"Take her, please! I only wish to raise one child in these treacherous ways." An Altmer woman drenched in sweat and tears pleads her close friend.
"Galathil, take her! You're her only hope." The woman cries out again. She holds a crying child wrapped in several layers of black cloth that used to be a Thalmor hood. Another child, the first twin, lays in a proper cradle with soft blankets and proper clothing.
"You look at me now!" The new mother grows impatient with her dumbfounded friend. "You will take this child and you will go to Valenwood. Take her away from the Thalmor, away from Skyrim! Never let her know. She's yours now." The woman places the infant in Galathil's arms.
"Lilé, I can't..." Galathil says softly, but she holds the baby tight in her arms.
"Her name is Írwen, remember that." The woman cracks a pained smile that soon turns into a look of panic. "Go! Go now! They are coming! They can't know there were two." The woman shoos Galathil away, and lays back into the pillows that prop her up on her bed. She watches as her child is taken by her best friend. She listens to her run. Down the stairs. Through the hallway. The door opens and a sob escapes her mouth as she listens to the sound of her best friend and child disappear forever.
~
Elenwen emerges through the door of the nursery only minutes after Galathil had escaped with Írwen. Lilé, the woman who now has only one child, has that child cradled in her arms. She holds the child closer when the leader of the Thalmor Embassy of Skyrim enters the room.
"Lilé, my friend. What joyous news I have heard! You've welcomed new life to the Aldmeri Dominion. May I see her?" Elenwen smiles, but her yellow eyes strike Lilé's face like a hawk looking upon its prey. Lilé reluctantly passes the child to Elenwen.
"What have you named her? Or has it yet to be decided?" Elenwen asks.
"Rel. Her name... her name is Rel." Lilé mutters, mildly annoyed at Elenwen's inquisitiveness.
"Her eyes are blue! How unusual for an Altmer child. Where is her father? Who is he, more importantly?" Elenwen asks, hinting at the Thalmor's disapproval of half-blooded children.
"He was killed. At Northwatch, when there was an attack he saved most of the soldiers stationed there. I... I watched..." She stops there, choosing not finish the sentence as the images flash in her. The blood, the scream. The scream. The laughter of the Nord as he slices into the skin of the father of her children.
She shakes her head. Elenwen looks slightly sympathetic as she returns the child to her mother.
"I must be going now. Would you like me to send someone to watch over you?" Elenwen offers. Lilé shakes her head as she gently places the yawning Rel into her crib.
Elenwen leaves the small wooden cottage. Lilé sighs in relief as she watches the Thalmor leader trudge through the Skyrim snow to her carriage. Lilé expected that she would stay at this small house for a while. They had sent her here when they had found out she was with child. A manor outside of snowy Morthal. She thought it was a dark place, swarming with vampires and necromancers.
Lilé returns to her child in her cradle, and strokes her soft face.
"We'll escape from these monsters. I promise you, my little Rel. I won't do to you what my mother did to me." She remembers how her mother had forced her to take part in the Great War. Urging her to fight and saying that she 'owed it to the Dominion.'
The two moons shone in the sky, bright and beautiful. Lilé admired them as she's crawls into bed, now that Rel had fallen asleep. Her mind wanders to Galathil, who had Írwen. Then to Eriador, the father of Rel and Írwen and her first and only love.
That night she smiled as she slept. As she was dreaming about a perfect family. Rel and Írwen playing with wooden swords in the sunny plains of Whiterun while she and Eriador ate berries and watched the children play while sitting in the grass. A laugh, a kiss, a tender touch. But it was all a dream. And dreams never come true. Not in Skyrim.
