Dannen woke up with a horrific headache and more aches and pains than she ever remembered having before. It wasn't surprising, considering she had slept on the packed-dirt floor of their home, and, she realized with a sense of disappointment in herself, dangerously close to the fire. The only thing she felt really motivated to do at that moment was crawl into her actual bed and sleep, but she could see the rose-gold light of dawn was already falling in strips across the floor where it shone between the shutters of the farm's windows. Which meant one thing – it was already time to get to … work was a terrible thing. And so was getting up. With a shaky push that sent the world tilting and her unsettled stomach screaming a warning she sat upright and brushed at the straw embedded into her skin. It had started to itch now she was awake.

Still unsteady, she stood up and, careful not to wake her father who was still sleeping soundly under his furs, she slipped outside. The morning was a beautiful one; the sun was still rising, bathing the forest in which she lived with a honey colored light that made it look like a dream. She instantly felt better - beneath her bare feet the grass was soaked with cool dew, which helped to wake her up a little more, and the fresh air eased her headache as she stepped from the grass and into the gritty mud to the side of the house, Dannen made her way towards the well to wash away the dust caked onto her face.

As well as grainy,the mud was jarringly freezing compared to the refreshing dew, and oozed up to fill the spaces between her toes. It was a horrible feeling at the best of times, but feeling like she did it was nearly unbearable. The well wasn't much to see – little more than a shaft covered with thin planks of wood to stop leaves and small animals from falling in, but the water was fresh and clean, even if it did taste far earthier than the fresh river water the people collected up in Chorrol. - she lowered the bucket down inside, careful not to let go of the old rope. She had done that before a few years ago, and the trouble it had been to fish it out had been so great she had always been very careful since. The water she drew was colder even than the mud, biting her fingers as she scooped up a handful to splash against her face. The shock of it cleared the last of the sleep from her mind and two more handfuls got rid of the meady, sour feeling in her mouth left over from the night before.

She and the few other people her age from the town had spent the night before talking and drinking. She hadn't gotten home until well after dark - most likely the cause for the sickening, heavy, tiredness that she felt. But rest or no rest, there were things to do. Just…in a minute. Dannen leaned against the wooden fence of the farm watching the road wind off into the trees, wondering for a moment where following it could take her. She had heard lots of stories from the people who followed that road, about different countries and strange creatures and foreign cities that looked nothing like Chorrol. A lot about the Imperial City too, recently. Even though it wasn't foreign, she was sure that it didn't look much like Chorrol either. Always there were strange stories from travelers about the things that happened there. They had said once, when she was a child, that a dragon there had turned to stone before everyone's very eyes. Her father told her not to believe it, but had been her favorite story anyway. She liked to watch the people coming and going from the city even now, more than a decade later. Sometimes she would stop them and talk, about the city, about places they had seen. A lot of people seemed happy to tell her about what lay beyond the farm. But most of the time though the only people passing were just guards on patrol. She knew them all by name, but never spoke to them out on the road. She wouldn't want to upset her father.

This morning there was already a figure making its way down the road from the town, but this wasn't a mounted guard or anyone she knew. She was intrigued - it was far to early for any of the villagers to go out into the forest, or for merchants to set out to Bruma or any of the other nearby settlements. The person was taller than an Imperial, and wore dark leathers and a long bow strapped to their back. Probably a hunter – the Great Forest was full of them, all tracking the abundant deer and elusive boars. But something about the person's stride made her look away. Hunter or not, there was a cold aura of purpose about them that seemed almost threatening.

"I didn't expect you to be waiting for me to arrive."Dannen's head snapped up and a surge of surprise made her headache flood back sickeningly. The person the person had crossed the distance between them alarmingly fast.

They must have run, she thought, but she hadn't heard them. Probably an experienced hunter then, but that didn't explain why they thought she was waiting for them.

At this distance she could also see that she had been right in her estimations - not an imperial but a female dunmer dressed in heavy looking leather armor. Her skin was a dark blue-gray and in places faintly lined with silvery lavender where it must have been cut with a blade some time in the past, all of which made her deep red eyes seem all the more unnatural and demonic. Instinctively Dannen stepped backwards and away from the fence, creating a barrier between them.

