[Aside: Someone recently asked me the name of the mod that adds all of the extra NPCs that Nona meets--Jade, Hjoromir, and so forth. I could have sworn that I’d mentioned this mod, but somehow I neglected to. The name of the mod is Interesting NPCs, and I’ve added a description of it to my mod summary page.]
“I wonder if there’s a potion for my curse,” Jade says pensively. I am in mid-stoop, reaching for yet another clump of mountain flowers, as she goes on to speculate that her problem might be curable with drugs, like a disease. I’ve never heard this from her before; I would like to think that it’s an indication of her confidence in my alchemical expertise, or perhaps just a random musing, but I can’t help but suspect that she might be growing a little discontented--not with me, I hope, but with the constant travel and danger.
She doesn’t keep me in suspense for long. “Fredas!” she says brightly the next day, as we head down to Solitude’s docks on an errand for Evette San, who makes spiced wine and sells it in the city. “The Bee and Barb will be bustling.” Wistfully, she tells me that we should go back there and see how everyone is doing; I never cared for the Bee and Barb crowd myself, but I know she’s fond of Sapphire, her former Guildmate, and I can’t blame her for being homesick, even if it is for a hole like Riften. I was hoping to find someone to marry while in her company--I still don’t think there’s any substance to this curse she keeps referring to--but I decide then and there that we’ll be returning to Riften after I’ve had a good look around Solitude, whether I’ve become engaged or not.
I persuade Vittoria Vici to release Evette’s spice shipment, and return to the city, where Roggvir’s body has been taken away. I’m sorry to say that Solitude did not make a good first impression: the execution happened yesterday, just as we were arriving. Roggvir’s crime was facilitating Ulfric Stormcloak’s escape after killing King Torygg; for that, he publicly lost his head. After that unpleasant spectacle, I was a little afraid to learn what else might be happening around here, for so often it seems in Skyrim that bad only leads to worse. But Corpulus, the owner of the Winking Skeever, had nothing more alarming to divulge than that a fellow from Dragon Bridge had come seeking the Jarl’s aid; that a deranged man was walking about in the streets; that a certain Jaree-Ra was looking to hire someone for an unknown purpose; and that the Bards’ College wanted new trainees. I heard nothing at all in this list to excite me, which was a great relief--exactly the reassurance I had hoped for. Corpulus even threw in a story about how the inn got its name: he used to have a pet skeever, and ... it winked. He’s a surpassingly dull man; I like him tremendously.
I spent the rest of that first day just getting my bearings; the city was abuzz with talk of the execution, and after hearing the opinions of numerous inn patrons and passers-by I found a pleasant distraction across the street, in the form of Radiant Raiment, a clothing store. Although the ladies who run it seem to have adopted a business model under which their customers must be disparaged at every opportunity, that didn’t stop me from buying a dress and a hat and a new pair of boots and then vowing to return as soon as possible.
Today, though, there’s much to be done in the form of little, innocuous favors for the locals. On my way back to inform Evette San of my success with her spice shipment, I meet Sorex Vinius, who claims to own the Winking Skeever. It turns out that he’s Corpulus’s son; the inn may not technically belong to him at present, but “it’ll be mine when he kicks off,” Sorex informs me with cheerful callousness. Like everyone else, he has an opinion on the execution, but his is personal, not political: “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” he sneers, explaining that, when they were younger, Roggvir discovered that Sorex had a crush on a girl named Vivienne, and thereafter used that knowledge to torment and humiliate him at every opportunity. Sorex is thoroughly uninterested in the rightness or wrongness of Roggvir’s actions in regard to Ulfric; as far as he’s concerned, Roggvir was an ass in his youth and maturity didn’t do much for him.
I have just agreed to help Sorex out by delivering some rum to Falk Firebeard in the palace, when I bump into Taarie, one of the proprietors of Radiant Raiment, who tells me that if I’m going to the palace, I might want to rethink my outfit. She’s probably right; I’m wearing my brown, stained tunic, the one I like to do alchemy in, so I ask her for suggestions. “You’re really going to the Blue Palace?” she asks, pleasantly surprised, and immediately offers me a free new set of clothes if I’ll wear them in front of the Jarl and, if she likes them, tell her that they came from Radiant Raiment.
This actually seems like a very silly thing to do, for two reasons: first, I’ve noticed that when I enter a Jarl’s hall, it is often the case that a very large, armed person will loom up in front of me and tell me in a menacing tone to stay away from the Jarl; bothering one of the most important people in Skyrim for the sole purpose of advertising a clothing shop seems like an excellent way to get myself tossed out on my ear. Second, I can’t help but doubt the sanity of anyone who would choose Nona to model their clothes, and I’d have to doubt my own sanity if I were to follow the suggestions of a crazy person. But I agree nevertheless, because: new clothes.
