Shallow Roots in Eroding Soil

by Pyre_of_Pages (Surrogate_Fawn)

Summary:

Elur knows she’s a Bosmer, but she struggles to understand what that means. Despite having two Valenwood-born parents, Elur is not growing up in typical Bosmeri culture. Bravil is the only city she’s known and poverty is the only life she’s lived. Her parents are mysteriously mute on matters regarding Valenwood and the culture they left behind – and why. As Elur grows, she clings to every scrap of the identity she is so desperate to understand – even as, bit-by-bit, more of it is stripped away.

Notes:

I’m having to make up a fair bit about Bosmer culture, as unfortunately the games don’t give a ton of attention to the mer/elven races like that. Consider most of the little details given here as my personal headcanons, unless the lore can be found elsewhere.

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Chapter 1: Shallow Roots

When they named her the Bosmeri word for “snow”, perhaps Elur’s parents were hoping for her to be a small spot of purity in the cesspit that was the city she was born in. With streets dotted by skooma dens and roads laced with addicts twitching for their next taste, Bravil never left anything pure for long. 

Even in a city of beastfolk and other destitute foreigners, a family of Wood Elves such as theirs was somewhat rare to come across. A few single Bosmer here and there weren’t uncommon to see, but a familial unit was. Elur was taught from a young age to keep herself out of trouble – advice mostly given by her father, Sylvid.

“Keep your head down, dove,” he would often tell her when she was preparing to leave the house with her mother. “Or else it’ll make for a pretty trophy.”

The warning – morbid as it was – worked to keep his young daughter clinging tight to the leather band around her mother’s waist while they were outside the home. She would have much rather been led through Bravil’s water-laden streets by her mother’s hand, but Illradil only had one to offer – and it was always resting on her dagger’s hilt when outdoors. Elur was a wee tot full of questions, and she had once asked her mother if someone had taken her hand as a trophy. Illradil had tussled her daughter’s wintery locks and said her hand had just fallen off one day, lost somewhere out in a field. Elur had looked at the red-pink mass of scarred flesh several inches below her mother’s left elbow and didn’t think that was true.

When she was out and about with her mother on a market trip, Elur had asked:

“Why does Papa never go to the market with us?”

“Your papa can’t walk well,” her mother had answered, placing a few cloth-wrapped rabbit haunches into a basket hanging from her foreshortened arm. 

“But he never walks,” Elur responded, twisting the braided tether around her fingers while she waited for her mother to finish her purchase. “He sits in bed all day.”

“That’s because he gets ill, dove. He gets ill frequently.” 

Illradil placed six gold pieces in front of the butcher, making sure each one made a noise as it hit the counter as if to emphasize she had indeed taken six items from the booth. The vendor gave the Bosmer woman a somewhat crooked look, but accepted her payment without comment. From her small vantage point, Elur had seen a golden glimmer slip into her mother’s sleeve as she withdrew her hand from the counter. Her mother had a habit of hiding a golden coin in her sleeve, only bringing it into her palm to tap against the counter of a merchant while she placed gold-painted tin coins down. Elur had no idea why her mother did this, but she had been told in no uncertain terms that she was not to speak of it to anyone.

Although he was bed-bound, Sylvid was never absent from his family’s life. When his wife and child returned home from errands, he would invite Elur to sit with him under the furs so he could see to her learning while Illradil saw to the home. Old as it was, Bravil had no public institutions for learning like the Empire’s more modern cities had. So, it was snuggled into her father’s side that Elur learned to read and write Tamrielic. Her father only had so much energy to give each day, but he used it to provide for Elur in the best way he could: sharing his knowledge with his ever-curious little girl – especially knowledge about their homeland. 

He only spoke to Elur about Valenwood when his wife was out of earshot, which was not often in their modest four-room abode (more of a large shack) shoved into a corner of Bravil’s city walls. If Illradil overheard him telling their child about the giant treetop cities the two of them called their birthplace, she would snap at him to stop.

“Cyrodiil isn’t Valenwood, Sylvid,” she would scold. “Let her learn the soil where her feet are planted.”

But Illradil was not always at home with them and Elur managed to soak up a tiny fistful of Bosmeri words Sylvid taught her in secret – starting, of course, with her name. She had inherited Sylvid’s striking white hair, which he claimed was proof of ancient Snow Elf ancestry. 

“That’s why your name is what we called snow back home, even though your mama and I never saw it until we came to Cyrodiil,” Sylvid had explained to his daughter one night, while his wife was busy preparing a meal – something that took her double the time to do with one hand. “Valenwood is too humid for snow, but there’s a word for it in our language thanks to the Snow Elves that came there a long time ago. There aren’t many families in Valenwood that can claim they have Snow Elf blood, but we had ancestors living in Skyrim centuries before the Nords arrived!”

“My love, you don’t know that for certain,” Illradil commented from the kitchen, her voice travelling through the ajar bedroom door. “There are plenty of pale-featured mer in Tamriel who aren't claiming they come from the Falmer.”

“It’s been family knowledge long enough to be certain,” Sylvid quipped in return. “No one can really ask a Snow Elf about their heritage now, can they?”

