I don't have time to play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but a month ago, I used to spend a couple of hours or more each day in the fantastic open world of that game. I was doing various quests most of the time, and those quests led me to some incredible places, but some days, I preferred just wandering around like I would do in the real world, in the woods and meadows here in my area.
On the 22nd of May, when this and all the following screenshots were captured, I was riding across the snowy landscape in the wild, northeastern part of the map. I was riding a beautiful red horse, and I battled quite a few dangerous wild animals and supernatural creatures along the way. I collected some precious berries that grow in that harsh climate as well. The plants in the game can be used to create all kinds of magic potions, remedies, and poisons if you learn the secrets of alchemy, that's why the flora in Skyrim is precious.
At one point, I saw a wild horse. Wild horses are a fairly rare encounter in the game, especially in the frozen north. This one had a pretty strange color. The horse was pale pink, almost white but not quite.
About a month earlier, while buying my first horse in one of the stables just outside the magnificent town called Whiterun, I got a side quest from the horse dealer. The quest came with a piece of yellowish ancient paper, a list of all types of wild horses that can be found in Skyrim. When I tame one horse of each type the quest would be completed. I forgot that old quest through the days that followed, exciting days filled with hardship and adventures, but I remembered it the instant I saw the strange pinky horse in the frozen valley surrounded by high snowy mountains.
When I tamed the new horse, the old one decided to go away, and I was curious to see where. There were two things I could do to discover the destination. First, I could follow the horse, or second - I could just search the Internet and find the answer in one of the many sites dedicated to the game.
I decided to do both.
After learning on the Skyrim Wiki that the horse will return to the pastures where I found it, it was time to take the long slow journey back to that place.
And that's what this post is all about.
Besides the horses, two more animal companions were traveling with me. A rat and a rabbit. The rat was pretty large. I would say it was the size of a labrador or some similar dog. I rescued it from a giant rat trap in the dark, smelly sewers under the southern town called Riften. The town was maybe something better once upon a time, but nowadays the place is a shithole filled with rats, crime, and despair. A month or so ago, I learned enough about hide tanning, sewing, and smithing to be able to create a backpack for my oversized rodent friend, so now he can carry some of my weapons and the loot we find along the way.
The rabbit is much smaller. I found him in an old cabin in the woods, a cabin that belonged to a hermit alchemist. It was a nice sunny day and the rabbit was sniffing around the backyard, surrounded by various strange medicinal plants and the ordinary carrots and cabbages. Besides being a cute little thing that follows you wherever you go, he was also trained to detect and collect some rare plants that can be used in alchemy.
And so we traveled across the map ...
... from the north to the center ...
... and one clear moonlit night, we reached the green pastures a couple of kilometers from the magnificent town called Whiterun.
The red horse is still there. Maybe I'll pay him a visit one of these days.
You can always find something to do in Skyrim. If you don't feel like embarking on one of the many quests the game offers, and you aren't in the mood for aimlessly wandering around, maybe you'll end up creating your own unofficial quest as I did in this case.
