"Is it gone?"

Rayya crawled out from hiding and scanned the sky. There was too much cloud cover to be sure. A shadow passed over the sun and she scooted back under the rock, sweat breaking out on her brow.

"I don't know."

"Ughhhhhhhh…" Carolinne moaned, raking her hands down her face. "I can't take much more of this."

"I know." Rayya sighed, falling in the mud beside her. "But Whiterun's close. If we can just make it"-

"Do you think zig-zags would confuse it?" Carolinne butted in, sitting up straight suddenly, her eyes alight with an idea.

"What?"

"I don't know! Some animals get confused by zig-zags! I read it in a book somewhere."

Rayya's forehead wrinkled as she thought about it.

"It's a bit more than an animal. It called you a milk-drinker."

"Aaaand...dragons are picking up Nord witticisms now." she groaned, slumping back down and gritting her teeth. "That's...so...very...comforting."

"And it's got an aerial view." Rayya went on, tapping her breastplate as she finished the thought. "A zig-zagging deer might have a chance of getting away from a land-based predator confused by tall grasses, but once you take away the confounding factor of a horizontal approach..."

"All right, all right...it was a dumb idea."

She slumped in the mud, defeated. A bug crawled over her ankle and she shook it off disgustedly, her foot twitching like a dog that had stepped in something foul.

"We could make a run for it." Rayya said helpfully, a hopeful smile curving her lips as her hand dropped to her side. "No matter how fast it is, it can only chase one of us. If I were to run out first and make a bigger loop while you make a beeline for the gate..."

"Rayya!" she gasped. "No! I can't have you sacrificing yourself for me!"

"Hey." she answered, reaching over and squeezing her hand reassuringly. "I wouldn't be without protection. Do you still have that potion of fire resistance?"

Carolinne bit her lip and reached into her bag. Rayya heard the clinking of many little bottles and after a bit of rummaging, she withdrew the old black one banded with scarlet.

"Thank you, Carolinne." she said, taking it from her and wiping the dust from it that had not come off in the confines of Carolinne's bag.

There was a pit of fear in her stomach that came with the idea of drinking things found in a tomb, but she made certain that none of it showed on her face.

"And you..." she went on. "Cast Stoneflesh before you run out. I've seen you practicing. You can hold it for long enough."

"Okay…" she breathed, sitting up, her face pale even under the darkness of the rock. "I'll…meet you at Whiterun Gate, then?"

Rayya squeezed her hand one last time.

"Of course."

The cork crumbled between her teeth as she attempted to free it. She took out her dagger and cut out the rest. Most of it fell inside the bottle and swirled, trapped in the brackish liquid inside. And then, without a moment's hesitation, before she could lose her nerve, she downed the potion, cork bits and all.

A rush of warmth oozed through her and she staggered to her feet, giving one last cursory glance at the sky before bolting for her life. There was a flash of light behind her and she caught Carolinne from the corner of her eye, frantically making for the road ahead.

Remembering her training, she fell into the rhythm of running, the even beat of her feet on the dirt. Her breathing calmed and her heart steadied. She could run for miles like this and sustain the pace for an hour.

Thankfully, she didn't need to. Whiterun was coming up fast. She tore past the stables, across the bridge and skidded to a halt against the crumbling wall still used by the Whiterun Guard for defense. Carolinne came shambling in shortly after, gasping for air and clutching her side, sweat stains forming dark blotches on the beaten fabric of her gown. She leaned against the wall, panting and gasping. Her eyes widened in horror as she looked up.

Just in time, Rayya followed her gaze upwards to see a pair of leathery wings slipping back into the clouds.

"Hoooo…" she breathed, wiping the sweat from her forehead. The potion was making her uncomfortably warm. "Shall we…ah…head inside then?"

Carolinne nodded stiffly. She was deathly white and her hair was plastered to her face with a cold sweat.

Wearily, Carolinne leaning on her staff and Rayya hunching under the weight of her pack, they trudged up the path to the gate. The man standing guard gave them a quick once-over, moved to block the door and curtly snapped "No vagrants after noon. Move along now."

A hot flush of shame rushed to Rayya's cheeks. For a moment, she took in how tattered and torn her cloak was, how ragged and dirty her clothes, how haggard her face and wretched her demeanor. Why did she ever think that the world could see her as someone important?

"Now, see here, sir." Carolinne growled, stepping forward and throwing off her exhaustion like an old garment, suddenly seeming twice as tall she was and half as filthy. "I am Thane to Dengeir of Stuhn and Lady Pouvoir of Wayrest and you will give I and my escort entrance. Is that clear?"