“Why not?” Elur had asked, looking up from the pointy-eared stick figures she was doodling in charcoal while laying belly-down on the floor. Her chin was smudged where she’d scratched an itch with black-caked fingernails.

“There hasn’t been a Snow Elf alive in a long, long time, dove,” Sylvid had answered. “They may be gone, but drops of their blood have a habit of bubbling up our family. You and I are two of those little drops. Your great-grandmother called us white-haired cousins ‘ice-blooded’, which is something her great-grandparents called it when Snow Elf traits appeared in our family.”

“What were the Snow Elves like?” Elur asked, resting her cheeks in her hands and smearing yet more charcoal over her face.

Sylvid leaned to peer through the gap in the doorway. Assured he would not be overheard, he leaned a bit closer to his daughter and whispered: “They were exceptional mages! Skyrim is nothing but ice and mountains, but it must hold some form of magic for the Snow Elves to be as powerful as they were. That deep understanding of magic is what’s been passed down. Bosmer are called the least gifted mer when it comes to such things, but we ice-bloods . . .”

To demonstrate his point – and after pausing to listen for his wife’s approach – Sylvid had, for the first and last time in his life, lifted his hands and revealed his magical ability to his daughter. A soft white-blue sphere of light appeared in the space between his palms with an audible hum of magical energy. Before Elur could reach out and touch it, it vanished with a static puff of sapped magicka and Sylvid slumped deeper into his pillows with a grunt.

“Don’t . . . don’t tell your mother I just did that,” he chuckled with a breathy cough.

Illradil swung the bedroom door open like a storm gale blowing through the house, her golden eyes like lightning. “She doesn’t need to. I know too well what burning magicka sounds like.”

“I’m fine, my dear,” Sylvid waved his wife away, despite an insistent cough pestering his lungs. “I used . . . used to do so much more than magelight.”

“Now even that is too much for your health,” Illradil chastised him, coming around to sit on the edge of the bed. “You barely have the energy to stand. Don’t waste it on nonsense.” 

She adjusted the straw-filled cushions and helped sit Sylvid upright so he could clear his lungs. As the blanket fell away from his bare torso, the horrific scar that had eaten most of his abdomen was revealed: a concave, skinned-over void – the indents of snapped-off ribs visible under the paper-thin scar tissue as he breathed and hacked. His family had no reaction to the old wound – they had even seen where it connected to an identical scar on his back, at an askew angle to the one at the front.

While her parents were distracted, Elur sat herself up on her haunches and put her smudged hands together in the same fashion her father had. She’d stared as hard as she could at the tips of her fingers, nearly going cross-eyed, but nothing appeared there.

“Elur, no!” Her mother’s sharp reprimand made her jump. “Don’t you dare start that!”

The child sheepishly sat on her hands and, judging by the deep sigh her mother gave, stained the fabric of her dress a sooty black where she’d touched it.

Illradil shot her husband a seething glare. “You see what you’ve started? I don’t want either of you mentioning magic again. It would cause nothing but trouble.”

“Why?” Elur asked. Her voice was small, befitting her young age, yet she dared to look her mother in the eye as she asked it – an innocent, yet daring challenge to her mother’s authority.

Illradil stroked her husband’s shoulder as he stilled from his coughing fit. “Sylvid, do you wish to tell your daughter why? Or should I?”

“Don’t. Not yet, she’s too young,” Sylvid insisted, giving his wife’s calloused hand a loving pat. Then, turning to his child: “Do as your mother says, dove.”

The young elf pouted. “But why ?”

Her parents had exchanged a prolonged glance, their eyes losing light the longer they shared gazes. It was as if they’d held a dire conversation in mere seconds without a single sound. Illradil stooped and urged Elur to her feet with a tap on her back.

“Supper’s ready, dove,” she said. She examined the blackened hands and face of her child with a weary grumble. “Divines, you look like you’ve been rolling in the fireplace. Go wash up, then we’ll help your papa to the table with us."

As enticed as she was by the promise of food, when Elur stood she had paused to look pleadingly between her parents – still awaiting an answer.

“You can ask about magic when you’re older,” Sylvid had reassured as Illradil nudged their small child from the bedroom. The smile he offered Elur was filled with much more sorrow than he likely intended, but she hadn’t noticed. “I promise, I’ll tell you everything you want to know when you’re a big girl.”

Elur, perfectly content with that promise, had scampered off to find the wash basin. She hadn’t seen the way her mother lingered in the bedroom door with the faintest twinkle of extra moisture in her eyes. She had never heard Illradil as she whispered for her husband to not make promises he couldn’t keep.

---

Sylvid died one muggy summer morning when Elur was six years old. He hadn’t gotten to keep his promise.

In the days prior, he’d stopped being able to eat. Anything that went down came back up, even water. The healers from the Temple of Mara had come, but nothing they gave him stayed in his body. Elur had been sitting in her mother’s lap at his bedside when Illradil allowed the Priests to try healing magic. She had watched in quiet awe as the golden light of a healing aura haloed her father’s body with the gentle sound of sand carried on the wind. Yet, that hadn’t been able to rouse Sylvid from his weakened state – hadn’t even been enough to make him open his eyes. The only thing the healers had said they could do after that . . . was ease his pain. 

