#anyway hope you enjoy this piece. I'm posting a disproportionate amount of efri stuff I feel

[ehlnofay]

(immediate follow-up to this piece)

They stop halfway up the mountain to let the goats graze.

It’s not a very big mountain, smaller than Efri would like, but it’s something. She’s never been here before. She’s not supposed to go past the little grove with the big lavender bushes.

By the time they get halfway, it looks like it might be past nine in the morning. Sissel sits on a rock with her dress pulled tentlike over her knees, a crumb still at the corner of her mouth. Efri wants to wander around a bit, but if she keeps walking the goats will follow her, and it’s time for them to eat. So she finds a bigger rock than the one Sissel is sitting on and climbs it. She can watch all the goats from here.

She wants to get to the top of the mountain. She might be able to see into the valley of the Reach from there.

“How long do you think it will take to get to the top?” she calls to Sissel.

Sissel looks up, shielding her eyes. The sun seems about level with them right now, and the light is so bright it reflects off Sissel’s pale skin and hair, shining and ghostlike. “Don’t know,” she says, running the words together the way she does. “All day?”

“And then it’ll take all night to get down? We can camp and come down tomorrow!”

“We wouldn’t have anything to eat.”

“I could find food. I do it every day.” It’s true. Efri takes breakfast in the mornings before she takes the goats out, and she takes dinner every night. She always tells Ma that she’s taking bread or something to eat when she gets hungry, but more often than not she gives it to Sissel. There’s berries and stuff, if you know where to look. And she doesn’t get too hungry anyway. “There’s crumbs on your face, you know.”

Sissel wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Not proper supper. I mean, you couldn’t find a proper supper.”

“I could so,” Efri objects, although she doesn’t necessarily believe it. The trouble with Sissel is that she’s very sensible a lot of the time, and that gets very boring. Efri is glad she’s not that way. “I could kill a rabbit or something. I have my knife.”

“We’d need to cook it.”

“Don’t be so dull,” Efri says, but when Sissel tenses, she slides off the rock and sits down next to her. Sissel has been chewing her thumb again – Efri can see the little holes and ugly tears in the skin. She knits their fingers together. “Besides, I actually have a fire-steel. And I bet you could make fire!”

Sissle tenses again. Efri pulls on her hand so that both of their arms waggle. “Don’t worry, there’s no-one else around.”

“I can’t make fire,” Sissel says. “Jouane won’t teach me.”

“That makes sense, I guess. I’ve heard magefire is dangerous.”

“Yeah.”

One of the kids trails up and starts sniffing the hem of Efri’s dress. She swings her leg to startle it away.

“I bet Onmund will learn to make fire,” she says. She tries to imagine it.

Sissel looks at her. “What?”

“Don’t tell,” Efri says. She looks away from Sissel’s shiny face, out at the goats and beyond them, the view. “But he’s gone to Winterhold.”

“No way. Really?”

“Yeah. I mean,” Efri tries not to let irritation bleed into her voice. Sissel gets nervous when she sounds angry. “No-one will tell me for sure. But it’s obvious – he’s been wanting to go for ever, he never shuts up. And this morning he’d had his bag all packed and they said he was going away.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

They’re quiet for a moment, watching the goats. One starts ambling back down the path they came, and Efri scoops up a stone and hurls it with her free hand. She’s gotten very good at throwing things. The stone clatters in the middle of the path, and the goat starts and trots back to where the others are browsing.

“I’d like to go to Winterhold,” Sissel muses quietly, resting her chin on her knees. “But I don’t know if the teachers would be as nice as Jouane.”

“I bet they’re super strict,” Efri says. “But really smart. You’d learn so much, and you’d become the greatest mage in all of Skyrim!” She unlaces their hands so that she can draw her dagger and hold it dramatically aloft. “And I’d go on adventures and be the greatest hero of this age! And we’d be unstoppable!”

Sissel snorts a laugh. “What, you want to be an adventurer now? Like Erik?”

“I think so.” Efri sheathes the dagger. “Or something. Maybe I could be a travelling merchant, like those ones with the caravans.”

“Aren’t they all Khajiits? Jouane said they’re Khajiits.”

“I’m sure I’d be allowed to travel and sell things even though I’m not a Khajiit. Or I could be a knight! That would be cool. Or even a courier, and I’d deliver packages to everybody all over the world. I just want to go places.” She’s rather sick of being told to go walk no further than the grove with the lavender bushes.

“Me too,” Sissel says.

“What are you going to be?”

Sissel shrugs and pulls her dress so far over her legs that the grubby tops of her knees are almost visible at the neckline. “Dunno. Jouane says I’m real good at magic. Maybe I could be a wizard.”

“You’d be the best wizard,” Efri says firmly.

“I don’t know.”

“You would so. Better than Onmund.”

“Are you going to miss him?”

The question takes Efri by surprise. She’s not sure how to answer it. ��Maybe. I’ll miss him more’n you’d miss Britte.”

“I wouldn’t miss Britte.”

“I know.”

Sissel tugs her dress again. If she keeps doing that she’ll tear it.

Efri keeps thinking about that question. Will she miss him? She doesn’t know.

Truth be told, there’ll not be much to miss. Onmund’s always just been kind of there. Half of an argument at the dinner table. Another face in the fields. Sometimes a flash of light in the distance, a sparkle, a gleam. Sometimes when she led the goats back into town, she saw strange symbols seared into trees or patches of frost when the rest of the grass was bare. She never told on him.

She stands. “Come on,” she tells Sissel, taking up her stick again. “I want to go higher. And I have potatoes in my pockets! I can start a fire and we’ll have a feast.”

“It’s only been five minutes,” Sissel complains, but she unfolds her legs and stands too.

Efri raps the stick on the rock sharply and the goats all look up.