the temper and resistent liver of a nord.

...until a rough voice broke the silence "Hey that is your costumer, seems someone already thawed" and with that the rest of the horde guffawed and snickered.

"Come down and sit with us, a pint or two will thaw you further and make you more resistent to the cold, want to be tough like a nord, drink like one" which was followed by cheering, 'skool' and clinking of earthen pints before foam was blowen from the warm drinks, chucked down like water.



Cold climate forms strong drinkers, what else to warm one and cheer up?



As fierce and feared a fighter a nord is, as nice they are with a rough friendliness, just like the land from which they come.

It was not just the unfriendly landscape and climate that made them travel the seas, they also have a curiosity they can hardly tame, and the argonian seemed to draw it out like honey the bee, or mead the nord.



This is how it came that the feathered creature sat at the tables which had been pushed together into a big one, a pint of warm sweet mead in front of him, surrounded by nord.



So sweet and nicely warming that one does not taste how strong it is until it has settled deep in your bones and the fuzzy feeling wouldn´t leave you.

A fuzzy feeling which makes most people coozy, that is why a drunken nord is slightly less dangerous than a sober one, and poor little lizards are much more easily felled than a sturdy big nord.



Tipsy with a hiccup the argonian stared into the empty mug with one twitchy eye, not able to focus onto the vessel with both eyes until the next moment he trusts his mug out, making an important mien "Mo..'chirrup' ...rrrre", smaking his lips and grinning "Nex roun go 'chirp' on me" which turns the chatter and laughing into a momentary cheer, making Kyrell grin even more.



Soon there is fresh, warm met on the table for all while the argonian keeps his old mug, pressing it to his chest like a trinket "There´sh shtill some foam" seemingly fond of it, the strange textur.

Oblivious to his drunken state and how he behaves, rather childish to the amusement of the others he tries to get his snout down the mug, unfortunately not broad enough to get his head in or even to get the foam.



He holds the mug with both hands on the table, so as not to let it escape, concentrating hard on the task and starring into it before he gets the idea to us his long tongue, making out drawn pleased noises as he laps up the foam from the depths of the mug, not realising the momentary silence his display caused.



But as soon as he looks up with the drunken smile on his face the laughter and conversation is back, only some glances wander more often his way, catching how he licks over the scaly parts of his face, or playing with the foam on top of the new mead, more interested in it than in the drink and dipping his fingers in the white mound.

"You know, if snow would be more like that I would like snow"

"Yeah but we can´t have you crawling on the streets licking off all the snow" which brings a new outburst of laughter and a hearty clapp on the back of the lizard who looks so awkward, placed with all the nord who are left, some have already gone home in their beds, sleeping off the booze, especially those who are not nord are already missing.





You could call the night pleasent and the nords friendly...

But with all the drunken people, the rough shove or short ruffle here and there, things happen.

Like a tuft of foam blowed and falling into the delta between two similiar snowy mounds, just with different texture.

Was it willed, or just an accident but it got the attention of the lizard who eyed the foam on his slow way down between the hills, slowly drawing nearer and following it with his eyes until the foam slips into darkness.



Totally fascinated by it Kyrell never realised that from around him is silence, only a couple of people farther away talk and drink, but left and right it seems that some even hold their breath, watching what may happen like does the owner of the mountain slide.



Just as the foam vanishs in the dark behind clothes a snout dives after it, tongue lapping over skin to get the foam and hiccuping which causes squeels and laughter from the nord women and similiar laughter from the others while the lizard got a pet on the head before the nord on the right side pulled him by the neck, the snout out of the warm hiding place and more or less getting crushed against a hard chest.



"Hey aye 'ave foam there too" the voice full of a grin as the man points down to his trouser where a blobb of foam sits on a rather prominent place which makes the argonian scrunch up his nose

"Who knows when you have washed those last" shaking his head and looking even at this action rather drunken, causing another row of laughter and a thunk here or there from a falling nord who got too drunk or a mug of met, set down a bit too hard.



More guests leave and only the hardest couple of people from the group remain, one of them the nord women Svenja which now holds Kyrell pressed to her bust who purrs and chirps happily drunk, blinking oddly while she kept on petting his feathered head..what a pleasure.

Not thinking anything of it he keeps rubbing his head against the warm skin, causing a rather girlish giggle and a rougher scratching down the neck, intensifying the purr.



Only for a sip of mead he leaves the nice soft pillow he had found, soon nearly lying on the bank, tail lazily swishing and thumping around until it is caught, held in a firm grip.

A mistrusting look over the shoulder, which is soon cut short when Svenja pushed his head down again, already had died when he saw that the nord Thjorgall who sat during the whole night next to him, held his tail in a not threatening way and soon also there  the petting started with one hand, the other still needed for the steady flow of mead.



What the alcohol can make people do what they never would do so freely while sober....at least the shy ones, people without shame don´t really need alcohol, there is nothing left to loosen up.





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Mmmh..this nice...warm..soft..I´ve died and gone to heaven surely...ah there..that place...scraaatching. Uh so nice, I think I stay here, right here in this place...



Mh, oh what´s that? If I could just lift my head and take a look..hm..no doesn´t sound bad. Other like petting too....gihihi



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Without the argonian realising it, the stroked tail twitched, a bit ticklish and petted Thjorgall by itself, swishing sidewise and rubbing along his legs.

The sounds muffled behind hand and pint still reached sensitive ears whose owner first thought of them as signs of

discomfort.

..but not as the discomfort of the kind they really were, too bedazzled by the mead as an unknown 'danger'and then

misinterpreting them as if produced by the same reason he himself twitched and produced sounds of contentment.





The others on the table were already too drunk to realise, or to care if they did know what was going on, a feathery tail

firmly petting the Nord who pulled the tail to himself, stroking and encouraging it while the argonian just leaned on the

woman, blissfully unaware and putty in her hands who massaged and stroked his scalp.



But sooner or later the petting would also cause a reaction from the body of the argonian, sensitive as those places, neck and tail were, a reaction he still was not really aware, getting a bit agitated the rougher Thjorgall petted his tail,

stroking him harder in return while the surpressed sounds seemed to touch something primal in him, together with the smell from both of the nord



But then there was a strangled noise, something seemed off in the next instand and Kyrell raised his head from where it had rested, blinking at Thjorgall and not getting his thoughts together why his tail felt so strange...sticky while Thjorgall looked even more red, breathing hard from the mead. But he could not get off that strange feeling, sitting up..something was not right with him.



"Goin to bed,´s late" he mumbled while brushing his ruffled head feathers back, trying to stand and swaying a bit.

"Come lets help you pretty, you can´t take so much mead, you might fall and hurt yourself" Svenja threw in while standing up herself, having drank much more than the argonian but not yet having lost her footing, laying an arm around his shoulder and pulling him into her side.

"Yeah can´t have that" came Thjorgalls gruff voice, wood scratching over wood as he shoved the bank backwards, fidgeting with the flap of his trouser before he followed the two up the stairs.