That was when Elur said her final goodbyes, at her mother’s insistence, after which she was barred from the room where his deathbed sat. She would never stop wondering if her father had ever heard her. Still naught but a scared and confused child, she had begged the healers to tell her why her papa was dying.

“He is too badly scarred on the inside to fix, child. His body has simply . . . stopped working,” a kindly Priest of Mara had consoled her the night before Sylvid breathed his last. The other healers had left hours before, but he’d chosen to stay and keep the elf child company. They were seated at the family’s small dinner table, just outside the closed bedroom door where Illradil and a Priest of Arkay were giving Sylvid his last rites. 

Elur sat silently next to the Priest, trying not to hear the muffled sounds of her mother sobbing. In her hand was a stick of honeytaffy the Priest had given her. It was gnawed and half-eaten, the child’s milk teeth unused to the tacky chew. It had left her entire mouth covered in sticky sugar, but the salt from a constant stream of tears kept souring the taste on her lips.

“Does your family attend any of the temples, child?” the Priest asked her, likely to try and fill the room with more pleasant noise. 

Elur shook her head and continued to gnash her small teeth into the taffy stick. She wiped runny mucus from her face with the sleeve of her dress.

“I see.” The Priest had nodded, looking at the humble home around him – perhaps searching for a house shrine to indicate which Divine the family favored to worship. If that’s what he had been doing, he hadn’t found any. “Hmm, well I know we haven’t seen your family at the Temple of Mara, yet,” the Priest continued. “We offer charity to many families in Bravil who . . . have need of it. Just remember you and your mother are always welcome, child.”

Elur wasn’t allowed to see her father’s body after he had passed. There was no funeral service held. Elur never saw where her father had been laid to rest, nor did she think her mother had. All they knew was what the Priests of Arkay had told them: Sylvid had been given a consecrated place within Bravil’s local crypt and was at peace. Illradil kept murmuring to herself in the depths of her grief that such a resting place was not what her husband would’ve wanted. Yet, when Elur would ask what her father would’ve wanted instead, Illradil refused to give an answer.

Elur began being left alone at home during the day. Illradil continued the routine she’d done most days before her husband’s death: leave the house before the sun was up, lock the door behind her and be back before that evening. Elur no longer had her father to fill her hours with learning and stories and conversation. His absence was a gaping void in her life. With so little to keep her mind occupied, she began to wonder where it was her mother went during the day. If asked, Illradil would always give the same reply:

“I have to hunt if we want to eat.”

Elur hadn’t known her mother could hunt. All their meat was market-bought.

Illradil never came back with much. If she came back with anything at all, she usually came with one or two simple items – such as new shoes for Elur, to replace a pair she had outgrown, or a bucket of coal for the fire. She sometimes had a few tin coins in her purse, which she and Elur would then spend an evening painting gold in front of the fire. At least that family tradition of theirs wasn’t lost with Sylvid. Going out on market trips became less frequent, as Illradil began coming home very late into the evening with small burlap sacks on her belt filled with food – always some kind of meat, of course. It was much more convenient for them both that the food was already cooked (albeit cold) so they could fill their bellies as soon as Illradil returned. Elur was left with only their supply of smoked fish to eat while her mother was out, so even a cold roast was a feast for her. 

“I thank the gods I can still honor the Pact in this way,” Illradil had muttered one night as she placed a piece of venison chop – reheated over the fire – on her daughter’s plate. Her eyes were glazed with a sheen of exhaustion and her words were half-slurred.

“What did you say, Mama?”

As if shaken from a light sleep, Illradil startled at Elur’s voice. “Oh . . . “ She blinked, shook her head. “Nothing, dove.”

---

As time went on, things had improved. 

It started when Illradil began coming home at night with small glittering items hidden up her sleeve, or sometimes in the folds of her petticoat; but upon returning she would flick her wrist a few times over a basket of linens in the corner and those glittering pieces would be gone from sight. Then she would go about the evening without addressing it at all. Elur once emptied that entire basket when her mother was gone, but found no trace of the shining items she knew had to be there. After Illradil returned and saw the basket haphazardly refilled, she turned heel and went to her bedroom. She returned without any glint of metal on her person, when Elur knew she had seen some when her mother walked in. Her mother’s bedroom was always locked from then on. 

The evenings spent painting coins entirely disappeared, replaced by evenings of mother and daughter conversing at the dining table. With Elur growing quickly, having the spare nights dedicated only to each other was a blessing both sorely needed. The most exciting thing Elur could do during the day was read and accumulate thoughts in her head. She was certain her skull would’ve popped if her mother hadn’t been a willing ear to her daydreams. Illradil would spend those nights with a smile on her face, listening to her child retell the storybook adventures she would read – and have no choice but to re-read – in excruciating, needless detail. The woman never looked happier in her life than in those moments.