Her eyes were grey and icy, her face as though it were carved from stone, though the Stoneflesh was long worn off. She wore her rags as though they were the garments of an emperor.

A shiver of fear and elation hummed through Rayya's soul.

His knees knocking together, the guard stumbled aside and as though the hordes of Oblivion were on him, opened the door.

*.*.*

They rested beneath the twisted branches of the Gildergreen and watched the throngs of people going about their business. Tottering old women with baskets of groceries on their hips came from the market and scurried past. Children wove through the crowd, tripping up anyone who dared stand in their way, occasionally screaming with obnoxious laughter at a joke only they could get. A guard was giving what appeared to be a very stern lecture to a well-dressed young man who was doing his best to hide what looked to be a valuable brooch behind his back. And above it all, a wild-eyed priest of Talos shouted over the crowd, gesturing madly to the crowds that passed him by as though he were no more than a passing breeze.

"So, what've you got?" Rayya asked with a sigh.

Carolinne winced as she dumped out the contents of her purse on her lap.

Two lockpicks, a button, a pebble with a rusty streak of iron through it and one single septim, the last of the money that Jarl Dengeir had gifted them with on the start of their journey. Rayya's purse was not much better off.

"Hmm." Rayya grunted, leaning back against the bench, the beginnings of an idea coming together in her mind.

Carolinne packed her things away glumly, but stopped short when she came to the pebble. Looking about surreptitiously, she cupped her hands around it to conceal the small green flash of light.

Rayya's head snapped in her direction disapprovingly.

"Carolinne…"

Smiling with a sweetness that almost changed her mind, she opened her palm to reveal the pebble, just as it was…but for the gleaming yellow streak of gold in place of the iron.
Rayya groaned, rubbing her temple with two stiff fingers.

"You know that gold is counterfeit. The second you get that to a goldsmith and it burns away…"

"Yeah…" Carolinne said, her face falling as she tossed the stone into her purse and drew the string. "I know."

Rayya sat up and looked down at the space beside her.

"I have a different idea."

"Oh?"

Carolinne craned her neck, a look of curious puzzlement on her face.

Rayya reached down and retrieved an old wooden bucket that someone had abandoned at the foot of the Gildergreen. She held it up enticingly, a mischievous smile forming on her lips.

"You studied music in High Rock, right? How good are you at playing percussion?"

*.*.*

Rayya felt sick to her stomach. She was dressed in her arming garment alone. Her feet were bare on the cold cobblestones. The ribbons that held her pauldrons in place fluttered in the wind and the ones that held her greaves did likewise. It was a poor costume. She'd seen beggars in Riften with more flair. Next to the brilliant performers of her childhood, she was no one.

She was trying not to think of the last time she had danced for scraps. It was different this time. She was not a child any longer.

Carolinne had started to play. She beat the makeshift drum with two hefty twigs, stolen from some merchant's firewood pile. It was at first a slow, simple beat, little more than the thumping of a bucket an old woman might employ to call her family in for dinner. Rayya tapped her foot to the sound, trying to feel the energy of it and in the process, work her own up. She closed her eyes and imagined the drums on the festival days of her childhood - the way they thumped through her being, the musicians laying on complexity after complexity, the dancers whirling faster and faster, their bright silks flying in the wind.

Her feet started to thump the ground to the rhythm. Her heart thrummed to the sound of the drum, the memory of music racing through her blood. Carolinne sped up slightly, playing games with the beat, hitting the iron band around the bucket for different sounds. She sucked in a breath, breathed out and then leaped into the market square.

The crowds spun around her as she moved, shaking her hips to the beat, the beads in her hair glinting in the sunlight as they flew behind her. She had done this a thousand times before, in private, in secret, to the sound of the drum inside her own head. It was terrifying to do it in front of people, but as she moved, the nervousness gradually subsided. She was doing it. And it was fine.

A handful of people had stopped to watch, curious and clearly entertained, but not yet amazed. None of them had thrown a coin into the headscarf that she'd tied into a makeshift satchel. She had to do better.

With an excited cry, she did a flying leap which turned into a walking handstand when she hit the ground. Someone whooped from the crowd and there were cheers and wild applause. Coming back up was a slight problem, but she played off the effects of the headrush well enough until it passed.

She signaled to Carolinne and with a smile, she sped up even faster, causing Rayya to dance at hyperspeed, to hurl all of herself into the movements, to whirl and spin and somersault until she was no longer sure which way was up.

