The first time Lucia had ever seen her, she was sitting on one of the benches in front of the great big tree in Whiterun. She was eight, a bit big for her age - though she was growing slower up and slower still out with malnutrition, now the same height as Braith, though the girl was almost a whole year younger - and Lucia was homeless. Motherless. Fatherless. An orphan. She did as she had been instructed, every day, and waited and asked for the charity of strangers. She had been doing as instructed for days and days; she hardly knew how long it had been, too concerned with when she would eat and where she would sleep to see beyond the week. There was a real possibility she would be dead in a week, though she didn't often make a point to dwell on it.
She asked for coin, and sometimes she got it. Others, she got food (just as good, in her opinion), and others still yet she got only news. Not many had turned her away in anger, which made her grateful, but none had offered to take her in, either, and that brought with it a certain bitterness Lucia was keenly aware a girl of eight wasn't supposed to possess. She forced herself to be grateful for the kindness offered, for the occasional septum, for the molding cheese and hard bread and ale that made her stomach turn. If all the town had for her was leftovers, scraps, and unwanted things, she would take it.
In retrospect, Lucia didn't know what had possessed her to ask the woman for a coin. She did not look like the generous type. She was a stranger, with Imperial features and Imperial armor and a wicked one-handed axe strapped to her side that was spattered with blood. It may have been the circlet on her head, the amulet at her throat, or the fact that she was munching on a solid hunk of cheese as she passed, eyes kept straight and locked on the stairs to the next district. Still, the girl asked, not expecting much in way of an answer and not bothering to stand from her bench seat. The woman turned.
Frozen, Lucia could only meet her gaze. She had pale eyes, grey and maybe blue, and close cropped black hair that put no gentleness in her gaze and did not obscure it. Those eyes gave the girl a once-over, a calculating move that caused Lucia to shrink back some. A moment of silence passed between them.
"Where are your parents?" The woman asked, finally, taking a bite out of her cheese wedge as though it were the most normal thing in the world. Lucia stuttered out her explanation, about her parents, about her lost home, about the help of strangers she had to use to get by. As she spoke, she became aware of a growing intensity in the woman's eyes that scared her. What was this wild woman thinking?
"I could adopt you!"
It was blurted out, just as Lucia had lost her nerve and trailed off into nervous silence. She was taken aback, as was the woman. Lucia was offered a sheepish smile, one that seemed to transform the stranger into something less terrifying, something more like…. A mother, maybe. Lucia would take what she could get. However…
It was well known, even to little orphan girls, that the only place in town available was Breezehome, and that only to a thane. Lucia, hoping she was wrong and the woman perhaps merely lived elsewhere (and how scary would that be? Moving somewhere unfamiliar. What if this new guardian died, too? Left her alone in a strange land?), she squared her shoulders.
"Do you have a place I can stay?" She asked, trying to keep the tremble out of her tiny, hopeful voice. The woman's falling face told her all she needed to know. "Well," she said, trying to feel grateful for the sentiment and not bitter, because she was eight and eight was too young to be bitter, "thanks, anyway…."
She turned to walk off, but was stopped by the woman's hand on her shoulders. Lucia froze.
"I apologize," the Imperial said, moving around Lucia to face her and kneeling so they were at eye level, "I was born a traveller; I had not considered that you wouldn't simply come with me." Her eyes were still disconcerting, especially so close up, but her words made Lucia feel a tiny bit better. "To make up for things… here," she mumbled, digging suddenly through a purse. She retrieved twenty coins from the already light seeming bag, and handed them to Lucia. The girl's eyes went wide.
"This is…" She wanted to cry. Twenty septims was more than she could have begged off of the town in a month, handed to her freely. "I can't take this," she said, small voice thick with held back emotion. The woman shook her head, placing her hands in Lucia's shoulders.
"Go to the Bannered Mare, tell the woman at the desk you would like a room, and some work. Ten septims will get you a room, and the work will at least earn you some food," she said, staring into Lucia with those intense eyes. Lucia clutched the coins close to herself, her own eyes wide.
"But, ten coins is so much," she whispered, feeling tears well up. The prospect of a bed, a safe place to bathe, and walls around her that kept out Skyrim's chill was almost too much, but she had to think, while she had the chance. Ten septims could buy her a lot of food, but only one night at the inn. Better to risk things outside and freeze, and have food, she reasoned. Perhaps sensing her thoughts, the woman frowned. She stood, and for a moment Lucia thought she had angered her. A slim, long hand slipped into hers a moment later, tugging her along, and the girl followed where she was pulled, puzzled.