Gradually, the market trips returned to their everyday lives. They didn’t just go out for necessities anymore. Elur – now old enough to keep pace – followed her mother into shops she had only seen through windows before. Although they were nothing extravagant, Illradil started offering her daughter gifts in the form of luxury items such as copper bracelets, newly-printed storybooks, even a new dress (once). Every item was paid for in the same way: the vendor being given their coin directly into their hand. It was a subtle difference, but Elur heard the sound the coins made as they clinked together in the vendor’s palm. They were gold. Not golden. She never again noticed a coin hidden up her mother’s sleeve.

Soon, Elur began to blossom. At least, that’s how her mother had put it. Illradil explained how Elur was filling out into the shape of a woman – and that was why she now stood watch, hand at her dagger, while her daughter bathed in the river. As Elur’s thirteenth year approached, her mother breached a subject that had never passed her lips before: the matter of her Clanmarking. Illradil had spent thirteen years staying mute on any subject related to their race, but it seemed this matter was of enough significance to break her silence.

“This is the Clanmarking of Karstlaurel,” Illradil had explained, running her fingers along her faded facial tattoo. It was a rather large, solid mark – thick blue lines beginning at the corners of the eyes and running beneath them to culminate over the bridge of the nose and then rise into a pointed peak between the eyes. “My mother had this same mark, and my grandmother. A Bosmer always belongs to her mother’s clan and each clan has its own unique Clanmarking.”

“Papa didn’t have any tattoos . . . or . . . did he?” It had been six years, but in that moment Elur’s heart clenched at the realization she couldn’t remember fully what her father had looked like.

“You remember correctly, he did not,” Illradil reassured, perhaps seeing the expression of concern on her daughter. “It’s more common for our women to have them. Some clans see it as a beauty standard, but we Karstlaurel women see it as . . . honoring where we come from.”

Elur looked up at her mother with a quirked eyebrow. “Mama, you always tell me I come from Cyrodiil. You don’t let me ask about–.”

“I know, dove. I know,” Illradil sighed and ran her hand through her ruddy-brown hair. “It’s tradition for Bosmer to be given their Clanmarking once they begin to blossom, but it’s your choice. I know there’s no reason to ask you. Even in Valenwood, there are many who choose not to undergo their Clanmarking . . . especially these days. I can’t imagine there’s many who do so outside the Green.”

“Does it hurt?”

“After you wake up, yes, but it only lasts a few days. I was made to drink a fermented bone broth before my Clanmarking, and I don’t remember any pain. My village’s shaman taught me how to make the dyes and needles before I left his apprenticeship. I could have everything ready within a reasonable time.”

Elur was silent as she listened, soaking up every drop of information. This was the most she had ever heard her mother speak about her life in Valenwood, and already thousands of eager questions were bubbling inside her.

“You were going to be a shaman?” Elur asked, white eyes alight. If she’d had a tail like the Khajiit she saw around the city, it would’ve been twitching in anticipation. “Why did you leave?”

Illradil’s back stiffened as though realizing she’d said too much. She turned toward her daughter and shot down any further questions with an arrow in the form of a sentence: “That is not important.” Then, her tone softened back out as she continued: “None of this is important, dove. I . . . felt as though not offering you the rite of Clanmarking would have been . . . would have been disrespectful to our kin back home.”

Elur trotted up to Illradil and wrapped her arms around her. She now stood neck-high, perfectly able to snuggle her cheek into the familiar crook of her mother’s shoulder. “You won’t be angry if I don’t have a Clanmarking like you?”

Illradil chuckled and draped her arms over her child’s back, her hand grasping her foreshortened stump to create a tight hold. “Elur, I love you with all my soul. Nothing will ever change that. I simply felt I had to offer it.”

“I want it,” Elur said with zero pause. “You never tell me anything about Valenwood, and I . . . I want something that makes me feel like I belong somewhere.”

Elur felt her mother’s hand ball into a trembling fist against her back, and she felt the motion of her throat as she tried to swallow a hard lump.

“I’m so sorry about that, dove,” Illradil said in a voice drowning in suppressed tears. “I just don’t want you to long for a homeland you can never see.”

Elur’s heart dropped to her stomach. “. . . what?”

“No. Not yet, dove,” Illradil smoothed Elur’s hair with her hand and kissed her forehead. “You’re not ready, yet. One day, I promise, but not yet.”

Elur felt a tiny wet drop touch her scalp as her mother hugged her tighter. It felt as though it washed away a small bit of her innocence. She wasn’t sure why.

“When, then?” Elur asked into her mother’s shoulder.

Illradil didn’t answer at first, she just kept petting Elur’s hair.  “I can give you this part of yourself now,” she said at last, “and by the Divines, I will!”

A few weeks later, Elur found herself waking in her mother’s bed. Her mind was clouded in a haze of the worst pain she’d felt in all her short life. She had drunk a foul liquid her mother had given her, something left sitting in a covered clay pot for days, and to her it seemed only seconds later that her eyes had opened – or, had tried to open. Her face was swollen and burning where the bone needle in her mother’s hand had created thousands of tiny wounds to insert the ink. Her lower eyelids were swollen, nearly shut, and even blinking was hard to do. Yet, her mother was right at her side, just like she’d promised she’d be. And it would be through her careful tending of the wounds with washing, bandaging and balming that they healed quickly.

