I'd apparently fainted, but when I opened my eyes I knew I wasn't dead yet. Just…somewhere else.

So this was the sun? It was warm, bright and amazing. Not at all the terrible, skin-burning ball of fire in the sky I expected. I smiled absently, enjoying the feeling thoroughly before I promptly wondered where I was, why I was here and where that baby was. I scrambled around on all fours, wide eyes trying to get accustomed to the bright light and help me get my bearings at the same time.

A deep voice came from nearby, but from where exactly I hadn't been able to pinpoint yet. "Calm yourself, girl. You're fine. I'm amazed you survived so long down there anyway; and with this baby nonetheless."

The baby. I twitched my pointed ears in annoyance and pulled back my thin, pink lips in a snarl, "Baby. Give. Now. Or I kill." My knowledge of the above-dwellers language was minimal at best, but I figured it got the point across anyway. Heavy footsteps drummed behind me and I spun to meet them, teeth bared.

"Easy, lady! Shit." It was a human! I'd only seen a few of these before and not for very long, since they were always taken down by the other Falmer and turned into a meal. It smelled male, and had an odd tuft of hair sprouting from his face unlike anything I'd ever seen. I desperately wanted to reach out and touch it, but who knew what this mongrel beast might do if I got too close? My patience was waning now, though, and I stomped a foot on the ground and lowered my voice into the scariest bellow I could manage.

"BABY." The human looked surprised that such a big sound had come from such a small elf, and I silently agreed with him. He held up one pink finger in the air and trotted off into a small thicket of…something nearby. I pushed myself onto two bare feet and padded after him, deciding to deal with everything else after he returned the child to me. I squealed loudly and jumped back a few feet when I saw the man from before molesting a massive, ugly beast covered in brown hair. "What's your problem? I just swaddled the baby and strapped it to my saddle for safe keeping! I don't know what you're supposed to do with one of the damn things, so I thought it best to just leave it be until you woke."

I paid no attention to his blathering and instead held out my pale arms, opening and closing my hands in a 'gimme' motion as he handed me a ball of some sort of soft material. I gave him a puzzled look, "Want baby. Not…this." I attempted to give him the ball back. Maybe this was some sort of strange human peace offering but I was in no mood for that. I just wanted to go home.

He shook his head, the tuft of weird hair swinging about as he did so, and peeled back a layer of the cloth to reveal the round face of a baby. I grinned at him, thinking how ingenious it was to wrap it in something like this to protect it. The Falmer never did that, I thought.

"Well…there you go. You must've been down there a long time, elf. Your skin is all white and your language skills are lacking to say the least. How'd you end up in Blackreach?" I rubbed my thumb over the sleeping child's cheek, giddy with excitement. I looked up at him and wondered passively what he was saying. Taking a few steps back, I looked around for the familiar glowing mushrooms and chitin tents and piles of insect eggs, and after not seeing anything of the sort I started to panic a bit. What if I couldn't get back?!

I gave the human a concerned look, "Home. Go back. Home!" He looked confused and at last replied. "Where do you live, elf? I'll be happy to escort you back to your family."

I nodded frantically at the words 'back' and 'family'. "Yes, yes! Back! To where come. Pallor, miss it." I nodded toward the baby in my arms.

Realization passed briefly over the man's slightly wrinkled, scarred face. "You mean to Blackreach? I don't think this Pallor woman is in there…I killed all the Falmer and I only found you and that kid."

My pale blue eyes grew wide as dinnerplates, and my voice instantly went to maximum shrillness. "You kill my Falmer? MY FAMILY. You kill them!" He didn't look worried at my outburst, and that angered me. I wanted badly to wrap my hands around his throat and kill him like he'd slaughtered my family.

"What? Wait…you're one of them snow elves aren't you? By the Gods! I thought you were all extinct or mutated into Falmer." He pulled his lips back widely, something that surprised me and caused me to snarl back in return. How rude.

"Why? Why have kill you them?" I murmured, sinking into the soft embrace of the plants that grew in the dirt here, rocking the baby gently. He knelt to meet my watery gaze and spoke in soft tones. "They aren't people, elf. Beasts. They were trying to kill me."

I sniffed, tears falling freely from my eyes. "You come in our home and murder." I couldn't quite read his face, and he simply put a hand on my shoulder and nudged me up into a standing position. "Come, you can't go back there and live all alone." I nodded in reluctant agreement.

The sun no longer looked as bright as it had before, and the colors of the world seemed muted. The feeling of grass (as he'd called it) under my bare feet wasn't as soothing as before and I no longer felt fear of this man. He said he was only defending himself, which is a good enough reason to kill as any I supposed. He made me put more slabs of that odd cloth over my body, saying that it was frowned upon to be naked out here like I was. I didn't fight it, just did as he instructed. The baby never woke up once the entire time, for which I was glad.

That ugly brown thing he'd perched the swaddle on earlier was called a horse, apparently, and I no longer thought it was so ugly after all. Just odd. It cropped at the grass nearby and shooed away insects from its rump with a long, black tail that it flicked from side to side. I now sat up against a rough, huge plant that looked slightly similar to the mushrooms from back home while he poked and prodded at the horse and fiddled with some leather straps and fittings that sat upon its back, explaining everything to me as he did so.

"Now, you see this here? They're called stirrups and you put your feet in them when you ride the horse." He flapped around a piece of leather with a large metal ring on the end. I nodded slowly, still staring at that tuft of hair on his face. None of the Falmer had ever had anything like that before, I thought.

"What is…name?" I spoke tentatively, unsure of the correct terms I was supposed to use still. He smiled briefly and turned toward me, tugging the horse forward by a strap protruding from its grass-filled mouth. "I am Baragma. Yourself?" I repeated the name over and over in my mind, making sure to understand it correctly before shrugging at his question. The Falmer never named their children and I'd never bothered to give myself one over the years before. "Not have."

Baragma reached a hand down to help me to my feet and I obliged, still holding the now-awake and cooing child in my other arm. "Now, you ride and I'll walk. It'd be uncouth of me to sit astride a horse while a woman with her child walked. I'll help you up." I widened my eyes, taking a step back. I was not sitting atop that strange beast.

"Don't worry. He's well behaved, I promise. You just have to sit there and I'll lead him." He didn't look like he was trying to trick me, so I took a few tentative steps forward and reached out with my free hand to touch the horse. It didn't rip my arm off or let out any terrible sounds, and the fur on it was actually pretty soft to the touch. I sighed, taking a look back at Baragma. "Okay…I sit."

He smiled, coming up behind me and wrapping his hands around my middle rather abruptly. I squirmed only slightly as he sat me on the horse's back, which was suddenly much taller than I remembered. "When we get to a town, you're gonna need to bathe. You stink like you haven't been near soap in years." I glared at the back of his head as he took the reins and tugged the horse's head, which caused it to lurch forward and nearly sent me flying. I tensed up and entwined my hand in the hair that sprouted from the horse's long, arched neck.

"Fall!" I squeaked. He chuckled and murmured an apology that I didn't quite understand, and soon enough I saw a large conglomerate of odd, square tents peeking over the horizon. Smoke rose into the clear, blue sky from chimneys atop them and my acute nose could already smell some sort of cooking flesh. I hoped I wouldn't be on the menu.