Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-24449631-20140610232750/@comment-3293219-20140615135340

Morgen sat at the kitchen table, holding a cup in her hand, which she was rattling furiously. Something inside, beads or something small and wooden knocked against the inside of the wooden cup and against eachother. Eventually the Nord slammed the wooden cup on the table, with a loud bang.

Another 'bang' could be heard opposite her, prompting her to look up and see an identical cup, with four, long, grey, boney fingers draped over it. Her eyes trailed along the battered leather sleeve, from which the hand petruded from, several holes and stitches from where the wearer had been shot and stabbed, beaten and broken. She followed his sleeve until it reached his shoulder, seeing his face to the side, his sharp, red eye and the black eyepatch, which made his right eye look like some sort of a void.

His long black hair lay bedraggled down his shoulders, his short, scruffy beard which looked just a worn and unwashed. The old Dunmer had a number of scratches and several scars, which jutted out from under his eyepatch and a few around his mouth. He continued to stare at Morgen, with his cold, steely eye...

Morgen lifted her cup up, peering down underneath it, revealing 4 die underneath. They showed a 2, a 5, a 3 and another 2...

Caleb examined his, showing no emotion as he brought the cup down again, sealing the dice inside.

"I have three 2s..." Morgen lied as it was her turn to reset the quantity, she didn’t know the rules to this game very well but from the sounds of it, neither did Caleb.

Caleb glanced back, under his cup and shook his head, staring at her with his ‘good’ eye.

“I call that a lie…”

Shit… Morgen sighed, pulling a dice from under the cup and throwing it across the table as she began to shake the cup again. Like before, they rattled the die inside the cup for several moments before slamming the cups down on the table, concealing the die inside.

“How do you always know when I’m lying?” Morgen asked, not even bothering to lift the cup this time.

“It’s your face; you don’t have any control over your facial expressions…” Caleb replied, shutting his cup down and hiding his die.

“I used to have that problem, when I started doing this…”

Morgen sat back, growing disinterested with the game, it was rare that Caleb talked about his past, so she decided to probe him for more information.

“How old were you then?” She asked, curiously as she sat back in her chair, tapping her fingers on the wooden cup.

“Must have been in my mid twenties…” Caleb muttered, he truly didn’t remember as it felt like a lifetime ago, he was a different man back then, he was a different man six months ago and now he was a different man once more, a better man.

“What were like before then? As a kid? Like… My age…”

Caleb was hesitant to answer, placing one hand over the other on the wooden cup, like the die were going to try and hop up and escape to stop him from talking. He breathed out, heavily as he began to speak.

The former Captain smiled slightly and huffed a little as he began to speak, wrapping his fingers around the cup.

“Well, I was a strange little boy… The only one with an eyepatch…” The Dunmer began, somewhat disappointed by the fact that Morgen didn’t return his smile immediately but she eventually lightened up.

“Yeah and it didn’t really give you a lot of options, in later life…” Morgen giggled, glancing up to him with her sea-blue eyes. It was still strange for Caleb, seeing her face so… clean… When they first met, she was a bit of a feral child, covered in dirt and rather pale but now? After only six months, she had come a long way, she was able to read and write and she was an incredibly fast learner. Still, she’ll always be a practical person, fighting was her thing, the bow, the sword and the knife were all she lived for and in Whiterun, there was a lot of opportunity for people with such skills.

He sighed, believing that he owed it to her to give her some information on his past self but he found it hard to start talking about. It wasn’t a painful memory for him, it was just so… Distant…

“I… Was young, naïve and I didn’t know the impact my life had on other people…” The old pirate captain grumbled, sitting back in his chair. He tapped his fingers on the cup as he tried to think of the next thing that he was going to say…

“Where did you live?” Morgen asked, falling back in her chair as she found this to be far more interesting than the game that they were playing. Prompting Caleb to look up at her as he thought about it for a moment, he hadn’t really thought about it, not since he met Morgen and Sylvia, it wasn’t that long ago but it felt like it had always been this way and what came before it was just a nightmare. He had long since passed through the light at the end of the tunnel and everything else had been kept in the darkness behind him.

