Hello there, readers. :) This is the third of a group of short stories I'm writing, each featuring a different one of my Dragonborns, explaining their backgrounds, personalities and motivations. This one will be about four or five chapters. The title is dragon language - it means 'spreads the sun.' You'll understand why by the end of the story.

Most of this story will be set in Black Marsh, so I'm making up quite a few things about Argonian culture and lifestyle, but I think it's all lore-friendly. I hope you enjoy!

PRIIDAHKREIN

It all started with the Histcarp Run.

Jeerala's mornings began, as a rule, with someone hammering on the wooden door to her room until it shook. Of course, it wasn't her room, but the room she shared with Meer-Lai, but since Meer-Lai was usually the one doing the hammering, she had long ago decided that if he was going to get up at some ungodsly hour, and stay up late working, it was more her room than his. He was barely ever in it.

This morning was no exception to the usual way of things, except that the blows on her door were even more forceful than normal. Jeerala jerked awake, groaned, and slammed her head down again. 'I'll get up tomorrow,' she shouted.

'You'll get up now.' Meer-Lai's voice, as usual. 'We don't have time to waste.'

'Time is infinite.' Jeerala parted her jaws in a gaping yawn. 'You should read more.'

A pause, something that sounded like a sigh, and then her brother's voice again. 'There's not infinite time for the Histcarp Run.'

Jeerala groaned and clasped a hand over her eyes. The Histcarp Run – of course. The most irritating few days of the entire year. The days when Meer-Lai could show again and again just how much better at being an Argonian he was than her. The days when everyone got to see just how clumsy and unlike the rest of them she was. The days when her father shot more disapproving looks at her than any others.

The days she wanted more than ever just to get away from the whole thing. The 'thing' being her family.

But she knew that if she didn't get up, Meer-Lai would tell her father, and then he'd take her books away until he thought she'd 'learned to overcome her laziness.' And so she mumbled something that sounded vaguely like an agreement with her brother's words, and hauled herself upright.

She dressed slowly and stumblingly, wondering twice why her tunic wasn't fitting before realising she'd been trying to put her head through the sleeves, and then later noticing she'd got it back to front. Then she managed to put both feet through the same leg of her breeches – she utterly refused to wear dresses, they were completely impractical in this environment - sending her crashing onto the floor. Finally, she spent an entire minute trying to put her left boot onto her right foot. And at last, she made her way down the wooden stairs, which creaked as usual, to find the cramped kitchen of their house occupied only by her mother, who was standing at the table, carefully wrapping up food in bundles of cloth.

'Morning, love.' Her mother glanced up from her work only briefly. 'Yours is the one in the light blue cloth. You might want to take a bag to carry it, especially if you're thinking of taking some books with you.'

Jeerala blinked. 'Aren't we having breakfast?'

'We can eat as we work.'

The voice was accompanied by the slam of the door being thrust open. Jeerala moved back to make way as her father crossed the room to the table and dropped a cloth backpack onto the wooden surface. 'There's no time to waste. The Run's started and we can't let them get ahead of us.'

'Don't overwork yourself, Rajava.' Swims-In-Streams pushed the food bundles across the tables. 'That's yours, and that one's for Meer-Lai. Don't forget to take cloaks with you; it looks like rain.'

Rajava huffed. 'Rain's not going to stop us. It's going to be a good year, I can tell. Fall and his lot are already up there, setting up the nets.' He turned to Jeerala, his yellow eyes narrowed. 'Are you going to grace us with your presence?'

Jeerala would have rolled her eyes if she hadn't known it would lead to a scolding. 'I only just woke up.'

'You should have been up at dawn like the rest of us. Anyway, I sent Meer-Lai to fetch you almost ten minutes ago.'

'Rajava,' Swims-In-Streams said quietly, drawing the pressure away from Jeerala for a moment. 'Has there been any word from your brother?'

