The wind howled violently over the stark white landscape, whistling through the large mounds of snow and spraying a fine white mist over the horizon. Despite this, the two travellers trudged on ahead, heads and backs bent to battle the unforgiving gales. The smaller, obviously a child, reached out to grab a firm hold of the woman's trembling hand.
"Mother." She whimpered. Her plea however was lost in the wind, and the woman trudged onwards, the child stumbling pitifully behind. Their intertwined fingers kept the wind from tearing them apart. No other creature was in sight, most had hidden away to wait out the storm.
When the winds finally calmed, a whole night had passed. Snow caked their bodies, but the child did not betray even a shiver. She peeked shyly out from under her hood. Her mother stood tall and proud, but she could see the quivering in her shoulders. The child desperately rummaged through her pockets and pulled out a handful of snowberries.
"Put that away." The woman scowled, causing the child to flinch.
She sheepishly tucked them back into her pockets.
"We'll be there soon." She muttered, exhaustion evident in her voice. "Don't get distracted and keep walking. Eyes down, keep that face hidden, okay?"
"Yes mother."
Winterhold was a derelict settlement – only a husk of what it once was.
Leaning houses that looked sickly, trembling under the wind as if to collapse any moment, spotted the landscape. However, the glass of the frosted windows glowed with a warmth that filled the child's heart with longing. Even so, she followed her mother as she trudged past the shack without sparing it a second glance. Towering over the sad settlement was a grandeur that could not be compared to – surely, in Skyrim there was nothing like it. It stood above the town like the sky towered above the earth, pale and omniscient, ancient – as old as the land itself, almost.
"What is that, Mother?"
"The College, Aysel." She replied curtly. "Head down."
It was hard to obey that order though. The sight beckoned her eyes upwards, further and further, until her head was thrown back and Aysel was staring in awe. Her mother tsked and pushed her head roughly back down. "Head down."
She nodded grimly.
"Yes mother."
Mother's friend had quite the shock when he saw her.
"Shani, it's been years, I thought you dead!" Enthir exclaimed.
"Quiet down, you fool." She hissed, shooting a glance over her shoulder at the child clinging to her skirts. Aysel fidgeted, sneaking shy glances around her. The insides of the College were as beautiful as she thought they'd be. They stood in the hall - the ceilings impossibly high and filled with a light more ethereal than even the sun. Quiet chatter and murmurs echoed as gaggles of students walked by, the sound subsiding as they piled up the staircase. Aysel stared after them curiously, brimming with questions, but her mother gave her a severe look that quickly banished any ideas of what mother called "running her mouth".
"ah... and Forald?"
"...he's..." Shani paused, conflicted. "Dead."
"...I see."
The man that they had come to see was elven, just like the woman that had stopped them at the bridge. He looked down at Aysel and smiled half-heartedly, a look of question in his eyes. "Is she... ?"
"Don't be silly." She quipped shooting the altmer a glare.
"Then who is the young one?"
"I'll explain." She sighed. "But only in private."
"Very well." He said. "Follow me, my quarters are this way."
The mer led them to a room at the end of a couple of twisting hallways. When they got there, he shut the door and mentioned for the two to take a seat. Shani sighed, gladly claiming the chair closest to the roaring fire in the middle of the room. "So." Enthir began, raising and eyebrow as he poured a sweet smelling wine into a polished goblet. "The details."
Shani nodded. "Aysella, remove your hood for me."
The child perked up, surprised. Reluctantly Aysel put down the apple she had been carefully inspecting. "Yes mother." She tugged the hood off, revealing a pale, gaunt face. Enthir said nothing, his eyes fixed firmly on the child. The shape of her eyes, her nose, the transparency of her skin. Aysella peeked at him sheepishly, causing him to instinctively recoil when their eyes met.
She's hideous. He nearly said it but didn't, instead giving the child a forced smile, before turning to Shani with an alarmed face.
"She's falmer, isn't she? But, not...I.. don't believe I am wrong, but, she's not yours, is she...? "
"She isn't." Shani affirmed. "But your suspicions are correct. Her mother was a dunmer. The Falmer had captured and enslaved her for some time before they.. captured me..." She left the rest unspoken, and Enthir could only give her a sympathetic look, at a loss for words.
"Yes, she doesn't appear to be completely..." Enthir stopped before the wrong word left his lips. "...like the falmer we know. She has retained her vision."
"She was born so."
"It's a miracle you escaped from them." He sighed. "And the child? How did she end up with you?"
"The Falmer tend to reject children like her."
Aysella fidgeted in place. She detested how they talked about her like she wasn't standing just there... but the child was used to being treated so. The others back home always ignored me too. Aysella decided to direct her attention elsewhere as well. She walked around the room, staring at things with wide eyes. It's so different, she thought, everything here is so... she struggled to find a word, but words failed her. Above ground was truly another world.
Enthir glanced curiously at the child. " Does she speak Falmeri?"
"Yes, she does."
"Fascinating..."
