[hider=thirteen - a TES excerpt]
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[indent][color=silver]“So,” the barkeep sighed. He was tired of this insufferable dunmer. 

He was tired of the way that he had stared blankly at the chalk menu. He was irritated at the way he just pointed at the third line down. “You want the smoked spadetail and fried bread?”

“Yes,” said Maralor. Yes, that was what he wanted. That would do – anything would do.

“Alright,” the barkeep responded. “Twenty-five septims.”

Maralor reached into his pocket and pulled from it a limp coin purse that had seen better days than this. After having bought his rations in Skingrad, there wasn’t much mercy remaining for his current situation. He tipped the entirety into the barkeep's hand who once again sighed his annoyance having let them clink around in his hand to be counted.

“This is thirteen septims. Do you have the rest, or are you having a laugh here?”

“Do I look as though I’m laughing?” Maralor clipped back.

“Then you’re not getting both.” The barkeep snorted. “I’ll be generous. You can have one or the other.”

Maralor hesitated before glancing back at his purse, and at the coins in the barkeep's hand. “I’ll take the fish, then.”

The barkeep stared at him a moment longer than necessary and then his mouth curled. “You know what? I’ve changed my mind.” He let his hand tilt to the side until the few coins rained with a loud bounce and rattle onto the bar, a mocking display. Another patron guffawed in amusement.

Maralor muttered under his breath, sliding the coins across the surface of the bar with stiff fingers and back into his hand.

“What’d you say?” the barkeep asked.

Maralor lifted his chin and met the barkeep's eyes. “That you gas on like a speared netch, s’wit.”

The room fell silent and the next thing he remembered was a closed fist catching his nose. White light burst behind his eyes and before he could draw a breath and react, before the sudden pain could assemble into coherence, a pair of large hands were in his collar hauling him off the stool. The same guffawing patron barked a laugh again and if Maralor had opened his eyes he would have seen the man pointing too. He was thrown bodily into the street and the next strike was the morning air that slapped his face. All he could find to do was to stand there. Clench his eyes shut and let the pain finish its arrival so it could start its departure. Waves of it. Hot and insistent, ringing and moving outwards from his nose until it settled as an echoing throb behind his ears. He gave a careful breath through his mouth and tasted the iron tang of his own blood and when he finally opened his eyes, the sun was waiting for him. That merciless gold thing. That hateful burning ball in the sky, desperate for everyone's attention and adoration and forcing it by catching on every window and door; reflecting from the edges of every polished distant spire. Everything outlined in its damfool aggressive brilliance. Everything was bathed in its gold but him.

Blood slid warm over his lips and he wiped it away with the back of his hand and sighed. It was certainly broken and not only that, the barkeep had been wearing a ring and that ring had torn flesh. The centre of his face was now crooked, tender, and swollen. Not his first. Not his last. Broken noses came to his work and life and he had long ago stopped pretending otherwise. In the clenched fist meant for retaliation were his coins and so he looked down at them, still blinking away at his sweat and pain. Coins of different sizes.

“Thirteen,” he affirmed aloud; his voice felt strange to his own ears then, and as he slipped them back to his purse he cinched the drawstring tight. “Thirteen,” he repeated once more, quietly this time as he lifted his gaze toward the market ahead. Surely, he thought to himself, he could find something worth thirteen here. And when it was found, that singular road would beckon to him once more. That alien etched vein across a strange horizon; calling him to whatever purpose was next.[/color][/indent]
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[u]Author's Notes[/u]
Maralor is a character I long to return to, I enjoyed writing from bitterness and this excerpt was a moment I feel captured him really well; being indignant at the sun itself for being so bright. My angry, angry boy. [@MacabreFox] and I will return to this one day~!
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