Jeerala looked at her father eagerly; her gratitude to her mother for changing the subject was quickly overwhelmed by a desire to hear her father say yes.

To her disappointment, Rajava shook his head. 'Still nothing. In his last letter he said he thought he'd make it back for the Run, but he's been away from Black Marsh so long I'm surprised he even remembers what time of year the Run is.' He stuffed the food parcels into his bag. 'If he turns up, send him to the streams. That's if he's not forgotten the way.'

'Uncle Ushara's not an idiot, Pa.'

Jeerala's father let out a small snort. 'Maybe, but he's still gone too far away from the Hist trees.' He fastened the straps on his bag. 'Go and get yourself a pack, Jee, we've got a long day's work ahead of us and you'll need supplies. And be quick about it – Follows-The-Fall and his family are waiting.'

With a sigh, Jeerala turned her back on her parents and plodded back up to her room. As she stuffed the essentials for the day into a knapsack – a cloak, a spare tunic for when the one she was wearing inevitably became soaked – she could hear her parents' voices drifting up from below.

'Will you be all right here with Shujeema?'

'Of course. We've got some new cloths almost made; we'll bring them up for you, and you can take them down to Fernglade with the fish.'

A pause, and then her father's voice. 'Argonians shouldn't stray too far from the Hist.'

'Your brother can take care of himself.'

Another pause.

'It's not him I'm worried about. He's made his choice. I worry more about those who have yet to make their choices.'

Jeerala hesitated, her mind torn between trying to work out what her father meant and whether she should take Travels Through Tamriel Volume Eight – Elsweyr by Marcella Desidenius or Amongst the Draugr by Bernadette Bantien with her to the streams. Eventually she decided that books were more important than her parents' nattering, and that since she'd only read the former ten times, in compared to having read the latter about fourteen, she'd take Travels with her, and read it in any spare moments she had.

Not that there would be many. Her father, she knew, would work her hard as he could get away with.

That was all she needed to take, she decided, and hurried back downstairs. Her father must have left while she'd been mulling things over. Her mother plucked her bag from her hands and placed a food parcel in it. 'Here. Your father's heading up to the streams. You'll catch up with him if you run.'

'Thanks, Ma.' Jeerala tried to inject some enthusiasm into her voice – something that usually wasn't hard for her, but on this occasion, her attempt failed miserably.

Her mother's eyes softened. 'Your father doesn't mean to hurt you, Jee. I know he can be a bit…' She gestured.

'Brusque?' Jeerala suggested.

'Yes, brusque. But he loves you.'

'And I shouldn't need to be told that.'

Swims-In-Steams winced visibly.

'You'd better get up to the streams, Jeerala. Unless you want to stay here with me and Shujeema making the cloth – '

Jeerala snatched her pack from her mother's hands. 'No thanks. I'm okay. Have a good day, Ma. Bye,' she blurted out, and raced out of the door.

Outside the house, she ran a few paces before skidding to a halt. Despite her mother's words, she had no intention of running to catch up with her father. She'd follow at her own pace – not least because she wanted to spend as small an amount of time helping with the Histcarp Run as possible. It wasn't that she wanted to make things difficult for her family. She just knew that if she spent too long up there, she'd be smacking her head against trees before long.

She stood for a moment in the clearing that formed the only home she'd ever known, hefting her pack onto her shoulders. The village of Hejal was hardly worthy to be called a village – it consisted of only three houses, all of which were made in the traditional Argonian mud-hut style. The walls were solidified earth, and they looked, to Jeerala, more like animal droppings than houses. At least, they looked nothing like the houses she'd seen in the pictures in her books. Nordic longhouses of thick stone, strong and made to withstand the northland winds. Cyrodiilic towers built to show off the power of the Empire. Entire cities of Bosmer and Khajiit strung among the trees of vast forests, balancing on the branches. So much more than three huts in a clearing in an impenetrable marsh.

