"Marry me," the drunken man slurred as he stared in an unfocused manner into the woman's eyes.
She rolled her eyes. "I don't even know you," she said, slightly annoyed as she took a final sip of her mead.
"But my love for you is like kindling fire."
"Fire," she scoffed, completely ignoring the rest of what he was saying, "the least reliable of the elements. It just does what it wants leaving no margin for control. Quite horrible really. Now I really must be going," she said exasperatedly as she quickly scurried out of the dingy old inn she was getting a drink at. She hugged her arms closer to her body as she walked outside, despite the downpour of rain falling onto her, the very rain she tried to avoid by staying a while longer at the inn. She'd always hated the rain.
She was on her way to the farm just down the road. The real reason she was at that dreadful, run-down inn was to steal an amulet off the intoxicated man from earlier and plant it in the nearby house, a job she received from her friend Vex in the guild. Unfortunately, however, the stupid man misunderstood her closeness and started coming onto her. "Idiot," she muttered, smirking ever so slightly. Why she kept doing these nearly mindless shill jobs, she would never quite know herself; she pondered this while masterfully picking the lock and entering the home, as silently as she could.
The young Breton girl sighed as she attempted to create a fire with an overly forceful flick of her wrist. She never understood why she could never produce magicka. It was in her blood, her mom would say. It'll just happen one day, she says. "But what if it never does?" she muttered almost silently to herself before giving one last attempt. She sucked her breath in as one small ember appeared, only for water to begin pouring down on both it and her. Slowly at first, but it gradually quickened and started to come down heavier. "Mom, why can't we just go home?" she complained, hugging her knees to her chest and leaning against a rock, letting the rain pour down on her in an uncaring state.
Her mother simply shook her head and closed her eyes. How do you explain that sort of thing to your ten year old child? How do you explain that you left High Rock just to follow the man you loved so deeply all the way to Skyrim just to find him bedding another woman? That you lost your job because you were framed for smuggling skooma to some Khajiit? That the reason you're living outside the walls of Whiterun is because you were caught stealing and had to run away from the guards? That you didn't even have a home anymore? "Synnna..." she whispered, pitying her own child for being in such a horrible situation.
Synnna tore her stare away from her mom and looked towards anything else she could, not really expecting an answer. She looked at the cursed sky for putting out her flame and then back at the ground and at her feet. For reasons she could not figure out, her mom had been acting rather strange the last few weeks. Strange really wasn't the right word though. It felt like years ago that her mom came into her room back at the old house in High Rock and told her to pack her things. Though, in all honesty, that had probably only been a couple months ago. Synnna really couldn't remember. And there was that man. She hated that man with a passion. He was just so strange. He always ignored the child and touched her mom in such strange ways. Then, he just mysteriously left and she never saw him again. Synnna couldn't even remember hearing his name. That had been a few weeks ago, perhaps a month. She hugged her knees closer to her chest. Her clothes were soaked and she was freezing cold. Why did Skyrim have to be so cold anyways, she wondered angrily. Then, not three days ago her mother ran to their newly purchased house in a nervous frenzy, grabbed little Synnna, and stormed off, seemingly never looking back.
The woman left the amulet in the old farmer's lockbox and snuck out as quietly as she had entered. "Easy," she muttered as she walked back towards Riften, her home. She couldn't wait to get back, but it was going to be a long walk there, she considered while staring back up at the now pitch-black sky. She sighed regrettably as she strained her eyes to see ahead of herself, hand silently hovering over her blade, just in case.
"It's getting late, you know," said her mother as she looked towards the darkening sky. "You should get to bed."
Synnna grumbled as she stood up and walked to their tent. Somehow, her mother had gotten it off of the nearby Khajiit caravan. She did not know how her mom had acquired it, but she did not care enough to actually ask. She crept into the uncomfortable bed roll and shut her eyes.
She was silently falling into what would have been a peaceful slumber when she heard it. The terrible thing that would undoubtedly change her entire life. She just didn't know it yet. Really, she hardly even processed it until it happened.
"Well, well, well. What do you 'spose we have here, boys?"
Synnna cracked open an eye and looked desperately towards her still sleeping mother. As cautiously as she could manage, she shook her mother awake. She woke with a start, an unfortunately loud start that stole the bandits' attention away from the chest that barely had anything in it, save for a dagger and a bit of venison, and towards the two confused and groggy females in a tent.