She almost tugged from her grasp when they climbed the steps to the Bannered Mare, but the woman held tight, and they passed through with only a small, panicked noise from the orphan girl. Inside, old Hulda was preparing for the night influx, and already there was drinking and music and the warmth from a fire. The woman pulled Lucia up to the desk where Hulda stood. The elder woman frowned at the stranger, then at little Lucia.
"I don't like where this is going," the tavern owner bit out. Lucia flinched, but the Imperial remained as calm as ever. She pulled a sack out of her bag, passing the whole thing into Hulda's hands without any hesitation. Hulda's eyebrows shot up as she opened the bag. "I'm liking where this is going a bit more," she amended, holding up one gold piece for inspection.
"Seven hundred and twenty gold pieces, for room and board, and food, for the little one" the stranger said, gesturing to Lucia, "just room and board, if she works for you. Little girls have quick fingers and fast legs, and women who run taverns have little time for things but a lot of food to spare for those who can make the time for them."
Lucia stood, hand still in the stranger's grip, as Hulda poured the coins onto the counter and counted them out. Her eyes were wide. Evidently, the purse from earlier wasn't the only one the Imperial was carrying. When Hulda came up with only seven hundred septims, she produced the other bag and poured out the remaining twenty for Hulda to count. There was no mention made of the twenty in Lucia's pockets. As the coins were counted and the two women discussed what work Lucia would be doing for her food, the stranger was writing a note on some parchment. When everything was counted out and settled, the woman turned and knelt in front of Lucia again.
"The coins I gave you," she said, eyes flicking to Lucia's pockets, "save for when you're running low on coin, if I have not returned. Give them to a courier, with this," she handed her the note. "Tell him to take it to Hadvar, in Riverwood. If the gods are kind, you will be heading there once your pay has run out."
"What about you?" Lucia asked, feeling a sudden and fierce connection to this foreigner who had paid for so much. The woman laughed, but it was a laugh without humor.
"If the gods are kinder, I will be back well before your time is up, and you will be here a while yet. Pick up a trade, little girl, while you're here; learn to cook and mend, and serve and count and read. All these things will serve you, if the gods are instead cruel. You have months here; do not waste them."
"Yes, Ma'am," Lucia said, in a small voice. The woman stood, nodded, and turned to speak with Hulda once more.
"You can't seriously be spending all your coin on the girl," Hulda was saying.
"I am." This from the stranger. Hulda frowned.
"And what of you?" She insisted, scooping the coins into their purse, "what will you do, with no money? There will still be a beggar on the street, unless you have some coin stored elsewhere."
"If I live, I'll have money to spare," the woman said evenly, "if not, I will have no use for what I have now. Take the money, Hulda, and be secure that you have a room rented for the near future, and that the girl will be sent on to be cared for if I don't come back."
Hearing that, Lucia wanted to cry. Was she an Imperial soldier, then? Off to war? Was she expecting to die? Thinking of her mama and papa, Lucia watched the woman turn to leave. On a last minute decision, Lucia ran to her, hugging her tightly. "Thank you," she said, trying to pour seven hundred and twenty septims worth of gratitude into the words. She received a light pat on the head.
"I will get a house here, if I live to come back," the stranger said, "and as soon as there is a bed for you, child, I will bring you there. Stay here in the meantime, and stay inside when you are able." Her voice grew stern, "there are dragons about."
As Lucia would learn, the chilling and the comforting often went hand in hand with the Imperial.
She had survived, the stranger, and in the wake of her return to the town there was talk that she had slain a dragon. Lucia heard the mumbles of "dragonborn", had asked the bard if there was a song for it, and when the merry man sang it she felt an odd surge of pride for the woman who had given her a temporary home. The stranger became less of a stranger as the days passed, as Lucia learned to sing and make bread and serve ale. Often the woman would visit the tavern, tucking extra coins into Lucia's hand and always asking after her and her skill acquiring.
She helped the town, too; within a month she was named Thane, and Lucia saw hope when the stranger was around. She hardly told anyone her name, Lucia had learned, but after so long coming in to see the girl, the barkeep and the bard, and Lucia herself, knew it well. Illise Yarrow, of Cheydinhal; though in truth her place of birth was mostly where her parents had been passing through, and Illise had no memory of it. She lived as her parents had, which is to say she wandered. After acquiring the title of Thane, she would disappear for long days and nights and come in to the inn weeks or months out from when she had left. Over time, she began paying for Lucia again, in payments of months, and she would always be gone just long enough for the ludicrous upfront payment to have made sense.
