“So what do you think about Bruma?” – Lena asked Hauk at dinner the next day. They were sitting at Jerall View Inn where they ate before going back to Olav’s Tap and Tack for drinks and much cheaper sleeping arrangements.

“Bruma is a Nibenese town with frosty air” – Hauk replied digging into his slow cooked mutton. “The Nords here wouldn’t last two minutes in Skyrim.”

“They’ve got dragons there again.”

“I’ve heard. Don’t know if I believe it though – dragons have been gone for thousands of years. Ancient Nords have supposedly slayed them all.”

“Oh, dragons are back all right. I fought one myself.”

“You what???” There wasn’t much that could make Hauk forget about the mutton, but the thought of fighting a dragon was one of those things. “And you didn’t think to mention it before? I mean, Ayleid ruins can wait! Why are we still in Cyrodiil?”

“Because Skyrim and the dragons are not going anywhere. Besides, there was only just the one dragon there, to start with. Plus the one that we killed, which is now dead, so doesn’t count. I’ve got to get my head around that whole affair.”

Nords are not considered to be the most expressive or emotional people, but Hauk was having a storm inside him, all his pragmatism evaporated. He was pacing the dining hall up and down, and the innkeep started to wonder if there was something wrong with the mutton.

“Whaaa–” Hauk was jerked back to reality. “Oh no, nothing wrong with the food.”

Returning to the table and to the mutton, he concentrated on finishing his meal.

“We’ll need to have a few drinks at Olav’s over this” – he finally offered. “I need to get my head around it too.”

No, he wasn’t angry with Lena, and he didn’t imply that she had betrayed him somehow by keeping this dragon business to herself. Yet something was going on, some strange feelings rising that Hauk didn’t recognise. After all, Lena was still a very recent acquaintance, although he came to consider her a friend. But what did he know about her, really? She’s been in many adventures and travelled around a fair bit, and of course she didn’t tell him every last detail of it. Neither did he tell her everything about his own life. Fair enough… So nothing could possibly be going on, could it?