"It's no good," she said to herself. "Just no good at all..." She couldn't take it. Gods, she hated this. Every night, sometimes starting as early as noon, but it's not as if she didn't end up in the same place every damned time. Always the same. Never a frown. She could never help but laugh a bit. Face down near the gutter, throwing up until her retching could only dredge up a steady dribble of acidic saliva...

Why did she keep drinking? Why, why, why? The ending was always the same. It was suitable, she supposed, that a bard like herself would be so intent on telling the same story again and again. Tch, leave it to some worthless minstrel. Her life was a mess, but perhaps it was a poetic mess, and that notion was what made her feel truly alive. She lived for this.

Though her home in Elsweyr had been humble and pure, it wasn't long after her move to Cyrodiil that she'd found herself drinking three times a week or more simply for the experience it provided. Even the not-so-noble pastime of aimlessly drifting about one's home became a grand adventure with a flask or four of brandy. That useless factoid she'd read in some story that she wouldn't remember tomorrow morning... At the time, it'd seemed absolutely life-changing. The Battle of Red Mountain was SO MOVING. Like touching the infamous mer-turned-Gods with her very own greasy paws. That other book... What was that other book, anyway? Chance's Folly? Maybe something about Potema? It had something to do with locks. IT WAS INCREDIBLE, IT... No, never mind, she was throwing up her dinner again.

Maybe nothing was life-changing at all and maybe her life was a vicious cycle in which she was eternally doomed to never improve, to end up crying in the streets every night for the rest of her days on this plane, but at least she could write silly stories in her mind as the few tears of pain she shed flowed down her cheeks and dripped one by one off of the tips of her whiskers. What if, for example, a scholar were to write a story about her life for once? About the experiences of a friendless young cat drunkenly crying and drooling near the porch of her empty shack on the outskirts of a heartland city full of broken promises? Wouldn't that be nice? She'd read something like that in a heartbeat, she thought, before her spinning mind and ailing stomach once again erased every thought she'd ever had.