VOKUNKIIR

PROLOGUE

Here is everything that, at the age of eight, I knew about myself.

My name was M'lina. I was short for my age, short enough for it to be an annoyance. I had an uncanny talent for removing items from people's pockets without their noticing, and I was becoming a darned good shot with a bow. I loved venison, and I hated cabbage. I had dark brown hair, red eyes, and grey skin. And I was a Dunmer.

Here is everything that, at the age of eight, I knew about my mother.

Her name was Ahkari. She had dark grey fur, very pale grey eyes, and a tail. She was the one who taught me how to remove items from pockets – as well as how to distract others while she did the same. Both her hands and her mind were quick, and both her wits and her talons were always sharp. And she was a Khajiit.

If you're noticing a slight issue here, then yes, I'd spotted it too.

I'm a smart enough woman. Nowadays, I can see I get it from my father. But I didn't really need to be bright. It doesn't take a whole load of brains to work out that Khajiit don't have Dunmer babies. Even back then, I knew that half-bloods almost always take on the mother's species. If I were truly Ahkari's daughter, then even if my father had been a Dunmer, I should have been born a Khajiit.

It wasn't, exactly, that it took me until I was eight to realise that it was unlikely that Ahkari was my actual mother. I know I was a kid, but I wasn't blind, or an idiot. I think the world 'adopted' popped into my mind rather sooner than that. But when you're dealing with the person who sang you Ta'agra lullabies when you were small enough for them to cradle in their lap, who showed you off to any customers as, 'my daughter, M'lina,' as if there were nothing in the world she was prouder of, who you'd spent your whole life calling fado… it's hard to go up to them and say, 'Look, I know you're not my real mother.'

So, there it was, for eight years, the mammoth in the tent. A huge lumbering thing that no one spoke about. And we traipsed across Skyrim together, as Khajiit (and Khajiit plus one Dunmer) caravans do, between Dawnstar and Windhelm and Winterhold. Never Riften. I overheard Dro'marash saying, once, how he missed travelling there, but when I asked him why the caravan didn't visit that city any more he gave a nervous laugh and said something about having a promise to keep. And yes, I did point out that that was hardly a satisfying answer, but he deflected very smoothly by giving me a sweetroll.

I learned a lot from them. Ahkari, Dro'marash and Qa'shando knew Skyrim well, and more importantly, they knew how to live there. All three knew how to manage coin and sway a trade in their favour, and soon, so did I. Dro'marash's honeyed words could convince someone that the Thalmor were Talos worshippers if they listened long enough, and it wasn't long before mine could too. Qa'shando, the caravan guard, knew how to handle a blade and a bow. When I was four, I was already toddling around the camp swinging a wooden sword, and before long, I progressed to a dagger. By the time I was eight, I was already getting the hang of firing an arrow. Learning both weapons seemed to come naturally to me. 'Natural talent,' Qa'shando chuckled, the first time I hit a bullseye.

'Thjiz, Qa'shando,' Ahkari snorted. 'There is no such thing. She may have inherited swift reflexes and a keen eye, but that is all.'

And that was what made me decide I had to ask. Because if I had inherited those things, who had I got them from? It could not be Ahkari, because while I happily called her my mother and loved her as one, the simple fact was that she had not given birth to me.

So I did it, in the end. Years later, I would learn that my father had passed on something else to me: an inquisitive mind. And so I went up to Ahkari one evening, after we had pitched camp and had seated ourselves around the fire, ready to begin the meal. I made sure the others could see and hear – that way, Ahkari might be less able to back out of the conversation – and drew myself up to my full, unimpressive height.

'Ahkari,' I said, 'Who are this one's parents?'

I said this one, of course, because I spoke in Ta'agra. The people around me spoke Ta'agra, so I did too – I was fluent in the common tongue, since any trader had to learn how to speak to strangers, but why should I use it around my family? Even now, after all the efforts I've made to sound like any ordinary Dunmer, I still find an edge of a Khajiit accent creeping into my voice when I'm angry. It's satisfying, actually, being able to growl your Rs and hiss your Ss. Gives you a bit of a threatening factor.

And Ahkari looked threatened, I can tell you that. Threatened and sad.

'Why, M'lina,' she said, her voice calm, but her eyes anything but. 'This one is your mother. We are your family. What else is there to know?'

I placed my hands on my hips. 'Fado, this one has listened to the customers talking and she has read books, and she knows that Khajiit do not have Dunmer babies.'

Ahkari hesitated, and I could see a new excuse, another way to avoid the question, springing to her lips. But Qa'shando spoke before she could utter it.

'Tell her, Ahkari. She has the right to know.'

Dro'marash let out a laugh. 'And you know she will keep nagging all of us about it unless she is told.'

I looked at Ahkari, and the pain on that familiar furred face was so clear it made a twinge of guilt steal through me. She had raised me, blood relation or not. She was my mother, no matter who had given birth to me. And I was making her feel like that was unimportant.

