The Language Of Dragons-A Skyrim Story

14. The Seven Thousand

"It looks a lot bigger up close." Miraak stated as we stood at the bottom of the first step looking up. "And that my friend is what we call perspective."

"Uh, you know what I mean." He replied as I simply chuckled in response.

I took a step onto the first of seven thousand ice covered steps leading up the mountain, and I was already dreading the daunting task that was to come. So i started to climb. After a few minutes of a journey that would definitely take hours I decided to get rid of the silence in the air. "So, basically, don't be alarmed but about half way up there is a frost troll."

"Why didn't you kill it."

"Well I tried, I really did but I decided to just run past it, and that was the first time I attempted the climb and I have just ran past it ever since." I knew that my face must have been a picture when I said it because Miraak gave me a look that just seemed to say 'I give up'. After a while we encountered our first pilgrim, and I didn't stop as I might have done once.

"When did you get into thievery?"

"A few years ago, I wen't to Riften for something and a man named Br...never mind, well he introduced me to the thieves guild. I stayed there for a while and I eventually became a Nightingale."

Miraak looked at me almost sadly but then his mood must have changed as he asked, "Isn't the skeleton key supposed to go back to Nocturnal."

I gulped at his question and I stated waving my hands in the air as I responded, "Technically, she never specified when I had to take it back and its not like i'm using it for anything really bad, is it?" He gave me a disapproving look and I continued "Yes I could have given it back, and I will by the way but I know for a fact that I would not be here without it and you would probably still be in Apocrypha." When I mentioned that place though a darkness seemed to pass over his features, like he never wants to hear of that place again.  We kept walking.

After a little while we got to a flatter part of the steps and we stoped to eat. It wasn't much, just some cured meats but that was when the conversation really changed. "So about what you were saying earlier, who is Br or what ever name you were going to say?"

A wave of nausea passed over me over my failed attempts to cover up what I was going to say and the memories of the past. I could tell him that is was nothing, that he was just someonefrom my past but somewhere deep down I knew that I had to tell him. "Brynjolf."

He nodded at me as if he knew how I was feeling but I just dismissed it because how could the first dragonborn ever know what it felt like.

"You two were in a relationship weren't you?"

I had to look away from him and I found the floor to be a good substitute to his dark eyes. "Yes, we were but that ended a very long time ago."

"Why?"

I could feel tears threatening the break the surface, threatening to break me. "I think that on some level he just couldn't deal with the fact that I had the soul of a dragon, a soul that had to be free."

That was it, a single tear fell from my face and landed on to the snowy steps. "I think he wanted me to stay there with him, in Riften but how could I when the whole world was out there, and I still had Alduin do deal with. I think he may have been overprotective of me but although I admired it I still had to be free."

"I know how it feels to be trapped." I nodded understanding now completely how he must have felt in Apocrypha.

"He used to call me his flower." I thought out loud, frowning at the nickname as if it were a brand to my very soul.

Miraak started to shake his head, his obsidian hair glinting in the light of the midday sun. "You are not a flower, flowers are delicate, things to be looked at." He turned to look at me and there was only seriousness as I looked back. "You are a dagger, you are as sharp as a sword and yet you can be graceful like a pencil in the hands of an artist. You are as beautiful as a flower but you are dangerous and deadly." I couldn't believe him, this couple of thousand year old almost sentient dragonborn just compared me to a weapon in such a way that from his mouth it was like the finest of poetry to be savoured like a delicate wine.

I must have been staring open mouthed at him because he replied to my look with "What?"

"Its nothing." I stood up, packed up my stuff and continued walking Miraak staring into my back as I walked ahead of him. He was being nice to me, as nice as anyone and I think that if I let myself trust him and something happens then I don't think I could forgive myself. It wasn't long until we reached where the frost troll was and we decided to run past it like I always did because he seemed content to leave us alone once we had past his home.

It was almost evening when we reached the top, the stone castle that was the home of the gray beards. The snow was falling fast so we hurried up the steps to the giant door, crusted with frost and shards of ice. As soon as we were in the door slammed shut behind us locking out the cold.

Miraak sighed and walked ahead of me as if her were looking at a place he had known his entire life. "I didn't think I would see this place again."

"You have been here before?"

"Yes, but that was a long, long time ago."