Chapter Text
Jerall Mountains, 4E 184
Katla stood looking at the statue of Talos, the outlawed ninth divine. The carved stone figure was on a hill overlooking the road she and her caravan were passing through, almost as tall as the pines that dotted the nearby mountains, oblivious to the cold and patches of snow that covered it. The scenery was breathtakingly beautiful, unlike anything she’d seen before in Cyrodiil.
It was indeed bone-chillingly cold. Katla shuddered as a gust of wind tugged at her hood and chilled her cheeks, almost freezing them off. The cold wind was also new to her; back in her hometown, Anvil, the winds were warm and the only thing they carried was the salty scent of the sea.
Oh, how she missed the sea. In her ten years of age, it was the first time she had been this far from home, and even though it had been only a week since they had started their journey towards Skyrim, she was already homesick and longing for her beachside hideout where together with her brother, Kjartan, and their friend Fadhlan, they would spend countless hours playing every game known to the children in that town and even invent some more interesting ones.
But more than anything else, she missed Fadhlan. It was a pity that he couldn’t come with them. It had made her sad, immensely. Fadhlan had patiently explained to her that unlike her, he didn’t have any relatives in Skyrim and that his family was originally from Hammerfell. In a feeble attempt to cheer her friend up, Katla had promised to write him letters and describe everything they would see on their travels. He, in turn, had promised to do the same thing, although he had shyly said that there wasn’t much in Anvil that Katla hadn’t already seen. If only her stupid brother hadn’t interrupted her back then…
The sound of heavy footfalls distracted her from her daydreaming. Speak of the devil, she thought annoyedly. Here he comes.
“Ran away from chopping wood again?” Katla asked with a feigned air of superiority, placing the fingertips of both her hands together to further reinforce her point.
“Mom sent me to gather firewood,” the boy said as he ran a hand through his tousled red hair.
“And? What are you waiting for? Go fetch firewood then,” she barked at him, knowing damn too well what ‘mom sent me to gather firewood’ meant.
“Mom also said to take you with me,” Kjartan replied smugly.
Yes. just as she had expected it. However, she wasn’t going to give up without a fight. He might be five years older than her, but that gave him no right to just order her around. “No, she didn’t. You’re just lying.”
“I’m not lying,” he wheezed.
Katla almost cringed as Kjartan’s reply came out a distorted croak. Having just reached fifteen, the boy was going through puberty and his changing voice and red peachfuzz growing on his chin had given Katla ample opportunities to make fun of him.
This time, however, she wasn’t in the mood for a quippy remark. She decided to let it go. Just this once though.
“Fine,” she sighed. “I’ll join you in a few moments.” she motioned to him to move along, shooing him away.
Kjartan clearly didn’t understand her because he simply stood there idly, staring. Katla tried her best to ignore her brother and remember what she was thinking about earlier. But just about as she was beginning to put the pieces of her shattered thoughts together, Kjartan’s voice barged into her mind like a rabid cow and wrecked whatever she had just managed to put together.
“What are you doing here anyway?” he huffed impatiently.
Katla very much wanted to punch Kjartan in the face; instead, she exhaled and decided to choose a different course of action. “See that big thing over there?” Katla pointed at the statue of Talos.
“Yeah, it’s huge.” he wondered aloud, then turned to look at Katla, as if suddenly remembering that they were in the middle of an argument. “It looks cool. What of it?”
“What of it? What do you mean ‘what of it?’ That’s Talos!” she couldn’t believe his brother was this dumb.
“Really?” Just as she had expected, the mention of Talos caught Kjartan’s full attention. Katla could swear she saw something sparkle in his bright hazel eyes.
Maybe it was her brother’s intense gaze, maybe it was her own interest, but the fact remained that Katla now had a single new thought being rotated in her mind. One that was far more interesting and fun than whatever it was she was trying to remember.
They were both observing the snow-covered statue with a distinct reverence that was equal parts childish curiosity and superstition.
Kjartan was the first to speak. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
He was grinning like an idiot; how could Katla not read what was in her brother’s mind when it was practically written all over his freckled face?
Needless to say, It was exactly what she herself was thinking at the moment.
She grinned in response. “Say no more, brother.”
“Ready when you are, little sister.”
“Hah! I was born ready!”
They didn’t even let the words leave their mouths, already placing one foot behind the other, preparing to launch into a sprint. The destination was the statue. Top of the statue, to be precise.
Running races were a part of the Kjartan and Katla’s daily life. Whether it was to the marketplace or from their room to the kitchen, ‘the disaster duo’, as everyone who knew them tended to call them, could make almost anything into a race. And take its results very seriously, even days after it.
Katla bolted fast, light steps barely left any marks on freshly-fallen snow. Kjartan’s steps, in contrast, sank almost ankle-deep; yet the two seemed to move with the same pace. What Kjartan lacked in speed, he made up for in power and endurance. The boy was already a solid foot taller and a good few pounds heavier than his peers. Katla, on the other hand, was physically normal, except that on very rare occasions, she was capable of surprising even herself with how far she could push her abilities to their limits.
Incidentally, Katla was treating this little running game like one of those rare occasions.
The real part of the race was scaling up the slippery surface of the statue. The siblings stood on either side of it, and while wasting no time throwing jabs at one another, they began their climb. Katla lost her footing a few times, but each time quickly managed to grab onto something to support her weight. She had removed her gloves and her fingertips were red lumps of scarred flesh, thankfully numbed by the ice they clutched.
They sat on either shoulder of the gigantic statue. Katla could see the road and her caravan from here. She liked this view much better than the one at the foot of the statue.
