Fic: Courtship Doesn’t Work Like That

The plan tonight had been to do some work on my next Nona playthrough post, and then do some actual playing after that. But Nona’s next post is going to feature a scene with the follower Aviendha (from the Wheel of Time mod) that really rubbed me the wrong way. And I found myself reacting to this much as I’d done a couple of times to events in Project AHO, in Kendeshel’s run!

The result: about 2,500 words of my making that scene with Aviendha work better.

Intro

Let me set the scene. Nona has just recently come back from High Hrothgar, after being tested as Dragonborn by the Greybeards, and she’s also had an encounter with some hostile Khajiit and discovered a strange shell-like creature in a house in an abandoned grotto. Aviendha has asked her to take her back to the bridge in Riverwood, where they’d originally met. But at the Riverwood Trader, Aviendha gets it into her head to tell Nona she believes Ysolda is the woman for her–and she does so in rather fervent terms!

This also gave me an opportunity to work in a bit of character development about what I’m seeing as Nona’s mental state as of the start of her playthrough: i.e., that she woke up amnesiac after being left for dead in Eastmarch. So I touch on that a bit here, too.

That’s action that will be covered in my next official playthrough post, and this scene should be considered my headcanon for how the scene should actually have gone.

Scene

It was not all that long a ride from Whiterun to Riverwood, especially at the slower pace dictated by some of Nona’s party being on horses, and some of them on foot. For most of the way, she didn’t even bother to mount the horse she’d named Foresti, since it felt rude to her to ride when Eris and Aviendha had no horses. But at a walking speed, the trip did take longer, and that left her group open to interception.

Such as the thief who tried to accost Nona by the side of the road that wound its way up the hill, from the crossroads by the meadery. She’d had barely enough time to tell the ruffian she had no time for him before Lydia struck him down.

The bigger problem was the dragon. Where it came from, Nona didn’t know; whatever gifts she possessed as the Dragonborn didn’t seem to include an innate sense of when a dragon was about to attack. One moment, with Aviendha, Lydia, Eris, and Gorr in tow, she was approaching the Riverwood bridge. In the next, fire blasted down out of the sky over the town, and a dragon’s roar split the night asunder.

Nona didn’t know much yet about what it meant to be Dragonborn. But she did know that if a dragon was attacking, it fell to her to do something about it.

And, thank the Divines, she didn’t have to do it alone. Along with the four who’d accompanied her to High Hrothgar and then into the strange pocket realm of Oblivion called Faceted Stones, Riverwood offered its own defenders. The guards sent by housecarl Irileth from Whiterun came running, bows out, to join the Dragonborn and her group in taking the beast down.

In short order, they succeeded. Power streamed off the creature’s body and into Nona, setting her every nerve aflame—though not so much that she didn’t see that one of the Whiterun guards had been felled in their fight. Riverwood had escaped unscathed, but even one guard lost was too many. She stopped to whisper a prayer over his body, and murmur a question to her housecarl about whether Lydia knew this guard too, as she’d known the ones who’d fallen at the watchtower when she’d fought Mirmulnir.

Lydia did, in fact, know his name. “Bjornir,” she murmured gruffly. “We can take word back to Whiterun when we’re done here, so Irileth can tell his family.”

By rights, then, they should have retreated straight to the inn for food, drink, and rest. But Nona recovered a few heavy, mangled items from the dragon’s remains, along with the bones and scales themselves. They were things that, perhaps, the people of Riverwood could use. And so she trudged into the Riverwood Trader, hoping to sell what she’d looted to Lucan and Camilla. Maybe after, perhaps, she’d feel justified in collapsing into a bed.

Out of the blue, though, Aviendha asked to speak to her by the door of the shop—and distracted her from any other thought.

“Ysolda is the woman for you,” the Aiel spear-maiden pronounced.

Nona blinked at her, not entirely sure she’d heard her correctly. “Excuse me?”

Lydia, on her thane’s other side, frowned. “I don’t think this is the time or place to discuss this,” she said, chilly with reproof.

Aviendha, however, seemed undeterred. Now that she had Nona’s attention, she plunged forward without hesitation. “Ysolda is a wetlander, your own kind. Her back is straight, her limbs supple and strong, her lips like plump love apples. Her skin is smoother than the finest silk, her bosom fine and well-rounded—”

“What are you doing?” Nona cried.

