In Over His Head! [A sexy, Mini Giantess romcom/fantasy adventure in Tamriel]

Vignette Part One

Not so long ago, and not so far away..

"Hey..." a quiet voice whispered from behind her, slightly to the side. "Eydva, can I borrow a quill?" the voice continued, desperation tinging its words. Eydva looked back, seeing her classmate, Ronaria, with her hand stuck out expectantly. She nodded, reaching for her bag that was resting on the floor beside her chair. "Hold on..." She grabbed her bag and pulled it into her lap, rummaging around. Balled up papers, singed papers, vials of varying colors of liquid, they all fell out of the bag and into her lap as Eydva pushed them out of the way, looking for her spare quill.

"Ah... here you go," she said with a small triumphant smile as she produced a quill from the depths of her bag. It was a little bent, but it still worked!

Ronaria took it gratefully. "I'll buy you lunch!" she promised, drawing her attention away from Eydva, directing it towards their teacher, who was at the head of the small classroom, lecturing on something or another. Ronaria began to scribble hectically onto her sheet of parchment, as though everything the teacher had said was going to disappear from her mind if she didn't copy it down as soon as she could.

To be truthful, Eydva hadn't been paying much attention this morning. It didn't matter, anyway... her grandmother was coming to pull her from the school at the end of the day. She bowed her head in shame, biting her lip. She was trying to hold back the tears that were stinging her eyes, threatening to fall. There was no reason to cry, really. This was... what was it now? The twelfth one? The thirteenth? Eydva had lost count many schools ago. No matter how much she paid attention, no matter how hard she tried, no matter how many late, sleepless nights she'd spent up practicing, it made no difference. Her magicka was wild, untameable. Even the best teachers at the best schools couldn't help her. Time after time, they wrote her grandmother and told her that it was a lost cause, her granddaughter was unteachable.

Destruction, conjuration, restoration... she'd tried them all and more, and none of them had ended well. There had been many accidents, a lot of collateral damage. It was lucky that her family was well-established and quite wealthy. No other student would have been able to get away with the destruction she'd wrought...

And time and time again, her grandmother sent her away, to this school or that. She came from a long line of powerful, magickally talented family members, her grandmother was desperate to continue that lineage, at any cost. She didn't care about Eydva as a person, only as a link in a long chain that she was intent on sustaining, growing. And though it was failure at every turn, Eydva was desperate to please her grandmother, to finally receive glowing praise instead of cold scorn and disappointment.

But there was one small glimmer in all the darkness that gave her some spark of joy in all the sadness. Whenever she was sent away from a school, she was able to come back home, while her grandmother scoured the entirety of Skyrim to find another school that was willing to accept her. Back to her childhood home, her room, and to... most of all, Staanovaar, her only real friend. No matter how many times she failed, no matter how many tears she'd shed over her failures, he was always there for her. He was her confidant, her biggest pillar of support. He was there when her own grandmother turned her back.

Eydva, drawn from her memories by a sudden presence at her shoulder, snapped her head up. She reluctantly, sheepishly looked up at her teacher. She swiped at her eyes quickly, hoping he didn't notice the tears that had started to form. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he look none too pleased. "Miss Tuvelsdottir..." he said, bending low to speak quietly into her ear. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. "I will not have you making a fool of me in front of my students..." he warned. She squeezed her eyes closed. "If this weren't your final day of lessons, I would have to show you some discipline after class," he finished, his lips barely brushing against her earlobe as he spoke. Eydva swallowed thickly, thanking the gods that she was leaving today. She had no interest in knowing what his discipline entailed, and she hoped dearly nobody else had been on the receiving end of it, either...