The first was her family's home, the one she shared with her parents and Meer-Lai. The second was that of Follows-The-Fall – a longtime friend of her father's, who had been born in Black Marsh but raised in Cyrodiil, and who, for some reason, had decided to return to his homeland. Just one of the many reasons why Jeerala found him hard to understand. Follows-The-Fall's hut was occupied by himself, his wife Lateesh, and their younger two children. The eldest, Catches-Silver, was the owner of the third house.

Lateesh's one and only goal in life, Jeerala sometimes felt, was to marry off her children, and she'd got part of her wish some years ago when Catches-Silver returned from the nearest large settlement – well, to Jeerala, 'large' consisted of more than ten houses, and the village of Fernglade just about met that criteria – with a pretty, pale beige-scaled girl at his side, announcing that this was Shujeema, and she was going to eat with them that evening, and months later they'd announced their engagement. And so fishing had been set aside for a week, while the family worked together to make a new hut in the glade. Jeerala wasn't sure which task she hated more – getting her hands rubbed raw by fishing nets even despite her scales, or having them covered in mud from making and repairing huts.

Jeerala let out a sigh and started trekking into the tangle of trees and ferns and unnameable plants that lay between Hejal and the fishing streams. There was a path, and the undergrowth was recently flattened by her father's passing through, but Jeerala still felt like every frond and vine was intentionally trying to trip her.

The novelty of having a new face amongst them had soon worn off; Shujeema was sweet but shy, and an Argonian of few words, and she always seemed eager to get away from her conversations with Jeerala. And so life went on as normal. Catches-Silver's wedding had left two more children for Lateesh to marry off. And if Meer-Lai and Ireethra went on the way they were, Jeerala had a nasty feeling that it wouldn't be much longer before her wish was granted.

She wouldn't have had any trouble with her brother liking Ireethra if it weren't for two things. One: she knew Ireethra hated her. And two, she knew that it made Lateesh even more convinced that Jeerala was destined to marry the youngest of her children, Stands-On-Pebbles. The thought made Jeerala let out a huff. I'm seventeen, for the Hist's sake…

'Hey, Jee! Wait up!'

Jeerala stopped and glanced back along the path. Speak of the Dremora.

Not that Pebbles was anything like a Dremora. As she watched him struggling through the plants, Jeerala had to admit that he was by far the best person in Hejal, just as out of place here as she was. But Pebbles never complained about it. Pebbles never complained about anything.

'Did you oversleep too?' he panted as he reached her.

'No. I slept to an ordinary, sane time.'

Pebbles laughed. 'I guess today will be more of the usual. Parents telling us to hurry, fish scales and water getting everywhere, and me proving just how much of a disaster I am with a fishing net.'

Jeerala snorted. 'More than me, you mean?'

'You're no way near as bad as I am.' Pebbles sighed with frustration as he tripped again. 'Your father is just a bit more vocal in his disapproval than mine, so it seems worse.'

'Let me take some of that.' Pebbles was hauling what looked like three nets and a number of spears, and Jeerala ran forward to help him carry them.

'Thanks.' Pebbles handed her a few of the spears, struggling for a moment to untangle them from the strands of woven grass that formed the nets. 'It's hard enough getting through this undergrowth without – darn these nets – tripping over this stuff.'

Jeerala grinned. 'Come on, let's shift ourselves, or our dads will advocate us being the ones being put in these nets.'

Pebbles blinked at her.

'What?' Jeerala tipped her head on one side, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

The other Argonian shrugged, smiling. 'You're the only person I've ever met who uses words like advocate.'

Jeerala let out a snort and turned her back on him, using the fishing spears to part the undergrowth before them. 'No offense, Pebbles, but how many people have you met?'

'Well, not many. I mean, your family and mine and a couple of other people. Maybe twenty. But still…'

'Advocate means to be in favour of, to argue for, to speak in support of. Alternatively, as a noun, it means someone who speaks or writes in support of something.'

'See, this is what I mean. I didn't have a clue what advocate meant until just now.'

