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Were any to walk past my inn room that morning, or perhaps to linger outside the balcony, looking for thrown-away scraps or trinkets carelessly left lying on the railings and blown away by a gentle gust of wind, they would have heard a mournful cry to the heavens.
Oh, Gil-Var-Delle, your name is desolation on my lips!
The song is a tragic one, a tale of mourning and loss, but it took on particular meaning for those of us who did not wish to heed the Dominion’s call. When the Altmer arrived, cloaked in haughtiness and dismay, ready to unite us, as they said, under the golden eagle banners of their noble, beautiful queen -- we were not asked. Oh, perhaps the Camoran King was, sitting on his wooden throne, shrouded in the mysteries of graht-oaks and city life…. but they did not come to ask those of us in the villages of Greenshade, nor our cousins in Marbruk and Woodhearth.
No, there was no question in the ships that arrived, nor the banners that were placed as though they had always been there; and there was none, either, in the fact that the finest houses in the new settlements that sprung up in their wake seemed, somehow, as if by chance, to go to those of Altmer blood. They were to have a civilising effect on us, a Thalmor soldier told me once, grinning gleefully as he stared down at me. I am tall for a Bosmer, but even still, under all the weight of his arrogance I felt as helpless as an infant. One wrong word, or look, and it might perhaps be my last; I could never tell with them, and so I made it a habit of lowering my eyes and nodding if any crossed my path, lest they see the flames of resentment burning deep inside me.
You would not know the village I grew up in; I doubt it is on any maps, Dominion or otherwise. It is small, and insignificant, and therefore was content to be forgotten, left alone until the golden horde came for us.
Well, we are Bosmer, and the forests have ever been our home. So when it was decided that our simple way of life was an embarrassment to our Altmeri betters and that our village was situated in a prime spot for trade… well, we became an inconvenience. It was clear that we would not go willingly, nor would we give up our Wilderking in the name of some queen we had never seen, who was unlikely to deign it worthy to come and visit her new “subjects” in this little patch they called home.
They gave us the choice: surrender or die. But it was no true life, not one where we could not worship our king in peace; and so we refused. I am certain the Thalmor laughed in mockery before the killing began.
How, then, did I come to survive, when they slaughtered every last one of us? I was not there. I was in Woodhearth at the time, trading and fancying myself an explorer as I spoke to the visitors who had come from far-off, exotic climes, asking them to regale me with tales of their travels. I have always been a curious woman, always the first to scout up the trees and set my sights on the world around me, and knowledge has always been a thirst of mine.
So when I came home to find my village razed to the ground, and Altmer builders making plans for holiday homes among the nobility, I gained the grimmest knowledge of all.
Even in the face of unity, there will always be divisions of power, unspoken or not; and they thought us wild, barbaric, uncivilised folk more wedded to the trees than the proper aspirations of our shared Elfhood.
I did not kill them where they stood, even as my blood boiled and I felt the black bile of rage coil in my stomach. I was outnumbered and unarmed, for a start; but it would only have fed into the lies they tell of my people, and I would not shame my loved ones in my grief. They had even stripped my home of its name, giving it a new one in the Aldmeri tongue. I will not repeat it; I will not give them the satisfaction of that word on my tongue.
However long I walked, I could not tell you, but I found a field large enough that all I saw was grasslands and trees in every direction; no sight of homes, nor people. And I wept, great shuddering sobs pouring from me, wracking my body, and I could not stop.
So when the cultists found and kidnapped me, and the King of Worms stripped my soul from my body and left me empty and shriven, I put up no resistance.
There was nothing left to take.