The first time Elur looked upon herself with her Clanmarking in her skin – a perfect mirror of the one her mother bore – was the first time she’d felt connected to her origins. She knew she now carried a piece of the culture she’d been so close to, yet too far away to touch for all her life. Although she knew she didn’t look much like them with her father’s “ice-blooded” features that hoared her hair and eyes, in the mirror she now saw the faces of the ancestors she would never meet: the grandmother, great-grandmother, aunts, cousins, and all the rest she would never learn the names of.

The jewelry, trinkets and clothing meant nothing in the face of this – the greatest gift her mother had ever given her. Elur had once again thrown her arms around her mother, tears of joy in her eyes and words of thanks on her lips.

How tragic, then, that such a generous gift would be the last.

Chapter 2: Eroding Soil

Summary:

The soil where Elur's feet are planted continues to fall away.

When Elur heard the knock at the door, she did exactly what her mother had told her to do. She grabbed a knife. 

It was late afternoon – too early for her mother to return. Besides, her mother had the only house key; there would be no reason for her to knock. Although the handle of a blade was an unsure fit in her hand, Elur had been taught to slash the palms of any unwanted guests should they attempt to grab her. With the weapon hidden behind her hip, the teenaged elf unlatched the door and opened it enough to peek through. A tendril of cold air reached through the crack and chilled her face, smarting the still-raw skin of her Clanmarking.

“Yes?” Elur asked, blinking against the sudden gust of winter air.

“Are you the only Wood Elf that lives here?” the man at the door asked without introduction. The emblem of a yellow stag on his chainmail marked him as a member of the Bravil Town Guard.

“No?” Elur opened the door further with a slow glide. She’d been told to never be visibly armed in front of a member of the Guard, so she slipped the knife behind her back to her opposite hand and then onto a nearby shelf behind the door.

“Can you describe your household members, please?” the guard continued in a casual, almost emotionless, tone.

Elur furrowed her brow. “Must I?”

The guard’s expression didn’t change. “Describe your household members.” 

“It’s . . . just my mother and I, sir.”

The lines around the guard’s mouth creased. “Is your mother at home with you?”

Elur shook her head. The cold crept past her legs like a house cat, slipping through the small opening in the door while dragging an icy tail over her shins. “Um . . . she’s out hunting.” 

The guard unfolded a page of parchment, looked it over for a moment and refolded it. “Is your mother missing a hand, by chance?”

Elur creaked open the door further, uncaring about the heat from the fire getting out – nor the waves of cold getting in. “Her left hand. What is this about?”

Without a word, the guard reached into a pocket on his belt and withdrew a piece of worn leather. Taking it revealed to Elur that there was cut stitching around the edges and slightly smudged lettering inked into the hide:

“I have a daughter at home. If you are reading this, please retrieve her.”

The message was followed by their house address.

“I’ve been asked to escort you to Skingrad,” the guard said. “The Guard must speak with you there.”

“Skingrad?” Elur asked, wringing the leather in her hands. Her chest thumped. “What is she doing in Skingrad? Oh, gods! Has she been arrested?”

The guard cleared his throat and crossed his arms over his chest, as if trying to look as professional as possible. “There was an incident early this morning, miss. The Guard needs you to identify a body.”

White-hot needles pressed into Elur’s skin from the inside out, breaking her whole body into an instant sweat that froze in the winter air. “A . . . a body?” The young Bosmer hugged herself as a subtle tremor began in her shoulders – felt, but unseen. “Whose body?”

The guard looked down at the girl with pity masked as detached indifference. “Possibly no one you know,” he said, “but that’s something only you can tell them.”

Elur’s fingertips disappeared into the flesh of her arms.

“Grab a shawl for the journey,” the guard continued. “The weather will only get colder in the night.”

“No,” Elur said, squaring her shoulders while she looked up at the man. “I’ll only go if someone stays here and waits. If my mother comes back and I’m gone, she’ll break down the Guard’s doors to find me.”

The guard released a white cloud of a sigh. “Very well. We’ll have someone keep watch for her return.”

As Elur retreated inside the home to retrieve her winter cloak, she was sure to scrawl out a note for her mother – just in case the Bravil Town Guard “forgot” to post someone at their door. She left the note on the dining table, a corner of it pinned down by a ceramic cup:

“Mama, 

Guard has taken me to Skingrad. I don’t know when I’ll get back. Love you.

– Elur

(Yes, I brought my cloak.)”

There was no time to leave a lengthy explanation. Elur knew her mother wouldn’t be happy to return home to either a short note or a guard at the door; but once the situation was made clear – that her child had been dragged a city away to look at a dead body – no doubt she would be furious. 

Elur had seen her mother’s rage in full effect when a skooma-sucker had attempted to mug them not too long ago. Illradil may have been a cripple, but one hand was all she needed when it held a blade. That Argonian had been lucky to limp away with only one heel tendon severed. The same mercy had not been shown to the muscles holding his thieving hands together.

As she followed the guard through the misty evening streets, Elur pictured with smug righteousness the gate to Oblivion her mother would open on members of the Guard the next day.