Her brother was similarly absorbed by the novelty of the view. It was obvious that even Kjartan hadn’t seen this much snow in his lifetime.
“I won,” Katla declared, finally deciding that the scenery interested her no more.
Kjartan turned to regard her, clearly confused. “N-No, you didn’t.”
“Suck it up, Kjartan. I WON,” she stated confidently.
“It’s not fair, you run faster than a goat,” Kjartan blurted out, clearly still mad at the results.
Did he just call her a goat? She raised her voice: “And you fell down like a bumbling cave troll. I’m going to tell everyone the story, they’re going to call you Kjartan the Cave Troll.”
The last words reverberated through the tall pines and white peaks. Katla and Kjartan stopped to listen to the reflecting sound, completely forgetting their argument.
“Hello?” Kjartan shouted and the mountains shouted back at him, replying to his greeting with gradually diminishing enthusiasm.
Katla had never heard anything like this before; she knew what an echo was, but here, it sounded a thousand times more magical than any description she knew of it. The silence that hung in the air after every echoed word felt almost magical too, as if the landscape was waiting for a word to fill it with.
“Hey, watch this!” Kjartan said; it sounded like he had an idea.
Katla was absolutely sure that her brother was about to do something stupid, dangerous, and undoubtedly fun, and by the divines, she wouldn’t let Kjartan have all the fun for himself.
Just as she had thought, her brother proceeded with his plan. He raised his hands to his mouth, inhaled, and shouted: “PRAISE TALOS!” with all his power, his voice suddenly booming and not its usual croakyness as it moved past the peaks of the mountain range.
They listened in admiring silence as nature around them responded to them with more praises for their outlawed god.
The moment was so thrilling that Katla felt the whole land here was filled with magic. It was already decided that she loved the frozen, unforgiving, inhospitable, and hash land of Skyrim much more than anywhere she’d been before.
And now she was going to try this new magic for herself. “My turn!”
Out of all the interesting words she knew – and she indeed knew quite a few, being the curious child that she was – she chose the strangest yet the most familiar sounding one. She remembered how she had taken a liking to it almost instantly.
“FUS!” she shouted, and the air shook with pulsating ripples. It was as if the very trees and mountains were shouting back at her, not in an echo of her voice, but in their very own, distinct voices. Almost as if nature understood that word. A gust of wind shook the still air.
Even Kjartan noticed it and turned to look at her sister wild-eyed, so thrown off by what just happened that he completely forgot his usual display of jealousy. “Woah! What was that?”
As much as she wanted to downplay it, her excited voice betrayed her surprise. “It’s an old Nordic word. I uh forgot what it means,” she thought for a few moments, rubbing her numb nose with the back of her hand. “Remember those stories Mom used to tell us about old Nord heroes? I learned it from there.”
True, Kjartan might not have Katla’s quick wits but his passion for his interests far surpassed his sister’s. And now Katla has just brought up one of his favorite topics; Any mention of Nords’ culture and history was guaranteed to grab Kjartan’s attention in less than a second.
“Do you think our relatives in Skyrim can talk like that?” he asked, fascination plastered all over his face.
“Hmmm… no. But guess what? Our ancestors probably did,” she paused momentarily to recall a very important detail. “Mom also said that it was taught to the Nords directly by dragons.”
“Woah…” he exclaimed, then his expression grew thoughtful. A rare thing. “Maybe now that we are in Skyrim we can find someone who actually knows this language and can use it!”
Huh. That was actually pretty smart. Why hadn’t she thought of it herself, Katla thought, feeling a little jealous. Maybe her brother wasn’t all that stupid after all. “Perhaps,” she did her best to fake unenthusiasm.
They both turned at the sound of their father calling out to them.
“I advise you two to come down before you call the entire Aldmeri Dominion here,” he was standing at the foot of the statue and, as the tired lines on his face showed, it wasn’t the first time that he had to deal with his children’s unconventional mode of entertainment.
“Dad!” Katla waved, grinning, legs dangling in barely-contained excitement.
“Look Dad, we found a statue of Talos!” Kjartan slapped the statue’s perpetually balding head.
“So I guessed right, we’ve finally passed the border to Skyrim,” their father wondered aloud.
“Can I see the Throat of the World from here?” Kjartan asked.
Their father sighed and pointed a finger to the top of the statue where his children sat enjoying a unique view of the southern Skyrim mountain range. “Yes, it should be visible from there.”
Kjartan looked at the array of peaks surrounding them with a puzzled expression, eyes darting from peak to peak. He leaned a little closer to his sister and whispered: “which one is the throat of the world?”
“The tallest one, obviously.” she declared, making sure it was loud enough for her father to hear. Everyone had to know that she was much smarter than her brother.
In the distant north, away from the rest of the mountains that rose all around it, the ice-capped peak of the Throat of the World stood draped in wispy shrouds of white clouds.
Kjartan pointed to it. “Next race is up that mountain,” his expression was of genuine excitement as he reluctantly tore his gaze from the majestic mountain.
She was more than willing to oblige. “Good, I’ve heard there are trolls there. Since you share”- she waved a hand at her brother - “some similarities with them, maybe you can befriend one or two.”
Frowning, her brother turned his face away to look at the mountains once again. Katla felt bad, maybe she had gone a little overboard with the jokes. But just as she was preparing a barely apologetical sounding apology, Kjartan turned to her with a malicious grin.
“There are goats there too, just saying,” he whistled.
Never mind the apology, Katla had to prepare something else entirely. Namely, something to throw at her brother’s dumb face to wipe that annoying grin off of it.
Her father called out to them. “That's it. I'm telling your mother.”
They both slid down almost instantly.