Child of the Dragonborn (for Liaras)

[justmedk]

14-year old Emily Carlson was on her way home from school on a Friday afternoon. She sighed as she turned a corner to head into her street. It had been a long week at school, and she just wanted to get back home and not have to deal with annoying "popular girls" looking down at her when she as much as breathed.
It was starting to get on her nerves, to be honest, the way that girls like Brittany, Michelle and Rachel could prance around and do whatever they wanted to everyone else, and everyone were all too intimidated to stop them.


Everyone...including Emily herself. And the teachers were of no use. Partly because they normally weren't around for the abuse, but Emily also had a sneaking suspicion that even if they had been, they wouldn't really have cared all that much. The teachers never did seem to care about anything but drinking coffee and gossipping about whatever irrelevant stuff they were gossipping about.

It was a warm day, so Emily was dressed in normal, everyday clothes: A semi-long red skirt that covered her knees, and a loose-fitting short-sleeved blouse. That was more than enough for what she had counted on dealing with.


It was, however, nowhere NEAR enough to deal with what she got.


As she turned the corner, there was a blur for a moment, and she blinked, almost as if she'd gotten something in her eyes.
When she opened them again, though, she was not prepared for what awaited her, and she stared blankly ahead of her.

"Wh...what is this place? What happened??", she asked everyone and no one in particular. She wasn't alone - she seemed to be in the streets of a city, but it wasn't the same city she'd just been in. This looked medieval somehow. Or....almost..


No....no, that can't be! That's not possible!

She took a couple of steps forwards, at the moment unaware of how she was being watched and studied, looking very strange in her odd clothes. She looked around and saw signs that she could read, and knew very well. This was Solitude.....in Skyrim.


"Oh hell no!", she called out in disbelief. "This isn't happening! I'm....I'm dreaming! That's it! I....This ISN'T HAPPENING!"

Solitude was one of the most successful cities in Skyrim, and it has only continued to grow as such since the successful defeat of the Stormcloak heretics, quelled by none other than Elisif the Fair, who is the reigning Jarl of Solitude and soon to be High Queen of Skyrim. The end of the civil war (ended as of four months ago) had brought in partners both new and old, and reforms were well underway. Merchants now came in and out of the city with new, exotic goods, some of which even came from off the continent of Tamriel.

The city was livelier than it had been in a long time, and that liveliness could only continue to grow, which is why although many eyes--all with their own message, whether it be weary, intrigued, or something else--found the distinctly foreign young girl walking down the bustling streets, no one seemed too bothered. For those that saw her, many assumptions came to mind, the leading contender being that she was foreign loyalty.

What else could she be considered with features so soft, so untouched by the horrors and rough lifestyle that came with, or clothes so ill-prepared to handle the weather, much less the countless threats of both man and beast that still haunted the many roads no matter how much gold the many Jarls poured into protecting their provinces.

"Hey, you there!" A tall Imperial soldier marched toward the noble-looking girl. His eyes were worn, hard, and suspicious. "You're coming with me; you have a lot of questions to answer." Unknown to this girl, but this Imperial soldier was one of the guardsman that let people into the city, and it was his duty to remember every face that passed him. And he didn't remember letting her (or anyone of her features) in. So he grabbed the young girl by the elbow and forced her down a path until they had reached one of the tallest buildings in the nearby vicinity. There were many soldiers outside of it and at least four next to the door--this was the jail, and that became clear upon him forcing the girl into the lobby room, as there was an open door that, if looked into, gave a glimpse of a line of steel cells.

"Oh, who is this?" asked a female soldier.

"A sneak-in," answered the Imperial that still had his hand wrapped securely around the elbow of the girl. "And she had better a good answer as to why she sneaked in, or she'll be in one of these cells until General Tullius has time for her." Turning to the girl, he pointed at one of the tables. "Sit there. It's time for answers."

[justmedk]

Emily was still trying to make sense of everything, looking around her with confusion on her face, when she heard a voice and her head snapped in the direction it had come from.


