"You should never leave meat to waste, little one. That is an offence against Yff're and the Green Pact."

"But Father, it was a person!"

"He was a bandit, little one. And now his soul has gone to Sovngarde. Now thank the gods for your meal and help me lay out the meat for drying."

It was a strange thing to recall while standing next to the bleached bones of a dragon, but Ysraneth supposed she shouldn't be surprised. She was as much a child of Valenwood as she was of Skyrim, more comfortable in the lush temperate forests of Falkreath than the open plains of Whiterun, and it seemed that the gods had chosen her to be the hunter of dragons. The flames that preceded the absorption of the dragon's soul had left very little flesh; a pity, because these guardsmen and the Dunmer Irileth had done their fair share in slaughtering the beast and deserved a portion of it. Perhaps some of the bones and scales would be salvageable…

"That was the hairiest fight I've been in – and I've been in more than a few," Irileth noted as she approached the skeleton. "I'll take charge here. Go and let the Jarl know what happened."

"In a moment," the hunter told the huscarl as she squatted by the bones, drawing a steel dagger scavenged from a dead bandit. "There's stuff that can be salvaged from Mirmulnir. You and your men deserve it."

The blood-eyed dark elf raised a coppery eyebrow. "You follow the Green Pact?" she asked, rich voice a touch incredulous.

"As much as I can," Ysraneth responded. "I stopped eating people when Father died. But I do make use of everything I take from my human kills and freely consume all animal flesh."

She sawed at the cartilage that kept the bones together until it parted, breaking open the ribcage. "These would make good tent supports. Damn shame there's only a few scales left. You could have made a fine tent."

Irileth gave a startled laugh. "Only a Bosmer's daughter could look at a dragon and see a tent," she observed amusedly.

The other guardsmen gathered around the duo, murmuring to themselves about the Dragonborn and the portents she presented. Ysraneth wasn't really offended; her height and relative bulkiness betrayed her dominant Nord heritage even if her milk-coffee skin, straight dun-hued hair and long teardrop face with slanted forest-green eyes were obviously Bosmer. Perhaps it was arrogance to think thusly, but a daughter of Skyrim who would say prayers for the dragons she slew and let nothing of them go to waste might be the best choice for Dragonborn. Most of the other races would leave the skeleton to rot but for a skull to stick on a post somewhere.

"I am a Nord, for what it's worth," Ysraneth told Irileth as she set aside a curved rib. "But I was raised by my father after the Great War."

"You support the Stormcloaks then?" Irileth asked, blood-red eyes narrowed in assessment of a potential threat. She was devoted to the Jarl that went beyond typical behaviour for a huscarl; Ysraneth would not be surprised if the pair loved each other. Given that she was mixed-race herself, she would cast no stones in their direction.

"Hardly. I was in Helgen, trading pelts for winter food supplies, when Ulfric came in." The half-elf continued with her butchering as the men fell silent to listen. "I'm not fond of the Thalmor. No sane person is, especially with what they did in Valenwood, but the Empire is the best chance to fight them."

"'What they did in Valenwood'?" one of the guards tentatively asked.

Ysraneth sighed, pausing in her work. "The Thalmor are obsessed with purity," she answered. "My father's family was… purged… because of inferior bloodlines. He survived and escaped Valenwood to join the Legion. My mother was a huntress in Falkreath who joined up to fight for Talos. She died two years after the Great War in a Thalmor purge of Talos worshippers and my father was honourably discharged from the Legion to raise me."

"I see," Irileth observed noncommittally as the guardsman made sympathetic noises. "Once word gets out about you, Ysraneth-"

The huntress grinned savagely. "It is an offence to Yff're to waste meat. And as I'm human and they're not, it wouldn't be cannibalism now, would it?"

Irileth gave another startled laugh as the guardsmen boggled at the pair of them. "You should be a lawyer," the Dunmer noted dryly.

"Perish the thought! I've got some morals!"

"Wait, how is being a cannibal moralistic?" the same brave guardsman asked dubiously.

"I'm not a cannibal. I don't eat humans or Bosmer," Ysraneth corrected. "I don't like Dunmer – no offence, Irileth, but your people taste a bit… ashy... and Orcs are filthy. Scales and fur stick to my teeth, so I only eat Argonians and Khajiit when I'm desperate, but Altmer? Clean, well-bred and very little fat. And since most Altmer who are outside Alinor tend to be Thalmor and/or trying to kill me… It would be immoral to waste the meat."

"You know, that makes a certain amount of sense. I'm just not sure if it's because I really need a drink or whether I hate the Thalmor just that much," the guardsman mused thoughtfully.

Irileth was shaking her head bemusedly as Ysraneth finished butchering the dragon. "Keep the bones," she told the huscarl. "Maybe Farengar will be able to do something or people will pay for bits of dragon and you can buy food for the widowed spouses of the men that thing ate."

"Hmm, that is noble of you," Irileth told her. "I'll oversee the rest. I'm glad you're on our side, Dragonborn."

"That makes several of us," the brave guardsman muttered. Ysraneth flashed him a grin before picking up her bow, salvaging some precious steel arrows, and rising to her feet with a long easy stretch.

She didn't expect the pureblood Nords to understand her worldview. Her father had raised her in the Green Pact, and as best she could she followed it, but the remnants of her mother's Nordic ways lingered. She'd never been comfortable with cannibalism. But since she wasn't the same race as the Altmer, it wasn't cannibalism.

The gods had chosen her to be Dragonborn. That gave her beliefs some kind of validity. Though if old tales of having a dragon's soul were true, consuming the souls of other dragons could be problematic.

She was halfway to Whiterun when the sky thundered with her name. And when she reached the Jarl's palace and he told her who was summoning her, Ysraneth sighed with relief. The Greybeards taught the Dragonborn how to deal with their Thu'um, so obviously they could tell her whether it was cannibalism or not.

She stood on the porch and looked up at High Hrothgar after the Jarl had thrown a feast for her and those who fought the dragon. Now a Thane with her very own huscarl, a dark-haired woman named Lydia, she'd need to get to the monastery soon since Alduin himself might have returned. Hopefully Lydia, who'd been briefed by Irileth, wouldn't be too… uneasy.

"Don't worry," she assured the huscarl. "I won't make you eat Altmer. You don't follow the Green Pact."

"My Thane, you're too kind," the pureblood answered, tone sarcastically relieved. Then she apologised for her disrespectful tone and Ysraneth had laughed.

"I prefer honesty. Besides, you're not part-Bosmer, so I wouldn't hold you to the same standards." She looked up at High Hrothgar again. "I just hope the Greybeards tell me eating dragon souls isn't cannibalism. If it is, we're in trouble."

Lydia burst out laughing, shaking her head. "Travelling with you is going to be interesting," she observed wryly.

She really had a lovely laugh. Ysraneth smiled at her, wondering just where her interests lay. "Not too interesting, I hope. I'd like to reach High Hrothgar alive."

"We'll be fine," Lydia assured her.

Ysraneth stepped forward and kissed her, touched by her ready loyalty so soon after meeting her. Lydia's eyes widened but she returned the kiss enthusiastically.

"I apologise for being so forward," the huntress whispered into the woman's dark hair, "but we're alone and my father had a saying."

"What's that?"

"'Waste not, want not'."

Lydia's husky chuckle warmed more than her heart. "A wise man, your father."

Ysraneth looked to the stars as the huscarl's mouth moved to her neck. Nords were quick to passion and it would seem Lydia wasn't going to be too judgmental.

Thank you, Shor and Yff're, for the meal, she thought silently. I won't let anything go to waste.