“I lived… In a house, a large house, almost as big as this city…” The Dunmer explained, finally letting go of the cup and sitting back in his chair.

“So… You’re rich?” Morgen asked, hopefully.

“Well… Were rich…”

“No, that was my father’s money, his land, his house…” Caleb corrected her, growing more and more depressed with every word as he slowly hung his head.

“Why’d you leave?” The Nord girl asked, throwing her arm over the back of her chair and letting her hand drape by her side as she listened intently, he never spoke of this stuff.

“He… And I… We saw things differently, there couldn’t be a compromise, so one morning, when I was about twenty, I realised that we couldn’t co-exist and so, I decided to leave.”

“I don’t… G-Get it, was he horrible to you or something?” Morgen asked, tilting her head.

“I mean, you could’ve stayed put, waiting for him to peg it and…”

“Morgen…” Caleb interrupted, sternly.

“What? I’m just sayin’ that’s what most noble’s sons would do! Well… In the books anyway… So, what happened? Did he hit you or…”

Caleb sighed and sat back, folding his arms…

“Sometimes… But that’s not why I left…” He looked around and sighed, leaning forward, like he was expecting that he was being watched.

“Then why?” Morgen asked, feeling like she was pushing her luck here but she wanted to know…

The Dunmer sighed and placed his hand on the table, curling his fingers up and making a fist, still his tone of voice was calm and cool as always.

“My father kept slaves...”

The young Nord’s eyes widened as she suddenly saw why he found it so hard to talk about it, she began to wonder what she would do if her sister was like that, whether or not she could stand up to her and if that failed, if she could… leave.

Morgen was heavily dependent on Caleb at the time, something that she never thought would happen. Though her Sister had raised her, Morgen was definitely the stronger of the two, even though she was half her Sister’s age. Sylvia was strong willed and headsmart but for years now, Morgen had been the one who did most of the practical work. Not that she was complaining, she liked being the rock of her small, dysfunctional family and she’d do anything to keep Sylvia out of harm’s way. Quite often, Morgen would wonder how the hell Sylvia survived without her or how Sylvia raised her for that matter.

You’d think that after fourteen years of being on the road? That she would have gotten better at taking care of herself but no, she still shrieks whenever she spies a giant rat or a mudcrab. Gods know what she would do if she encountered a wolf or a bear, up close…

“I didn’t think anything of it at the time… I wasn’t like him though, I knew that they were people but… I just thought that some people were slaves and I never questioned that, then one day I saw this Khajiit woman, screaming and clinging to the arm of one of my father’s guards… Her sister had just given birth and before she even saw the child with her own eyes, it had been taken away… The Mother was too weak… Given that she’d just given birth, so it was up to the sister to chase them out and try to retrieve the baby. The Guards just beat her, repeatedly, with batons… I don’t think they would have stopped… If I hadn’t stepped in.”

Morgen glanced away, obviously somewhat disturbed by the image, the cruelty of slavers just couldn’t be matched, a good reason that slavery was outlawed in the third and fourth era.

“S-So… What did you do?”

“I was angry… Which… Now that I think about it, might have been the thing that saved me from getting hit with the batons. I demanded that they helped her up and treated her wounds and gave the baby back to its mother. I told them that I’d have them killed if they didn’t…”

Morgen gave him a slight smile, admiring his courage. Doing such a thing now wouldn’t even leave a blip on Caleb’s conscience he always did what he thought was best but back then? He was… Just a boy, like her, she couldn’t have done that, at least not convincingly and pulled it off.

“My Father was… Far from impressed… It was then that I realised that I had to get out of there, that the life I lived was… Evil…” The Dunmer’s use of the word seemed to be… Strange, even to Morgen. Judging from some of his previous tales, he always considered himself to be evil on some level, murdering people, stealing, betraying people…

For him to call something or someone else evil must mean that he really despised it.

“S-So you left? Just… Walked out on him, like that?” The Nord asked, kind of hopefully as she wanted to imagine him just walking away, with nothing but the clothes on his back, spitting in the face of his elder.

