Bad Memories

The white furred Khajiit stood openly atop the ridgeline, the desert sand winds billowing ripples in her loosely fit hood, the ghost city of Orcest towering above and before her across the canyon, as she peered down to it's distant bottom where the Ossuary lied. She stood unconcealed by stealth, not that it mattered, the grounds outside the Ossuary empty to her sight, and not that she cared, her weighted and heavy mind too preoccupied to reconsider it's indifference to not hiding while spying on a den of vampires.

She had promised herself she would never return. And yet she did. And once more she promised never to return. And yet here she stood, her distant presence having borderline if not fully broken that promise once again. She should not be here. She knew that. But the burning desire to see again what was better left behind her overpowered the concern. And in this moment to her, standing here evoked over a century's worth of memories of her life in undeath, even if to reminisce was not her intention in coming here.

She remembered her last day of life, her last day as a naive child too optimistic for her own good. Not that the last part ever changed. She recalled it with clarity. She was just over twenty at the time, over a hundred years ago. Still alive, her first trek into Anequina, her heart set on visiting Orcrest to visit it's temples. She had but crossed the bridge, when the men who murdered her harrassed her. She had no chance against them, foolishly had she hoped all would turn to peace in the end. And in the end her stabbed and bleeding body was left to die.

She remembered how her life forever changed, how the darkness claimed her, only for her to wake up as if it all were a dream, surrounded by strange people, in a strange place. Their apologies, their explainations, her realizations of her new reality. She recalled it all. And the thirst. The eternal thirst. How she struggled with it at first, striving to master it, she remembered that too. But she remembered how she was not alone. Her new family helped her, reinforced her, supported her in her new life. She wouldn't be who she was now without them, and she knew that.

And then she remembered the day it all changed. The flu ravaged the city, death and desperation were quickly becoming it's only residents. So many came to the clan, so many tear filled faces and pained voices sapped of breath as life slowly left them. Her heart bled for them. The same could be said for most of the clan. The people begged for mercy, and mercy was given in the only way it could be given. A clan that numbered a handful became the size of a city. The animals could no longer feed them all. It was a constant endless purgatory of near starvation.

She remembered how they came. The necromancers burst in with force, laying seige to her home to seek and defile the bodies of those intered in the time of the flu. They were strong, but her family was starved and weak. It was a slaughter, bodies and ash littering the floors in the hall of the dead. And among them, the Clan Mother. That was the final blow that lead to it all falling apart. Because she also remembered how Rakasza took power, lead the clan down a dark path. She remembered The bloodshed he caused, that he advocated.

And she remembered leaving. Leaving, going far away, and vowing never to return. She remembered wandering Tamriel, in search for a new home that she discovered never existed. She remembered how long it took her to look before she accepted that. But she remembered breaking that vow, to come back, hope in her heart, sure that her family was again as it should be. She found only that those who once were slaughtered, now slaughtered others. And then she remembered once more vowing to leave, and let them rot.

But today, the white furred Khajiit stood alone, looking at an empty tomb, in an empty canyon, beneath an empty city, in an empty desert, her mind full of nothing but memories, no sound uttered by her or the world, save for the billowing sand winds echoing down the canyon walls.