'It's a perfectly commonplace word.'

Pebbles grinned. 'I'd have said a normal word. You say commonplace. It's those books of yours, right?'

'Unlike apparently everyone else in this village, I want to actually know some things other than how to trip on a net and fall in a stream.'

He let out a snort. 'Good luck with that. I don't think your Pa would approve.'

'Let him disapprove, then,' she said, shrugging. It's all he ever does.

Neither of them was in a hurry, so Jeerala was unsurprised to see that, when they reached the fishing streams, they were the last to arrive. Rajava and Fall were stringing a net across one path of water. Meer-Lai and Ireethra were doing the same for another, while Lateesh and Silver lined up baskets nearby, ready to fill them with the day's catch. Just another Histcarp Run.

The Histcarp Run happened twice a year; once when the fish, in one swarming silver group, migrated from the food-rich but dangerous waters of the inner marshes, to the clearer and more open pools and streams on the outskirts of Black Marsh, where they would lay their eggs. Once the breeding season was over, they would make an equally long journey in the other directions. No sane fisherman would snare any Histcarp as they made their way to the breeding grounds, for fear that there would be none to catch next year, with no eggs laid. But on the way back, they were fair game.

So once a year, Jeerala was dragged out of bed early and pulled down to the fishing streams. This was a patch of the marsh where one river separated out into several fast-flowing, knee-high brooks. Blocking the streams meant that they had their pick of the fish, but getting nets across all but a few of them (Rajava ordered that a couple always be left, so that if something went wrong with the year's clutch of eggs, there would still be plenty of carp) was time-consuming, tedious and tricky. The speed at which the water flowed meant that often the nets would be washed away in the current, which meant either you sat by them all day making sure they weren't being knocked out of place, or you lost a bunch of fish and had to replace the net. Jeerala was usually on net-watching duty, which was most likely a good thing, because the alternative was to be doing the spearing or the net-hauling, and neither of those things was a good idea.

Net-hauling was simple – you just had to wait until the nets were full enough, then pull them in, which Jeerala might have been good at if she didn't seem to have an uncanny talent for dropping the nets. Spearing was harder still. Among the histcarp, whose meat sold for a tidy profit, there would always be fish they didn't want to see. Slaughterfish, for example, could bite through a net in seconds, and wreak havoc among a catch with their razor teeth. Which meant someone had to stand beside the streams and use the spears to stop the unwanted fish as they approached - a task that had more than once led to Jeerala finding herself upside down in the stream with a slaughterfish chewing on her tail.

'You're late,' Rajava remarked, as Jeerala and Pebbles dropped the fishing gear at his feet.

'Sorry, Rajava.' Pebbles gave a relaxed shrug. 'We had a lot to carry, that's all.'

'I daresay.' Rajava stooped and gathered up the nets in his arms. 'Right, the Run's not properly started yet, so we've got a little time. Two on each stream, as normal. We'll leave Numbers Five and Three unblocked this year.'

The group divided up quickly. Jeerala rolled her eyes as she saw her brother and Ireethra set off towards the farthest stream together. Knowing that if she didn't move fast, her father would pair up with her to make sure she couldn't do anything stupid, she grabbed Pebbles's arm. 'Come on. Let's grab a stream before we have to go with our dads.'

He blinked. 'Um, wouldn't it be better for us to go with some of the more experienced…' He trailed off, then nodded. 'You're right, let's go.'

They both knew what would happen if they fell under the command of their parents or elder siblings; every move they made would be declared wrong, and then deft, skilled hands would show them the correct way of doing it, while they sat there knowing they would never be able to do such a thing. It was better for the two disasters to be together, with no one to criticise.

They were the last to get their net strung up. It took both of them, eventually, jumping into the water and wading across to get it done. Jeerala had to admit this wasn't too unpleasant; if she was a true Argonian in one way, it was that she loved the water. Still having soaked breeches was a bit annoying.

