Disclaimer: All of Skyrim belongs to Bethesda. I own nothing more than my own character's personality.
Mabeanne has traded rain for snow. The humid and moist pockets of land belonging to Cyrodiil are long past.
The mountains of this new region still stand in all their jagged glory. They look as if they pierce the very sky, certainly having sliced open the stomachs of many clouds.
The wind whispers through the boulders and rocky walkways considered suicidal to traverse but the lone wanderer perseveres. A thick cloak made from a bear's pelt is what keeps her from freezing to death. It is a much loved thing and late at night when it is just her bedroll and the stars above she strokes it as if the beast still drew air in its lungs and thinks on her girlhood.
Not an unhappy thing to ponder but she doesn't do it often. Only when her fingers curl amidst the dark fibers and sleep edges close.
If she buries her face in the pelt she can still smell her guardian, glowing from his bout of storytelling in the mead house and drunk on echoes of the great heroes of old. Oh to hear just one more tale from his lips.
He was not her father but she very much wishes he had been. In her mind he is-for blood does not matter much to one who was born and then lost.
There are very few pictures of the mother who was there before him in her mind and what is there of that lonely looking woman is out of focus.
She remembers waterfalls of spun gold flowing about a pointed and gaunt face. Blue eyes that would stare and stare but see nothing, appearing to be looking past the world entirely. Not the blind of those who can't see, but the blindness of someone who is where she desperately doesn't want to be and refuses to accept the way life has unfolded.
There were rare moments where Mabeanne remembers feeling that mother's hand stroke her back while she lay in bed and pretended to sleep. The mother would lean down and tuck the sandy wisps of bangs from her child's forehead and wonder what the man the girl favored so much was doing at that moment.
Such affection is a subject of great debate in the remembering however for Mabeanne has often considered these moments were dreamed and not real.
The mother acted very strange one day; a day she only knows about because the guardian told her upon her coming of age to hear it.
There was a full moon and a cloudless sky. The mother had stared up at them both for many hours after Mabeanne began her dreaming.
Leaving her shoes at the hearth, stoking the firepit as she passed, the mother took her leave and wandered through the trees that stretched out from the long house and was never heard from again.
No body was found but the land was vast and wolves many in number. A body was not expected to be there to find.
So the girl now woman lies beneath the stars and tries to dredge up the faint memories while stroking the cloak of her father's and soon reaches the inevitable thoughts of her return to Skyrim.
There is no one there now to call Mabeanne home and sit her by a fire pit with a cup of spiced mead to guard against the chill.
But still she has come, for the land is in her bones just as it is in any Nord's bones and she is loath to die before laying eyes on it once more.
She has not thought of her plans after crossing the border. For all the effort it took to reach this place she is of a mind to stand atop this mountain and stare down at her homeland before immediately turning back.
There is nothing that holds her there anymore. There is only an echo of what once was and the desire to linger a bit over the memory.
Mabeanne knows not of the ambush she is to stumble into. She has only ever heard of dragons in the bedtime stories from her youth. In her life the Dragonborn is a legend not a title belonging to her.
But she will learn soon enough. All heroes do.