"You were waiting for me?" said the stranger, furrowing her brow slightly in confusion.

"No, I wasn't waiting for anyone." Dannen replied, now a little more uncertain than afraid. She hadn't been expecting those unsettling eyes, but this wasn't the first dunmer she'd ever seen.

"Well. I'm here anyway."

The two looked at each other in silence for a moment, both as confused as the other.

"Well…what was it you wanted me to do?" prompted the elf, hitching the leather strap of her longbow to a more comfortable spot on her shoulder.

"Do…?"

"What you hired me for, remember? You do remember, don't you?"

Dannen did not. Somewhere between Reameo Bruiant deciding that The Grey Mare would be much more fun than the Oak and Crosier and waking up at home she had lost track of the evening in a blur of tipsiness and faces. But even then she was sure she would have remembered hiring this woman, especially with eyes like that. She couldn't explain why the hunter would be here though if she hadn't. The dunmer seemed to read her expression because her own look of uncertainty vanished.

"You don't, do you? You asked me if I wanted a job, and to meet you here some time after dawn. Don't worry about it if you didn't mean it though, I think it was more of a general address to the room when you offered."

Dannen winced at the idea of how much of a fool of herself she must have made to have been offering jobs to the entire bar. She was surprised too. The stranger was being, well, agreeable, which hadn't been her first impression at all. With a deep breath (and the hope she wasn't doing something she would regret) she smiled reassuringly.

"I don't actually remember you, I'm sorry. But I do need to hire a hand. I guess if we agreed something last night then I'd better keep my word, even if I don't actually remember giving it."

The elf returned her smile, although it didn't quite reach her eyes, making Dannen wonder again if she was doing the right thing. But what was done was done now. She probably just thought Dannen was an idiot. She felt like even more of an idiot as she showed her new hire around the farm. The farm house was much more 'house' than 'farm', and their fields were more 'garden' than anything else. If that. It had been a long time since her father had been well enough to till and plant the land, and longer still since he had wanted to. Weeds had choked the tomato vines but the corn grew unchecked amongst the death bells and other only that but the mer looked so very out of place standing knee deep in petals dressed as though she were ready to go off fighting bandits or hunting wild animals. It was embarrassing to ask someone like that to dig up weeds.

"So, what is it you were planning on getting me to do?" the stranger asked. "I'm good at tracking animals, and I'm not so bad at carrying and lifting things if that's what you wanted."

Dannen's face fell a little. She had hoped that she had already at least given an impression of what she had wanted her hiree to do, but apparently she hadn't. She coughed a little to clear her throat.

"Actually, the first thing I really need help with is this." She waved her hand around, to make clear what she meant. She really hadn't wanted to say 'pull weeds'."You mean clear this land?"

"Yes."The other woman looked pensively around the half-acre, but her emotions beyond that were impossible to read. She didn't seem averse to the idea though, just thoughtful.

"It'll be a shame." she said after a moment.

"What will?"

"The flowers. Pulling them up. They grow so beautifully here, and I've never seen so many deathbells or this much lavender before."

It was hard for Dannen to imagine someone like that caring about flowers, but the way those eyes scanned the banks of color seemed genuine. And that was more reassuring than anything the mer could have said. No one who looked at flowers that way could be as cold as she had assumed her to be. And with that she found herself suddenly much more at ease.

"It will be, I suppose, but you can't eat death bells."

"No…I guess not."

The rest of that morning was spent working harder than she had in a long time- on top of her usual duties she was also trying to find time to make a space for her new 'farmhand' to sleep. She hadn't been sure what the elf would have wanted at first - the woman's clothing and demeanor seemed to imply that she was used to far superior surroundings than straw strewn earth near the fire, but the scars on her face also implied that she had seen her fair share of rough environments. Dannen truly found her impossible to decision was thankfully made for her when the elf brought her belongings into the small porch of the house to keep out of the sun, along with her thick leather armor, and got to work. Since then Dannen had been pushing furniture as quietly as she could (so as not to wake her father prematurely — it was still only an hour or so after dawn) and sweeping the floor free of dust ready for the make-shift from what she saw as she hurried in and out of the house, her effort was well deserved.

