Work Text:
In Whiterun we get a lot of travellers. Many of them stop to eat here. Plenty of people cloaked in shadows. I don’t ask them questions. Plenty of warriors, in full steel armour, wielding great swords and battle axes. They are usually twice my size, all muscles.
None of them bother me. I am long past being intimidated by others. Except for one.
I was wiping down the counters when I saw a young woman approach my station. She had the looks of someone from northern High Rock, but she acted as a Skyrim native. She had a simple request. A few bags of salt, in exchange for some gold.
I gave her all the salt we had, and after she left, I wrote down salt on my shopping list. I grabbed some on the way to the store next morning, and she came by for more salt in the afternoon. This routine continued the next day, and the day after that.
After a few days, though, I didn’t have salt on hand. The store was out that day, which happens occasionally. We keep a bit in the kitchen, but that is needed for the cooking. She did not know of this.
She walked up to my counter and asked for salt. I told her I did not have it. She looked at me. It was a simple look, and yet I felt fear. She paused for a moment, as if she were saving the memory of this time. And a felt a strange jolt.
It was like waking up from a dream and not remembering anything about it. It was like time had reversed, making me an earlier version of myself. It felt like I had died, or been horribly injured, and then forgot. She was the one who had killed me.
But I was alive and uninjured, and she was still staring at me. “I would like the salt that you have”, she said. I was so scared that I complied, knowing that it was not possible that I had some. The salt bags were in my pockets, like they were every day.