With the stream blocked, they were set to begin, and that meant one of them had to do the net-watching, the other the spearing. 'We'd best swap after an hour or so,' Pebbles suggested. 'That way we can't get too bored.'

The truth was that both jobs were boring. Either you sat and gazed at a net, or you stood and gazed at fish. You got bored whichever one you did. But with spearing there was at least a bit of action – generally when you missed the slaughterfish and had to dive in to grab it with your bare hands as it snapped at the terrified Histcarp.

After one hour of lying on her stomach, gazing at the knots and trying not to fall asleep, occasionally rising to help Pebbles draw in a filled net, Jeerala pulled herself to her feet and gestured for him to pass over the spear. Slinging the weapon over her shoulder, she walked a little way upstream, knowing that when she inevitably missed, she'd need to leave herself plenty of space to run after the slaughterfish and try again before they could reach the nets. Positioning herself on a rock that jutted a little way out into the water, she pushed the spearhead down into the stream, so that the point sank into the mud, balanced her chin on the butt of the spear, and waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Within five minutes the scene was beginning to blur in front of her eyes, so she shook herself and began what she called her boredom exercises – lists of interesting facts that she would recite to stop herself falling asleep. 'Khajiit name prefixes and suffixes,' she whispered. 'Exclusively male: dar, dro, jo. Exclusively female: daro, la, dra, ko. Gender neutral: S, Ma or M, Qa, Ra, Do, Ja or Ji or J… or are the J-prefixes male? Damn it.' She'd have to look it up when she got home. 'Right, next exercise – major cities of Hammerfell. Sentinel, Taneth, Dragonstar, Elinhir, Gilane, Hegathe, Rihad, Skaven. And Stros M'kai, kind of.' She huffed and stole another look at the river, almost hoping to see some kind of water snake that she could spear, but there was nothing. 'Fine, the Bosmer pantheon of Gods: Auri-El, Y'ffre, Arkay, Z'en-'

'Jee!'

Jeerela jolted her head upright, spinning around to face Pebbles, from whom the shout had issued. He was standing in the stream, the water up to his midriff, wrestling with something beneath the surface.

'You let it swim right past you!' he gasped.

'Damn it!' Jeerala tugged at the spear, realising too late that it had sunk so far into the stream bed that considerably more force was going to be needed to get it out than had been necessary to get it in. She threw all her weight upwards, and was rewarded with the weapon pinging up out of the water with a sharp sucking sound. Her moment of triumph was quickly quashed when her own momentum carried her backwards, sending her sprawling.

Cursing under her breath, Jeerala pelted downstream to reach him. His hands were clasped around the midsection of a slaughterfish as long as his arms, and his teeth were gritted as it writhed in his grip, its snapping teeth slashing holes in his tunics.

'Stay still!' Jeerala shouted, pulling back the spear. 'I'll get it.'

'You'll hit me!'

'Then throw it out onto the bank!'

'I tried that once already, it just wriggled back in!'

'Throw it further!'

'I can't, it won't stop squirming –'

'Then throw it down here and I'll stab it.'

'You'll miss.'

Jeerala opened her mouth to protest, then realised he was right. 'It had to happen,' she moaned softly, and jumped into the stream.

Using her tail as a counterbalance against the push of the water, she strode a few paces towards the still-struggling Pebbles, wishing she'd brought a knife with her. That might be a less unwieldy weapon than the one she now had to somehow use to spear the slaughterfish without stabbing Pebbles and without poking it out of his grasp.

'OK,' she said, breathing in deeply. 'Hold on.'

'I am holding on!'

Jeerala drew back the spear and angled up her blow, aiming for the area just past the slaughterfish's gills. At the same moment, she felt a fierce, sharp pain shoot up her leg. She let out a yelp and whipped her head down to see a second slaughterfish digging its teeth into her ankle, a few of its needlelike teeth punching through the gaps between her scales. Instinctively she stabbed down at it. The blow glanced off its side, but it was enough to make it release its grip. And as it let go, Pebbles finally lost his hold of the first slaughterfish. With a blur of grey, it dropped back into the water.