With a resounding THUD of the drum, she ended in a full split, panting as she smiled at the crowds, her arms outstretched, her chest heaving, her sweat horrifically hot beneath the arming garment.

Coins poured into the headscarf as the crowd applauded enthusiastically.

*.*.*

The ale sloshed over the sides of the tankards as they clanked them together in a rowdy toast. Carolinne's cheeks were already flushed as she gulped down her second mug of the night, somewhat messily, dribbling a bit down the front of her borrowed robe. Rayya downed hers more neatly and set it down, drained, as though she were replacing a delicate wine goblet on a linen-covered table.

She breathed in the smells of cooking meat and wood smoke and felt content, to the very bottom of her soul. For tonight, they were taken care of. They were bathed and dressed. Her armor was at the blacksmith's being cleaned. Their traveling clothes were being washed as they sat. They had money enough for food, drink and bed, plus a smattering of leftover gold that glittered in the firelight on the table. It wasn't nearly enough to pay for passage to Ivarstead, but it was certainly a start. Those thoughts were for the morning.

In the meantime, she tapped her fingers to the beat of the bard's drum and felt herself falling into the glimmer of Carolinne's eyes.

A Redguard woman ran about the smoky room, taking drink orders from every belligerent drunk and slapping away the hands that reached out to touch her.

In the noise and darkness, with drink and lust swirling in her head, Rayya never noticed the scars on her face.

*.*.*

There was one bed in the room. Rayya insisted that Carolinne get it and exhausted, she flopped onto it without arguing, seemingly having fallen asleep instantaneously. Her bearskin was still in relatively good shape and as she was making herself comfortable on that, Carolinne's eyes sprang open, bright and full of mischief.

"You left off in the desert, right? After escaping and…"

Her face fell upon remembering.

"If you don't want to go on, please don't force yourself for my sake."

"No, it's alright."

Rayya smiled, sitting up, the bearskin plush beneath her bare toes.

"The next bit is a good part. A birthday party."

*.*.*

Rayya's 11th birthday was as good as could be hoped. The pottage had meat in it tonight and there was blood-red cactus fruit for dessert. After dinner, one by one, her parents presented their gifts to her. From Mama, a doll sewn from scraps of clothing she had brought along, given in the hopes that it might replace the ones that had been lost.

From Iya, a painting of the home they had left behind.

When it was Baba's turn, he asked her to close her eyes and hold out her hands. She did so and felt something smooth and stiff dropped into her waiting palms.

It was a stick.

The roughest edges were smoothed over, though it was not completely finished. It was too short to be a walking stick and didn't have the proper handle to be a cane. It was little more than a sun-bleached piece of wood found out in the desert, save for the lone notch carved into its shaft.

Confused, she opened her mouth to thank him for it anyway, when Baba shook his head.

"No, msichana. This is not a gift. I wish with all my heart that I did not have to lay this burden on you, but…"

He sighed deeply, leaning heavily on his cane. The shadow that had come upon Baba ever since they had fled the city returned, with renewed vigor.

"Times have changed and so must we change with them. The world is a violent place and so you must learn how to survive in it. On my eleventh birthday, I entered into the Hall of the Virtues of War. So too, will you."

Mama and Iya looked so solemn, kneeling as they were on either side of Baba, their eyes looking at the ground, refusing to meet her gaze. She felt a lump rising in her throat and a tightness in her jaw. Baba was looking at her, sorrow written in his old, graying brow.

"But…was not the Hall…" she forced out, thinking back on the little she'd seen of the men and women who'd spent their time sparring outside the squat adobe building that had served as their training ground. "destroyed with the rest of the city? How can I…"

"Journey many and many miles, but do not leave the Hall of the Virtues of War." Baba intoned, twirling his pointer finger as though he were writing the message in the air. "The Hall is not a thing that can be destroyed so easily. It exists wherever you and I stand, where those that teach meet those that learn. Tomorrow, you will begin your training. And with that"-

He pointed to the stick.

"You will practice the Eight Basic Cuts. But for now, msichana, rest."

He kissed her on the crown of her head and turned away to help Mama clear away the dishes.

Rayya held the stick for a while before bed, feeling its smoothness, lifting its heft. It was a strange thing, in its power to elicit both excitement and dread from her alike.

She swished it through the air and for a moment, it was not a stick in her eyes, but a sword.

