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“Look at this, Dove,” the Dragonborn said, holding up a small golden ring with an emerald embedded into it. She marched across the room, stepping over draugr on her way, and held the ring up to Lydia’s face. “It matches your eyes.”
Lydia took the ring from her hand and examined it. It was small, far too small for either of their fingers. It was crafted well and looked new. “Where in Oblivion did you find this?” The woman’s smile faltered a bit and looked over her shoulder.
“That bandit there had it.” She pointed at the burned corpse on the floor and then frowned. “What if that was a gift for someone? Now I feel bad for killing him.” She crossed her arms over her chest and peered down at the body.
Lydia doubted it. The ring surely wouldn’t fit anyone older than ten or eleven. She twisted the ring to look at the inside of the band. An engraved message read “papa loves you”. Ah. Lydia slid the ring into a pouch on her belt and decided not to mention the engraved message to her Thane.
“Strange that he would bring such valuable jewelry into a dungeon,” The Dragonborn said, flipping the corpse over with her boot. “Seems like the type of thing you’d keep at home, no?”
“People carry all sorts of things with them,” Lydia said, shrugging. “Either because they’re sentimental or because they want to make an offering to the dead.”
“An offering to the dead?”
“Sure. The dead may need wealth in Sovngarde.”
The Dragonborn only laughed and said, “You Nords are so peculiar.”
The Dragonborn’s find seemingly kicked off and interest in collecting jewelry. True, when she and Lydia first met her fingers had been adorned in rings and her wrists in bracelets, and even still she wore a locket around her neck everyday. But Lydia had not realized how much the woman actually loved jewelry.
She never purchased the jewelry, but if she came upon a ring or circlet or whatever it may be in a dungeon or bandit camp, she’d drop it in her pocket and add it to the growing collection when they returned home.
It started with a drawer she filled with rings and circlets, then she bought mannequin heads to place the circlets upon or slip the necklaces over their shoulders. With each new addition, she would excitedly drag Lydia to her room and show off the display.
It was endearing, Lydia decided. The Dragonborn, warrior of legend, slayer of dragon and man, enjoyed collecting jewelry. Though, she herself never wore any of it.
One day, after returning home from a small mission for the Jarl, the Dragonborn took a locket out of her pocket.
“New addition to the collection?” Lydia asked, eyeing the locket while removing her armor. Odd, the locket looked familiar. Perhaps it was already a part of the collection that the Dragonborn had brought with them.
Her Thane shook her head and pulled her own locket out from under her shirt. “Look,” she said, holding the lockets next to each other, “it’s the same as mine.”
Lydia finished taking off her greaves and looked between the two lockets. Yes, the new one was nearly identical to the Dragonborn’s– save for the Dragonborn’s name engraved into the bottom of hers.
She sat next to Lydia and clipped the locket around her neck. “There we are,” she said, grinning, “now we match.”
Lydia gently held the locket and ran her thumb over the carefully engraved flowers around the edges of the embedded ruby. She had no interest in jewelry– neither collecting it nor wearing it– but the grin on her Thane’s face made it far too difficult to voice that opinion. Instead, she dropped the locket, letting it hang around her neck, and said, “Thank you.”