Pebbles swore violently, and Jeerala slapped her free hand to her forehead. They always managed to mess up somehow. She always messed up.

She caught Pebbles looking out towards the other streams, where their families were flawlessly, competently working, and shook his head at him. 'Don't call them yet!' she hissed. They still had a chance to stop the slaughterfish before they reached the nets – the river grew shallower and more choked by weeds, and even a sleek, sharp-toothed slaughterfish would have to slow down to get through. She hauled herself out onto the bank and raced forwards, her eyes narrowing. This time, just for once, she was going to sort things out for herself.

The first slaughterfish was already at the nets, and trails of red were beginning to work up through the water where its teeth were already at work on the panicking histcarp. Jeerala dashed to the edge of the bank and stabbed down with the spear. She missed, her fingers slipped on the sodden wood, and it fell from her grasp, instantly floating out into the middle of the stream.

That was that, then. They'd have to call their parents over, and they would have to kill the slaughterfish – the other one was arriving now – and the creatures would have half this catch ripped to shreds by the time he got there. Her father would split her and Pebbles up so there could be no more mistakes, and rant about how she never put her mind into this work and her blunders lost them money. And yet again she'd be reminded that she didn't belong here.

'You've still got one weapon left, Jee.'

Jeerala's head snapped up, her eyes widening. She knew the voice, though she'd not heard it in almost a year.

'Uncle Ushara?'

And there he was, calmly leaning against a tree on the other side of the stream, watching her with a look of relaxed amusement. 'Go on, Jeerala. You know what to do.'

He was right. She did.

She looked down at her hands, swallowed hard, curled her fingers inwards, and reached, reached with her mind. She reached for that spark within herself that Ushara had taught her how to wake. She reached until she felt that beautiful, beautiful power that her family told her not to use running through her veins, and a chill spread over her hands as her fingers closed around two swirling balls of frost.

Clutching the spells close to her chest, she looked out over the water. One of the slaughterfish was near to the bank, dangerously close to the knots that held the net. Without hesitation, Jeerala pointed her arm in its direction and released the spell. A thin spear of ice cut through air, cut through water, and cut through the slaughterfish.

Instantly she spun around, seeking out the other. She watched the way the histcarp fled, following their retreat back to its source, and found it. It was moving fast, chasing down a whole cluster of fish. Jeerala aimed just ahead of it and let go of the power.

She barely even needed to aim. The slaughterfish's charge went wild and stopped, and the weight of the ice spike slowly dragged it down under the water. The bluish-white tip of the icicle showed for a moment above the surface before being swallowed up by the murk.

'There you are.' Ushara stepped away from the tree, took a short run up, and hurdled the stream in a single bound. 'Nothing to it.'

Jeerala's face broke into a grin, and she threw her arms around him. 'It's so good to see you!'

He chuckled. 'And you, Jeejee. And you.'

She let no one call her by that name. Not even her mother, nowadays. But for the one person who never judged her, never made her feel like she didn't fit it, never told her she had to live out her days in this village… well, exceptions could be made.

'What's going on here?'

Jeerala let her uncle go and turned to see the rest of the families approaching – her father in their lead, surprise flickering in his eyes. 'Ushara. I didn't really think you'd come.'

'Good to see you too, big brother.' Ushara marched forwards and hugged Rajava tightly; Jeerala noticed that her father hesitated before returning the gesture. 'A guy's got to come home for special occasions, right?'

'Real special,' Pebbles muttered, moving to stand beside her with rushes trailing from his horns, and Jeerala snorted. It was common knowledge that Ushara only returned to Hejal for the Histcarp run because Rajava had, went he'd first left the village, instructed him to return for it every year to lend a hand, not because he found any kind of excitement in it.

