VIII - The Thalmor Embassy

A chilly afternoon several days later found Merill perched on a stone along the Karth River, holding her bow in her lap and staring up at the great cliff on which Solitude was built. She stared along its stone walls, absentmindedly whittling her way down the arms of her bow with her skinning dagger. It was too big and bulky to carve properly and she was nowhere near as skilled as Brelin had been, but the motions gave her comfort. For her thirteenth birthday he had given her a beautiful, pale-wooded longbow, its arms crisscrossed with carvings of lilies and vines that entwined one another. She felt a pang as she remembered that bow, stuck in the mud as she scrambled away from their burning cabin. Long gone by now, she figured.

VII - Delphine

Riverwood was a quiet, rainy village, but Merill drew her hood low over her face as she entered, not keen to have people remembering her face. She didn’t like being cornered, and she had every intent to make this friend well aware of that. The afternoon was overcast and thunder boomed in the clouds overhead as she made her way through the muddy streets of the dreary logging town. The road was quiet, occupied only by a few chickens, a dirt-smeared wolfhound that followed her about, and a few villagers watching the storm from the cover of their porches. Merill studied each one of their faces from beneath her hood, wondering which one had been spying on her all these weeks.