'You are M'lina's mother,' I told her. 'But this one still wants to know…'

'She wants to know who she is,' Qa'shando said firmly. 'And she must.'

Ahkari sighed and tapped the log she was seated on, indicating for me to come and sit beside her. I did so, and she wrapped one arm around my shoulders.

'Dear M'lina,' she murmured, as I huddled close to the warmth of her body. 'Know that while I do not share your blood, I have always cared for you as if you were my own. You are as a daughter to me. I told myself I did not tell you what I knew of your past because you were too young to understand, but now… now I think it was because I did not want you to think of anybody but me as your mother.'

'I won't,' I told her, and then, it was the truth. I didn't know then what I know now.

She held me a little tighter, closed her eyes for a moment, and started to speak, her voice low and her expression distant. 'Eight years ago, on a night that was bitter even for the Pale in midwinter, the three of us made our camp in the wilderness. Night was drawing in, and we were far from any settlements. Wolves were howling. It was the last night on which we would expect to see any living soul happen upon us. But one did.'

I glanced at Dro'marash and Qa'shando, and saw that they were both nodding, their faces lined with thought. I knew that whatever memory was replaying in Ahkari's mind was in theirs as well.

'She came out of nowhere, like a ghost from the snow. A Dunmer woman, gaunt and thin, her clothes torn and her eyes… haunted. And she was carrying you, M'lina, holding you in her arms, wrapped in furs to protect you from the cold.'

Dro'marash was nodding. 'She must have seen our fire. She stood there, staring, and all she said was, 'Please, help us.''

I listened, eyes wide. So this was my mother, this stranger. But how had I ended up alone with the caravan?

'We did what we could for her, of course,' Ahkari continued. 'It wasn't a night to leave anyone in the blizzard without a friend, stranger or no, especially a young mother with a child who could not be more than a few weeks old. She was starved, I could see that, but the first thing she did was to take you closer to the fire and make sure you were warm. When you cried, she calmed you, and only when you slept did she even look at the food we offered her.'

'And when she did, she ate like a wolf that hadn't been fed in a month,' Qa'shando added.

'So who was she?' I demanded, tugging at Ahkari's sleeve.

'She would not say,' my foster mother replied, giving a small shake of her head. 'We asked her name and she would not give it. We asked where she was going and if she would care for company, but she would neither tell us nor accept our offer. All she asked was that we gave her and her child a safe haven for the night. And so we gave her that. We gave it to you both.'

She clasped her hands together, watched the dancing of the flames in the campfire for a few seconds, then carried on. 'When morning came, she spoke to us. She said… she could not care for her daughter as she should. There were people hunting her, she told us, and she had to live alone in the wilderness. 'If they catch me,' she said, 'they will kill me, and even if they don't kill my daughter, there'll be no one left for her. And even if they never find me, I can't give her any kind of life. I can barely even keep her alive. She deserves more.''

I was already beginning to work out what had happened next, so I was unsurprised when Ahkari's next words were, 'She asked us to take you with us, to care for you, to keep you safe. And we found we could not refuse. She was so frightened, and you were so small. We said we would take you in and try our best to raise you well. 'Apart from that, I have only three requests,' your mother told us. 'First, never take her near Riften. Second, make sure she knows I love her and that I never wanted to leave her – that it's because I love her that I have to leave her. And third, call her M'lina. Her name is M'lina.'

'You're not saying it right, Ahkari, you never did.' Qa'shando was shaking his head. 'It was some Dunmer name, this one does not think he can remember what it was. But M'lina is what we called you, since it was easiest. Besides, you are one of us, no? A Khajiit in thought and mind, if not in body. You should bear a Khajiit name.'

All my life, I had founds myself agreeing with my three companions, my family. I had never doubted them. But suddenly, I found I did. I did not agree with Qa'shando. The name that he and Ahkari and Dro'marash could not pronounce was the name that my mother had given me. It was my true name. Not a Khajiit name, but a Dunmer name.

And for the first time in my life, I felt like a Dunmer. I looked at these three beloved, furry faces and realised that though they were my family, I was not one of them. I was an elf. They were beastfolk. No matter how much we cared for each other, the strange woman who had given me to them was my kin, and they were not.

I breathed in deeply, and tried to wrap my bemused eight-year-old mind around the concept.

'What did she look like?' I asked.

'Like you,' Ahkari said. 'This one can tell, though you are young and my memories of her are dim, that your face shall be like hers. Her skin was the same shade of grey, and you are lightly-built, as she was. She had your brown hair, though yours is darker. Your eyes, though…' Her voice trailed off.

'This one's eyes?' I pressed her.

'Are not how hers were,' Dro'marash finished. 'Her eyes were… not like those of any other Dunmer that Dro'marash has seen.'