---

It was a shame that Skingrad was dark and quiet by the time Elur arrived. The buildings were tall and made of finely carved stone and artistic glass, not algae-coated brick and damp wood. The empty streets looked regal in the night, the houses with diamond-like windows aglow in hearthfire – nothing like the dark, sodden pathways where Bravil’s worst lurked at night. Candles placed in sconces by every door lit the cobblestone roads well enough that Elur’s escort didn’t need to carry a torch. Elur occasionally lagged behind as she slowed to admire what detail of the city she could see in the glow, her neck often craning to see the rooftops disappearing into the overcast night sky. The guard never waited or slowed his pace – only uttered stern reminders to keep up when she slipped from his side.

A Priestess of Arkay greeted them as they arrived outside the Hall of the Dead – a building marked by a circular window of rose-stained glass over the door. The window burned a soft crimson with the light of a chandelier positioned behind it.

“Gods have mercy, she’s only a child!” the Priestess – a Breton, judging by her small yet willowy frame – exclaimed when she saw them approaching. “Were there no other next-of-kin?”

“None,” was the guard’s response.

“Oh, dear.” The Priestess put a hand to her cheek and pondered the young elf that had been presented to her. “How old are you, child?”

“Thirteen.”

“You see? She’s of majority age,” the guard stated. “Her witness is lawful.”

The Priestess turned to the man, indignant. “Do you have any idea how young that is for a Bosmer?” she chastised. “Imperial laws regarding age were not designed for mer.”

“They are still our laws,” was the guard’s last reply before he gave the young elf a firm, yet gentle, push towards the Priestess.

The Breton woman sighed and motioned to be followed into the Hall. 

The chapel was filled with Arkay’s presence. A shrine to him sat in the center of the entryway, swirling wisps of spiced incense purifying the air around it. Three members of the Skingrad Guard stood at the doorway of a room branching off from the main sanctuary. Elur was led straight to them. After answering requests for basic information, she was asked if she knew why she had been brought to Skingrad.

Elur held out the piece of soft leather she’d been given. “This?”

“Ah, yes,” the Priestess of Arkay tutted. “We found that message sewn to the inside of the deceased’s corset. It would seem she was prepared for something like this to happen. Before we go any further, child, what is the name of your mother?”

“Illradil,” Elur said, fidgeting with the leather message in her hands. “Illradil Karstlaurel. She’s out hunting.”

The Priestess pressed her lips into such a thin line they nearly disappeared, but she smiled regardless. Her eyes didn’t. “Well, my dear, just tell us if the deceased looks familiar to you. Then you can make yourself comfortable until someone comes to collect you.”

The guards stepped aside and the Priestess nudged a stiff-legged Elur into the room beyond. A coldness filled the room that felt unnatural, far more oppressive than the winter chill seeping through the stone walls. Elur wrapped her cloak tighter around herself, but still the coldness soaked her clothing like water and stuck to her skin. The air felt like fire to breathe and Elur began coughing after just a few shallow breaths. The Priestess raised a hand, her palm glowing a pale blue, and within seconds the aggressive cold receded like a fog bank in sunlight. As the cold faded, white-blue spheres of magelight – just like the one Sylvid had shown his daughter briefly all those years ago – appeared inside the goat horn sconces and bathed the room in a heatless glow.

That was when Elur saw it – the body on the stone slab in the center of the room.

A linen shroud was draped over the table, concealing the identity of the corpse lying beneath. Black-brown stains had seeped through the linen on the outline’s unmoving chest. Elur became aware of the tang of iron bleeding into the air as the spell of cold receded. It coated her throat. The taste of dirty septims was at the back of her tongue.

The Priestess wrapped an arm around the child’s shoulders and more-or-less pulled her to the tableside. Without another word or action to prolong the inevitable, she took hold of the linen sheet and pulled it aside.

A short, small whimper was all that uttered from behind Elur’s lips when the corpse was revealed to her – the quiet sound of a heart breaking. 

Eyes of solid, unbroken gold stared half-lidded into the ceiling – the star-shaped membranes serving as hidden irises sat dilated and relaxed, unseeing.  A clean, yawning slit in the throat – pale pink windpipe exposed . . . and severed. The upper torso, drenched in blood – now dry and brown-black. Amidst the visceral mess, smudged fingerprints wrapped themselves around the gaping neck, just visible on the upper edges of the wound – as if a single hand had attempted in vain to close it. 

Elur’s eyes of unbroken silver-white stared down at the gore, her own hidden irises mere specks. At last her sight tore itself away from the corpse’s horrific wound and travelled down to the arm lying limp at its side. It ended in a hand coated in dried blood, the ichor clotted beneath the fingernails and in the creases of the palm where it had pooled. The fingers were curled slightly inward, joints held in place with the stiffness of death.

“Is this your mother, child?” the Priestess of Arkay asked in a hushed whisper. 

It wasn’t. Elur saw familiar traits in the vacant, expressionless face – she recognized the bright blue Clanmarking, identical to the one still healing in her own skin – but it wasn’t her mother.

It was just a body.

“Yes,” was Elur’s tiny reply.

With a small nod, the Priestess draped the soiled linen back over the corpse. As Elur watched the extinguished golden eyes she’d known since birth vanish under the cloth, she knew she’d never see them again.