After parting to get on with their respective tasks, the elf had immediately begun work on the field, and her progress was sure and swift. Already she had cleared about a third of the land of the utterly useless plants that were no good in food, potions or salves, and the pile she had made was about as high as the wooden fence that separated it from the surrounding woodland. Dannen no longer had any regrets about the deal she had made just an hour or so before. Sathyn - which was the mer's name - still made her feel uncertain somehow, but no longer was the uncertainly tinged with fear. She felt instead simply unsure about how to treat her new hand, and it was actually a struggle to even think of her as one. When she had first had the idea to hire someone to finally beat the family home back into its former glory she had imagined a typical handsome, blond-haired nord boy with muscular arms and a deep tan from working the land. A cross between the farmer's son's she knew, and the heroes that had bridged the gap between wide eyed childhood to the confusing world of a break from her work, she leant against the stone wall of the farmhouse and wasn't sure how Sathyn compared to that. It was almost as though she had had her secret wishes and practical expectations twisted as a joke of fate. The elf was probably as strong as the men she had pictured, her muscles clearly defined as she pressed on with determination, and no doubt her appearance and scars indicated some level of excitement and danger in her past, but at the same time the elf was the complete opposite of her original visions. Dark hair instead of blond, blue-grey skin instead of tanned, red fiery eyes instead of sky blue. And all that ignored the matter of sex entirely. She couldn't help but feel disappointed.

She played with a lock of her own straw-gold hair as she thought those things to herself , lost in a world where nords with broad, mischievous grins winked at her as they shoveled earth like it weighed then there was her father to think about. He would certainly not be happy to find out what she had done. It had been his own very conscious choice to let the farm fall to ruins and cut himself off from the town, and now she had finally acted on her long held resentments she found herself afraid to actually stand up to him and voice them.

"Is there a problem?"

The sound of the dark elf's voice jerked her out of her reverie, and she realized she had been staring out at the field for some time.

"No, I was just taking a break and started to daydream a little."

The elf made a noise in the back of her throat and nodded, beginning again to work on clearing some of the plants in which she was knee deep.

"DANNEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

The voice of her father rang out clearly from inside the small house, bouncing off the surrounding hills and ringing back to them. Immediately she sprang from the wall with fear - she hadn't planned for him to wake up so early. She certainly hadn't had time to plan out what she was going to say, how she was going to explain what was going her expression, the elf stopped work and got to her feet, looking at her as if to gauge what it was she ought to do flapped her hands to tell her not to worry, and with a deep breath turned and walked into the house to meet her father's judgment.

Inside it was nearly too dark for her to see, with the only light coming from the embers of the fire and the two small windows high on the walls, from which beams of light fell illuminating the interior in pools. On one side of the room was her own bed, neat and unslept in, and on the other stood an identical frame belonging to her father. The bedclothes were mussed and he was groggily sitting on it, pointing accusingly at the rough bed she had begun to make for Sathyn.

"What on earth have you brought that great bundle of straw into the house for?" he demanded. So it's going to be straight to the point, she thought with an internal wince. At least she'd be able to explain before he fully woke up, which might help. There was no point putting it off, so she just jumped right in.

"It's a bed. Or it will be. For the new farm hand I hired."

He just sat and looked at her, as though what she had said was so far from what he expected that he had just decided that she hadn't said it.

"We need to start making money from the farm again. We can't afford to just sell our things when we need food. We're running ourselves into the ground."

Again he said nothing, just looked down at the floor and blinked, this time as if he were thinking. "No."

Suddenly she wasn't worried anymore, just angry. In the dim lighting, with her father sitting like that, she could really see what was and had been going on her entire life. Her father wasn't just ill, he had chosen this life for them out of stubbornness as well as grief. And it wasn't the life she was going to let herself live.

"You don't get to say no."Angrily her father looked up and into her eyes.

"This is my house, you are my daughter. How dare you try to take this farm out from under me: a sick man and your own flesh and blood."

"Would you even still call it a farm? And is it really yours when it's my efforts that have kept us going while you've decided to let it fall to ruins? This isn't your decision to make, because there is no other way that we can keep on if we don't. Don't you see that I do everything for you, and I do it because I love you? And you want us to starve and live on scraps because you can't bear to accept the past."

