Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-17114085-20150516130656/@comment-5583506-20150526192118

"Dad! This one caught a butterfly today!" chirped the Khajiiti girl and eagerly waved her tail wildly around.

Hassiri smiled. "Did you now? That's very talented of you. But this one thinks that you should let it go. Butterflies belong in the nature."

"Ra'Kissi will, dad. She wasn't going to hurt it. She was just going to look at it."

He took his daughter's hand an trudged through the meadow, heading for the cottage. "Come now, let's go and see what your mother have cooked for us. And besides, you know that the only butterfly your father needs is you."

The girl giggled as he made a silly grimace.

The family's cottage was more comfortable than it was spectacular. If visitors had expected an extravagant castle, they had come to the wrong place. Najika was a good woman and a most extraordinary wife, though she had a temper like no other Khajiiti woman he had ever met. Luckily for him, this wasn't the case this day.

"There you are", she said and smiled to him as he slightly crouched to get inside the doorframe. "Dinner will soon be ready."

"And has this little ne'er-do-well done her homework?" he said and grabbed Ra'Kissi round her waist, lifting the laughing girl up underneath his arm. "If not, she will have bugs for dinner and supper... and breakfast too, perhaps?"

"She has", replied Najika. "Also, there was a man here earlier..."

"A man?" said Hassiri confused, knowing that their cottage was well-beyond the face of the world.

"Yes, apparently he was a man from the Office of the City Watch. He wanted to meet you, but this one said that you were out on your trading business as usual."

Hassiri's smile faded. "Did... did he say why he wanted to meet this one?"

She shook her head as she stirred the cauldron. "No. But Najika told him that if he suspects her husband of having done anything illegal, he must have taken the wrong man. Khajiit told him that her husband is trader who would never harm a fly and only keeps his weapons around to dispatch highwaymen."

"Y-yes", said Hassiri nervously. "It was probably just a mistake. Or perhaps the Office of the City Watch was just making a list of all the active traders in the region so that they would know if someone was robbed, yes?"

"Just what this one thought thought", replied Najika. "Anyway, the dinner is done. Grab a seat and let's eat. And afterwards this one wants to have a little conversation with you."

"Really?" he said as he felt the uncomfortable situation passing. "What about?"

Najika cast a glance on Ra'Kissi who was happily observing the butterfly in the jar, purring contently as she did. "About a potential little brother to keep our girl company?"

Hassiri swallowed hard. "Yes... That might be necessary..."

He woke up with a headache. He could barely sleep nowadays. He felt a tear trickle down his cheek. How long since had it been since he had abandoned them? 11 years? Ra'Kissi was probably a teenager by now and his wife... his wife was probably remarried to someone else.

The Office of the City Watch had finally tracked him down; Hassiri, a mercenary and assassin. The bounty on his head had been enough to put his whole family into poverty and misery. He couldn't allow that to happen. They were worth better than that. So he left...

He had left all his gold behind for them to manage making themselves a living, before he had disappeared into the night without saying a single word. His whole family had been living on the lie that he had been an honest merchant and trader, happily unaware on the fact that the money they were living on came from clients who took pleasure in watching suffering happen to people they didn't like. And Hassiri was the one who brought the suffering. He did so mostly undercover since that day, in order to retain his bounty at its current level. With this recent assignment he had been given he had just made enough gold to pay off his bounty and return to his household as a free man.

The only thing bothering him was if his family could ever forgive him? He had been gone for 11 years, and they most likely took him for dead by now.

He turned around underneath the tent, trying to sleep again, but still he couldn't see anything else but the faces of those he truly longed for to be with. He wondered what Ra'Kissi looked like now and if his wife still loved him?