*.*.*

As night fell on the sands of the Alik'r, Baba roused her from slumber with a tap from his cane. She groaned, sinking deeper into the confines of her bedroll and clutching the doll to her chest.

"Today." Baba said sternly, tapping his cane on the bedding beside her, "You will run."

Obediently, she scrubbed her skin with the dry linen cloth until she was clean and dressed herself.

A brilliant sunset, rife with pink and crimson and flaming orange still streaked the sky. She stumbled out of the tent groggily and stood for a moment, taking it in.

Baba pointed with his cane to a boulder in the distance.

"Run to that boulder and back. I'll tell you how your form is when you return."

He passed her a waterskin and she took a sip before shooting off into the sunset. At first it was exhilarating - the wind in her hair, the thump of her feet on the sand, the rush of running without boundaries, without restrictions, without another soul to avoid crashing into for miles.

And then, most of the way to the goal, she started to flag horribly. A cramp crept up her side. The shifting sand beneath her feet made it that much more difficult to run. It felt as though she were running through sucking mud, her feet getting heavier with every step. She stumbled the last few steps to the stone and leaned on it heavily, sweat pouring down her back. More or less, she walked back, with a few extra spurts of effort thrown in here and there.

Baba was stone-faced when she returned, his features severe in the strange light of the setting sun. Though the air still held the warmth of the day, she shivered.

Baba clicked his tongue. Rayya inwardly flinched.

"Here is your problem…" he said softly. "You assume the goal is speed rather than endurance. You burn yourself out by spending all your energy on getting there fast, when you would be much better served by getting there smart. Pay attention to your body. Know your limits. Pace yourself accordingly."

He tossed her the waterskin again. She drank from it gratefully, a single drop escaping her lips and sliding down her chin.

"Now, try again."

*.*.*

She had swung the sword from sunset until midnight, repeating the same motion again and again. Her shoulders were sore. Her hands were raw. Baba watched, saying nothing, stepping forward only to straighten out her form when she began to slip.

She flopped into bed at sunrise, her shoulders aching, her hands numb. Iya pulled out a cooling ointment and rubbed it into her shoulders as she drifted off to sleep.

*.*.*

It took her a full month to realize how much bigger her portions at dinner were compared to everyone else's. When there was meat, the greater portion of it was scooped into her bowl. She could hear Mama's stomach growling in her sleep, hear Baba's irritation as he argued with his wives about where to go next, see Iya's weakness beginning to take a toll on her labor.

Once, when she was handed her portion, she tried to scoop some of it out on the fly into Iya's bowl. But Iya wrapped her gnarled hand around hers and shook her head slowly, pushing her spoon away.

Rayya cried into her pillow that day, as the rest of the family slept, so quietly so as not to wake anyone.

*.*.*

There was a freedom in running, in feeling the rush of air, the thrum of your feet meeting the ground. There was a point in the process - in the buildup of energy, at the intersection where pain became pleasure - that felt almost like flying. In that moment, all the troubles that she carried from home ceased to exist.

There was only the here and now, the eb and flow of breath, the warmth of her sweat and the coolness of the night air, the beat of her heart and the hum of her soul.

She slid to a halt and tagged the stone pillar, sweat pouring down her brow, her breath forming steam before her as she panted. Other pillars littered the sand - cracked, broken, slowly vanishing beneath the surface or being worn away by the sandy wind.

For a moment, she wondered what it had been. If people had lived there once, if conquest had taken them from their homes and families and places of work…

But that was a thought that served no purpose.

She stretched, wiggling her shoulders and curling her toes. And then she carried herself back to camp, the sand flying under her feet.

*.*.*

On nights when soldiers were spotted in the distance, she could not train.

On those nights, they hunkered down low, never daring to light a fire or speak above a whisper. She was trapped in the tent, cramped in a sweaty space which did not offer her a view of the stars or allow the coolness of the wind to penetrate through its heavy walls.

She did not know which was worse - the boredom, the frustration or the fear. She felt like a caged animal that could run and run and run until there was nowhere left to run. Thoughts she didn't want to think about sprang into her head with renewed violence in the all-encompassing silence.

On nights like these, Baba made her do push-ups and squats and lunges until she was sick of them.

Iya lay in bed with her and whispered stories of the old gods in her ear.

*.*.*

Whenever they traveled, whether it was to find better hunting grounds, a suitable source of water or a campground that did not get near visits from elves who lit their fires with magic, the load Rayya bore increased. She was weighed down with cooking utensils, rolled canvas, the bits of food they'd managed to preserve for future use. As she got stronger, a few ribs from the tent were strapped haphazardly to her back.