Her eyes widened as she saw the Imperial soldier in front of her, and she realized then and there that no matter how impossible it was, it was also true: She had somehow found herself inside Skyrim! She had no idea how that oculd have come about, but come about it had, and she now had to make the best of it.

And since magic is real here, she thought, perhaps there are even someone who can send me back home?


For the moment, though, she focused on the soldier in front of her. Her big blue eyes staring at him with part confusion and part fear, as she attempted to open her mouth to answer him:

"I...I...", she began, but apparently the soldier ran out of patience as he grabbed her. Emily gasped loudly as she was being force-marched down a path that ended up at a place she knew very well. She'd been there often, in fact, just not in person. As she slumped down at the table, her long blonde hair - which had been almost hanging behind her as the soldier had marched here in - fell back down again, and she looked around at the assembled people - soldiers - who looked at her with a look that she didn't have to be a soldier herself to recognize: They had no more of an idea how she got here than she did, and they were considerably less tolerant of this kind of new experience than she was.


"I....I don't know how I got here", the small 14-year old said. Her baby fat that still hadn't completely vanished made her seem younger than she was, but mostly that was done by the fact that she was very much in a vulnerable position that she genuinely had had nothing to do with.


"I...I was walking home from school...and....and suddenly I'm in the middle of the street", she went on, managing only barely to stifle a laugh at the absurd thought that popped into her head:

I fast-travelled, didn't I?

She looked around at the assembled soldiers, the distress and confusion on her face and in her body language being genuine.

"I...I just wanna go home", she said. "I...I don't belong here. Please send me home!", she finished, not realizing at the moment that IF there was a way for her to go home, these soldiers definitely wouldn't know it.

The Imperial soldier listened-more aptly, he heard what was said.

After all, only attentive ears and an equally attentive mind could be considered listening. Hearing, however, any functional ears could do that. So he waited and waited as the small girl (he would say Nord if only because of the blonde hair, but no Nord would be that tiny, sheltered, and so forward with their feelings of weakness).

Even though he wasn’t listening per say, his mind did work with the few words that managed to stick with him. He crossed his arms, a thin smile stretched across his face as he considered her story. School…was she referring to the Bards College? He didn’t think they’d accept someone so young, but if she was from a rich family like her appearance suggested, then it might be possible that her family paid a pretty piece of gold to disregard age (and talent) as nothing more than trivialities.

“Ah, you want to go home, do you?” repeated the soldier, distantly, eyeing her with distaste. It was supposed to be the end of his shift, but instead he was stuck dealing with her. “If you don’t start making sense, one of those cells will be your home,” he said, callously. Because it would be so much simpler to throw her in a cell and be done with her. Only the possibility of her being a noble girl and General Tullius coming at him with an execution order for offending a potential trade partner held him at bay.

“Let’s go over this again,” he said, slamming one hand on the table and leaning forward. “You were in the middle of the streets of Solitude, a place where you ought not to be! I remember every face that passes me when I work the gate, and your face wasn’t one of them. “Now, you better—” The female Imperial soldier rested a hand on his shoulder, and he stopped. “What do you want?”

“You’re going to scare the poor girl,” said the other soldier. She had her own daughter, barely a year old, and so her maternal instincts were fresh.

“You try your luck, then,” he grumbled, taking a step back.

“Okay, let’s start over. What’s your name?” asked the soldier before continuing. “And you mentioned a school and your home? Where is your home?” It certainly wasn’t Solitude; that much she agreed on.

[justmedk]

Emily was trying to remain calm, but the confusion of it all was starting to get to her. She didn't know how to make sense of anything anymore. Skyrim was a game. It was not real. And yet, here she was.
An idea suddenly appeared in her mind as the guardsman spoke to her, and she pinched her arm hard, wincing a bit in pain, and staring at her arm as if she couldn't believe that she was not yet awake.

