Olive Branch (Abigail)

 Prompt: Olive branch (storytelling collective prompt Prequel)

 

A/N: happy holidays!

One could say I ended up in my current relationship, situation, whatever you want to call it, by way of offering an olive branch…literally, I think as I lie in bed unable to sleep. 

 

Where I even got one I don’t remember, it’s not like they grow anywhere near Riften, or in Skyrim at all. I doubt you would find them any further north than the middle of Cyrodiil, and even then they’d probably be few and far between.

All I remember is while exploring the woodlands outside the city one day I stumbled upon a peculiar person who seemed rather disoriented and just a slight bit annoyed, being on the ground with a horse that was quickly going back whence it came which didn’t seem to help. 

 

Growing up in this skeeverhole of a city, and the general area of The Rift, had an upside in the end as for once in my life I was able to offer assistance. The aforementioned assistance came by way of a stick I picked up, particularly an olive branch, to help up the confused looking mage before chasing down her horse. As it turned out the mages name was Olivia, and she had come to Riften on business, magic related of course, and the rest is history. 

 

How Isabelle joined the fray I don’t remember either, she just showed up one day while Liv and I were going through her latest batch of alchemy ingredients.

On my right sleeps Olivia, curled up next to me sound asleep, and on my left is Isabelle who is also asleep quite contently- though not facing me. An unlikely trio we may be, a mage, a thief, and an assassin, but we make it work, it just requires an olive branch every now and then…both literally and figuratively.

 

 Liv is quite the cook, and has the peculiar trait of baking when stressed, Isabelle is particularly useful when you need someone shut up for good, and I have my own network of contacts and ways of getting things for cheap, put everything together and we are a somewhat organized system with the capacity to be very successful under certain circumstances.

 

 Between the repetitive dripping of the water droplets from the ceiling of the cistern, far below the cold winter air outside, and my thoughts exhausting me I find myself slowly becoming overtaken by sleep. There’s work to be done in the morning, spells to be learned, contracts to be done, items to be stolen, and I’m reminded I still need to apologize to the owners of the inn…perhaps I’ll find something to offer them, a gift this Saturnalia, as a sort of peacemaking olive branch? They make good drinks and I’d like to be allowed back in there, after all…