It’s a beautiful day for our journey back to Falkreath, which turns out to be so thoroughly uneventful that even Nona’s a little starved for action. I’ve been going back and forth along this road so frequently that there’s nothing to gather—no plants or mushrooms of any interest at all—and we meet no-one along the way, save for a few hunters and a very rude orc who tries to pick a fight with me by calling me a milk-drinker. Even if I cared about some random idiot’s opinion, I couldn’t effectively prove myself not a milk-drinker by taking the bait and then watching Vorstag beat her to death, so I leave her be.
We arrive in Falkreath in the middle of the afternoon, and I go immediately to see the Jarl. (I’m hoping he won’t notice that I’m wearing the same Radiant Raiment outfit I had on the first time we met; it’s still the only nice set of clothes I own.) Siddgeir is delighted to hear of the Embershard bandits’ demise. “Teach them to stop paying me,” he says with an air of grim pleasure. Then he adopts a confiding, friendly tone that sets my teeth on edge. “I like you,” he says. “You’re not afraid to get your hands dirty.” And he decides then and there to grant me permission to purchase property in Falkreath Hold.
Here I was, enjoying a little glow of pleasure, even pride, at having accomplished something worthwhile—I mean, bandits are bandits, even if you’re going after them for the wrong reasons—and two minutes with Siddgeir has made me feel as though I’ve just finished wading through a river of slop and that he will be calling upon my vaunted slop-wading talents the next time he wants a priest blackmailed or an orphanage burned. I end the interview before he can ask me to do anything else. Well, I knew I was going against my principles when I agreed to kill those bandits in the first place: no sense in crying about it now.
It takes me a while to find the steward—actually, it takes a stupidly long time: I walk all over the Jarl’s longhouse, and then I suddenly wonder whether she might have stepped over to the tavern for a drink, so I walk over there, and then I walk back to the longhouse and search the place from top to bottom again, before she suddenly steps out of a shadow and introduces herself. She’s an Altmer named Nenya, and she’s surprisingly agreeable for someone who has to deal with Siddgeir’s vagaries on a daily basis. This is most likely because she enjoys being the real power in Falkreath: she tells me that Siddgeir is wholly uninterested in actually running his hold, and so leaves everything to her and Helvard, his housecarl. She offers to sell me a plot of land for five thousand septims, and shows no surprise when I hand over the entire sum without hesitation. I now have the deed to a property called Lakeview, just off the road that runs east out of town.
With all my expenses—including Vortag’s fee, the cost of materials for his arms and armor, the expensive scroll I bought from Calcelmo—Lakeview has cost me around seven thousand septims, and I don’t even have a house yet. But I am a landowner!
I ride out eagerly to see my new property, but I’m delayed by those trapped watchtowers on the road—two more bandits have moved in, and these new ones aren’t quite stupid enough to kill themselves with their own falling rocks. Fortunately some Imperial soldiers just happen to be wandering by, and the bandits don’t last long against a hail of arrows.
As Nenya directed, I turn off the road near a house called Pinewatch—my new neighbors, apparently. I stop by the door in the hopes of getting acquainted with them, but it’s locked and there’s nobody about. The path to the side—it’s not really a path, just an area open enough to ride through—is full of angry mudcrabs and wolves. The inhabitants of Pinewatch, if there are any, must not come out much. It’s getting dark by the time I reach Lakeview; a thorough inspection will have to wait until morning. Vorstag and I spend our first night on my new property camped near the spot where my house will likely be.
The morning light reveals everything I could have wished for: the view of Lake Ilinalta is spectacular, and I have all the resources I need at the site to begin building—plenty of clay and stone, as well as a pile of sawn logs. In alarmingly short order I have built an unfurnished cottage that will serve as the entryway for a great hall. The size of the finished building will far exceed my former expectations; indeed Nona would have been perfectly content with a very small house, but Vorstag is staying over, so I need somewhere for him to sleep, and the cottage isn’t large enough for a second bed.
I head back to town to buy more logs, passing along the way an extremely unpleasant Khajiit warrior named S’vashni, who can’t seem to open her mouth without saying something viciously insulting, and whose only topic of interest is swordsmanship. When I try to bring the conversation to a more civilized level, she tells me that talk is for cowards whose blades say nothing. I wish I could tell her that the message I’m getting from both her words and her blades is “I am a nasty, violent wanker with a dangerous sword fetish,” but I would most likely be both too polite and too interested in self-preservation to say that, even if the option were there. I leave her, then, to whatever senseless murders and/or diplomatic incidents she has planned for the day, and continue into Falkreath, where I find that I must purchase my lumber from that idiot Bolund who can’t believe that “provincials” like me are allowed to wander Skyrim.
