Bless Us As We Hunt

Mourning Doves Zenaida macroura

Speckled Racer (Drymobius margaritiferus), family Colubridae, South TX, USA

Chapter 9: A Chosen Day

Pairings: Miraak x Altmer OC, Male OC x Serana (QPR), everyone & daughter OC

Words: 6874

Summary

Lakeview Manor was never meant to be a nursery. After Miraak is resurrected to live freely on Nirn, he and Lilliandra are given one last impossible surprise: a daughter neither of them planned for, expected, wanted, or quite know how to love safely. There are no gods invited into Ophelia’s childhood. Only monsters, survivors, old wounds, and the fragile domesticity of dangerous people trying, in their own strange ways, to keep one small child whole. (Or: there are no fixes or redemptions for villains just because they now have a family.) A non-linear anthology narrative set 4E 203 and after.

Chapter Summary: After Elikar’s birthday, five-year-old Ophelia realises they have celebrated everyone’s day except Miraak’s. When she learns her father no longer remembers his birthday, she decides to find him a new kind of day to keep.

A/N: We've hit 500 hits! 😭😭 thank youuuuu

Miraak begins to think the danger has passed.

Then Ophelia looks at him. “When is yours?”

The room alters. Not by much. Not in any way a child can properly name. But Elikar stops turning the gifted stone between his fingers. Serana’s gaze flicks once toward Lilliandra.

Lilliandra becomes still, though not wounded. No, not that. Miraak knows the difference. He knows her face when grief finds a door. He knows her face when memory cuts. This isn’t quite either.

This is attention — careful, keen attention.

He feels all of it before he answers. “I do not remember.”

Ophelia blinks at him. It’s not the sort of answer she expects. He can tell by the way her face remains open, waiting for the rest of it. Waiting for him to amend himself into sense. “You forgot?”

“Yes.”

Her brow creases. “All of it?”

Miraak sets his cup down. “Yes.”

Ophelia looks troubled by this. Not frightened, but more that she’s simply confronted with a world arranged incorrectly. “But everyone has a birthday.”

“So, I have been told.”

“That means you have one.”

“That does not mean I know it.”

Ophelia glances toward Lilliandra, because to her, Lilliandra knows nearly everything. “That is your father’s question to answer,” she says gently.

[Morrowind at Night #15 | Temple | 30.05.2026]

The scanner failed me here, lol. The rain is invisible, all the colors are wrong and there is no contrast.

Anyways, now I will take a break of a week or so before resuming the series. I can feel i have improved a lot since the first one. I discovered i can blend colors and do layers kasjakajka.