“I am describing her. Have you seen her in her bath? There is no need for me to describe her if you have seen—”

Behind Nona, Gorr let out a barely repressed guffaw, while Eris coolly stepped up to the counter and proceeded to finish the transaction with Lucan that Nona’d been trying to do in the first place. Camilla, Lucan’s sister, was nowhere in sight, but that was no comfort. There were already too many people in the room as it was. “No,” Nona said, the words growing tight in her throat, “I haven’t seen any such thing.”

Lydia stepped closer to Aviendha now, her expression darkening. “I don’t know what bathing customs are like where you come from,” she said, “but in Skyrim, we don’t watch one another bathe unless explicitly invited.”

“And,” Lucan put in loudly from behind his counter, “we also don’t typically discuss what a lady looks like naked in a public shop, especially when that lady isn’t even present. If you’re going to engage in that kind of talk, people, take it to the inn.”

“I don’t mind,” Gorr offered, though he looked away with a sheepish grin the instant Lydia shot him a virulent look. Eris also looked in Gorr’s direction, though her half-hooded face remained unreadable as always, and Nona could not tell in the slightest what the blind mage thought of the situation.

For her own part, she was mortified.

“I really need you to stop this,” she told Aviendha. “Right now. Please.”

The spear-maiden looked from face to face, perhaps only just in that moment realizing—as she’d belatedly done when taking off her clothes in the abandoned grotto their band had discovered near Ivarstead—that she was overstepping her bounds. “I mean no offense,” she offered. But she didn’t exactly look repentant, and her blue-green eyes were bright with resolve. “But you do well to blush, putting her aside when she has bared her heart to you!”

Nona froze where she stood. Her memory hadn’t been exactly… steady, since she’d awakened in the wreck of a wagon in the wilds of Eastmarch. Everything and everyone she’d encountered since was new to her, and the discovery of her Dragonborn nature most of all. For one wild moment, it occurred to her to wonder whether she might have met Ysolda, at some time Before The Wagon—but no, that made no sense. There was Before The Wagon, and After The Wagon. Aviendha was definitely After, yet she spoke as if she’d witnessed Ysolda doing a thing of which Nona had no memory at all, not even one in the After.

“She hasn’t done any such thing,” she said. Her voice sounded thin and strained even to her, and her head was pounding with the effort to double-check her own fractured memories against the still-sparking backdrop of the dragon’s soul echoing through her awareness. “At least, not in my hearing. Please, I really must ask again…”

Aviendha didn’t seem to catch those last few words. She drew herself up tall where she stood by the door, in a posture of righteous indignation. “Very well, wetlander. When this land begins to break you, it will be a fitting punishment for your treatment of Ysolda.”

Lydia took another step closer to the spear-maiden, her stance still relaxed, but her hand lingering meaningfully on the hilt of her sword. “Did I mention another thing we don’t do in Skyrim?” she inquired, in dulcet tones that did absolutely nothing to hide the threat beneath them. “Namely, talking like that to a thane of Whiterun. To the Dragonborn. As her housecarl, I’m going to give you to the count of three to apologize, before I start hitting you until sweet rolls come out. One—”

“Take it outside or I call the guards!”

Later, Nona would remember that last was surely Lucan, but in that moment she didn’t know for sure. Because what came out of her was even louder than the shopkeeper’s irate demand, and it blotted out everything else: a rumble of the Voice, stirred up within her by the remnant of the dragon, and filling her next words with the threat of flame.

“I SAID STOP IT.”

The room fell immediately silent. Every face turned in Nona’s direction, much to her chagrin. Everyone visibly gaped at her, even Eris, if the slight startled parting of her lips could count as gaping. Nona’s cheeks felt hot enough to be almost painful, as if the dead dragon’s soul were trying to burn its way out of her, through her very flesh. But there was nothing to be done for it. She knew what she looked like, delicate and pale enough that the slightest blush would indeed flood her cheeks like dragonfire.

Still, she was the Dragonborn. And the thane of Whiterun. Nona could not have articulated the expectations everyone she’d met in the last many days assigned to both of those lofty positions—but, by the Divines, she felt the weight of them now. With a heavy sigh, she looked at everyone in turn.

“Lucan, my apologies for the disturbance. Eris, thank you for taking care of paying for our trades. Please let me know how much gold you spent, and I will pay you back. Gorr, you may not mind but Lucan does, and I do. Lydia, please don’t hit Aviendha. I’m sure she means well. And I seem to recall someone else I’ve met recently not hesitating to speak to me honestly about what she felt was right. I personally prefer honesty. Even when it makes me uncomfortable.”

