The Upper-hand

I continued walking through the grounds of the Russafeld winery and thought about how strange it was to be back. I kept to the shadows mostly and stayed far away from any Bosmer I saw. I didn’t want to chance bumping into Elsoreth or anyone else from her clan, best to leave them be.

I walked past the fountain where the scene of the crime took place, the moment that changed so many lives here. I wondered if things were better though, so I took a moment to lean up against a building and observe for a bit. I saw many people going about their day here at the vineyard. Some clearly were workers, some were visitors, and all seemed to have a variety of emotions the more I watched. Oh well, I thought to myself, better move on.

I eventually made my way back to Alamar, who was asleep on a bench under the tree. I sat on a bench near him, contemplating how best to wake him up. “Hey!” I shouted at him, “You want your wine or should I just keep it as payment?”. Somehow that statement snapped him awake and he leaped to his feet. He leaped a bit too quickly apparently as the movement resulted in him throwing up whatever contents he may of had left in his stomach.

“Oh! You found them!” He said excitedly once he managed to pull himself back together a bit. He went to grab at the bottles and I quickly removed them from his reach. “Not so fast Alamar, as far as I’m concerned these bottles are mine until I receive payment for them.” I was having a bit of fun with this hungover mer. I mean, he did have me find these bottles because he was too drunk to hang onto them and too hungover to locate them. It’s about time I got to be the person doing the talking down.

“Ugh, fine… here’s all the gold I have, now give me that wine!” He said to me, clearly in no mood to argue about it. He tossed a rather heavy pouch at me and I in turn set the bottles on a bench and walked away, counting the gold in the pouch. I made my way to the stables to grab Sweetroll and admired my new heavy sack of gold. Not bad for easy work, I smirked as I stuck it in my pack.