One might think it would be easy to hide within a growing city, to get lost amongst the constant stream of visitors and migrants. But the bigger the city the more eyes are open to spy you, and the more loose tongues are willing to betray you. There is little honor amongst thieves, and less still amongst drunks and skooma fiends. It does not take long to track the Vulture down between the taverns and bathhouses.

Gulug the Vulture helped steal food from the rural tribes to buy medicine for the city’s poor. He boasts fortune, proclaims benevolence, and finally brags self-righteousness. I, like Gulug, am neither a good nor a bad man, but unlike Gulug, I am an honourable one, in that I wilt stand and look my consequences in their accusing eyes.

On the steps of Scarp Keep I am greeted by the radiant High Priestess Solgra. A little while ago I bemoaned rather cruelly that no Breton or Redguard would take an Orsimer to their bedchamber to secure the Covenant. How ignorant I am, how blinded by bigotry. For though Solgra may stand taller then I, her shoulders may be broader, her skin tougher, her tusks… inconvenient. It is into her illimitable eyes that I have fallen.

Windows to one’s soul they say, nay, they are windows to one’s everything. One’s feelings, be-it happiness or grief, and one’s health, both physical and cerebral. One’s wisdom, bravery and pride, or lack thereof of one or all. One’s intentions, one’s aspirations, and one’s dreams and nightmares. And of course the very beat of one’s heart and hue of one’s soul. But it was in my reflection within them that I was to discover their beauty. For when I looked into Solgra’s eyes, I felt a peace and serenity within my own heart I had not felt since my soul was so cruelly rent from my body by the bodkin of that insidious Worm King.

Oh wretch that I am, that my heart were not so burdened that I might have the courage to look deeper into her eyes. Perhaps I am not so honourable after all, for why does peace and serenity make me feel such abrading guilt… and yet the Vulture felt none?

S.K