About this image

I mentioned recently on Flickr that Raena’s Amulet of Mara had become such a staple of her look that I had to incorporate it into her backstory, and in honor of Mother’s Day, I thought it appropriate to give it a quick write-up. Bear in mind most of this was written at 1 in the morning (the BEST time for creativity and coherency, AMIRITE??) and then edited / expanded on later, so please excuse me if it’s not really be best excuse of a summary you’ve ever read. Expect much bittersweet mush ahead. ^^

The way I’ve got it written now, Raena inherited her amulet from her mother. She never knew her father; she was raised by her single mother in a small town in Cyrodiil. While the two had nothing but love for the other, Rae’s mother worked long and hard to support the both of them, which forced a distance between them. It soon became that the only time the two could be together was in the early hours of the night, where her mother would sing Raena to sleep every night; reciting to her the tales of her homeland far away, of love and of loss, of the importance of never losing sight of what’s truly important. As she grew, however, Raena started to come to see just how hard her mother worked to keep the two of them alive. She began to see her mother’s songs not as the tales of wonder she once had, but rather the wistful yarns of a woman who had sacrificed so much to gain the strength necessary to shoulder the burdens of them both. And that was something Raena simply couldn’t handle - she wanted her mother to be strong for her own sake, and no one else’s. That day, Raena made herself a promise; that she would learn to be self-sufficient, to be strong enough to shoulder even just a little of the weight her mother carried. And so, she worked; running errands around town to earn a little extra coin, working under traders and smiths and listening to their stories of the wide world around them. She even came to teach herself the bow, both so she might earn her own keep in the forests and so she could defend herself should it ever become necessary to do so; everyday learning just a little more and stepping just a little farther from home. Finally, the day came where she felt confident enough to truly set out on her own - leaving behind her all the coin she could muster and a letter for her mother, confiding all the love and admiration she’d held for her and the desire that she could live something better than she had.

And so Raena set out. She lived well enough on her own, hunting, making bargains with traders and doing her daily dose of good deeds for those around her. She followed her feet wherever they might take her, her mother’s songs never truly fading from her heart. As she wandered, she came to condition herself to say hello and goodbye in the same breath, always taking the care not to tie herself down to anyone or anything, the fear of coming to depend on someone else’s strength - or even worse, coming to have someone else rely on the strength of her heart and having it fail them - always egging at the back of her mind. She came to live with her arms wide open, but her heart perpetually closed, a part of her always searching for somewhere she could truly call her home… until the day she followed her feet just a little too far and she crossed the threshold into Skyrim. Stepping headlong into an ambush at the border and being swept up as a product of a quickly-brewing war was perhaps not the best introduction to the new world around her, but as fate would have it, the harsh land in front of her would soon become the home she’s longed for.

… if, that is, she could find the strength in her heart to accept it as such.

And for the answer to that, well… let’s just say that a certain broody warrior was just the right kind of force needed to pull apart those walls she’d so carefully built brick-by-brick - nothing less than what she’d done to him, mind.

Mod credits:
= Bethesda Hi-Res DLC Optimized
= aMidianborn Book of Silence
= Auriel ENB ~ .155 binary ~ SweetFX