"My father's a fisherman, and during the warmer months I'd join him on his fishing boat, skipping stones into the water as he reeled in fish after fish. Sometimes he let the fish go, and they gratefully swam back to the sea. It was windy, always windy, the way I remember it, and the cold would burrow right through my thin clothing and settle in the hollows of my bones.

We never said much.

Sometimes it began to rain, and we let the water wash over us, slip down our spines, and then we'd come home, chilly, cold, soaked to the bone. My mother'd be inside, usually cooking something, and she'd ask us how it went. My father would smile and take off his coat, hang it up by the door and wipe his feet on the rug. Water droplets clung to my garments, the worn belted tunic I always wore when we went fishing, and then we'd come and sit by the fire to warm up. And my father would look at me and say, 'Another good day's work, Sibyl,' and I'd nod and smile and that's how every summer was, until my mum got sick.

She got sick in the spring, when I was ten, which I always thought was cruel, because spring is the prettiest season of all. During spring, in Cyrodiil, the sea looks like glass. You could be on that sea forever and ever and never get tired. If I miss anything, it's that sea: the sky stretched out endlessly, and how my father's hand was warm in mine as we paddled back to the shore.

---

Nowadays, I deliver letters, postal notes, things wrapped up in brown paper to people with foreign names. Most of the time, I don't get to know what those things are. I just send them.

See, you have to have a lot of faith to do my job. You have to trust that what you're doing is important. You have to believe that you're holding something that someone needs to get, and be so determined that your fear of the war doesn't stop you.

---

My mum got sick; it broke my father's heart. I think he would have traveled all of Tamriel to help her, if he could have. Sometimes, when I'm sad and I think about it, I decide it's all very romantic, in a very tragic, lonely way. It's the stuff of the books I used to read as a little girl, the stories that fill my dreams but disappear when I wake up in the morning, the tales I used to write on sheets of crumpled parchment and now can no longer tell.

It's funny, because Father promised me, when I was little and we took these trips to the sea, that I'd never have to leave Anvil, never have to leave Cyrodiil. I'd never have to leave him and the sea and the rickety boat, and the house all warm with my mother's love. And I never wanted to. I don't think I was ever one of those girls that dreams of secretly being a princess, because I loved our shore. Our shore, I called it. And then things happened, and my father took long walks along the shore where he didn't talk to anyone, and Mother couldn't hold onto a mug of water without dropping it, and it was decided, I'm not sure by whom, that I ought to go to my uncle in Skyrim, and so I did. I was eleven.

And the worst part: aside from the summers and the holidays, I've never lived in Anvil since.

---

I dream about being brave. I dream about walking these pretty roads without an ounce of fear in my step, I dream about looking those Stormcloak men straight in the eye, I dream about telling people my name, Sibyl Valencia, Imperial of Cyrodiil, without a quaver in my voice. And I dream about these things at the same time I dream of love stories where the girl gets swept off her feet and we go back and live in Anvil forever sailing. I dream about showing somebody, anybody, the poems and stories squirreled away in my desk drawer and I dream about running through these streets as fast as I can, determined and brave and faithful.

---

I wrote lots of letters when I stayed with my Uncle — letters home. Father would write back to me in his clumsy, loopy scrawl, and even if he didn't write much, he was dutiful. I never saw him read a book, and he had a thick accent — it's funny, we all sort of drop the T if it isn't the first letter, and our Os are very long — and he worked with his hands, more than his mind, but I think he liked learning. I think he liked learning how things worked.

But I think it pained him, too, to see me come back from Skyrim during the summers with my accent diluted, my speech much more composed and controlled, into this very stiff speech you're listening to now, rather than the breathless syntax of my youth, and flush with novels and plays and stories that my father didn't know. My father knew fish, he knew Anvil, he knew emotions, love and loyalty and war, on such a deep, primal level, ungovernable and inarticulate. He didn't know what I was learning, and we grew apart.

During my last year of being in Cyrodiil, though I didn't know it at that time, we went fishing one more time. The boat, the paddles, the thick tunics and heavy boots. The sun hid behind the clouds. Our neighbor sat with Mother. And so we went out to sea and caught the fish, and my father handed me the reel.

I caught one fish. It flopped around helplessly, struggling to breathe in the stiff cold air. I looked at Father and I let the fish go. "I can't watch, Daddy," I said. The waves rippled out in circles. "Oh, Daddy, I can't."

---

One day, I realize, I'm not a kid anymore. But I still have an imagination — I hear my mother's voice in the rain, and I see my father's writing looped up in the clouds. I imagine what could happen if the war never ended. I imagine being sixty years old and still in Skyrim and never going home.

I have to write these things down, otherwise I will fall apart — poems, mostly, and none of them are good. I used to write stories about all the tragic sad lovely romances that permeated the world, but now they stay in my dreams, the fleeting thoughts of a hopeless romantic.