“Hmph,” said Lydia. She still scowled, but she stepped back from the Aiel woman, and her hand fell away from her sword. “As you wish, my thane.”

“Aviendha…” Nona met the spear-maiden’s gaze as levelly as she could. “Look. I don’t know what you said to Ysolda, or what she said to you. I just know what she has and has not said to me. She seems very nice, but the last I spoke with her, when she asked me to bring her a mammoth tusk, she spoke as if she was interested in Mikael the bard. Not me. I too am new to Skyrim, so I-I don’t really know how courtship works here…”

Or anywhere else for that matter, came the disquieting thought. But nobody else but her needed to know that.

“Not like this,” Lydia insisted. “No self-respecting Nord woman needs help expressing her interest in someone. That’s what Amulets of Mara are for. If Ysolda really is interested in my thane—and for the record she’d be several steps up from Mikael—then she can put on an amulet and tell her that to her face.”

Aviendha’s brow crinkled. “That doesn’t seem terribly romantic. Is there no passion in this cold, hard land?”

“Passion exists here, as it does everywhere.” This, surprisingly, was from Eris, though the mage showed no sign of discomfiture that she’d spoken up, or that she was aware of the surprised glances in her direction. “But as it does everywhere, it has its time and place. It cannot and should not be forced, no matter how strong the interest of another in seeing it succeed.”

Behind his counter, Lucan stood eying the lot of them warily. His scowl eased off somewhat, but his tone remained pointed as he put in, “And that time and place is not in my shop. Dragonborn, I accept your apology, but please don’t make me ask again for you to take this discussion elsewhere.”

“Of course,” Nona hastily replied. “Everyone… out. Now, if you please. We still need to take Aviendha to the bridge as she’d asked, and which I’d wanted to do before that dragon so rudely interrupted us. Good night, Lucan, please give my regards to Camilla.”

They all took their leave, then. Nona could not possibly have physically pushed anyone out the door; most everyone in her little band was taller than she, and Lydia and Gorr were more heavily armored besides. Some part of her that still roiled with the last few sparks of the dragon’s soul hinted in the back of her mind that if she really wanted someone to move, the Shout the Greybeards called Unrelenting Force would do it. FUS. RO. Or both of them together.

But they’d tried Lucan’s patience enough, and she was not about to unleash a Shout in his shop or anywhere else in Riverwood if she could help it. And so she waved everyone out the door ahead of her, offering Lucan a last rueful smile as she went, and the coins she hastily pulled from her pockets as she searched for enough to pay Eris for her purchases of supplies.

Outside, everyone waited for her to join them. And Aviendha in particular ventured to her side, her face turned thoughtful. “I will give you that apology now,” she said. “I did not mean to speak out of turn. I do believe that Ysolda is the woman for you—”

“Bold of you to assume my thane even wants a woman, or a man for that matter,” Lydia warned.

“I don’t even know right now, to be honest,” Nona admitted. “And I don’t think it’s a thing I can spare time to think about. There’s too much happening, with the whole… Dragonborn thing. I don’t even know if I’m going to be alive tomorrow, if I’m meant to fight dragons. Ysolda is awfully pretty and awfully nice, I agree. But right now I don’t know if it’s safe for me to be interested in someone, Ysolda or anyone else.”

That, at last, seemed to reach through Aviendha’s determination. The spear-maiden’s expression shifted, the indignation easing out of her eyes, replaced by understanding. “Of course. I should have realized. Forgive me, Dragonborn. I will set it aside until such time as it’s safe to discuss.”

“When such a time happens,” Nona said, “I promise I’ll be open to discussing it. But preferably directly with the person in question. But for now, come. Pleases. You said you needed to go back to the bridge. Let’s do that now, shall we?”

Night had well and thoroughly fallen over the town now, with only a few sleepy noises from a cow the next street over, and a single bark from the dog Riverwood’s children liked to play with. There was still a tang of dragonfire in the air, a grave reminder to Nona that a guard had lost his life in the town’s defense… but she wasn’t entirely prepared to grapple with that thought, on top of everything else.

And so, to her surprise, she drew strength from a sparkle of humor.

“And besides, given how you spoke of her—are you sure you’re not interested in Ysolda yourself?”

Laughter burst out from them all at that—and after a moment, though the question seemed to hit her like a shield bash to her head, even Aviendha chortled aloud. “You know, Dragonborn,” she replied, “I may need to think about that.”

The laughter carried them all the way to the bridge. In that moment, Nona felt much better about the night.