The Adventures of Porky the Guar, Volume I Brima

[Brima]

Title: The Adventures of Porky the Guar, Volume I
Series: The Adventures of Porky the Guar
IC Author: Amon Serethi
OOC Author: Brima
Word Count: 874
Suggested Location: Serethi Manor

THE ADVENTURES OF PORKY THE GUAR

VOLUME I

Once upon a time in the Ashunor river valley, behind a small, traditional Redoran farmhouse, there lived a guar of unusual size called Porky.

Porky was owned by a farmer called Neron. In the spring, Porky would help Neron plow his corkbulb fields, but the rest of the time, he grazed in his pen behind the house, and slept soundly at nights beneath the small ash-shelter which the farmer had built for him. It was a good life for a guar, and a quiet one. The only time Porky’ s routine was disrupted was when Neron’s daughter Radethi would load up baskets of gold kanet garlands onto his back, and lead him north to the ancient river city of Silgrad Tower.

Radethi’s garlands were noted for their grace and delicacy, and decorated many famous ancestral tombs on festival days. She sold them in the plaza before the Tribunal Temple, and the baskets Porky carried there were always empty before noon.

One day, when the garlands had all sold in the first two hours, and Porky was snuffling hopefully at passersby (sometimes, they would take pity on him and throw him a blossom or two), a young nobleman came rushing up to Radethi’s stand.

“I’ll give you that guar’s weight in gold,” he cried, “for a basket of Timsa-Come-By!”

“But Timsa’s hard to come by at any time of year,” objected Radethi, “Let alone in basket-fulls! And by the grace of Almsivi, why do you need so much?”

“They’re the new favorite flower of Seriah Ules,” replied the nobleman with impatience, “Don’t you know anything about what happens in Upper Chambers?”

As a corkbulb farmer’s daughter, Radethi didn’t know much about what happened in Eastside, let alone in the noble district of Upper Chambers, but even she had heard of Seriah Ules, the most highly reputed beauty in all of Silgrad Tower.

“Well,” she said finally, “I do know a spot in the hills where there might still be some.”

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed, “You’ll be the making of me, I knew it the moment I saw you. Let’s go at once.”

Radethi packed up her stand and led Porky and the stranger out of the city. They followed the road south, and after some time Radethi stepped off the road and began to climb into the hills. Porky ambled happily after.

Every so often he would stop to try and eat some wild kanet by the road, and Radethi would tug at his lead to get him to follow after. It was harder still for her to encourage the stranger to keep up: as the day wore on, he began to walk almost as slowly as Porky.

Finally, when the sun was high in the sky, they arrived at a weathered ancestral tomb cut into the hillside. Near its base, clusters of rosy Timsa-Come-By grew, still in full bloom despite the lateness of the season.

The young nobleman ran forward with a glad cry, while Porky trundled over towards the door of the tomb, where a tasty-looking curtain of vines half-obscured the entry-way.

“Whose tomb is this, anyway?” asked the young nobleman, after he had piled as many flowers as he could into Porky’s side baskets.

“It belongs to the Serethi family,” said Radethi. “No one’s kept it up for a long while, though. They say that the son of the family is a member of House Hlaalu and he’s never even bothered to visit it. What a reprobate!”

The young man shot her an odd look over his shoulder, then turned his attention back to Porky, taking hold of the guar’s lead and pulling him away from the tomb entrance.

“What a reprobate, indeed,” he said. “Shall we be going?”

By the time they returned to Silgrad Tower, the sun was low in the sky. “She’s going to be at a feast in Upper Chambers tonight, ” the young Dunmer told Radethi, as they passed under the city’s eastern gate, “So I must be on my way. Can’t be late! Here’s the fee I promised you.”

“What about Porky?”

“I presume you’re staying at the temple of the Tribunal?”

“Yes, but - ”

“I’ll have him sent to you there tomorrow, never fear. Word of a Serethi!”

For weeks after, the events of that evening were the talk of Upper Chambers. It was said the nobleman Otham Serethi, notorious scoff-Temple and rising member of the Great House Hlaalu, had walked into a feast at High Councilor Goldar Valen’s manor leading a guar laden with priceless Timpsa-Come-By, and that his luck with Seriah Ules had turned for the better on that night.

As for Radethi, she waited at the inn adjoining the Silgrad Temple for days, but Porky never arrived. The sizable sum Otham had given her for the flowers did very little to assuage her fury.

“I sold that impious Hlaalu flowers,” she wept angrily to the innkeeper, “not my guar! If he doesn’t send him back soon, I’m going up to Upper Chambers myself to find him.”

But as to how Porky fared in Upper Chambers afterwards, and whether he ever saw his Redoran farmstead and his own homely ash-shelter again, that’s another story entirely.

[sandor]

Nice work!