---

A civil war starts, after the Jarl of Windhelm kills High King Torygg. My uncle told me that he would join the Legion against the Stormcloaks, because they were tearing their province apart and, as he said, were too silly to realize that the Empire, while crumbling, were not the real enemy. That the real trouble started with the Thalmor, and they were making us waste or resources and time with this petty war.

---

Then he dies.

My uncle. He dies because those Stormcloaks kill him while he's unarmed on the streets.

I am angry, of course. I am angry, and my first thought is to join the Legion myself because, as weak and sheltered and little as I have always been, scared of the Stormcloaks and scared of the war, I do not stand for having my family taken away.

They didn't take me. Not as a warrior, at least. Even though I told them that my uncle had told me how to use a bow, they don't take a liking to such a pathetic frame. But I beg, and eventually they make me a courier, to send important notes and letters and information to soldiers in camps.

I write letters to my father, but he does not know that his brother-in-law is dead or that I am a part of the Legion. I make up the life I was supposed to have. I tell him not to worry, I am fine and thriving. I tell him that I am in love and I will send him a letter when we marry — his name is Alren, I decide, and he is a hunter, just like Uncle. He has dark hair and even when he looks serious there is a hint of a smile on his face. I create a beautiful village for me to live in, even though I am mobile and have no home, and invent flowers for Alren to shower upon me.

I worry that when I come back to Anvil, it won't be the same — the air won't be so salty, the sea won't look so pretty, and nobody I know will be the same and I will be different and unwelcome — and so I force myself to stay in Skyrim.

And every time when I write my father's address on the envelopes I send, I hesitate, and then I leave the place for my address blank.

---

I think I would like Skyrim. I think I would find it dashingly romantic, and its pretty atmosphere filled with tragic sad lovely stories that I could tell. I would find its little homes and settlements charming. I would appreciate the mountains, the rivers, the Holds. I think I would like Skyrim, if it weren't the Fourth Era in the middle of the war and if I were not so frightened.

---

Late at night, I sometimes imagine that I will be given a package, and it will be the last package I deliver, because I will be killed. "That Imperial woman," they might say. "This was the undeliverable package."

Or I won't have a funeral at all. Nobody will say anything. They will forget to send a letter to Daddy and he will find out later, after all this war is over and after everything is done. I'll have died on my journey trying to send a letter, and I won't even know what the letter is about.

I have to have faith, and although I've never really believed in the Eight Divines all that much despite my parents' teachings, I have to believe that the war will end.

And I have to believe that someday I can go back to Cyrodiil, and that I will be welcomed there, and most of all, that it will still be the home I know."

Character Name.
Sibyl Valencia

Age.
24

Race.
Imperial

Sexuality.
Heterosexual - Flexible

Faction, Army, or Allegiance.
The Imperial Legion

Occupation.
Courier for the Legion

Werewolf or Vampire.
N/A

Major Skills.
Archery - During the years where her uncle was alive and she lived alongside him, Sibyl had been taught to use a bow. She is sufficiently adept at it, but uses this skill more for hunting than any form of combat.

Speech - Due to her love of literature and word, Sibyl has developed a very eloquent way of speaking and expressing herself and, more often than not, knows how to use this skill to her advantage.

Restoration - One of many things she has learnt over the years is some knowledge in the field of restoration. The spells she's familiar with are Healing, Fast Healing, Healing Hands and Steadfast Ward.

Weapons, Armor, and Belongings.
Hunting Bow - Though it is specially crafted for her by her uncle, Sibyl's hunting bow lacks anything special, save for her engraved name along its grip and her personal emotional attachment to it.

Mismatched Arrows - Sibyl's quiver has a nice assortment of various arrows that were collected along her journeys, given as gifts or earned as rewards. Steel arrows appear with the greatest quantity, but amongst them are iron, elven, glass, orcish and even one or two of ebony.

Steel Dagger - One never knows when a blade on hand might be useful, whether for basic survival needs or in close combat — although, Sibyl sincerely hopes it will never have to come to the latter.

Imperial Light Armor - While she has the full set, it does her very little good with protection as she knows not how to use it to it's full ability. Aside from preventing bruising if someone threw a pebble her way, the armor serves no purpose other than to show her loyalty to the Legion.

Ring of Fortify Health - Seeing as the light armor does nothing for her, the silver garnet ring does its job by helping to keep her just that little bit more safe. It was a reward she received after delivering a particularly important missive, and one she has treasured since.

Cobalt, her Horse - Being a courier, Sibyl rarely stays in one place for a long time and spends many of her nights at inns, forts, or makeshift camps. With all the traveling she does, it's obvious that she would have a horse to make it easier on her. Her bluish-black stallion is more than just a way of transport, though; Cobalt is also her closest companion.

Other - Aside from what has already been listed, Sibyl carries with her several other belongings inside a worn leather satchel. It contains a set of plain clothes, a coin purse with a handful of septims, her journal, a few sheets of paper, a quill, a bottle of ink, some food and a small number of other items. Anything she doesn't have on her is left in her uncle's old house, which she had come to own after his passing but rarely ever uses.