I also buy iron and corundum from Lod to make nails and fittings and locks, and, upon returning to the building site, use it all to put my main hall together. More wolves attack us while I’m working, so it’s fortunate that Vorstag is standing around wearing all of his armor with nothing to do. Once again, I’ve used up all of my materials in a burst of uncannily speedy construction, but I haven’t built any furniture yet. Another trip to town is in order, and there’s no way I’m handing any more money to Bolund, so I head down the slope towards Riverwood.
Near the bottom of the hill I find a curious tableau: four skeletons stand unsupported and motionless, facing a large stone table with a haphazard collection of bones and soul gem fragments arrayed atop and around it. Leaning thoughtfully over the arrangement is a robed woman named Carmella, who asks me whether I have come to watch the dance of bones, to pay homage, or to learn the craft. I answer very cautiously that I’m not sure what she’s teaching, and learn, to my relief, that she isn’t taking on new students anyway. She introduces herself as a master of the necromantic arts—not a practitioner of necromancy, she is careful to explain, but a necromantic artist creating works that serve to illuminate the human condition. I can’t honestly say that I like this particular piece, but that is almost certainly not the point, and I find Carmella friendly enough, if a bit pretentious.
The sun is setting as I get back from Riverwood. Carmella has gone elsewhere, leaving her artistic creation to whatever fate that hungry wolves and the elements might have in store. The skeletons stand as before, their eye-sockets eerily aglow, but they make no move to attack, and I decide that, on the whole, I rather like them. They seem lost and naked and vulnerable in the fading light, and—oh dear Gods, I’m actually standing here admiring the monstrous installation that this woman has left sitting practically on my doorstep. What will the neighbors think? Do the neighbors exist? Will they ever emerge from Pinewatch?
I do a bit more work before going to bed—“a bit” meaning that I build a fireplace for the main hall, a washbasin, and two beds—and then fuss around at my property for a couple more days, riding to Riverwood now and again to mix potions and buy materials. (I want to have an alchemy table in my home, but it requires quicksilver and I haven’t any left.) I fish in the lake; I make soup; I put in a little garden and plant vegetables and flowers; and I build more furniture—a bench for the entryway, sconces, barrels to store food and water, shelves, endtables near the beds, a dining table. I build a wardrobe for my room, and inside it I place the Radiant Raiment clothes that I wore for my audiences with Siddgeir. I don’t think I’ll ever wear them again. Then it occurs to me that Vorstag has nowhere to put his things, so I build a dresser for Vorstag’s room.
Vorstag’s room. How odd it is that I’ve constructed my house as though he lives here already! (That’s what happens, I suppose, when a single individual working alone is able to build and furnish a large house from scratch in two days with no prior planning.) And is it more peculiar that I have unthinkingly arranged things so that he can live here, or that I have unthinkingly arranged for him to live in a separate room? His interest hasn’t faltered: he still tells me from time to time that he’s surprised that I’m not spoken for. So why am I not spoken for?
Now that I have no need to marry for property, Vorstag is everything I could want: he’s human and male, and, if I’m going to be especially picky, also strong and brave; he’s a decent enough fellow who hasn’t killed any of my pets, and he’s quite good-looking if you like a man with facial tattoos and a jaw that can crack walnuts. In fact he’s pretty much out of my league, and the only reason I can think of for his liking me so well is that he has entirely mistaken my character. And who could blame him for getting the wrong idea about a woman who makes him a complete new set of armor and weapons before hauling him off to a bandit-infested mine to slaughter all the bandits so as to collect a reward from the Jarl of Falkreath himself? I hate to admit this, but Vorstag may be under the impression that I’m some sort of hero, someone held in high regard, and not merely a timid, all-too-ordinary woman who needs someone to protect her from bears while she picks mushrooms.
There’s only one way to resolve this: well, there’s several, but instead of taking the sensible route of thanking Vorstag for his help and sending him back to Markarth so that I can settle into a peaceful but solitary life of gardening, fishing, and alchemy in my new home at Lakeview, I’m going back on the road. With Vorstag. I’ll need him for protection, and once he’s spent enough time with me to disabuse himself of any silly ideas he might have about my courage or social prominence, I’ll know whether he truly likes me for myself. Maybe we’ll go back to Dawnstar; I’ll need some quicksilver if I’m going to make that alchemy table, and none of the nearby smiths are selling it.