Serene of Cyrodiil, her true story, chapter 1 Options

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Ok so at last I came round to do it.....posting my story that is! I must thank all of you who have encouraged me to do it (oh yes you know who you are!)

Special thanks to Treydog who has helped me with editing and also for being a sounding-board, and thus kept me writing.

I now start with the prologue of my story just to see if you think you like it and want to read more

Enjoy!

Dedication


This work is dedicated to Treydog, whose enthusiasm encouraged me to really write this story.


Prologue.

Alone at last, I close the door behind me as I enter the small room which serves as my private library. I’m proud to say that I probably have the most complete collection of books in Vvardenfell these days, though it has taken me the last seven years to get it.

As I tucked my daughter into bed a while ago, I decided that now the time had come to write down my story. Mostly for her sake, but also for me; I need to get it off my mind, in order to continue with my life and to be able to fulfill the tasks that lie before me. Then there are the numerous questions asked by the little girl lying in the next room, unaware of the fact that she’s a miracle of the Age. . Questions about why there are so few children around and why they all seem to be nearly the same age, that is, age 5 and lower. Questions about why everyone she meets looks at me, her mother, with admiration and respect. Questions about why there is a non-ending row of visitors who want to see me and so keep me from being with her, like a normal mother would be.

I know the answers to her questions, but providing those answers means I will have to tell her the whole story, the story about me, Serene of Cyrodiil, a legionnaire’s daughter of uncertain heritage, who has become one of the most powerful and famous people in Vvardenfell….

So there it is......feel free to comment, it´s a short one I know but I have to start somehow.....

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I opened my eyes, and sat up in my bed, still shivering from that strange dream. It was a dream…or was it? Sweat was running down my back and I was simply terrified despite the voice telling me not to be.

“´ad a nightmare lassie?” Sonya didn´t even look at me, she just turned around and fell asleep again. The other two neither moved nor uttered one word.

I sat with my arms around my knees and tried to figure out why Azura kept coming to me in my dreams. She wasn´t even one of my gods. Back home Ranya often told me about the Dunmeri gods and what they stood for. Azura was the goddess of dusk and dawn. What did she want from me? I felt dizzy all of a sudden and lay down again. The thought of being some saviour did not appeal to me; all I wanted now was to do my time in prison, maybe be released a little bit earlier because of good behaviour. ……..

During the next two weeks I had the opportunity so to say, to experience what an imperial prison was like. The women´s ward was situated in the ground story of the building. Therefore the barred windows were high up on the walls, just below the roof. They were rather small and did not let much of the outside light in. Walls of raw granite made the cell damp and there was a distinct smell of dirt and mold. As it was the ground level the cold oozed right up through the stone floor, making us spend most of our time in the cell on our so- called beds. They were simple pallets made of some kind of wood and, as I said before, standing on top of each other two by two. On each bed was a lumpy mattress, apparently filled with mouldy straw, which smelled awful. With that we had one blanket each, a thin, worn blanket which did not help very much at night against the raw chill.

In one of the corners there was a bucket, to serve as a toilet. I did not visit it until the end of my second day in prison; I resented the stench very badly but at the end I didn´t have any choice anymore, I had to use it!

Each morning a guard came in with a second bucket with almost clean water, cold of course, and a piece of hard greyish soap; we had to share that between us, so we took turns in who was to be the first in line to wash herself. Towels were non-existent; we used our blankets. My strong sense of hygiene made me suffer severely the first week from this inability to keep myself clean, but after that I gave up and in fact didn´t even notice the thick odour of human grime that was consistent throughout the cell.

Sonya, Leila and myself tried as well as we could to wash ourselves and keep the cell tidy; it gave us something to do and kept our thoughts busy. I admired Leila`s calm, and the fact that she was nice, friendly and even laughed rather often…..despite her death warrant she was in good mood. I was nearly constantly thinking of how she could be saved- it struck me as a crying shame that a lovely girl like Leila should be deprived of her life, for a crime she undoubtedly did NOT commit.

The food was not as bad as one could imagine, drab , but we got rather big portions. For breakfast there were kwama-eggs, beaten and fried, with some peculiar grey stew with chunks of meat in it. I didn´t ask what kind of meat it was because I thought I would prefer not knowing. At noon we got fairly the same, sometimes there was some bread to go with it, or boiled saltrice. In the evening we just got bread and cheese , in fact that was the best meal.. The overall drink was water……on Sundays we could get some comberry-juice, that was if Margoth was the warder…..Margoth was a bosmer, and had worked at the prison for ages. She was afraid of no one, and had the compassion to sometimes cheer up the miserable lives of the imprisoned women.

I got on very well with my room-mates. I told Sonya of my nordic grandmother and we found out that the families were somewhat related. But then again it was no wonder, Falcreath isn´t that big. I repressed the fact that I was not the real granddaughter of a nordic lady named Reidun of Falcreath……

As I´ve said Leila was a nice cheerful girl and very easy to be with. She ate very little and often treated us with leftovers from her plate. Sonya helped herself to it and so did Almina, but me, I just couldn´t …..my grief for the fate of Leila made me physically sick.

Almina puzzled me even then at this early stage, and considering what happened in a few days , I still can´t explain why she did what she did and why she did it at that particular moment. She hardly ever spoke with us, just sat there on her bed, glaring out into the air with a stubborn grumpy look in her broad face. Hygiene didn´t bother her at all, she never asked to be the first to wash herself. In fact I don´t remember her washing at all…

It´s strange how you get used to certain routines and find them quite endurable at a time like that. We never spoke about our final punishment, never mentioned the fact that at least two of us were supposed to be executed in a couple of weeks or months; the time-schedule of executions was not for us to know about.

On the night between Middas and Turdas the second week of my stay in the Imperial Prison I had my next encounter with my dream-God Azura…..

This time I was surrounded with a red mist, swirling around me, covering me in a strange chill, yet not unpleasant. Azura´s voice came through the mist, loud and clear this time;

“Serene, Serene of Cyrodiil, be prepared! Have no fear, I will be with you……You will hold in your hands the fate of an innocent, have confidence ……all will be revealed in time.”

Then Azura disappeared and I woke up, drenched in sweat and badly shivering. I swept the dirty blanket tight around me and just sat on my bed for a while, thinking I was slowly going insane. None of my room mates were awake so I finally lay down again and soon fell into a dreamless sleep.

The next day the memory of my strange dream was almost gone and we continued our tedious time in prison. On Loredas evening we got some overcooked crab-meat for supper together with a bottle of comberry-wine, served by Margoth, naturally….At the time, I did not understand that this “special” meal was an ill omen- a sign of death to come, although not the death that was intended…