“Come now, dear,” the Priestess said, carefully leading Elur from the room. “That was very brave of you.”

Elur didn’t feel brave. She felt like mist – floating, touchless – and a slight shift in the air could dissolve her into vapor. She took tender hold of the Priestess’s sleeve in a silent desperation to remain real.

The Skingrad Guard asked her more questions that night. Elur sat on a bench in the sanctuary, the Priestess still by her side, and answered them as best she could. At first she assumed the repetitive asks about what times her mother went “hunting” and what she would return with would somehow help arrest the person who murdered her; but when she asked:

“This wasn’t a murder,” a guard told her. “This was a bodyguard serving his duty.”

“Apparently, those nobles are smart to have their sellswords,” the second guard commented. “The sewers of Bravil seem to be leaking up the river these days.”

“So . . . no one will be punished for this?” Elur asked, cocooned inside her winter cloak. Her sight hadn’t left the tile floor since she sat down.

“The guilty party already has been,” the first guard replied. “From what you’ve said, we have strong reason to think this woman was far from a novice pickpocket. She was bold enough to attempt this in the broad light of morning! She was comfortable with what she was doing.  I guess she wasn’t expecting her marks to start hiring extra eyes . . . eyes with the lawful right to punish a thief.”

“Well, when you have only one hand . . . it’s wise to not get caught with it in someone’s pocket,” the third guard at last piped up to scoff at the deceased. “Five sly fingers aren’t much use when a bodyguard has ten – five to hold a blade and five to hold your neck open.”

“ Gentlemen! ” the Breton woman scolded. She wrapped a protective arm around the young elf seated beside her. “ Please , show some human decency! You’re speaking about this poor girl’s mother, thief or no! That matters none! As a Daughter of Arkay, I will not have you disgrace the dead in his presence!”

The three guards left the Hall soon afterward, their duties complete. Elur kept her gaze cast to the floor. Thief. Pickpocket. How long? Did it matter how long? Had it been long enough for her mother to deserve to die – bled out in the streets like a butchered sow?

No one would come for her until the morning. Elur spent the night on that bench, with a throw pillow and a blanket offered to her by the Priestess. It was impossible to sleep, knowing only a cold stone wall separated her from the lifeless flesh that was once her mother. Elur watched the candles burn in the chandelier overhead until dawn arrived, mesmerized by the way their reflections burned bloody in the stained glass window.

She continued to exist as mist – unsure of the hour, numb to all sight and sound as she was escorted back to Bravil. It was as if her entire form was held together by the clasp of her cloak and weighed down to Nirn by the sheath of her mother’s dagger around her waist. That weapon was the only part of her that would be coming home. The Priestess of Arkay had told Elur it would be simpler for everyone if Illradil was interred there, beneath Skingrad. Elur had no idea how to argue against it. She wasn’t sure if she’d wanted to. Her mother was gone. It was just a body. It was going to rot away like spoiled meat, regardless of where it was left to fester. Elur wondered if her mother would’ve wanted the same thing her father supposedly wanted done with him after death. It didn’t matter, though – Elur had never found out what that was.

There was no guard stationed at the door of her house; she felt foolish for asking. She locked the door behind her, even though she knew someone out there had the house key – it hadn’t been found on her mother’s person. Someone had taken the coin purse she kept it in.

When the fire was relit, one shadow was cast on the wooden walls. The sizzle-pop of boiling sap was the only sound in the house as the flames grew. Only one felt their heat. Elur had been alone in that four-room ramshackle home many, many times. This time was different. The word ‘alone’ felt too light to describe what this was. This was ‘one’. This was . . . ‘only’.

As Elur removed her cloak, she spotted the note she’d written for her mother sitting right where she’d left it: on the dinner table, under the ceramic cup, untouched, unread. That was what did it. That was what made the mist turn to flesh again; flesh that could feel again.

It started as a small gulp, and then another – though her throat was tight. It became a concave heave of the chest, like a void had opened beneath her ribs, and her lungs struggled to draw air in against the sucking pressure. The tears clawed their way up from the void in her chest and came cascading over the raw skin her mother had inked not two weeks before. The salt stung. When her lungs were released and again could fill with breath, they exhaled the wail of an injured animal; a primal cry for mercy in either the form of help . . . or death.

Neither would come.

At least, not quickly.

---

That empty house, that shack tucked into a corner of Bravil’s walls, became Elur’s prison of safety. Outside her door was a city that would snap her up like a duckling in slaughterfish jaws. Should she make one false move, there was no one who could protect her. She was too old for an orphanage, the Guard had told her; she was a grown woman and was expected to fend for herself. Elur wasn’t sure if that was true for the races of men, but . . . she very much still felt like a child. Just because she had begun to develop the body of a grown woman, that didn’t make her one in spirit. She wasn’t sure how long her people could live, but she knew it was longer than what men called average. The Priestess in Skingrad had to be right . . . surely thirteen was not as “grown” as the Empire insisted. Not for her.

