The first things she remembered were the sun and the stench. The sun's rays burning into the exposed patches of her skin day after day, branding her as a desert dweller, and the unmistakable smell of refuse, blood, and rotting flesh, thrown and flushed outside the city gates by its inhabitants. "Out of sight, out of mind", as some of them would say.
Cleanliness was a matter of pride for most Hallin's Stand citizens. A pristine Redguard city in the heart of the otherwise inhospitable southern Bangkorai wastes. From the shiny cupolas of the homes and wayshrines, polished daily until their surfaces reflected the sunlight by servants and workers desperate for a coin or two, to the fountains and public gardens whose irrigation system had cost a fortune to the magistrate and the city council, every nook and corner of the city was an ode to the triumph of Man over Nature. "Look", the sturdy archways and spotless streets screamed, "the desert cannot reach us here". "Look on our works you mighty, and despair", Hallin's Stand citizens echoed.
She knew better though. Hallin's Stand was merely a façade for things that lurked in the basement. Oh, it was clean, and neat, and pretty alright. And the citizens did a great job keeping it that way, dumping trash and the occasional body or so into the lake outside the walls where it was carried away by the current. But when the East wind blew, that sickly-sweet smell of decomposing tissues could be picked up even in the artisan district.
It was faint, and nowhere near what she had to endure living under the bridge, but it was still there; a constant reminder that, while the Ojwambu people looked up to their gleaming roofs and skies for shelter and safety, and refused to go deep into the bowels to confront the monsters lurking beneath, the basement was still there, and one day, it would come for them.
There was something about the desert. About the empty wastes, the lone and level sands stretching beyond what waking eyes could see. Something old, primal, and frightening. Sure, the inhabitants of Hallin's Stand felt safe and prideful beyond measure in their fortified walls and moats, but at the end of the day, when they were back in their homes, when all masks and pretences were left at the door and they were alone with their thoughts by the hearth, one would only need to listen for a moment, and he would hear the desert's faint beckoning.
And so it was in that climate of cleanliness, ignorance, and bliss that she grew up, one nameless street urchin among many, spending her days scavenging and looking for odd jobs here and there, and her nights under the main bridge to the city gates, trying her best to ignore the stench and dreaming of greatness. It was a bubble, and on her worst days when she watched all the travellers and merchants rushing across the bridge towards the meagre shade offered by the city gates, she felt like the bubble had yet to burst.
She had no name. Names were for people that mattered, and from a very young age, she knew that she didn't. She was expendable, one of many orphans cast out and relegated to the fringes of society. The world was very beautiful but also very cruel to unwanted kids, and so she did her best to survive under the shadow of the distant sun.
She had it better than others though. Around the age of six, she lucked out in becoming an occasional errand girl for one of the magisters of the local Mages Guild. The magister in question was an altogether decent woman, she supposed. Her age was difficult to tell what with her being an elf, and to be honest, it hardly mattered in the grand scheme of things. The Magister held herself with an ethereal grace of sorts, and dismissed most people as being inconsequential while her mind latched onto greater things.
As many scholars before her, one day the Magister realised that in order to broaden the scope of her knowledge and finally unveil the mysteries of Aetherius, she would have to pursue her research in a less than clean manner. A manner certainly unbecoming of a citizen of Hallin's Stand, let alone a respected magister. Though, truth be told, mages earned more distrust than respect around these parts. The Way of the Sword was strong with these Ansei descendants, and stories of necromancers from Hammerfell were still present in the collective imagination.
At any rate, while the Magister had glorified errand slaves commonly called apprentices at her disposal in the Mages Guild, she didn't trust them enough to bring her the materials she needed for her dirty little work. And so she found a street brat to carry the task for her, and the girl just happened to be at the right place at the right time. This began their strained and tenuous partnership.
While the girl knew that the Magister didn't care for her beyond the safe delivery of the reagents and other materials, she stuck around the Guild quarters a lot in hopes of escaping the desert heat and learning a few useful things in the process. The Magister on the other hand disliked having a constant reminder of her less than savoury activities around, and yet every time, she sighed and said nothing, letting the girl browse through stacks of books trying to decipher them, and watch students practice with elemental magic.
Sometimes, the girl got chased from the premises. Sometimes, another master or scholar in passing felt charitable enough to help her with reading and understanding tomes. Whatever the case, the Elven magister never intervened. She never bothered asking for the girl's living conditions, for her family, or anything else. And at the end of the day, when the packages were delivered and they stood watching each other from across a scholar's desk, so many things were left unsaid.
As time passed and the Serpent God Satakal came that much closer to devouring the world, at least according to his few local worshippers that kept resisting the new Pantheon, the Magister gradually warmed up to the girl. She fed her crumbs of knowledge as well as the occasional meal or so, the portion of an absent-minded apprentice too busy finishing his essay to bother with food. And the girl was grateful. Yes, these were merely an afterthought from an indifferent master, but she would take whatever she could get. "A scavenger's mindset," the Magister once called it.
There was never any talk of an admission to the Guild. The girl had magical potential and a keen mind, well as far as an orphan living on and off the streets could get, and her patchwork education certainly fulfilled the minimum literacy requirement, but that's all it was, unrealised and untapped potential waiting to be expanded upon by someone who cared. And, for all their love of knowledge, nobody in the Mages Guild did.
All things considered, Hallin's Stand wasn't such a big city. Sure, it painted an impressive image to an outsider, but still paled in comparison to Wayrest or even Evermore. It was a trading hub whose main source of gold and riches were travellers and merchants passing through from the Alik'r Desert to Craglorn and vice versa. As far as the actual residents went, the population wasn't that great, and the local Mages' Guild stipends were enough to afford its magisters' residencies and a dozen or so apprentices, but not enough to give an orphan with no possessions of her own a chance.
Oh, the admission to the Mages' Guild was based on talent and not wealth, or so the flyers promised. And the apprenticeships were free, save for a moderate admission fee (for paperwork, you understand). The Guild gave you working clothes and lunchtime meals, and some larger ones even offered room and board for adepts unable to make the journey every day. But Hallin's Stand Guild was no large one, and while apprentices were expected to show up for lectures and practical courses, they were left to their own devices when it came to lodgings, books, parchment and ink, and other expenses. As such, while the girl was usually allowed to hang around provided she proved herself quiet and useful, she was too much of a risk to bother investing in. Just a street kid with nothing of substance to her name safe for potential, and nobody to vouch for her. And you know how it goes with the people living on the streets; here one moment, gone the next. Ultimately, her life had no meaning, but death had a price, if all the body parts that could be harvested for reagents were any indication.
"You'd be better off in Evermore," the Magister once dropped off-handedly, after receiving a new batch of vials and inspecting their content. The girl said nothing and smiled.
Sometimes, she thought about it. What would life be like elsewhere, in Sentinel, in Evermore, in Cyrodiil even? Would she be accepted into the Mages Guild? Find work as a shop assistant? Would she even reach these places or get lost on the road? Would the Magister find a replacement? Would anyone even miss her if she left?
As it was however, the journey seemed long, risky, and full of unknowns. So maybe she could be admitted into the Evermore Mages Guild, and maybe she could find work at a merchant stall in Sentinel, but that's all it was, just hypothetical daydreams. Hallin's Stand was not kind. And the desert was not forgiving. But at least it was familiar, and so she kept on living in a hammock under the bridge, and harvesting plants, insects, and body parts from bloated corpses that could be found washed up on the shore near the Sacred Springs.