Prompts provide me with such a good opportunity to write about my OC's! Thanks to @tescheer for giving me that opportunity!
Caylene looked out over the great basin below, pulling her cloak tighter around her armored frame. The nights in Hammerfell were deathly cold, particularly as it neared Saturalia - even without snow, frostbite had claimed extremities of some of the less well traveled men who hadn’t expected it.
Footfalls trampled up the wooden steps to the ramparts, and the Breton felt Senti’s soft palm resting on her arm through the cloak. “Homesick?” The Redguard asked in a low tone, leaning in for warmth.
“In a way. I think I miss the snow. Da could trudge through it up to his waist as if he were walking on an Imperial road. He went out late to find strong wood, and stayed up all night to carve me figurines.” Caylene rummaged in her side pack for a moment before producing a small, wooden knight on horseback. He had painted it in the heraldry of Daggerfall. “He used to tell me, ‘I can only hope you learn the craft; Clan Luzgarz made half of its wealth from sculpting’ and I would only nod. He told that story so many times I could repeat it in my sleep.”
Senti’s lips curled at the corners. “Dear, you already have. You mumble for hours.”
Caylene cleared her throat, slipping the item back into her bag. “Yes, well. There’s much on my mind.”
The Redguard’s practiced hands slipped beneath Caylene’s cloak, pulling the knight’s hand back out into the open, and pressed another figurine into her palm. It sparkled in the moonlight like the surface of the Iliac, cut from quartz and showing a mage in the traditional wear of a Forebear. “I thought you would want something to remember me by, should something happen, or we part ways once the war is over. Alteration magic has a number of novel applications I’ve picked up under apprenticeship in Sentinel.”
The mage pressed her lips to Caylene’s cold cheek, and after a moment, the knight was alone again. She looked over the great basin below and smiled at the glittering sand.