Elur spent two full days after her mother’s death lying in bed, wishing only to shrivel up until her tears had nothing left to draw from. After two days, she’d realized how painful dying of thirst was and the animal need for water brought her out to the well. While outside, she obeyed her father’s never-forgotten words and kept her head low. She followed her mother’s example by always having one hand on the hilt of her dagger. What exactly would she do if someone tried to do worse than grab her? She had no idea; but the touch of the metal below her palm made her feel safer.

What salted meat there was in the house didn’t last long. By the time the winter chill had cleared and the trees were blooming tiny white buds, Elur had little to survive on except water and smoked pork that had turned green around the edges. Elur searched the entire house for any stash of coins her mother may have hidden, but found nothing. Unsure of what else to do, Elur made her way into the market one day with the closest thing to coin she had: the two copper bracelets her mother had given her.

Years later, Elur would scold herself for allowing the jeweler to give her only half a septim for each bracelet. She hadn’t learned the art of the sale yet, and that bastard robbed her. Yet, in the moment, Elur was thrilled she had a coin in her hand. Her mother had preached that eating anything grown from the soil was bad for her; but when the one gold coin she held could only buy her a loaf of bread, Elur decided to disregard her mother’s words. Words couldn’t feed her.

Limbs weakened from hunger, Elur sat herself below the statue of the Lucky Old Lady in the chapel courtyard and began eating her bread. It was bland and didn’t fill her stomach the same way meat did, but it relieved the hunger pangs and that was more than enough. So distracted with her meal was she that Elur didn’t realize someone was approaching until they spoke:

“How are you today, child?”

Elur ripped another piece of crust from the loaf with her teeth and looked up at the stranger. He was an older man in the golden-orange robes of Mara. He wasn’t a mer, but Elur couldn’t tell exactly what race he was. Perhaps a mix of a few? She didn’t reply to the man, but she saw a flicker of what had to be recognition cross his face when their gazes met.

“You’re the Karstlaurel girl, aren’t you?” he asked. He ran a finger over the bridge of his nose. “You have the same mark as your mother. I remember her.”

Elur squinted at him, slowly chewing her mouthful of bread.

“Ah, I suppose you wouldn’t remember me,” the man chuckled a deep, warm laugh. “My name is Gavril. I came to support your family several years ago, when your father passed.”

The phantom taste of honeytaffy passed over Elur’s tongue. She swallowed only saliva-soaked starch. “Mm-hmm,” she hummed with a slight nod.

“I thank Her Benevolence that you’ve grown so well,” Gavril continued. “It’s always a blessing when Bravil provides enough to nurture the young into adulthood!”

Elur scoffed through her nose and turned away, continuing to eat as if the Priest wasn’t there.

“And how has your mother been, dear?” Gavril asked, undeterred by the silent treatment.

“Dead and buried,” Elur stated, not bothering to look his way.

Well, that certainly shut the man up. Not for long, though.

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Much to Elur’s annoyance, the Priest sat himself beside her on the cobblestones – much like he’d done at her dining table when she was small. She watched him from the corner of her eye as he reached into his belt and held out an offering of two gold coins.

“I’m not sitting here to beg,” the teenaged elf grumbled as she bit down on the tough butt-end of the bread. How did people not break their teeth on such food?

“I know you’re not,” Gavril said. “True charity is given without being asked.”

Elur glanced longways at the coins. A charity case was better than a beggar. She accepted the coins and hid them in her shoe. “Thank you, sir.”

The Priest sat with her in silence for several more minutes, the both of them listening to the bustle of Bravil around them. Elur’s shoulders were tense, expecting the man to begin preaching the Good Word of Mara at her any minute. She wasn’t interested in listening to a sermon about how the love of her parents could be replaced by the love of a voiceless, formless goddess or something of the like.

“You were welcome at the temple then, and you are welcome now,” Gavril said, breaking their mutual quiet.

Elur braced herself. “I’ve never worshiped any of the Eight,” she said. “By now, I don’t think any of them would like me.”

“Needn’t be for worship,” the Priest continued with a warm grin. “If you’re ever hungry, my dear, our table is open to you. If you ever need medicine but have no coin, seek us out. If there’s nowhere else to turn, turn to us.”

Elur gave a sardonic chuckle and finally turned to look at the man. “You’re worried I’ll join the skooma dens, right?”

Gavril sighed. “It’s a valid worry, I’m afraid. Many turn to the beastfolks’ poison to fill the pits in their hearts. I don’t want to see another bright soul become drowned by that vile substance.”

“It doesn’t seem like much fun,” Elur said. She thought of the uncountable number of addicts she’d seen passed out in alleyways, or speaking frantic gibberish to themselves while pacing the streets. There seemed to be more of them every year.

“Good. Keep that attitude,” Gavril chuckled in kind. “What was your name, dear girl?”

“Elur.”

“I hope to see you again soon, Elur,” he said, struggling to his feet with a soft grunt. “Her Benevolence will never turn you away, so neither will we.”

The young Bosmer watched the Priest walk back in the direction of the chapel. Being pitied was fine with her, as long as it kept her from begging – and kept her safe from the risks of being a thief. No one could legally kill her for being pitied.

Notes:

Constructive feedback is very welcome! I'm always eager to improve my writing!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of The Ice-Blooded Dragon