Chapter Text
Rialla sighted to herself and patiently followed the man who was supposed to ‘test her out’. She could see his irritation, his manner that told her he was not looking at her at all right now, as all he was seeing was a stranger that intruded in his home. A whelp not worth second glance. The man was rude but it did not bother her much.
The white-haired old man she met just now, Kodlak, worried her much more. In addition to her noticing how strangely he looked at her when she first walked in into the room, she too, felt something, some familiar sensation tingle at the back of her head when she looked in his eyes. Logically, she knew she could not have known him from anywhere, but still. The more she thought about it, the more familiar the old men felt, and she had to get to the root of this matter.
Returning back to her current situation, she wondered how this big man would act if he knew who she actually was. How many of her enemies she had almost single handedly chopped into pieces just this morning, including a dragon that dropped out of the sky while she was returning to Whiterun. She smiled bitterly to her thoughts, making a note to herself sarcastically, that if she had decided to keep her identity secret from most people she should probably stop feeling hurt by the fact that they do not recognise her at sight and look at her with due respect.
With these thoughts going around in her mind, she stepped out of the Jorrvaskr and followed the large back of the man in the Wolf’s armour down the steps to the training yard. She saw the man called Vilkas smell the air attentively and growl something under his breath, as he turned around. Rialla smiled at him, tilting her head, trying to appear unaware of his foul mood. He does have quite handsome cheekbones though, she noted to herself.
“Let’s do this,” he said.
Let’s get this over with…, she echoed in her mind.
She reached over to her shoulder and pulled her blade in one swift motion. It gleamed with purple slightly, but as Rialla suspected, the Companion in front of her did not appear to know what it meant. He told her to take few swings at him, rising his shield up, and she leaped forward. She changed the angle in the mid swing and landed the first blow without fail, making the much larger man stagger back.
Someone whistled encouragingly. They appeared to have audience.
I must be more tired then I thought… I forgot that I was supposed to act normal and hold back a little.
She scowled to herself and pirouetted, noticing an opening in man’s stance, swinging her weapon once more.
The whole farce ended in four blows, as the man lowered his hands, stepping away and informing her that it was enough.
Rialla sheathed her weapon, nodding absentmindedly, and when she glanced up again at the Vilkas, her brows crawled up in surprise. The man was staring at her thoughtfully. She realised he was looking differently at her now, something in between confusion and realisation was flashing on his face.
Oh shoot…, she cursed herself immediately for not being careful enough, Did he notice something?…
But after a pause, in stead of what she was afraid he would ask, he suddenly handed her his sword.
“Take this to the smith in the Skyforge, whelp.”
She extended her hand and took it without thinking, still blinking at him. She was so worried she even forgot to spit some venom at the “It’s probably worth more then you are” comment Vilkas dropped before stalking away.
“Well that was closer that it had to be,” She whispered quietly to herself, and looked up at the rock on top of which the Skyforge was supposed to be, “Let’s get this done, get the job I’m supposed to from them and be out of here as quick as I can…”
This was the day when the Dragonborn Rialla had joined the Companions, the step she knew she had to take to blend better in to the world of Skyrim and carry out her mission, and the step she did not consider having any special meaning for her future.
The step that Vilkas would not consider having any meaning at all, when he first saw her.
Their few minutes in the training yard left him thinking, however.
She was tall for a woman. Slightly taller then Skjor, but still not tall enough to look Vilkas or his brother straight in the eye, without arching her neck slightly to look up.
She had Nord blood in her, but appeared to be of mixed race, as he had never seen Nord with a hair as black as hers. Her grey eyes were of such pale icy colour, that in contrast with her raven black hair and black and long black eyelashes they sometimes looked almost white.
What troubled Vilkas was the look on her face, glimpse of which he had caught just when she leaped past him, swinging her blade.
She was fighting him, but for a moment he saw an expression for which he could not find an explanation. It was a look of someone very tired and most likely bored, also much older then the girl in front of him was. It was evident in her eyes, suddenly very heavy and cold, surrounded by tiny wrinkles. His eyes were sharper than human’s because of his blood, and he was sure he was not mistaken. It was then when he finally decided to pay attention to the newcomer in front of him, and realised her smell was even odder. She did not smell of fear or excitement, as he would expect from any person, especially woman, made to fight him. Her heartbeat did not even quicken, as far as he could tell. There were even stranger smells stuck about her armour: of old dungeons and blood, human blood mixed with something else he had never smelled before. But it was the almost icy smell of the woman herself that made the wolf inside of him feel his hairs standing up on the back of his neck, reacting to something strange and unknown.
It was this feeling that made him watch her from a distance, whenever she came back to Jorvaskr of whenever he caught a glimpse of her in the city. He saw more then once, her usually smiling face turn blank and her eyes look like the ones of an very old person, when she thought no one was looking. He also saw that there were other expressions that showed up on her face when she thought no one was looking. He saw her face light up with a smile that could have belong to a child, when she was passing through the mead hall and noticed a plate with freshly baked honey cakes. How she teared the warm dough with her fingers in small pieces, closing her eyes blissfully and making strange sounds in pleasure, as she put them in her mouth. That scene made him stare wide-eyed from his corner bench, where he was reading his book before she walked in, and made him forget to breath for a moment from sheer eroticism of it. On the day of her Trial, when after the ceremony Companions were gathered at the tables for the laud celebrations, he had caught the sight of tears gathering in her eyes quite few times. She blinked and looked up every time it happened, then smiled and pretended nothing was doing on, hiding her face behind her wine cup.
The woman was strange, not like anyone he had met before.
He couldn't bring himself to come closer to her, trusting her was completely out of question, but he could not make himself stop following her with his eyes just as well.