“Not… Exactly, I spent the next month planning my escape, which I wouldn’t have managed, if it wasn’t for an Argonian prisoner, who helped me. He was older and more experienced than I was, in almost everything…

I could handle myself in a fight, I was a trained swordsman but I had little experience and like most spoiled elves in their twenties, I didn’t have much by way of common sense. I was smart but… inexperienced and that’s why I needed Kelzar.”

“Kelzar?” Morgen asked, tilting her head as it suddenly hit her as he had mentioned an ‘Argonian’ before…

“Oh, the Argonian…”

“Yeah… Him…” Caleb sighed, no trace of hatred or resentment lingered in his tone, he hadn’t forgiven Kelzar for what he did to him but he understood why he did it and he remembered what he did before. No matter his intent, that Argonian made him who he was today and Caleb would never forget that.

“He hated my father and my house, when I came to him and asked him to help me escape? He immediately agreed, he’d lost everything in that camp and getting me out of there was the perfect revenge…” He decided to hold up on the information about his eventual betrayal, the years that he spent plotting against Caleb, hoping to ruin him.

“The two of us walked through that gate as changed men… We had new names, new lives, new identities and for the first time, both of us were free.”

Morgen smiled, though she picked up on it, raising an eyebrow and sitting up straight.

“Wait… ‘New Name?’ What was your name before that?”

Caleb paused, glancing away, with a look of concern as it was so long ago, he’d never referred to or even thought of his old name before, it had almost been forgotten.

“It doesn’t matter… That man died a long time ago, he isn’t who I am today…” The Captain replied, sitting up and huddling over his dice cup as he peered under it, refreshing his memory.

Morgen didn’t respond, she just glanced away and thought about it a little, he obviously wasn’t ready to talk about that just yet and she couldn’t force him to tell her if she wanted to. These things took time…

“Caleb?”

The Dunmer snapped the cup shut before looking back to her, almost like he was surprised that she had more questions, which he shouldn’t really be, considering that he had just started opening up about this stuff.

“Do you think your dad… Missed you?”

Caleb shrugged; he didn’t care that much but it would be good for his old man to know what it was like, having your child torn away from you and not being able to do anything about it. His prized specimen gone rogue and ran away with one of his slaves, if he even realised that… Perhaps he thought that Kelzar had killed him or kidnapped him.

Perhaps he didn’t care? That wouldn’t surprise him at all…

Either way, he was just a nobleman; he wouldn’t be dead yet as Mer lived a long time, they were stubborn like that, especially rich ones who lived good, stress free lives, thanks to their army of slaves, who broke their backs everyday so that he didn’t have to break a sweat.

“Don’t know… Don’t care…” Caleb grumbled before looking back at her.

“Well… What’dya know? Two 5s…”

Morgen raised her eyebrow before remembering that they were playing a game, she sat up and sighed, knowing full well that she couldn’t beat him.

“Spot on…”

Caleb looked up to her, unimpressed at first as if she had gotten it wrong but still, she stood her ground, until eventually he threw a die at the center of the table.

“See? You’re getting better…” He smirked, going back to shaking the cup again and letting the dice rattle inside.

Morgen gave him a faint smile and did the same, rattling the dice inside the cup, relishing the sound that it made before ending it with a slam to the table.

“Nah… You’re just a shit liar…” She said, returning his smirk.

-

Morgen slowly awoke in her bed, groaning as she felt like she was sinking in it as she slowly opened her eyes, she began to wonder what would happen if this bed was like quicksand and it slowly swallowed her. She wouldn’t care; she’d just sink and enjoy every minute of it…

Nothing was going to get her up now…

She’d lie here until she expired…

“Breakfast is served!” A loud, obnoxious, tinny and incredibly annoying voice sounded over the intercom. She cringed as the noise entered her ears and rattled inside her head, ruining the tranquillity of the morning…

The Nord sighed and got up, rolling out of bed and throwing on her clothes and coat.

She can ‘expire’ later…