Dear daughter

I am unable to remember a time when I didn't love you. Surely it was before I felt your kick for the first time; surely I already loved you when I was a little girl. My daughter. You are the only one I am not afraid of loving.

I know I raised you with a stern hand and tough love. 'Tis how it had to be, little one. I could not raise you with the softness of a farmer's wife or queen because that is not the mother this world gave you. I know I hurt you but I always thought you knew that I love you.

I cannot say that I was not outraged when I gave birth to you, yes, for a whole minute I was filled with dread. My little girl, I was not mad at you for being who you are, I wasn't mad that all my planning had been for nothing. I feared for you. What kind of life could a girl have with me as her mother?

For you I would gladly have battled five arch demons, for you I would have waded through a thousand swamps, battled millions of darkspawn. If anybody dared to hurt you this world would have burned.

I have isolated you, just like Flemeth isolated me. Don't hate me for it, 'tis only fear on my behalf. I fear that they will hurt you. So I teach you fear, even though I know it is wrong, hoping that you will grow up to despise humans like me. But it doesn't work, the more I try to make you hate humans the more you seem drawn to them. I had to do something, but I know now that it was wrong of me to make you kill that human child. It feels like I made you kill yourself. Can you please forgive your stupid mother?

Being a mother involves so much pain, so much heart ache. From the moment you cried for the first time I knew true mortality, actual frailty. I had never known that an infant could hold so much power. I love you so much, my child. I wonder if Flemeth had these feelings or if her humanity was too far gone. I believe the latter.

I feel very guilty. I have completely failed you. My only offspring growing up to hate me. I search my feelings; was I really as bad as Flemeth? You seem to think so. But you don't know what she was like, and like all young people you are arrogant. You think that you know everything. And me, I am really the fool in this, because I honestly thought that you knew how much I loved you, how I could never hurt you, how you are my everything.

It wasn't until you came to kill me that I realized how deeply I had failed you. How my incapability to show emotion had wounded you. I didn't even put up a fight. Against you, my darling girl, I will gladly be defeated. You didn't use your magic, which surprised me greatly, instead you used your father's knife to my throat. I kept my eyes open as I felt the life drain from my being; I wanted to keep looking at you for as long as I was able. For you to be the last thing I saw in this life. I said a silent prayer as my eyes closed for the last time, the only prayer I would ever say. I prayed for you, my beloved, I prayed that you will never experience the sting of motherhood. Let the cycle stop with us.

I love you my daughter.