There’s little to do in Windhelm the next day--the White Phial hasn’t gotten any new stock in, for some reason--and staying cooped up behind those gray stone walls isn’t helping me decide whether or not to marry Scouts-Many-Marshes. I put on my armor, therefore, and set out on horseback to explore more of the surrounding region. After riding out a little way I dismount and start leading Snowberry so that I can stop to gather, er, snowberries. It seems that I’ve already begun to miss being on the road: walking slowly along with Jade and my horse, gathering reagents, taking potshots at the local wildlife, being mauled by psychotic wolves--it’s somehow very soothing. My wanderings take me west, then over the bridge to the north. Not far beyond this crossing I find another mill--Anga’s Mill, so my mysterious naming instinct informs me. This one is in somewhat better shape than the others: it is equipped with one spare axe and two surly workmen. The latter have little more to say than the former, telling me only that I should speak to Aeri, the owner, if I want a job. I’m only too happy to grab the axe and chop for a while. Ah, it was a good life I had in Riften, wasn’t it? That long, leisurely walk to Heartwood, that lovably ill-tempered Elgrim fellow, the cramped, depressing attic I slept in, the obnoxious regulars at the Bee and Barb, the boring--all right, it was actually pretty unpleasant. I bring a load of wood to Aeri, accept my pay, and she promptly proposes to me. Two proposals in two days?! I’d like to know what Jade thinks of that. Cursed, pshaw! I’d say she’s bringing me good luck. Although, when I look around for her, I can’t find her. She seems to have gotten lost somewhere. Perhaps she ran away from some wolves and hasn’t found her way back yet. It’s an odd feeling, being desired like this, and not one that Nona would ever have predicted being troubled with. I was planning to move on after receiving my pay, but instead I stand there bemused for the rest of the day, watching Aeri work. And she's really something--the way this slip of a woman loads those enormous logs onto the conveyor all by herself is--not something anyone should be doing if they want to retain the use of their limbs and/or spine, frankly. But she does it hour after hour while her big strong male employees go about their tasks with their cute little axes and grindstones. It’s an offer that deserves serious consideration: Aeri owns her mill and seems pretty successful, although she does complain about the Jarl of Dawnstar’s demands. She’s strong, hardworking, capable. She has her own house--a house I could live in, with her, in a very picturesque location that is both convenient to and not actually in Windhelm (a huge plus). On the down side, she seems a bit old for me, and a little too focused on work. And, well, there’s one other problem-- I like Scouts-Many-Marshes a hell of a lot more than I like her. Now, lets be clear: Nona is no romantic. She can’t afford to be. She wants to live in a house, and in Skyrim houses are for player characters--or for people who marry an NPC who somehow already owns one. You cannot get your own house without being willing to wander around in dungeons killing people; it’s just not possible. But presented with these two choices, side by side, it’s hard to imagine Nona’s being happy with Aeri when there’s a guy she likes much better, a guy who wants her, living really close by. It certainly wouldn’t be fair to Aeri. And if Scouts-Many-Marshes is preferable to anyone Nona might choose for more materialistic reasons--anyone she could meet in the Windhelm area and choose for materialistic reasons, at least--then he needs to be evaluated on his own merits, which are considerable: • He seems genuinely nice. Even when he was being paid almost nothing, his hostility was directed at the specific source of the ill-treatment, and not at Nords or humans in general, which puts him ahead of most of the other Argonian dockworkers. • He really seems to like me. And the favor I did for him was actually meaningful, something that feels like a good basis for affection--not something dumb like giving someone a septim or a mammoth tusk. • If I married him I could start calling myself Mrs. Many-Marshes, which would be awesome. • He’s got ties to his community and cares about his people and blah blah. • I’ll say it again: Mrs. Many-Marshes. AWESOME! But as admirable a fellow as he may be, Scouts-Many-Marshes is not without his flaws: • He is an Argonian. He’s got horns and spines and no lips. I don’t want to be crude, so lets just say that there are certain acts of physical affection that might be problematic owing to his anatomical characteristics. Also, Nona would like to have children someday, and I have no idea whether that would even be possible with an Argonian. • If I married him, we’d be living in the Argonian Assemblage, which is a big dormitory. We’d have no privacy as a couple. • Some of the other dockworkers hate me. Stands-In-Shallows hates me because I wouldn’t steal skooma for him. Neetrenaza hates me because I’m human. And I would have to live with these people. • The Argonian Assemblage is in Windhelm. That’s bad enough on its own, but there’s also the problem that, as a human, I would have privileges in Windhelm than my husband lacked, and I think that that would be unpleasant for us both. All in all, I’m inclined to think that we would both be better off with someone else. I have nothing to say against him personally--but it’s entirely possible for two nice people who like each other to be absolutely miserable together, and I feel it’s the probable outcome here. And yet I can’t quite let it go: for how likely is it that I will ever again find anyone so agreeable who actually wants to marry me? It’s getting dark as I return to Windhelm. Jade appears at my side somewhere near the gates, which is a great relief--I should otherwise have been obliged go searching for her in the dark, and hardly have been able to forgive myself if something had befallen her. Activity in the marketplace is starting to die down, but I head vaguely in that direction anyway--I have wolf pelts to tan, so it would be good to get some leatherwork done now that the smiths have gone home. I pass through the graveyard, and there, near the Hall of the Dead, a guard and three other people stand crowded around a pale corpse. Approaching with my lantern, I get a good look at the body, stripped and savagely mutilated--it’s Susanna, a young woman whom I saw only yesterday in Candlehearth. The guard tells me that she isn’t the first--something I already knew, of course, from Viola Giordano. But seeing a murdered woman lying right front of me is another thing altogether. And now that I have seen her, there’s nothing anyone could say that would induce me to stay here a moment longer than I must. Goodbye, Scouts-and-Mrs.-Many-Marshes. Goodbye, Windhelm. I’d run back to the stables and gallop away immediately if that weren’t completely insane--but I do need sleep, and the killer has, I hope--I hope!--killed enough for one evening.
3 Comments
Laura
4/29/2013 06:11:29 am
When will we see a new post? I'm going to have to start shipping Nona with Jade if we don't meet some more characters soon.
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Claire
11/22/2015 11:06:04 am
Oh, please no...
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Claire
11/22/2015 11:04:06 am
If I were you, I'd marry a man if I was a woman. It just makes sense to do that. Doesn't it?
Reply
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201 And All That
Nona Plaia may well be the most boring person in Skyrim. Below are links to her "adventures" in chronological order.
A Life More Ordinary Mods An NPC is Born The Lady in the Lake Adrift in the Rift Opportunity Chops Studying Abroad Witches, Wolves Footwear is Not Enough A Modest Proposal Scales of Love Dances with Beers Five Rules to Live By Plain and Pusillanimous Watery Woes How Not to Stage a Murder Hot Heads and Cold Graves Run Nona Run Interlude A Fool Suffers Gladly The Markarth Discomfiture In Search of the Unknown It's Raining Bandits Down and Out No Holds Barred Beyond the Pale The Slippery Slope Mission Implausible The Nord in the Next Room The Only Living Girl Victory is a Gateway Drug Continuity Break Wherever You Go Archives
August 2014
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