As soon as she said it, she was filled with triumph, and regret. They were things she had been longing to say for a very long time, but she knew that they would hurt him all the same. She didn't want to do that; he wasn't a bad man. Life had been hard on him, and he had gone on in the way that was easiest, but it wasn't a way that she could continue to he really did seem hurt - his disbelief and anger had drained somewhat, and he had turned ashen and pale.

"Get out."

"What?"

"Get out. How…You know…you know how talking about…OUT."

The last word became a hacking cough, and slumped slightly, clutching his side like it was a deep wound. Instantly she was at his side, laying him back down, fetching medicines and salves to help with his pain. It wasn't just stubbornness which had kept the farm in disarray. When she had been about six or seven her father had developed a strong, painful cough that only seemed to get worse. It might have gotten better had he been more willing to see a healer, but by the time he had been convinced to go he had been choking up congealed blood for weeks. It was, of course, a bad case of Blood Lung, and at that stage it was incurable. Since then most of her time was spent gathering plants and creating medicines. Draughts to help him sleep, soothing salves to ease the tightness when he breathed, syrups to stop his throat from burning from the never-ending coughing. One day it was going to kill him.

Laying him down into the bed and pushing the pillows up to make sure he could breathe clearly she worked quickly and expertly, knowing how to do it by heart. Eventually the coughing subsided, and although ragged, his breathing was a lot easier."Get some rest, there's no point getting upset like that." She was struggling to find the right way to word what she needed to say. Now that he knew what she had been thinking, and what she had done she needed to make him see how important it was, and also that her mind could not be changed. All without upsetting him all over again."When the land is clear and growing again, you'll see how much better things will be, I promise."He did not reply, and not knowing how to go on, she decided to leave him to recover.

For a long time she sat against the wall of the porch, watching Sathyn work, listening to make sure that her father didn't get up or cough again. She felt suddenly exhausted. All the excitement, rebellion and hope that the implementation of her plan had brought about faded into an empty feeling. Whenever she had daydreamed about doing this she had always tried to skip over the parts where her father was concerned - knowing how he would react - and somehow she had managed to convince herself to disregard him in reality. But now, faced with the harsh image of his pale face and violent coughing, she found herself wondering if there had indeed been another way to stay afloat, if she really was a bad daughter. A few times she felt like telling Sathyn that she had made a mistake.. But whenever she did make up her mind to do it, she saw how different the field looked thinks to her efforts. Seeing the weeds being pulled up made it look like the field was waking up, being released. It made her feel a little more like she was doing the right thing.

"Are you okay?"

Dannen jumped awake. Curled into a ball thinking, she had drifted off. She yawned a little.

"Yes. Well, no, maybe."

Sathyn raised an eyebrow.

"My father wasn't pleased to find out that I hired you. It was his decision to let the fields waste and even though we have no choice but to work the land again he's so upset it's making his illness worse, and he might not let you stay in the house. He probably wont make things easy for you." She looked down, feeling defeated.

"Well, it takes more than that to scare me off a job. You're the one with the gold. I'm yours as long as you want me. Or said gold runs out, whichever happens first."

The mer shrugged, and Dannen was unsure whether it was meant to be a joke or simply the truth, but either way it was a relief. The two women smiled wanly at each other, before Dannen coughed, looking away, embarrassed. But a lot less upset than she had been moments before.

"It'll be better soon, once he's had time to think about it. It's just been a shock, and..." she mentally kicked herself in the shins as she realized she was about to begin rambling, "…we should go to get some alchemy ingredients."

"Alright." The mer nodded in agreement. At first she began to make her way towards the road up towards Chorrol, but Dannen waved her over and pointed towards a worn trail that snaked off into the woods, and felt a glow of pride as her companion gave her respectful nod. It was nice to think that she'd impressed someone.

Even though Dannen knew the way like the back of her hand, Sathyn soon took the lead - the path was rough and pitted, with gnarled roots constantly trying to trip the imperial up as her skirts tried to wrap around her ankles. It really wasn't surprising that Sathyn got ahead so easily, with her powerful legs and leather greaves, which not only didn't trip her but protected her from seemingly every thorn. Dannen seemed to catch herself on every plant in the forest. After a minute or so, she just couldn't carry on matching the Sathyn's pace and stopped, resting against a tree for a moment.