I really don't like to be given vague answers. 'How?'

'Their colour,' Qa'shando said. 'They were not red. They were… purple.'

'Indigo,' Ahkari said, and when Qa'shando shot her a bemused look, shrugged and added, 'This one has sold dyed cloths since she was as tall as M'lina. She has learned to be very specific on the naming of colours. That shade of dark bluish-purple is indigo.'

Dro'marash rolled his eyes and muttered something about pedantry.

'That's not normal, is it?' I asked, ignoring him. 'Dunmer – they have red eyes.' I stopped, thought about what I'd said, and corrected myself. 'We have red eyes.'

I received nothing but a series of shrugs in response.

'That is all we can tell you, M'lina,' Dro'marash said quietly. 'The next morning, your mother said farewell to you, and left. We could see that it broke her heart to leave, but leave she did. Never again have we seen her in eight years, though we have always kept to her requests. It is a lucrative trading route, yet still, we do not go near Riften. We call you by the name she gave – or as near to it as we can. As for her second request… well, you know now what she wished for you to know.'

I bit my lip. Her second request was that I be told that she loved me. Somewhere out in the endless wilderness, I had another mother, who loved me, who had been forced to leave me behind, but who had not wanted to.

'Is there nothing else you can remember?' I flicked my gaze between the three of them. 'Was there anything she said, or…?'

'Nothing that gave us any clue to who she was,' Qa'shanda replied. 'Though… she wore dark leathers. Like –'

'Enough, Qa'shando,' Ahkari said sharply. 'If M'lina wishes to know of her other mother, give her truths, not ruminations.'

Qa'shando's response was to shrug and obey. He always was the kind of man who avoided conflict, who did what others asked of him without argument. I have to wonder, sometimes, how different things might have been, had he been able to finish that sentence. But things were not different. They happened as they did. Things have a habit of doing that.

We didn't talk about my mother any more that night, nor any night afterwards, because I could see that it made Ahkari uncomfortable, and I didn't want to hurt her. She had raised me, and I loved her. But though I might not have spoken of it, but I didn't forget what I had learned. I ran it through my head at moments when my mind was idle, like a mantra.

And so here is everything that, at the age of eight, I knew about my true mother. It was all I would know about her for far, far too long.

She was a Dunmer. She had worn dark leather armour, which had reminded Qa'shando of something Ahkari had not let him speak about. Ahkari thought I would grow up to look very like her, though my hair was darker brown than hers, and her eyes had been a colour that no normal Dunmer's eyes were. She had enemies who would have killed her – and possibly me, too – if they found her. She had loved me. She had given me a name that sounded something like M'lina, but I didn't have the slightest clue what it was. And the final thing I knew about her was that I was determined to find her.

My name, if it wasn't obvious already, is not M'lina. It wasn't for twelve years after that night that I would begin going by my true name, and I didn't even know for certain that it was my true name for five years after that. But it was always there. It was always the name my mother whispered to the sound of the wind and my crying, the night I was born, the first time she held me in her arms and cried over me.

I'm no great writer, and whatever people are saying about me nowadays, I'm not a hero of the kind who deserves to have their tale told. I've done a bit of saving people, sure, but I've also done far more stealing from people. And honestly, I'm not writing this for the people hundreds of years in the future who want to know who I was. I'm writing this for you, Leonardo, so that when you're old enough to start asking questions about the crazy, chaotic mess that's our family, I can just shove this book into your hands and leave you to it. Sorry to disappoint, but this isn't a story about the makings of some noble warrior. It's just my story. It's the answers I wish I could have been told by Ahkari that night, the answers I went too long without. Answers I won't make you wait for when you start to wonder why our family is as it is.

My name is Melyna. This is the story of how I learned that. And it's the story of what happened because I learned it.

Hello there, and thanks for reading this far, I hope you stay for more! This is one of several short-ish stories I'm writing about my Dragonborns; it'll probably be about six or seven chapters long (if it keeps to my plan, which my stories rarely do.) The subsequent chapters will be a fair bit longer than this introduction. I doubt anyone will have much trouble working out who Melyna's parents are - especially those who know who my favourite characters in Skyrim are. But she herself has a great deal of learning to do, and I'm looking forward to writing it. Updates will hopefully come weekly.

For anyone who was wondering, Qa'shando is my own character, not one from the games; I had a feeling that the formation of the Khajiit caravan would change slightly over the sixteen years between when this introduction is set, and the beginning of the game, hence Qa'shando's presence and Zaynabi's absence. know the Qa prefix is rare for Khajiit, but... I liked the name too much. I included a little bit of Ta'agra in this chapter; fado is the word for 'mother,' and thjiz means, 'foolish.'As for the story's title, it's Draconic - it means, 'Shadowchild.' The reason why may be clear already - and if not, it will be by the end of the story.

Thank you for reading!