Unbonded - part one?

'Wo-hoo!' the little Redguard's laugh rang like a silver bell amidst the billowing clouds of dust. 'Did you see that thing the floor just did? Under our feet? The topsy-turvy spinning thing? Is this how you feel when you're drinking? I haven't had a chance to do any drinking yet - I mean, my mom gave me a sip of wine at her last birthday... And it tasted terrible! Ugh, so bitter and prickly and...'

Slowly, like ebbing tide crawling back from the shoreline, the dust settled, revealing the blurry curves of the girl's silhouette. His head was still throbbing dully, as he could still hear the echoing thunder of the crumbling wall, and there seemed to be a trickle of blood dripping down into his eyes - but still, Ralof tried his best to figure out which way was up and which was down, and clambered awkwardly into a more or less upward pose. For a while, he remained silent, gaping at his fellow prisoner and trying to blink away the scorching brightness of the spell she kept casting at the itching gash across his forehead - accompanying her magic with a generous dose of chatter.

By the Nine, how could she go on like this without keeping her mouth shut? Without running out of breath? Even as she lay with her head on the block, she had been singing on the top of her voice, swallowing the fearful tears that were streaming down her face. And now that the sudden, inexplicable, impossible arrival of a dragon had plunged the Keep into chaos, and they had used this chance to escape, she had switched from singing to talking. Giggling. Telling jokes. Ignoring the roar of the great beast behind their backs and the fact that the whole place seemed to be falling apart round their ears.

She must have noticed Ralof squirm, for she grew quiet for a moment, and then blurted out apologetically,

'Oh my, what's wrong? Does the spell sting? It's supposed to do that - don't worry! It means you are going to be all right! Or... Or maybe you don't trust magic? I heard many Nords do. My people, the Redguadds, don't trust magic either - but I was raised by elves, and they taught me there are different kinds of magic, good and evil. This is most definitely good magic. Here - can you feel that?'

Extinguishing her spell's dazzling light, the little Redguard (rather unceremoniously and without a hint at hesitation, which could have been expected from a girl her age, being trapped in a narrow hallway together with a burly, bearded, mail-clad warrior) grabbed Ralof by the wrist and pressed his fingers against his own forehead. Through the tears in his threadbare glove, he could sense that the soggy, oozing mark was gone; and his skin was no longer itching.

'It's all mended now!' the girl chanted, clapping her hands in glee and leaping up on one leg, with another bent in the knee and forming a sharp angle, so that her body resembled a chubby little figure 4.

She then shifted her weight to the bent leg, reversing the 4-like shape, and continued,

'You are good as new - so turn that frown upside down, if you please!'

But instead, Ralof furrowed his forehead even more, watching her little jig and pondering to himself whether the little thing had been touched by Sheogorath. It was beginning to look like it might have been a wiser move to make a beeline for the Keep without telling her to come with him. He was not sure if he was prepared to deal both with a dragon overhead, the Imperials at his heels, and a chirpy little madwoman by his side.

In the meanwhile, it seemed to dawn on the girl why her fair-skinned companion looked so sour. She slowed down her dance and cocked her head to one side, bird-like, breathing out,

'Oh, now I get it! You think I'm annoying, don't you? A lot of people seem to think that... I have seriously lost count of the times I got snapped at because I got overly cheerful. But I just can't help it! Certainly not now!' she inhaled deeply and repeated the jig a couple of times. 'I'm so excited to be alive! Aren't you excited?'

'I... I suppose...' Ralof mumbled in reply, rubbing his freshly healed forehead and watching the girl prance around him.

What with all that stumbling through the collapsing tower and avoiding Imperial soldiers, he had not really had time to digest the thought. Now, however, it was beginning to sink in - a rhythmic chant that rang clearly through his mind, with the musical accompaniment of the girl's laughter. He was alive. Alive. Alive. Alive.

Gods, that round-faced little southerner was not that crazy, after all - she was right! She had every reason to be leaping about like this - and so did he! He was alive. He was alive. Shor's bones, he was alive! He was going to feel it all again: the warm touch of the fire's golden glow as a snow storm thrashes and howls outside; the prickly, fragrant carpet of pine needles tickling his bare toes; the soothing coolness of a clear mountain stream cloaking his body on a sweltering summer afternoon; the bittersweet caress of mead against the roof of his mouth; the tight, reassuring embrace of a shield brother and the tender touch of a woman... He was going to experience all of this once again - because, blast it all, he was alive!