"You okay?" The dunmer stopped a few paces ahead, and turned back to face her as she sheepishly rearranged her skirts, which had bunched up uncomfortably between her legs.

"Yes, just these skirts are hard to walk quickly in, and they snag all the time"

"Hm" the mer nodded, "You'd do better with a good pair of pants, or even just a split skirt you can tie to your legs when you walk if you're really that attached to tradition."

She then leant against a tree herself and looked out across the wooded valley that stretched out below them, and off towards the farm, the way they had come.

" You travel a fair way into the forest to find your plants. I'm surprised your father lets you go alone."

Inwardly, Dannen grimaced. If her father ever caught wind of just what her herb gathering entailed he would never allow it.

"He doesn't really know for the most part. He knows I go out to get the herbs for his medicines and the salves I sell at the temple, but really he's not well enough to come out and see how deep my trail goes. But he is very protective. He blames himself for my brothers' deaths."

She hadn't been sure if she should tell the stranger why her father acted the way he did, but it seemed to have come out of her all in a rush without any real conscious decision to justify her statement.

"You had brothers?" Sathyn turned to look at her, a strange expression on her face. Dannen was used to being quizzed about what happened or hearing the story retold by now, and for the most part people were either pitying or gleeful in their gossiping. Sathyn seemed to be neither, and for this she was oddly grateful. The mer seemed interested, but not uncomfortable or sympathetic, and it made her want to talk more than she usually would have. Of course, the story would no doubt get to her soon - in a smaller town like Chorrol even old news like that would be excitedly recounted by everyone in the bar upon finding out where the elf was staying, and so as a justification it was in her best interests to tell it first. But all the same, she felt as if she truly wanted to talk about it with Sathyn.

"Yes, but I don't remember them much at all. I was really very small when they died. The farm was attacked by goblins, but my father stayed back in Chorrol with me, because my mother died not long after I was born, meaning there was no one else he trusted to look after me. I suppose he was worried and protective back then even. The farm was our livelihood, but being so close to the forest goblin attacks were getting so frequent we just had to do something about it. The guards wouldn't help us because we were outside the city walls, so he hired a traveler with a reputation for helping people with problems like that to go with them."

She paused for a moment, thinking about how best to word the rest.

"She was the only one who came back. It wasn't her fault of course - there were so many goblins and she was badly hurt too. But it was my brothers who really bore the brunt. My father….well, when he was younger he was something of an adventurer. Or at least that's what he makes out to everyone who listens. I found out a few years ago that he was really just a plain old sellsword, but maybe that's why he blames himself so much? I don't really know. But my brothers didn't know how to fight at all.

"Since then my father hasn't left the farm except for their funeral. He doesn't trust the people in the town anymore, what with the gaurds refusing to help us." she shook her head, but after so long she felt no anger, just a sadness thinking yet again about how her life had changed before she was old enough to know differently.

" We used to provide most of the food for the town once. But once Rallus and Antus died my father hasn't touched the earth, and well, I wouldn't know where to start. That's why I hired you. We have a little money left, but we can't go on forever living off of selling our things."

Sathyn didn't reply, and the pair stood, their backs against the thick-trunked yews and watched as a hawk circled and swooped through the air far above the trees. Again, Dannen felt a deep gratefulness to her taciturn companion. She was starting to appreciate the other woman's calm demeanor which she had first taken for coldness or even hostility. For a few minutes more the silenced stretched on, before they left their spot on the tree and continued on down the trail, at a slower pace this time.

"Do you know how to farm then?" Dannen said at last.

"A little. I'm not really used to it here though, I grew up in Morrowind. The climate, the earth - it's all different in that part of the world."

Dannen looked up in surprise. "Really? But…I thought you'd have an accent? How do you speak cyrodilic so well?'

The elf met her gaze, and smiled oddly.'I've been here a long time.'

'Ah.' Something about the tone of her voice implied that this was a subject which she did not intend too expand upon further.

"But as for cyrodilic, all the provinces use it, didn't you know?"