"I thought you'd say that." Shani smiled wryly, glancing quickly in the direction of Aysella as if to check if she was listening. Satisfied that the child was distracted, she leaned in and whispered. "Didn't you always want to interview a live specimen?"
Enthir stared at her, momentarily taken aback. "Well...yes I-I-" He stumbled on his words. "But the girl... Shani, she calls you mother."
"An endearment from an abandoned creature means nothing." Her eyes were cold, unforgiving. "Do you want to take her or not?"
"Well she's definitely an interesting case." He muttered. "But Shani, this is... unlike you."
She pressed her lips into a thin, hard line. "The years have been rough, Enthir."
"It seems so."
"I- with Forald's child I had -" She breathed. "I was with child when they- attacked. When I was captured and I-"
Her eyes wandered up and fixated on the child's back. Something very near hate burned within them. "I lost Forald. I lost the child. I lost years of my life." She was gripping her interlocked fingers so tightly her knuckles were white. "I just want to start anew."
"Shani -"
"Gold and supplies. And I want to be put in touch with the right people... I need to disappear." She met the altmer's eyes evenly. She was deadly serious. "Do that for me and you can have her."
He stared at her lengthily. "And if I don't?"
"Then." She sighed. "I take her and go elsewhere. I doubt I'd find anyone else who'd want her, but... chances are, we'll both die out there, both me and the potential specimen... and that's how it is."
"Mother."Aysella suddenly turned around, by the looks of her blissful expression, she hadn't a clue to what they had been discussing. "What is this?" She held a golden trinket in her hands, turning it so the light from the fire would bounce off it at different angles. Sighing, Enthir stood and walked over to the child. He took the trinket from her, regarding her with an analytical stare. Finally he looked down at the trinket. It was a gold ring.
"This is a ring, made out of gold."
Aysella tilted her head. "Go-ld." She murmured, as if trying the word out. "It's very shiny."
"Gold tends to be." Enthir muttered wryly. Really, he hadn't the patience for children. He glanced back at Shani. Still, it was a unique opportunity. I'm sure if I explained this to the Arch-mage, he would gladly take the child in, if not as a specimen, then as a student, he mused, or both. Of course, he wouldn't, couldn't, tell him the exact details of how he met this child... it would be likely that he would need to embellish on that, actually. He sighed.
Enthir handed the gold ring to Shani.
"Gold isn't just shiney, it's valuable." He said, directing his words at Aysel. "Remember that."
Shani accepted it, grasping it in her hands.
"Thank you, Enthir."
When Aysella woke in the morning to find her mother had left without her, she felt nothing but a dull ache.
"You knew." Enthir said when he saw her apathetic face.
"I have good hearing. Like other Falmeri." She told him simply over breakfast.
It had been arranged. The Arch-Mage would let her stay, but not with the other students. She was too young and... too different. So in the end Aysella ended up getting a whole abandoned wing of the College to herself. "The place really keeps itself clean." The Breton lady, Mirabelle, explained. Magic, of some sort, kept it that way. However, whatever spell kept it spotless did not hinder the smell of disuse and age - it had seeped into the stone and cloth, even though her bedsheets had been rewashed and dried for Aysella's use.
Strangely, the smell reminded Aysella of home.
The reflecting stone - what did mother call it? She remembered. It was called a mirror. She tilted her head and the thing in the "mirror" did the same. This was her own self, her own face. She reached up to prod the pale, soft skin. She looked like the others from home, but she hadn't looked enough like them to earn their acceptance, either. She poked her nose. Many of the others didn't really have one. Just two holes. The other children had always been repulsed by the thing that had jutted out of her face.
But I don't look like "them" either. The stoney gray eyes, the almost translucent skin, the unnaturally lanky body. She turned to stare out the window. She could not see a thing except for pure white. But all of those things are not to blame for mother leaving...At that time, the grownups had thought she couldn't hear them, but her kind always have had the best hearing. But even though she had known, she couldn't bring herself to ask mother to stay, probably because she knew... that mother would say no.
"Because... I killed her baby." She whispered. "I killed mother's baby, and mother's husband. And everyone else."
She fled and crawled under the bed, down there where it was cramped and hard to breathe and safe. She let the tears stream down her face.
Despite knowing all of this, she still wished her mother could have stayed.
Hewwo there~
This is me, the "author" I guess. I'm not expecting much out of this, just a way to kill time really. I suspect I tried to cram too much of Shani's side story into this chapter... but I can't bear to change it. I don't really know where this is going... it just goes wherever it wants to go, I guess. Characters will be OOC at times, because it's only me.
However, I wouldn't mind if you could give me some constructive criticism on my writing - it's always welcome. Feel free to drop a review, hate comments aren't really wanted but do what you want. I do not own anything in The Elder Scrolls Universe and I do not claim to, I'm not that creative anyway! I only own my own characters, and this story, which are rubbish, so yeah, heh. Even so I would like to continue this to completion, if I can.
Thank you for reading this "prologue" of sorts and have a loooovely day~~ :D