Run Away

Everypony had already gone to bed, the frailest of foals shifting under their covers in restless sleep.

Most were completely covered from the cold wind that blew through the small holes in between the wood walls. It was supposed to be our ventilation, or so said Granny Smith.

She was a frail old mare, broken by the rough city gates and darkened by the frozen wind of Skyrim. She was a pale green, with a tightly knitted white bun and some thin sticks for legs.

This was the day. While everypony else slept, I was going to end it.

End it all.

I had managed to pickpocket a small iron knife from a passing nord in the streets on the way home, which I had been secretly sharpening throughout the rest of the day- of which was FILLED with chores.

Granny Smith was a tuff and strict one, and everyday she had us all clean the orphanage until it was spotless. Now, I would actually be okay with that, if she didn't make us keep cleaning after the fifth time of going over and dusting the place til it shined.

The orphanage was called Honorhall, and Granny Smith was often known as 'Granny the kind'.

Kind?

Bah, she wasn't anything of the sort. Her frail posture and kind words around strangers may have given her that title, but she didn't live up to it. We children call her 'Granny the deadra', or demon in other words, when she's out of earshot.

Once though, a child got caught saying that name around her, and he got the worst beating one could imagine.

His name was Aventus, a small black colt with icy blue eyes that were pained and dull from all his suffering.

That's how everypony's eyes were.

Dull and pained.

Any pony who wasn't a Nord got the worst treatment, and the worst eyes.

There were a few Imperials, and one Altmer.

Ironically, I got the worst of it.

Being part cat and all, you aren't necessarily the 'liked' one of the bunch.

I have dark gray fur, ruffled with charcoal colored stripes, unlike the normal sandy tan or tabby orange colors. I wasn't born directly in Elswyer, the home land for Khajiit. It's a harsh desert filled with bandits and monsters of all shapes and sizes.

No, I wasn't born there.

I was born on the border to the Black Marsh, the home of the Argonian race. It's a swampy place, about as dark as the night itself. The only sand there is blackened, and the trees are tall shadowy spruces.

The ponies there, lizard-like creatures with scales and long stiff tails, were also either brown like the mud or black like the sand, with the exception of green or gray.

I was born with the phenotypes of my parents, tan striped fur the color of sand. But as I grew up, I adapted to the environment.

Here's how adaption of Khajiit go-

At about the age of three, whatever color you are, your eyes and ears, they stay the same from then on. So here I was, a black little cat pony with two fierce yellow eyes.

I was told they used to be deep blue, like the oceans you hear about in story tales, but they soon became bright yellow like a hunter's, and small thin black slits.

And now, I sat at the foot of my bed, with a sharpened iron knife at my neck, those same emotionless slits glittering with the pain of a hunted deer.

"It'll all end soon" I whispered reassuringly.

It didn't help any.

Adventus, the colt I'd spoke of earlier, had run away. He had been my only friend at Honorhall.

I mean, considering everypony else teases and bullies me.

Now, with my only friend gone, I was hopeless.

My parents gave me up when I was three, no one wanted a charcoal, thief-perfect cat child, and the guards often pursued me if they saw the slightest change of attire.

There was no hope.

There was no faith.

I pulled the knife closer to my neck, until it brushed against my tattered fur.

I planned on making this long and painful.

I was about to pull the knife through my skin, too.

That is, until something caught my eye, a tiny white light that glinted off of the table beside me.

It was a faint light, shone from the corner of the broken wood, which was parted slightly from termites.

The light was coming from inside the table, it seemed, faintly glowing from what moonlight could reach it through a small broken window in the ceiling.

I put the knife down, temporarily, only to see what had interrupted my supposedly dramatic death.

I put one hoof one the top edge of the table, and another on the bottom, and began pulling, though more lightly to make sure nopony would wake up.

Before I continue, I would like to note that I have a horn; I'm a unicorn Khajiit.