"Hey, Brynjolf, have you seen Vex?" she asked, just wanting to put a close to this near idiotic quest she had been sent on.
"Aye, lass, just in the cistern."
And with a curt nod, she was off to the cistern.
There were three of them, Synnna quickly determined, and they certainly weren't friendly. She glanced anxiously at her mother who was feeling around at her side. Synnna assumed she was fumbling around for her dagger, which was left in that chest, something her mom probably realized as well as her eyes grew wider and peeked at the three men walking closer to them. She quickly sat up and drew her daughter behind her arms. "Leave us!" she commanded, trying to sound as menacing as she could.
The men merely chuckled as they drew closer.
Her mother then stood in front of the tent, blocking it with her arms as she drew lightning into her hands in an attempt to intimidate the men to leave without any problems.
"Well ain't that cute?" Synnna thought she heard the taller of the men say, but she couldn't be sure. She tried to peek her head around her mom's protective body to get a better look.
"Little mage here has some lightning." More laughter.
Her mother made to electrocute the intruders, but they were quicker. The tallest and largest quickly approached her and grabbed her wrists, drawing them over her head and he forced her against a tree.
The other two snickered. "Again, Wuulfric? This is the third one this week."
"Yeah, when do we get our turns?" the other said, seeming to be both joking and serious at the same time.
"Later!" the first growled, causing the others to go examine the measly amount food and animal pelts the two runaways actually had.
"What of the girl?" one of the other two asked, a smirk on his face.
Synnna ultimately was still processing everything that had happened. Not ten minutes ago everything was normal- more normal than it had been now anyway. She jumped back and started to run at her mother's attacker in blind fury and courage.
"No Synnna!" her mother cried. "Run away!"
The largest bandit, Wuulfric apparently, violently ripped his mouth away from her mother's neck and slapped her. "What are you waiting for? Grab the brat!" he barked at the other two men.
They glanced at each other and pursued the girl, almost immediately catching up to and tackling her.
"Make her watch and then kill her," he commanded them.
So, following their grim orders, they drew her back against an adjacent rock, holding her hands steadily against it, greatly minimizing her chance of escape. She struggled as hard as she could; she kicked the man to her left as hard as she could and then the one to her right. They grunted in slight pain, but they did not relinquish their iron grips on the girl. Tears rolling out of her tightly clenched eyes, she screamed as she tried to escape their hold. Her eyes snapped open as she heard her mom cry out and scream as the man began tearing off her top.
"MOMMA!" Synnna screamed at the top of her lungs, gasping for air from her tears. Something changed within her at that moment. And suddenly, her mom stopped screaming. She was no longer pinned to the rock. She no longer felt cold and afraid. She slowly opened her eyes again, and all she saw was fire, fire everywhere. It was the brightest and largest flame she had ever seen, and it was in every direction. She calmly stepped out of it, the flames seeming to avoid her as she moved. She searched for her mother, and even for those terrible men, but all she found were corpses. Burnt corpses.
"MOMMA!" she screamed again as she sank to her knees, tears resembling waterfalls falling from her face; what's worse, the flames only seemed to intensify with her growing anger. They wouldn't even stop when she started to calm down and tried with all her strength to stop them. Thankfully, however, she never got burned.
To this day, with the exception of not being burned by them herself, she never did learn to control her flames.
And on that night, Synnna swore to herself, to her mother, to the gods, that she would learn to control her magicka, but never again would she use her flames. Her flames, that were too large and dangerous; moreover, she could never learn to control something like that, could she? Sure, she would still use magicka from the branch of restoration, but that would be the extent of it.
Really, nearly everything that happened to her related back to that one night, that one horrible night in which little Synnna killed her mother in a pathetic attempt to save her. And that night would truly haunt her forever.
A/N: Well... that turned out... differently than I first expected. In any case, please review. Tell me if you thought it was great or repulsively awful.
Anyway, I have a rather long storyline planned out for poor Synnna here, consisting mostly of current events but also several flashbacks, and this chapter was just sort of there to get the ball rolling. Was it too dark for the beginning of a story?
To be completely honest, I got the idea for this story at around 1 am and have been writing this for the past 2 hours nonstop and can't tell if it's any good or not.
Feeling like I'm probably going to regret this whole thing in the morning,
YolToorShul