Lucia worked hard, at that inn. She cooked with the cook, helped clean the other rooms and learned how to keep her own customer-fit and tidy, and in the evening she worked on her letters with Hulda, who had taken a liking to her. She learned to sew by patching up her own raggedy dress, learned to mend and make, and when Illise came back with a new dress for her, Lucia knew how to take care of it. She was nine, now, and had been growing ever taller with her renewed health, and she needed the new dress. She was very thankful. Illise, for her part, never looked the same coming back as she did leaving.
Lucia didn't realize it was her, when she came back in mage robes and told her about a school in the north. She sat in Lucia's room that night and regaled her with tales of a cocky Khajiit, a kind Nord, and an eager Elf. When she left, she gave Lucia a spell tome that she couldn't read just yet, with a bird on the cover. "Restoration magic is in short supply," she explained, "this is another good skill to have." Lucia resolved to read it as soon as she was able.
"You saved those twenty septims, right?" She asked. Lucia nodded, and was handed another note. "Good. If you don't want to live in Riverwood, send this to the College, to J'Zargo. Can you say that name?"
"J'Zargo," Lucia repeated, tripping over the sounds but saying it passably enough. Illise smiled and ruffled her hair.
The guards hardly recognized her, when she came back in stolen vampire armor and told Lucia about a dog and a god. Hulda almost shooed her out when she came in a brown outfit, hood up and looking like she was up to no good. Illise had only smiled, and handed Hulda a large money pouch that the older woman had to be talked into taking. She told Lucia, later, in Lucia's room, that she had a job with a guild now.
"You can't tell Hulda, or anyone else in town," she'd said, those sharp eyes boring into Lucia's own. Lucia nodded solemnly. That same night, Illise showed her how to crouch and walk without being heard, how to pick through a lock without breaking the pick, how to be polite and get her way. She left Lucia a book, beggar prince, and the little girl worked her way through it slowly, proud of how her reading and writing was coming along.
When she left the next morning, Illise pressed a new note into her hand. "You've saved those twenty septims, right?" She asked. Lucia nodded. "Good. Now, you have a choice. If I don't come back and you run out of time, ask the courier to take this note to Brynjolf, in Riften, if you want work." She gave her another twenty septims, so Lucia could send two of her notes if she wished. Lucia stored the forty coins and three notes in a box she couldn't pick the lock on, for safekeeping, and began to lock the door behind her whenever she left the room.
After that, Illise was gone for a long while. A dragon attacked the city, and Lucia spent a whole afternoon numbly staring at the charred bench she used to sit at every day to beg for coin. A thief came to town, stole everything from the houses and inns, but not from Hulda. There was a strange mark on the door to the inn, now; a diamond with two overlapping circles. Hulda refused to talk about it.
Lucia cooked and cleaned, sewed and mended, and worked on her reading. She finished beggar prince and moved on to her spell tome, Healing, with trepidation. It was much slower going, and she had to practice on top of that, but eventually Lucia could heal herself as well as any novice. Hulda sent word by courier to Illise, and Illise sent back a thousand septims for Hulda, a note saying she was proud, and another book, healing hands. Lucia started on it right away.
It was another few months before a stranger came to the Bannered Mare. She was in tight fitting light armor, with a hood and cowl that covered her entire face, except the eyes. Lucia knew her immediately. "Illise!" She cried, running to hug the woman.
Illise patted her on the back, kneeled down, and whispered in her ear, "I have enough coin for Breezehome. Tomorrow, once the house is mine and the hearth is lit, we'll be going home."
Lucia wanted to cry. Home. She took Illise at her word, informing Hulda and packing her things. She kept the forty septims and her notes well hidden, for safety.
True to her word, Illise came for her the next day, and walked her the short distance. Breezehome had a warm hearth, a cozy kitchen, and a room for Lucia, with its own chest. The lock there was even harder to pick. She put her things away immediately and flopped down on the bed. It was poorly made, but she slept better there than she ever had at the Inn. When she woke the next morning, it was to food and a new mother.
Illise didn't stay long, leaving Lucia to her own devices. When the little girl asked where the housecarl was, the one there was a room for upstairs, Illise looked stricken and asked her to not mention it again. She was gone the next day, leaving coin for Lucia and food, and another healing tome.
Her mother may not appear often, Lucia reflected, but she had provided for her well. Hulda was told to keep the extra septims, as a thanks, and Lucia was welcome to earn her own coin at the Bannered Mare whenever she wanted. The girl walked the streets, playing with friends during the day, and the night was spent keeping up on her cooking and mending, her spellwork and her sneaking.
And every great now and again, her mother would show up, showering her in love and gifts. Lucia felt content, and safe. But always, always, she remembered her forty septims, and her notes.
Just in case.