My trip to the palace goes better than expected: I’m a little embarrassed by Vigilance’s constant barking--I really should have left him outside--but happily it escapes remark. As I arrive, the fellow from Dragon Bridge is petitioning Jarl Elisif for aid--something about unnatural magic and a cave; he gets less than he hoped for, owing to the skepticism of the court wizard, but Elisif herself seems nice enough--definitely not the sort to throw a stranger in prison for foolishly parading back and forth in front of her in an overly fancy outfit. So, after handing Falk Firebeard his rum, I screw up my courage and ask the Jarl whether she likes my clothes, and she actually responds positively, telling me that Radiant Raiment can expect to receive her order for some dresses in the near future.
I chat with Nythriel, the court gossip--that’s not her official title, but it might as well be--who has all of the latest news on such lofty subjects as Thane Erikur’s sex life: she’s seen him leaving the dungeons carrying clanking bags of stuff--shackles and torture equipment, she has no doubt--and tells me conspiratorially that he’s not the one doling out the punishment, if I catch her drift. My desire to hear more is at odds with the feeling that the longer I listen to her, the harder I’ll have to scrub myself clean in the bath afterward.
I’m enjoying Solitude, and there’s still a great deal to do here, but over the following days I become increasingly frustrated. My waterskins are empty, and in the morning I ride all the way back to Dragon Bridge to refill them. Seawater won’t do, and although Solitude has a well, Realistic Needs and Diseases won’t allow me to draw water from it. Then I spend the rest of the day searching the city for a cooking pot to boil my water in, and find nothing--not in the inn, not in the Bards’ College or Blue Palace kitchens, not in Castle Dour. (It’s a hazard of realism mods, and one I don’t know quite what to do with, that in their efforts to improve immersion, they create yet more absurdity. Why can’t I draw water from a well? Because having to drink water wasn’t a feature of the original game, and so a mod author who wanted it to be a necessity would have had to think of that specific possibility. There is, I have only now discovered, a mod that specifically allows users of Realistic Needs and Diseases to draw water from wells, but I’m reluctant to install yet another mod every time I come across some minor shortcoming in one of those I have already. Absurdity is a basic condition of Skyrim, and one I’m trying to embrace. And it is very, very trying.)
Defeated, I return to the Winking Skeever, where Sorex notices that I’m wearing an Amulet of Mara and asks me quite plainly whether I’d be interested in having a life together. Having just spent several hours searching this stupid city for a cookpot, I am honestly flummoxed--not just by Sorex, whose tone even as he proposes leaves me in doubt as to whether he really likes me all that much, but by Solitude itself. I abandon the conversation with the question still hanging and head grumpily to bed. Tomorrow, I will do what my predecessor Nordrick thought best in these cases: I will stalk Sorex like some odious pervert and find out everything about him.
I find out precisely nothing: Sorex spends the whole morning and most of the afternoon in the Skeever, either sweeping the floor, sitting at a table, or listening to Lisette’s singing. He doesn’t speak to anyone, except very briefly to me when I happen to get close to him. At around 4 pm, I follow him out of the inn and into the marketplace, where, for the next few hours, he hovers around the stalls, still without engaging anyone in conversation. Now, my travels through Skyrim have not exactly been a thrill a minute--in fact, I’ve avoided excitement rather assiduously--but I can honestly say that I’ve never had a duller, stupider day than this. Learning nothing new about Sorex, I spend the hours mulling over what I already do know: he’s a gruff, unvarnished fellow, even crass; a man of no invention, the sort who contentedly makes the same lame joke over and over (“The Winking Skeever isn’t just the best inn in Solitude. It’s also the only inn in Solitude!”); a man with no interesting opinions, but honest with himself, aware of his own resentments, as his story about Roggvir shows--a quality I find appealing for its very plainness. In fact, I’m struck by Sorex’s very ordinariness; I could almost believe that we were made for each other.
But oh, Solitude, you were not made for me, nor I for you. It’s getting late as I break off my conversation with K’avald, a homeless Redguard whom I started talking to out of sheer boredom (he’s a happily deluded fellow who believes himself to be a wealthy nobleman, though he cheerfully accepts the coins of passers-by as “investments” in business projects which have yet to materialize) in order to follow Sorex back to the inn, where I eat fish soup for dinner as a cure for the mild case of Rattles that I’ve contracted from drinking dirty river water all day. Could I live in the Skeever, where there’s no room large enough to accommodate us both, save for that belonging to Corpulus, who seems unlikely to “kick off,” as his son delicately puts it, any time soon? Living in Solitude would force me to buy all of my food and drink, or light campfires in the street, or else cook in someone else’s home (someone in this city must have a cookpot), which all seems perfectly wretched; certainly I can afford to stop making my own food--alchemy is nothing if not remunerative--but living as a permanent hotel guest isn’t what I want.
I just can’t do it. I’ve carelessly allowed myself to hope and dream, and in so doing have perhaps become overly choosy. But I can’t help it, now. I feel a terrible determination starting to take hold: I must have my own place. Somehow, I must become a homeowner--and maybe then I will marry Sorex Vinius, maybe not--but I will never be happy, Sorex or no Sorex, without a house of my own. I don’t like where this is going, what it’s likely to lead me to do. And I know that my friend Jade will likely blame my dissatisfaction on her mysterious curse. But I can look her in the eye and say this with total conviction: it’s not you--it’s Skyrim.