It was the man's fist slamming against the table that snapped her back to reality as she jumped in her seat in shock. The fact that her one rational explanation for this was out the window, combined with the obvious threats of a fate that seemed far worse than death, was enough to finally overcome the usually rational and collected teenager's defenses. She started to cry, hiding her face in her hands, and sobbing loudly in confusion and fear - so much so that she didn't at first catch the woman's question. She sensed, however, that this woman was a little bit more "civilized", and she forced herself to regain control of herself and ask in a broken voice to have the question repeated.

"I....I'm E...Emily", she sniffled. "Emily Carlson. I'm fr...from a city called New York", she began, before shaking her head and sniffling again, knowing that of course New York would mean nothing to these people.

She looked at the woman, confusion, desperation and fear all over her face. But not deception.


"I...I don't KNOW what I can tell you", she said, her voice close to breaking again, "but I'm not...like...a spy or whatever! I swear!", she almost yelled. "I don't know what's happened to me.....", she started crying again.

The Imperial woman smiled encouragingly as the frightened noble girl found her voice. "It's lovely to meet you, Emily," she said at hearing her name. "My name is Arice." Her patience--and geography--was very quickly tested, and her eyes narrowed as her mind searched for the name of the city she hailed from. It was a strange name that would have stood out to her (given that it was made of two words and not one), but nothing from her training (which had been a rush-job given the war) or from her daily conversations with visitors from lands domestic or foreign had ever presented her with a name of a city quite like that. Which, as loathe as she was to admit it, gave her colleague's suspicions more weight.

"Not a spy are you," parroted the soldier in question, and the woman admitted to herself that the girl even mentioning the word only dug herself a deeper hole. "You're clearly not a citizen of the Empire, however, given your clothes and your speech and your so called home, though. And no one has seen you wandering around before, either. If that doesn't point to you being up to no good, what does?"

Another good point.

But--"Should we hand her over to the General, then?"

"The General? He'd kill us if we bothered him over an urchin like this."

"But if she is a spy or the daughter of a foreign noble, we'll be the ones punished for negligence," she pointed out.

The Imperial crossed his arms and thought about the dilemma for a moment. "Well, if tossing her into a cell to rot has too much risk, and we can't let her go or just show her to the General, there's always him."

"No."

"What?! He's used to--"

"No. He hates being bothered, and I have a kid that needs an alive mother, thank you very much. So unless you want to be the one to bring him a kid that might either be a spy or the key to a new inter-continental trade deal, we need to come up with something else. "

"Cow-..." The insult died on his lips as he played the scene in his head. Sure, he could drag this girl by the wrist to the Gold Tower (which had been built post-war specifically to house this man, although more for everyone else's safety and peace of mind than anything else), but then he couldn't get drinks tonight because he'd be dead. "General Tullius seems safer. That's only our careers, after all."

The Imperial woman paused, her protest also dying. "...Okay. Come on, Emily, you're about to face an important man that will help you get home," she continued, her face darkening. "Only if you're telling the truth. Otherwise you'll be seeing our faces for a really long time, and not in a good way."

The man grabbed the girl by the elbow again, and the two soldiers began escorting her to the General's headquarters, which was the building immediately adjacent to the prisons.

[justmedk]

Emily shook her head eagerly as the rhetorical question about whether or not she was a spy was raised.

"N..no, sir", she said frightened. "I...I swear. I...I don't know how I got here.....and...and I just wanna get home", she continued, not hearing the conversation between the soldiers.
Until they adressed her again, that was. That made her pay very close attention. Given where she was, and how these people were dressed, she knew the game well enough to know that the man they were talking about bringing her to was more than likely General Tullius. She didn't mind that too much - that meant that Legate Rikke wasn't far behind either, and she'd always struck her as a reasonable person.


Not that anything about this is reasonable at all!, her mind insisted, as she was almost dragged from the cells to General Tullius' headquarters.
She tried clenching her eyes shut and opening them again, trying to wake herself up, but nothing happened.

When they arrived and waited for the General, Emily again tried to wake herself up as she looked around her. She knew this place well. Well enough, that was, as if it was the back of her hand. But, again: Actually being here, and not having a clue as to how she got here or how to get home, was a very different experience from playing it