Thin light falling into my eyes. Derkeethus muttering nonsensically. The feeling of being pulled out of my body. Cold snow inside my clothes. The metallic smell of blood mixed with vomit. Something has died in my mouth.
"It's her!" A voice, young and familiar.
"Not the one you've been pining endlessly over. You have strange taste in females if you're after one as broken as this." A thick Falinesti accent. The sounds are warped and far away in my ears.
"Is she alive?"
Cool fingers on my neck.
"By the Eight! Her skin is on fire! Run back to the village and get Hob."
"But--Faendal. Why can't I stay--"
"Run, fool! We have no time!"
Darkness...
The sound of wooden wheels creaking on gravel. Derk's voice a constant stream of rhythmic utterances. Subtle rocking.
I'm in my mother's lap crying because one of the other children stole my bow. She takes me to my father, who shows me how to make another. We decorate this one with feathers.
Blue skies overhead and trees. The smell of rich pine resin.
"Does he ever stop chanting?" A deep, Nordic voice.
"No. He's been doing it since we found them."
Burning fire in my body; clear and alive like a flame or the wild cry of the hawk as it hunts. Peering through my lashes, a Bosmer I met once smiling at me worriedly.
"We're almost there." Fingers brushing my forehead.
Swirling black. Drifting through time and space. Murmurs around me. A raw blaze consuming my soul, then a softer warmth. Bells ringing in a breeze.
When I next opened my eyes, I screwed them shut immediately against the sudden onslaught of light. They hurt and felt weakened, as if I had never used them before. Carefully, I opened them again and peered around me. I lay on a wooden bed dressed with a rough, woolen cloth. Distantly, I realized my clothes were different and my battered armor lay draped over the end of the bed. All about me chimes chorused in breezes that blew through the rafters.
A robed figure was leaning over me, her hands alight with some kind of painfully bright magic.
"Finally, you're awake," she said with a relieved smile.
"Mnn where'mi?" I slurred, my throat aching in the attempt to speak.
"The Temple of Kynareth. In Whiterun. Those men brought you and your friends a long way from the mountains. It's taken weeks to heal your hurts, but we've managed it. Kynareth has blessed you, my dear."
"N Drk?"
"The Argonian?" I nodded almost imperceptibly. "He's resting at the moment, but has been awake for several days," she replied, gesturing behind me. Slowly, I turned my head, wincing at the stiffness and saw Derkeethus lying on a similar bed in the corner, snoring softly. I felt a gossamer thread connecting me to him. Something ephemeral and fragile, but present. There was a not unpleasant tug altering me to his location.
Shifting my focus and saw a small table adorned with what few items had survived the avalanche. The vial with the snow and cracked White Phial were untouched, though the cases I sealed them in lay in shattered pieces. Several bits of paper were scattered and torn, one of which looked as if it had once born a charcoal sketch. A larger body of notes still lay rolled, though the edges were crinkled and crushed from water damage.
Below the table slumped my pack and cloak, both ripped but otherwise still serviceable with some patching. My heart wrenched in my chest as I looked at my knives, which lay nearby. Their blades were bent, one of them had even snapped in two. My stomach filled with ice when I saw my bow, battered, scratched, and broken. All of it was beyond repair.
"One of the young men left you a letter and a package. He was the nicest fellow, seemed very concerned for you," the robed woman eyed me meaningfully. I noted a long, slender shape wrapped in velum leaning against the table.
"N Jor'n?" I asked, not catching her implication just yet. At this the priestess frowned and looked away. Without replying, she stood aside and I looked beyond her to see my familiar.
With her assistance, I slowly struggled to my feet and crossed the space between the two of us. Jorin lay on the tiled floor, breathing heavily in a puddle of cold, congealed blood.
"He only just started bleeding like this last night. We've done all we could," I heard her say, but I didn't really absorb the words.
Letting out a strangled cry, I fell to my knees. "Jorin?" I managed. My fox friend slowly turned his head to gaze at me, the whites of his eyes glaring in the bright light of the temple. He whined pitifully and I saw the muscles in his backside try to move his tail, but it just lay there in a lifeless heap.
Tears stung my eyes as they welled up against my eyelids before falling gently on to the fox's silvered fur. "I'm so sorry," I sobbed, lightly stroking his shoulders.
For several agonizing moments, Jorin struggled, panting so rapidly it was like listening to a humming bird's wings beating, until at last he managed to rest his nose on my knee. He looked at me with his icy blue eyes and blinked slowly once...twice...and then he closed them. I felt his small body trembling and his heart beat declining rapidly. Finally, with a small sigh that managed to sound relieved and grateful, he was still.
Blindly, I shook him. "Jorin, no. You have to wake up."
He didn't respond. "No, stop that. Wake up! Please, wake up!"
My breathing hitched and my throat clenched as I began to cry in earnest. Slowly, I pulled his small body into my lap and hugged it tightly. "Please don't go. I don't want to be alone."
Holding his limp form, I rocked it back and forth as my mother once did to me. Deep inside I knew it wouldn't bring him back, but I pretended for moment that it could. I pretended that he was just tired and upset from what had happened. That he would get annoyed with me hugging him like this--he had never been one for coddling--and would soon snap at my hands and scramble away.
Even as I felt Derkeethus approaching, the connection shifting as he moved about, I continued to pretend. I didn't look up when his shadow fell across me. I only buried my face into Jorin's fur and tried to listen for a heartbeat that was no longer there. Would never be there again.
After several minutes or hours or days...maybe even years, I sought a scrap of one of my blades and held it out to the Argonian.. Derkeethus, looking uncertain, knelt at my side and took the blade I offered him. He knew enough of Bosmer tradition to know what I was meaning to do. Pressing the blade against the bloody fur, he glanced at me in askance. I nodded, starting to sing the words of farewell and remembrance even as I continued to sob.
Together we slowly consumed Jorin, the faithful companion through our many travels. He would dwell always in our bodies, until at last they came to rest upon the earth, and thus would never be truly forgotten.
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