A/N: So...I'm sure you all know the drill. I don't own it, not any of it. Wheeee! Now we can get on to the important stuff...
This is what I get, she thought. This is what I get for trying to come home…trying to visit my da on his deathbed.
It was a strange sequence of events that had led to Siri, a Nord and native of Skyrim, to the dank cave where she was presently crouching, her breath shallow and silent in an attempt to sneak by a bear. She and her companion, a strapping kinsman named Ralof, had just fought their way through Helgen keep to escape the fiery wrath of—by the Divines, could it really be?—a dragon! The bear twitched and let out a loud growl, causing Siri—armored in nothing more than a Stormcloak tunic and fur boots—to seize up in fear.
The letter had come by courier to the Imperial City two weeks prior: a frantic missive from her uncle, Honmund, urging her to come home as quickly as possible, and relating the story of her father's swift decline into illness. The shakes, the night terrors, the weakness—he was very ill, Honmund wrote, and might be called to Sovngarde soon. The night she received the letter, Siri packed her bag, left a hefty coin purse for the innkeeper, and started for Skyrim.
The farther north she traveled on her journey, the more she wondered why she had left home in the first place. Cyrodiil was a nice place, sure—cosmopolitan, accepting. Why, in Skyrim, she would never have had Khajiit friends, or Argonian friends. In Cyrodiil a Nord and a Khajiit could pass in a city without a second thought. But as she left the warmer climate of the Imperial City and journeyed north, toward Bruma, the kiss of the cold and the snow on the ground made her long for Skyrim's frigid countryside. She had left to find independence—a job in the Imperial City, working a shop, perhaps, or maybe as a librarian at the Arcane University, once she mastered her magic. But the past year and a half had been spent traveling Cyrodiil in search of work—staying at inns, doing odd jobs, never scraping together much money or making a name for herself anywhere.
It was good, she thought, that her uncle's letter had come when it did. She had run up her tab at the Tiber Septim Hotel, and after paying the innkeeper she was left with a scant fifty-two Septims. She had begun to despair of ever joining the Mages' Guild, for she never had time to work with magic—the countryside of Cyrodiil was crawling with Thalmor agents, who, while certainly not friendly to the non-Mer of Tamriel, had done a very good job of keeping the roadways safe. Not once in her journeys across the province had Siri found the need to draw a weapon.
Ultimately a good thing, as she had needed to sell her cutlass to buy food a couple months back.
When she had reached the border of Skyrim—a decent trip from the Imperial City, one that had taken the better part of a week, thanks to bad weather rolling off the mountains on the Skyrim-Cyrodiil border—she was relieved. Crossing back into her homeland felt right, she thought, feeling her Nord's blood stir with pride at the rough-hewn, bitterly-cold landscape. This is where I belong, she thought.
It had not been a day before it all went wrong.
Siri had set up camp near Fort Neugrad, in Falkreath Hold. Although she had heard of the Stormcloak rebellion, she knew that the Imperials had the Stormcloaks on the run, and felt that there would be no danger in camping in the open for one night until she could reach her da's farm just outside of Falkreath. Unrolling her bedroll beneath a bare tree, she fell asleep, the stars twinkling down at her peacefully.
Siri was jostled awake not two hours later and looked around, groggy and confused, at the bright lights surrounding her. Suddenly she felt a rough hand on her upper arm and managed to focus on the person it belonged to.
He was wearing Imperial armor, and he and his companions had odd expressions on their faces.
"Can I help you?" asked Siri, thoroughly confused.
"A pretty little one," jeered one of the soldiers behind her. "Where are your Stormcloak buddies, cutie?"
"I—what?" she asked, a note of panic creeping into her voice. The men guffawed at her, and the one who had her arm dragged her roughly toward the fort.
Around the front of the fort was a caged wagon, flanked by Imperial soldiers, with two prisoners already inside. Terrified, Siri attempted to explain to her captors that there had been some misunderstanding.
"Wait," she cried, "wait! I'm not a Stormcloak—I came back to Skyrim because my father is ill! Please! I have to go home to see him!"
Her pleas fell on deaf ears as one Imperial bound her hands. Desperately, Siri pulled away and attempted to flee—if she could get far enough into the darkness, she could lose them: Falkreath was her home, and she had roamed this countryside with her da and older brother in her youth. She knew the entire hold quite well. She headed for the forest, which couldn't have been more than two hundred feet away…
Suddenly there was a crushing blow on the back of her head, and everything went dark.