The following knowledge is not public; you might learn bits of it from talking to Maeriell, or others who learned it, or you could talk to me about a storyline element in which you know it or got word about it or parts of it from off in Lake-town; but this isn't something she's being public about. I'm sharing it here to help us find one another, if we can have some kind of character story or RP that might arise from it, largely since having her be secretive about it in Eriador has (at least so far) tended to lead to only dead-ends - she's poor and trying to find a way to get by, but everyone only asks what her trade is, and she doesn't have one she can admit to.

My goal is to keep her possibilities open, to not rule myself out from RP storyline possibilities unnecessarily. I don't have a particular end or direction in mind - maybe she'll fall into shady company and back to doing the kind of things that get you run out of town, and maybe she will find some other way, ideally an interesting one that's not just scrubbing toilets, to make a new life for herself, or maybe her story will weave between these two poles back and forth. Or maybe she'll find a way to use her skills but for legitimate and beneficial purposes.

My pa were a quaywright, which means them as build and repair all the pilings and quays that the town, Lake-town it is, is built on. Was a booming trade in his great-grandmother's time when she took it up alongside many others, on account the city got burned - by a dragon! I didn't believe it until my pa took me out on a rowboat and I saw the bones at the bottom of the lake! - and many hands was needed to build a new city. Of course, there's not much building happening now so it's mostly repairs and maintaining, and it's dangerous work, lots of it's underwater, so not many folk what do it live to be old. Like pa - he died about ten years ago, drowned. My brother's doin' it now. Hope he's more careful.
 
Pa's death left my ma in a hard place - she'd never had to support a family. For a little while, the neighbors took care of us, but that couldn't last long. She never found any consistent work what paid, just odd jobs here and there, and sometimes they went long enough between that we had nowhere to sleep except up on a roof next to the chimney (for warmth).
 
I were just a kid and didn't understand a lot; I just knew my ma was sad and we was all hungry, and I wanted to make her happy. So one day I lifted something from one of the rich merchants, you know the kind, someone who'd probably never even notice it missing. I told ma that someone gave it to me. I imagine it wasn't long before she figured out that I didn't keep having people give me stuff, but she made a point of not asking too much. I figure she didn't want me to be stealin' but she also didn't want to be hungry and cold and scared neither. She did make sure to talk me around about bein' sure I never took nothin' from no one couldn't afford to spare it, and never hurt no one, all without ever lettin' on she knew what I was up to. She's a clever one, she is.
 
I got pretty good at it. Plucking things from pockets, slipping through windows, jimmying open locks, and like that. I knew the secret ways to get around town unseen, including a lot were under the town - I'd learned from pa a few secret ways in and out, and places you could get a breath where no one would know. I got to be a really good swimmer too. But the most important part were knowing what I could take, and from who, without it going noticed or makin' a fuss. Lake-town got plenty of rich merchants with more than they know what to do with, more than they'd be likely to even notice missing.
 
Least until I made a big mistake. Was this one prospersome merchant, you know the kind, stuck-up, acts like no one else matters if they ain't just as rich, treats folk working for her like yesterday's bait. I took a shiny bauble out of one of her chests - she had more shiny baubles than you could wear in a year! Why anyone need that much I can't understand.
 
But it turns out, or so she claims, it were a gift from someone what mattered a lot to her, so quick as you can say oars up she's shoutin' to the whole town and dragging the Master out of his house and there's a big hue and cry. And the Master feels cornered - now he's got to make just as big a fuss or the merchant and the whole town will think he ain't doin' his job, and there's an election comin' up too. So quick as drowning he's got guards searching every inch of the town, and guess what they find in my pocket.
 
So I'm clapped in irons and dragged up to in front of the Master's house and half the town is rousted from their beds and gathered around to listen as he makes a big speech full of very important-sounding words about justice and making an example and such, and people is calling for them to cut my hands off, and worse, and he ends saying that he'll convene the Council next day and they won't go easy on me. And they throw me in his drawing room, still in irons, with a guard just outside, to wait until morning.
 
I can't get the irons off, but I do manage to find a few baubles of the Master's what go into my pockets, then slip out a window and into the water. Swimming's not easy with the irons on but I go slow and careful until I come up on shore a ways away under cover of a moonless, cloudy night. Run all night until I pass out in a farm field somewhere. Next day I sneak into a barn on one the farms up past Dale and find tools I can get the irons off with. I can trade the baubles for some food and coin and warmer clothes in one the farm villages, but I can't stay - they'll be looking for me and won't be long before they come this way. So I keep on the move, and before long I'm traveling with a trade wagon heading west after coming to Dale for trade. When they ask my name I lie - was this Elf-maid from the wood come to town to trade once and she were really pretty and I liked her name and so when I was panickin' about givin' a name I gave hers, and that's what folks've known me as ever since.
 
I figured I'd come to the next city past the forest and find a new place outside the reach of the Master, but it turns out there ain't none. No next city, I mean. You got some villages of folks out on the edge of the woods what are most unwelcoming to strangers, then there's mountains, and then there's a whole lot of nothin' all the way to Bree. So this here, Bree, this is the next city.
 
And here I am, hoping for to make a living some way or other. I'd rather not have to do it by dishonest means if I could help it, but I ain't never learned a trade. What am I good at? Swimming? You ain't got a puddle big enough or deep enough out here to need any skill at swimming hereabouts, and everything I know about how to get around in Lake-town don't help here. Feels like I'm in the same spot my ma were in - odd jobs can only get you so far.