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• Ulysses

  

  • 34 posts
   

  April 7, 2013 6:24 PM EDT

  17TH OF LAST SEED, 4E 201 

  What I know of blades and of blood and of adventure is only what any attentive reader could learn from one good book, or several bad ones. What I know of the smith’s trade comes from idle chatter and idly watching Oengul at his forge in the marketplace. What I know of spellcraft and an enchanter’s work, of how to buy and sell, is only the wisdom of my mother and my father passed down to me. But my hands are quick and my mind quicker, for to survive in the Gray Quarter, a knack to finding lost things is the first skill any urchin learns. Whether these things were lost to begin with, or helped along the way.
  
  I have worked the docks these last few months, hauling cargo from ship to shore alongside Argonian and Dunmer alike. I am told that our people were once at tooth and claw. Now we are united under the heel of Ulfric and his ‘Sons of Skyrim’. Still, the work has given my limbs a wiry strength, and I have a few hundred Septims saved from honest work. And with this coin in my pocket, I have begun to plan. I shall leave this place, I think, and start a roaming life. But who can start an adventure without an initial investment? Not I. That’s the part the books and the songs never tell you. Nevertheless, these are my first steps toward freedom.
  
  I spoke today to an Argonian dockworker, Scouts Many Marshes, who confided in me that our Nordic brethren on the docks are paid up to ten times what we are by Shatter-Shield Shipping. I could not stand for this. It does not fit my plans.
  
  I worked the day away before heading uptown, to Candlehearth Hall. I do not know what I expected. Perhaps to find myself out on the street within moments. Gasping and muttering of ale going bad in the passing of a Dunmer amongst Men. ‘There goes this neighbourhood.’ But I was greeted by nothing more than a curdled tone from the proprietress as I asked where I might find Torbjorn Shatter-Shield. Drowning his sorrows, the answer seemed to be. Drowning his fresh-dead daughter in mead.
  
  If I believed the hearts of the rich could feel such sorrows as the hearts of us poor, or if I believed the heart of a nord could thaw for a moment, I would have felt true sympathy. As is, I showed only counterfeit companionship. I smiled a counterfeit smile, but bought the old man a real drink. After hours of carousing, and another few hard-earnt drinks, I brought up this problem of wages. Beard drenched in mead, he agreed, even as I slipped my hand into the pocket of his fine coat and brought out an unseen, unmissed pouch of coin.
  
  And I returned to my family’s pothole in the streets of the Grey Quarter, to write, and to sleep.

• Ulysses

  

  • 34 posts
   

  April 7, 2013 6:45 PM EDT

  http://dunmerofskyrim.tumblr.com/tagged/Journal+I/page/6