Rajava stepped back, looking at his brother closely, and it struck Jeerala, as it always did when she saw them together, how similar they looked and how different they really were. They had the same sturdy build, the same brown scales, the same yellow eyes. Only their horn shapes and Ushara's lack of head-feathers were different – on the outside. Her father – firm, asking nothing from life, living every day as it came, never showing any real emotion, dressed in his rough working tunic – was as different to his adventurous, warm-hearted, open, mage robe-clad younger brother as Skyrim was to Elsweyr.

'You can help the children,' Rajava said, nodding in the direction of Jeerala and Pebbles. 'They seem to be having trouble.'

'None at all, from what I could see. Your daughter just bullseyed two slaughterfish. Right through the gills.'

'She also somehow managed to let those slaughterfish get past her. Last time I looked, she was on spearing duty.'

'Then let's not bother with the spear, and she can use the weapon she's good at.'

Rajava let out a terse sigh from between his teeth. 'Ushara. We've been through this before. I never wanted you to teach magic to Jeerala in the first place. It's not good for her.'

'I'm right here,' Jeerala muttered.

'Try telling him that,' Pebbles sighed.

'And why should that be so?'

'Because if you teach the girl magic, she'll get ideas into her head, same as you did. She already spends too much time with those books of hers. She's always using those weird magic orbs to go wandering out at night looking for strange plants –'

'The correct term is candlelight spells, Rajava.'

'-and she almost walked right into a wamasu lair once. If you didn't teach her those spells, she'd stay at home where it's safe.'

'Where she's bored,' Ushara said quietly. 'Admit it, Java, your daughter's the same as I am. She doesn't want to stay here.'

Rajava whacked his tail down on the ground. 'I don't need you to tell me what my own child wants in life!'

'Have you tried asking her?'

Jeerala swallowed as her father turned his head towards her. His eyes drilled into her for a second. Then he turned away, scooping up the fishing spear he'd dropped as he'd reached them.

'She's too young to know what she really wants,' he muttered. 'Let's get back to work.'

He strode back towards his stream, and after a moment's pause, Meer-Lai, Ireethra, Lateesh, Fall and Silver did the same, sending smiles and nods in Ushara's direction, but nothing more. Jeerala stood beside her uncle and her friend, her jaw clenched so tight that it was painful.

'Don't worry about him, Jee. Not right now, anyway.' Ushara placed a hand on her shoulder. 'Come on. Let's get on with the boring work. I'll teach you something new when we're done.'

'What school of magic?'

'All of them. I've brought more spell tomes with me than you've caught fish, I bet you.' He smiled at her. 'You keep using those ice spikes on any fish we don't want – you won't miss.'

'While we're working, will you tell me about where you've been?'

'Just about everywhere, Jee.' Her uncle gave a quiet laugh. 'After I left you last time, I decided to head for Morrowind – they're not fond of Argonians there, but it's always nice to give your people a better name, right? So I headed out into the ashlands, and three days in, I hear this voice above me, and without any more warning some random Bosmer mage falls from the sky and ploughs into the ground in front of me. Squash. I had a peek through his stuff, and it turns out he'd got some random spell scrolls that would make him fly, but he'd forgotten to bring any that would make him land…'

The fish darted on through the streams as Jeerala threw back her head and laughed for what felt like the first time since she'd last seen her uncle. The last time since she'd been able to speak to the only person on Nirn who really knew who she was.

The only person who'd ever bothered to ask.

I had fun trying to imagine what life might be like in a tiny Black Marsh community. Most likely isolated. Not the kind of place to be if you're an adventurous spirit like Jeerala. The village of Hejal, the idea of the Histcarp Run, and all these characters were invented by me (histcarp appear in Skyrim, so I just added a little more to the lore about them, since there's not much information on them.)

I'm aware this chapter isn't particularly action-packed. That's sort of the point - this is the humdrum existence Jeerala is stuck in and wants to escape. And next chapter, things will be kicking off...

Thanks for reading!