'Pardon me,' a quiet, all too familiar voice said somewhere behind his back, 'But if you two keep dallying, you might not stay alive much longer. That dragon is tearing the whole of Helgen apart, if you haven't noticed'.

Ralof started and whirled around, a stifling wave of red-hot rage rushing up his spine and then back down again. Of course. Given how rotten his luck had been lately, what with his troop walking right into an ambush and then getting roasted in dragon fire, he should have figured that the gods wouldn't let him enjoy the elation of being alive for too long. That son-of-a-horker just had to come along and spoil it.

Ralof had prayed to the stars that he wouldn't have to cross paths with the Imperial scum ever again, for both their sakes - but now there he was, that goddamn traitor, that faithless milk-drinker; leaning against the pile of debris, panting slightly, with that disgraceful garb he called his uniform all grey with dust.

'You,' Ralof growled, his nostrils flaring. 'What are you doing here?!'

'I grabbed him by the hand on our way to the Keep and dragged him out of harm's way,' the girl explained cheerfully as she helped the traitor steady himself on his feet and looked him over intently from head to foot to check for injuries. 'You just were too blinded by dragon fire to notice. This poor dear fellow was about to get fried to a crisp, being all brave and reckless - weren't you, Mister List-Reader?'

'My name is Hadvar,' the 'List-Reader' replied, looking up at the girl, the tips of his ears flushing, while he passed his hands along the sides of his leather cuirass to wipe away the dust.

He must have picked up those smooth lady-catching moves from them bards, while training in Solitude - the sleazy wretch! The true sons of Skyrim were too busy doing the actual fighting for things like that! (Although, for all his disdain, Ralof did make a mental note of the way Hadvar spread his shoulders and straightened his back when he was done with his... preening).

'He doesn't deserve being called by his birth name,'  the blonde Nord growled huskily, his eyebrows drawing together into a single straight, bushy, intensely disapproving line. 'There is only one name for the likes of him - filth'.

His darker kinsman choked indignantly, and then broken into a frantic fit of sneezing, blowing the last of the dust out of his nose in small, chalky wisps.

'How dare you!' he wheezed in between sniffs. 'I am serving a noble cause - I am fighting to restore peace and order amidst the chaos that the likes of you had created!'

'We are fighting for our homeland!' Ralof roared, advancing at Hadvar with his fists clenched. 'While you have sided with the enemy, you damn traitor!'

'The Empire is not our enemy!' the 'traitor' retorted. 'It is the source of our strength! With the Empire, we have a future! Gods, you have no more sense than back when you were a child!'

He punctuated his scourging soliloquy with one final, decisive sneeze.

Up to this point, girl had been watching them bicker from the background, her cheerfulness rapidly fading away; and each time the two Nords hurled insults at one another, she would bite small slivers of skin off her lower lip, and her blue eyes would grow round and glassy, welling up with tears as though every harsh word they said was directed at her own little self. But now, apparently deciding that she had had enough of this, she took a long, steadying draught of air, wiped her face with the back of her hand, in an abrupt, resolute gesture, and stepped between the men, spreading out her arms to shield them from one another.

'Hold on now... so you know each other? You - you grew up together, right?' she asked, looking from Ralof to Hadvar and then back again. 'If you did - why all this bitter hatred all of a sudden?'

Ralof stepped back and spat at his feet in disdain.

'I thought I knew this milk-drinker once, when we were just lads,' he said darkly. 'But to me, that boy I played with... he died long ago. He died the second he turned his back on his home and his faith and decided to lick the boots of a bunch of elves and their toady'.

'Watch your tongue, rebel,' Hadvar snarled.

No doubt, he had a perfectly good comeback line reserved for the seething Stormcloak - but before he could say anything further, the girl put an end to the argument: to utmost surprise of the two Nords, she girl dug her fingers into her hair with a loud exasperated groan.

'Mama was right!' she cried out, stomping her foot on the cracked stone floor. 'There is a war going on in Skyrim, she said; you will find many broken homes and ruined friendships, she said! But I had no idea that I would stumble on something like this so soon after getting here! Stendarr's mercy, this is worse than almost getting beheaded! And here I was, so happy and...'

'Wait,' Hadvar cut her short sharply. 'Did you just say something about "ruined friendships"? This treacherous bandit is no friend of mine!'

The girl straightened up and looked Hadvar straight in the face, making him shudder: for the blue of her eyes had changed from the soft, deep warmth of a serene sea to the hard, transparent glint of an ice crust.

'Yes he is,' she said firmly, 'And so help me, I am going to make you see that! Both of you! Now, let's get moving! We have a dragon to escape from!'