"No."

"We used to speak a language called Dunmeri. We still do, sometimes. But it tends to be the older elves the speak it day to day, for the younger elves it's more a matter of pride to know how, even if there's little call for it. We're a stubborn, arrogant race of people, and we live for long, long times, so it's hard to loose our heritage even when things change so much."

Dannen laughed a little, knowing a few dunmer over the years she agreed wholeheartedly with the idea of the dunmer as arrogant and stubborn. Sathyn might have been a little cold and untalkative, but most she had met had been all sneers and cutting sarcasm and by comparison she seemed utterly friendly. But as far as their culture or even lifespans she knew almost nothing at all, and Sathyn's comments intrigued her.

"You do? How long?"

The elf shrugged. "It's not unheard of for us to reach 180, even 200."

"200...wow. So…how old are you?"

"About 47 now" she replied with another shrug. Dannen was shocked - the elf's skin was smooth and tight over her sharp features, and her frame was strong and youthful.

"That's…impossible. You look 20 if that."

This time it was Sathyn who laughed, a low throaty sound that seemed to hold just a little of the arrogance she had referenced moments before.

"Well, humans age so quickly it's almost like you're fruit going bad. I wouldn't really expect you to be able to judge an elf's age."

Dannen scowled, but her curiosity was still burning.

"What is Morrowind like?"

Luckily Sathyn seemed to be enjoying knowing more than her companion, because everything she said was sparking off a thousand new thoughts and questions. Already she had forgotten the ghost pain of talking about her brothers, and the anger left over from her argument with her father."It's…very different and in many ways the same. It's hard to describe to someone who has never seen it. Different animals, different plants. Have you been to Cheydenhal?"

Dannen shook her head.

"Well, if you had, it's pretty similar to that."

For a little while longer they walked between the trees before they came to a small clearing filled with wildflowers and fallen tree trunks. It was perfect for collecting alchemy ingredients, but Sathyn seemed ill at ease. While Dannen was scanning the undergrowth for the right fungi and roots, Sathyn scanned the trees, trying hard to look like she wasn't, but occasionally Dannen would see her eyes flash over the surroundings with suspicion. Goblins weren't the worst thing that you could run into in The Great Forrest afterall.

'You don't carry a weapon when you go out here?'

'No' Dannen said, a little confused, perusing a tree on which vibrant orange fungus grew.

"But aren't you afraid? What if you came across wolves or bears or something worse?"

"This close to Chorrol? Anyway, the guards are nearby, if anything happened they'd come running."

"I thought you said that they consider what happens outside the walls as not their concern?"

She looked worried for a moment."I'm sure they would though."

Sathyn raised her eyebrow skeptically.

"I think you should carry a weapon. Look, I've traveled a lot, and believe me, there are things that would make the head of the guard wet the bed out there. Just because a place like this looks idyllic doesn't mean that you're safe. Don't just trust that other people will be your defense."

Dannen raised her own eyebrow to match the elf's own expression, half out of mockery, half genuine disbelief. She had been coming to the spot every day more most of her life, and hadn't even seen a squirrel up to now.

"Fine, don't believe me. " she said, huffing again. "Just, look, there'll be a sword in your house right?"

Dannen nodded.

"Carry it. It won't do any harm. Not to you anyway."

"I wouldn't know the first thing about using it."

"I can teach you."

"You know how to use a sword?"

The elf smiled like Dannen had asked a very stupid question, which she realized it probably was. She simply wasn't used to talking to people like Sathyn. Her usual acquaintances were merchants, or the other inexperienced youths of the town.

"Of course. I'm better with a bow, and daggers are faster if you're up close but I'm sure I could teach you how to swing that sword and not cut your left arm off."

Dannen was offended, but to her amazement realized that Sathyn had been joking rather than mocking her.

"Ha. I guess it wouldn't be a bad thing to learn." she said at last. After that the two of them worked together, walking in circles, picking anything that looked like it might be useful and storing it in the hide satchel, although Sathyn continued to glance around the trees frequently. From time to time Dannen would find something new and bring it over to her to teach her to recognize it, and although she sometimes thought that she was humoring her, the mer never said anything.