#justbosmerthings

The tree

Sometimes Dayla wonders what it would be like if, against all odds, she returned to Valenwood. Despite everything that happened both back there and here in Skyrim. Sometimes she closes her eyes and inhales the resinous smell she has come to love in Skyrim’s forests, so different from the ones she has grown up in. Sometimes, in the the flickering darkness behind her closed eyelids, she can feel painful memories approaching, and clenches her firsts firmly so the pain drives those shadows away. I could never go back to Silvenar, Dayla thinks. My clan, my family, I have no right to return to them, and they would never take me back ... And if they would? she wonders. If they were to forgive the past, and welcome her back despite having been disowned ... How could they ever accept that she’s living with a former Thalmor now?  They could not, could they? We’ve always been rebels. Our resistance against the Thalmor is what always has defined us. That fight is still so engrained in her identity, and yet so distant. Another life, Dayla thinks, another world. A past she can’t ever go back to. Sometimes, however, Dayla wonders what it would be like. Her thoughts start out comparing Skyrim’s forests to Valenwood, imagining living somewhere in her homelands but far away from her clan and family. But then, eventually, she asks herself what Ancano would say, if she was to show him the green soul of Tamriel’s garden, stepping back into the shadows the Thalmor’s rule is casting over the land. It’s Dominion territory, she recalls, and not exactly a place where an Altmer and a Bosmer, let alone a Thalmor and a rebel can easily live together. At this point, she always realizes she would have to choose, between her past and her future, between her loyalty and her love, between her family and Ancano, and she knows she’ll never even try to go back.

Please let them find Ancano. Help me come up with a plan to free him. Once we know where he’s being held, every step I take towards that place will endanger him further. Show me a way, Baan Dar. Let me save the man I love.” next      previous          first

For once, Dayla is lucky: nobody in the tavern seems to recognise her. As the bard starts to sing The Dragonborn Comes, nobody looks at Dayla, and she lets out a silent sigh of relief. For one moment, she’s nothing more than a simple Bosmer girl roaming Skyrim, quiet and inconspicuous, one more to listen to the bard’s song. Yet she feels the dragon souls swirling inside her. Strange, wild souls, but now a part of her. Slaying dragons, saving the world, being called a hero ... I never asked for any of these. Still, this is her path.

Dayla stares at the map, silently counting the tiny flags, the red and the blue ones. “It’s just not my war,” she whispers. “I’m not even from here.” “Yet they want you to choose a side,” Ancano dryly replies, “and eventually you will have to.” “And you?”

“Clearly, you are exaggerating. We should move on. It certainly is not that cold,” Ancano snarls. “One moment. My fingers are all frozen.” Dayla holds her hands out towards the fire, knowing Ancano looks down at her disapprovingly. “It hardly ever snows in Valenwood,” she says.”Does it snow in Alinor?” He remains silent. “Ancano?” “Are you quite sure we must be speaking?” he snaps. She looks up. “Is it because you can’t go back?” “Just warm your hands, will you?”

- “The power to unmake the world at my fingertips, and you think -” - “Leave it be, Ancano. This can’t be what you want.” - “...” - “Come.”

Dayla apparently has some strange sleeping habits. Maybe a Bosmer thing.