She heaved and buckled under the load but did not once dare to complain.

In time, it got easier.

*.*.*

Once in a while, they ran into other refugees.

It was a man with a cartload of children this time. They peered out between the flaps of the covered wagon, their eyes dark and curious, their faces lined with hunger. One of his daughters was deathly ill. She lay among her sisters, covered in a cold sweat, a fever as hot as the Alik'r sun burning on her brow.

Iya treated her with herbs and strong-smelling ointments. Baba shared what water he had with them. Food could not be spared. The man wept because he did not have anything with which to pay them back. He had lost everything when the Aldmeri Domain took Rihad. He had driven his mule from camp to camp, begging for work, trying to find a new place to set down roots and had every time been driven out again by the encroaching conquest.

He told them that he had heard rumors of refugee camps being set up on the outskirts of Sentinel. The quality of the housing was not anything to speak of, but the mere presence of food and water was. If he and his children could just make it across the desert, perhaps they would be saved.

He thanked them for the assistance, whistled at his skinny mule and vanished over the horizon with the rising of the sun.

Her three parents convened quietly as she lay in bed trying to sleep. They spoke in hushed, urgent tones. She could not make out every word and for that, her stomach clenched even harder in anxiety.

At sunset, instead of going on her usual run, Baba had her help take down the tent and loaded a good portion of it onto her back. They followed the tracks of the mule and the wheels of the cart until the wind blew them all away.

*.*.*

Her twelfth birthday passed with little ceremony.

Mama had nothing left to give, save for the care she had shown her daughter every day of her life. Baba carved a new notch into her sword to mark the time and gave her a pat on the back, his eyes crinkling as he smiled. Iya told her a silly story of Ius, the Animal God that had her laughing long into the night, the light of the tale driving out the shadows that hunted her, if only for one night.

*.*.*

On the way to Sentinel, they came upon an abandoned cart in the desert. Its ragged tent flaps blew in the wind. The bleached bones of a long-dead animal lay in its dried and cracked harness.

Baba volunteered to take a closer look inside, asking that he not be followed. Rayya watched him from afar as he picked through the wreckage, her chest tight for a reason she could not quite explain.

He came back with tight lips and a new weariness in his limp.

"Will you shepard their souls, Iya?" he asked softly, clasping her old hands.

She nodded, bent down and began drawing in the sand. Rayya was sent to fetch rocks of suitable weight and heft.

*.*.*

Rayya's lips were cracked with thirst. The sandstorm raged outside, beating on the walls of the tent with the fury of scorned lover. She could barely hear herself think. Her family screamed at each other over the sound, struggling to be heard, to do something else besides hunkering down against the onslaught.

It was tonight that Baba taught her how to meditate - to cancel out her pain, her discomfort, to empty herself but for one thought.

She chose to imagine a sword in her hand.

Not a sword of metal, but of greenery. It had been so long since she had seen such things. Flowers bloomed along its blade. Leaves unfurled along its hilt and crept up her arm, down her spine, rooted her to the ground. She breathed in and out and saw it so clearly in her mind's eye.

She opened her eyes and the storm had quieted.

*.*.*

A little over a year after she had first begun training, she mastered the First Cut.

Her sword swung through the air with perfect control, time and again the same, her form unwavering, her mind, unbreakable.

Baba watched from afar, smiling.

*.*.*

Sentinel bloomed suddenly out of the desert - a shining city of turrets and minarets rising from the sand, gleaming gold in the rays of the rising sun.

Rayya felt small before it, afraid and confined. The tall, stern walls seemed to draw close around her as they approached the gate. It felt so strange to walk on cobblestones again, to fall in with a thronging crowd. She clutched Mama's hand and squeezed, feeling for a moment as though she were half her age and not partway to becoming a trained warrior.

Mama squeezed back and offered her a tense, tired smile.

Notes:

Whenever I sit down to write a new dragonborn the absolute first thing that I have to do is give them some sort of defining trait or quality that in some way sets them apart from the rest of the world. Something separate from the special power of a dragonborn, but capable of tying into it. Something that marks them as different even before the revelation of their destiny.

It isn't always a good thing. Greed and self-destructiveness are as equally valid qualifiers of a dragonborn as tenacity and passion. In Carolinne's case, her defining trait is her voice and the ways she is capable of using it even without the thu'um.

She got off so much easier than my other Dragonborn.