But, I've never been properly taught magic, and the only actual school for unicorns in Skyrim is the College of Winterhold.

I live on the other side of the country.

So, without ever being taught, I've only been able to sneak in the time to learn to cast weak flames and a small healing spell. And that's not much, mind you.

I pulled apart the wood, which parted like wet paper, to find the item that had glinted in the moonlight.

It was just some ordinary silver necklace.

I pulled out the dusty rusted piece of jewelry.

Turning it over, I found the word 'dovakiin' on it, and a tiny iron button on the thin side of the circular item.

I pressed it, and it clicked softly. The front side slowly opened up to reveal a small picture inside.

And a note.

The picture was of two Khajiit ponies, each smiling contently with a small baby in their arms.

What I presumed to be the mother had a long brown mane with blue and teal stripes, and a tan and red dotted face like a doe.

The father was a deep blue, and had white spots on his face and stripes on his neck. He had a gray and blue mane.

The two babies were vastly different.

The one on the left, held by the mother, was brown and black, with dots and jaguar patterns all over it's face- along with a large brown splotch over it's right eye, which was a sea green, much like her Father.

The one on the left was... Tan, with darker stripes all over the body and face, with deep blue eyes out of a fairy tale.

There was one black birth mark on the back, which was a circle, marked by an eye like dot in the middle and two small lines on the sides of the outer ring.

I had the same birth mark...

I quickly closed the necklace, which again echoed a soft click.

Was that me?

Who were the others?

My parents?

My sister?

My family?

I sat back down on my stiff hay bed.

What I had just saw... If that was my family... It seemed impossible.

They all seemed so happy to be together.

I remembered the small square of old parchment within the jewelry.

Sighing, I clicked it open again and dropped the note onto my hoof. I closed the container.

The note wasn't hard to unravel, it seemed to have been preserved by the necklace enough from the cold, damp environment.

Once it was fully open, I began to read the delicately written words on the paper.

'I don't want to leave Elsweyr. It's a wonderful place, harsh sun and all. Our children love the sand, and they've gotten great at hunting here.

But with M'srandere's death, we may have to go.

The trading caravan can't travel at this rate, and we can no longer fund it if we have no income from their sales.

It's a shame, really. We were just now establishing a life for our family, and now our efforts may have just been wasted. Skooma seems like our only choice now if we stay.

Unless I can find a Sleeping tree plant somewhere...

I need to stop thinking like that.

I just hope we can stay. Our family's doing wonderfully at the moment.

Chi'la, our eldest daughter, seems to be a great negotiator and blacksmith. She most definitely carries after her father.

Our youngest daughter is a skilled hunter, and loves her father's hunting bow. She seems to be an aspiring mage, too. She won't ever put down my spell book at dinner.

She's quite sneaky though.

She managed to sneak into my chest and put on my old steel armor and pretend to be protecting a caravan. An old job of mine I had took up before switching to income and funding.

I just hope we can all stay here.

But if we can't, at least stay together... Hopefully.

                                                                                                                                                    Journal entry 11, Fredas, Second Seed

I read it at least three times, squinting in the darkness to make sure I had read it correctly.

That foal had my exact birth mark, and if this note was real...

I shook my head.

Surely my parents hadn't wanted me.

Surely I wasn't being lied to!

I took in a deep breath to calm myself. This note held so much unexplainable information.

What if this was another family?

Perhaps it was just another child who had hid this here so that Granny Smith didn't smelt it for spoons?

I glanced back at the knife.

This note changed everything.

I reached for the knife, but stopped short. I couldn't do it.

Not yet.

I was greatly intrigued by the note.

If this was real, I had a sister...

And I knew magic. How could I forget magic?

It would explain my interest in it though.

As the night went on, I sat on the edge of my bed in deep thought, as if at any moment I would flee and escape reality.

It was troubling, the words printed on that parchment.

It kept me awake, kept me thinking.

But I had to know.

I needed to know if it was my family. I needed to know if I still mattered.