Dúathil the Bosmer, Skyrim Anniversary Edition
For the first time since reaching Skyrim, I have found a place to rest my head at the Jorrvaskr in Whiterun, and the Companions have given me a real chance to prove myself and fully join them. That would be the first place to call some sort of home in a long, long time.
My name is Dúathil, that means Night Shadow. I'm a Bosmer by birth, although I have never seen the Valenwood. My father was a hunter and my mother's love for alchemy made them break the Green Pact, run away from their homeland and live in the Great Forest in Cyrodiil, which is where I spent my childhood and learned from both of them. Those were happy and carefree years, until that dark day when we went to the city of Bruma to trade. I must have been about 10 or 12 years old, we were innocent and not used to the dangers of a city. I'm not ready to talk about details, but my parents were killed by thugs and I was taken by a ring of criminals. After multiple attempts to flee and equally numerous beatings, they locked me up and almost starved me until my instinct for survival was stronger than my wish for freedom. I was lucky they had noticed my agility and sneaking skills, so I was sent to steal from rich people rather than be considered useless, or worse, pretty.
During those years, I learned to keep to the shadows really well and avoided people whenever possible. I don't know how much time I actually spent there, but when I was grown and fed enough to start looking like a woman, it grew harder to remain unnoticed. The criminal leader was a Nord who hated all elves and called me a filthy little savage that no honorable man would ever touch. Since he definitely wasn't one, I kept an arrowhead in my boots at all times, coated in the strongest poison my late mother had known to make. So when the inevitable happened and he grabbed me in a dark alleyway, I fumbled for the arrowhead, rammed it into his neck, watched him turn blue and disappeared into the shadows that I was named after.
The coins I took from his purse were enough to bribe a city guard to let me climb over the wall and get away for good this time.
I chose the only way people would hesitate to follow me: North through the mountains. Trying to cross the border into Skyrim, I got caught in an ambush and was taken captive by imperial guards who thought me in league with some nationalist Nords of all things. I just wanted to be left alone by all kinds of people! They didn't care and planned to execute me along with them. Just one guard kept looking at me with doubt, and when of all the crazy coincidences a dragon (yes, a dragon! I didn't even know they existed outside of stories!) interrupted my execution and everyone started to flee in panic, he actually stopped for a moment until I got my feet under me again, led me out of this chaos, gave me some basic equipment and told me to meet up in his uncle's place in some village nearby if I wanted to.
I didn't trust him, obviously, but I made my way through the wilderness and enjoyed being a free woman in the free air for the first time in 10 years.
I hunted, gathered plants, had to kill some bandits in self defense, and when I reached the village of Riverwood that my saviour had mentioned, I crept close and observed them for a whole day, hidden in a tree.
I saw Hadvar, the imperial soldier, go in and out of a smithy multiple times, together with an older man I assumed to be his uncle, and a woman and child. The village seemed to be filled with normal people leading normal lives, cutting wood, planting crops, children and animals running around in the dirt, and no sign of soldiers. So I decided it was worth the risk and went to the blacksmith. Hadvar greeted me like an old acquaintance and his relatives actually invited me to stay for a while and called me his friend. Strange. I didn't know how to have friends. But they all talked more than enough, so I didn't need to say much myself, and later I helped the blacksmith at the forge in exchange for their hospitaliy and chopped some firewood for another villager to earn some coins. Hadvar recommended joining the imperial army against the Stormcloaks. I won't pick any sides in a conflict in a country that I know nothing about, and exchanged the imperial uniform for something less noticeable at the local trader.
Hadvar's uncle asked me to stay for dinner and recommended going to Whiterun to inform the Jarl about the dragon attack.
I don't know yet if I want to get involved in any of this, but Whiterun seems to be as good as any place to go and learn more about this region, and to find a way to get by without having to sleep in the cold forest all the time. But first I enjoyed my new freedom for a bit, hunting, fishing, and just staring at the open sky and breathing the fresh air, collecting new herbs and experimenting with them, and staying out of the sight of other people.
Finally on my way to Whiterun, I ran into some folks fighting a giant. I arrived too late to help them , but they handled it very well on their own. They called themselves the Companions, and one of them, a woman called Aela the Huntress, encouraged me to seek them out when I reach the city.
I was out of money again and couldn't go unprepared, so I fell into my old habit of sneaking into an inn, stole some treats and also picked up all books I could find, to learn as much as possible about what's going on in the world in general and this part in particular.
The walls of Whiterun were too high and too heavily guarded to sneak in, but I could convince the guards that the Jarl needed to hear about the dragon attack, and they let me in.
I decided to keep a low profile at first and observe what's going on in this place before getting further involved.
Turns out it's much harder to remain unnoticed in a city, but those folks are also more open to strangers.
So here I find myself now, eating with the Companions after training with them, ready to prove my worth and join them. Aela called me shield sister. I have never felt welcome anywhere in the last 10 years, but among this bunch of tough men and women, I feel respected, even if some of them are as suspicious of strangers as I am. I won't love them all, but I think we'll get along, and maybe I can find my place in this odd country with them. I respect them and will watch their backs, and this is their home, so I'm going to the Jarl and inform him about the dragon tomorrow.
