Disclaimer: Everything Skyrim belongs to Bethesda. The near 800 hours of my life spent within it are entirely my own.
Author Note(s): Computer had to go through an overhaul with OS reinstallation. As I didn't have any back-ups of my game saves, I lost all of my old Dovahkiins and had to create a new one. As much as I love my current and longest-standing Dovahkiin, I can't help but miss my three previous ones: Irian, my Orc warrior, Sharvic the Argonian assassin, and the Dunmer Melniana who's the first character I finally took up magic in Skyrim with. On a random free-writing whirl, I came up with this: a story for each, and from each a story. Hope it's a good read. :)
Warning: A long-shot in 3 parts. Stay clear of cliff-edges.
UNRELENTING FORCE
Fus
Duty and honour were Orc edicts before the Nords adopted them. Before cities of Man, there were their villages without walls, camps without ramparts to look out of—unprotected, primitive beginnings they were always so willing to forget when faced with "lesser kinds".
I used to look out from the ramparts of the stronghold walls when I had watch. I used to look out to the invisible borders drawn across the Jerall Mountains. I imagined the dark lines of the cartographers ink, where they separated twin peaks and where they decided who belonged where. Up, down, from roaring white to forest greens. On very clear days, I could see Bruma from the tallest watchtower.
I had never been there. I had never been anywhere and even when I joined the hunting teams, we never ventured far from the stronghold.
Often I wondered what the point was, of putting a sword and a hammer in a girl's hands, so that she may forge the sword she would fight with, only to confine her within a prison.
Mother said I was as restless as my father was wandering. I never met my father, but Mother told me he was an Imperial bard, a bloodkin who'd come to stay at her maiden stronghold. He took her one summer and was gone when she found that she was with child. Her marriage to another chief was a death blow, quickly and cruelly dealt. If the clan chief knew I wasn't his real daughter, he never said a word about it but it would explain why he never spoke to me. He took on a fourth wife after my birth. She gave him three strapping sons and a beautiful daughter. There was no reason to pay me any attention after that. I thought I was quite forgotten until it was arranged for me to marry and leave the stronghold.
I watched the sky over the peaks bleed and darken, knowing it was going to be the last time I was able to do so in this part of Cyrodiil. The stronghold I was going to be sent to was somewhere in the Colovian Highlands. Mountain Orcs were rare enough in cosmopolitan Cyrodiil. I wasn't even aware that there were strongholds in the Highlands but I could be assured that the ones there were considered weak. I saw how the other girls looked at me: some with pity, others with a sneer. I knew it was hardly a good marriage.
One of my half-brothers came to take over the watch when night descended. I left to find Mother waiting for me near the longhouse.
"Walk with me before you go inside," she said.
So, we walked to the silent forge. The embers were still red hot when we arrived. Mother drew a sword I had finished that morning from the weapons rack and inspected it. And she must have seen it—all the longing that was beaten into the arching green blade, all the pain and frustration that I'd kept so well-hidden from everyone—because she asked, "If I let you, will you leave?"
Though my heart beat with sudden hope, my answer was a mechanical and practiced, "I cannot dishonor our clan and our chief."
"I did not raise a daughter who hides," Mother put in sharply. With deliberate slowness, she asked again, "If I let you, will you leave?"
"Yes."
Mother took a newly-made scabbard from the wooden shelves by the armour bench and sheathed my blade with it.
"Go," she said as she shoved the sword against my chest. She sounded fierce, determined, and yet sad at the same time.
"But I cannot—" I began.
"I was a young woman once. I wished to see the cities of Skyrim and swim the Sea of Monsters. But I didn't. Your father asked, but I didn't, and that was really why he left. I was stupid not to go…to stay, carrying a babe that is not of pure Orc blood." She grew quiet, looking away into the distance, and then went on, "A part of me was frightened by the idea of receiving a sword of pain forged by my mother's hands."
Mother paused and then fixed an unwavering gaze on me.
"When you were little, you asked why I never forged anything for you. Now I'll you that it was so you may have nothing shackling you to me, or to your people. Take this sword and go with my blessings. Find the first carriage out of this land. Go see the White Gold Tower. Join the Mages Guild. Go to Hammerfell, Skyrim… But don't ever look back."
Right then, all the years she had spent training me until my fingers were calloused, and educating me until I could craft all manners of potions and recite centuries of eddas by heart, started to make sense.
"At least come with me," I said finally. "The old clan chief is dead now. There is nothing to hold you here."
"Are you stupid, child?" she snapped. "I am not as young as I used to be, and I am the only one in this entire stronghold who can mix potions and enchant a damn sword. I am past my prime, past my chance at adventuring. But you are not." Her voice softer, she went on, "On the day of your birth, there was a strange call in the sky, like thunder, but the day was clear. The others called it an omen and for once I believed them. You are so much more than this."
She waved at me. "Go! Do not waste this. A fifth wife of some soft chief is not what you're destined for."
"What am I destined for, Mother?" I asked.
It was then that she smiled. "I don't know. And believe me, that's the best part."
She pushed the sword at me once more and I took it, tying it to my belt in place of my old one.
"Go," Mother urged, in a whisper now. "Past the graves and by the mines. There is a small path to a ridge. Watch your step going down. The mountainside is steep. Keep going north until you hit the main roads."
Mother pressed a coin purse into my hand and pushed at me to go. I thought she had more to say, a "Goodbye" or "Be safe", but she turned and started down the path towards the longhouse without another word. I could watch her back and saw how small she'd grown from the ages, but I knew I would not be able to leave if I did.
I had the lightest and fleetest feet of the entire stronghold, and so made my escape quickly without being detected. I found the path that Mother spoke of in the growing dusk—a thin ridge caught between a sheer rock face and a death fall. I gave it brief consideration before make my way down, using a spare dagger to get a grip on the icy face. Foot by foot, strafing left as I kept my body close to the wall, I climbed. Down, down, a dark, fur-wrapped swab against the white. When I finally reached flat ground all I could discern in the dark was a continuous plain of deep snow. I kept a brisk, lopping walk, going north and never looking back. Several times I fell and each time I got up and carried on. It was nearly dawn when I reached my first line of trees.
I took the time to catch my breath, trusting that I was far enough from the stronghold now. It was then that a large shadow washed over me, making me look up in alarm to what turned out to be an empty sky and a quiet forest. The roaring winds were gone and in its place a music like no other made of bird and insect calls. The air smelled of the greens and colours that made it. I thought I could hear a stream.
I decided that I would seek out Bruma and see if I could hire a carriage into Skyrim. Fus was the name of the first running step I took as I put myself into this new adventure. I was laughing, and I had not laughed since I was eight. I didn't know what I was in for, or what I would be, but at least now that the cord had been cut, I had the chance to find out.
I swore not to waste it. I swore on my mother's heart not to waste it.
Ro
"It has been days," I reasoned. "We need to get back to work. We have quotas to meet."
The guard remained unmoved. "We have to be vigilant in case those Imperial bastards decide to show up," he replied, hooking his thumbs into his sword belt.
"They won't be showing up if there's nothing to gain," I told him exasperatedly.
These past few days had been nothing but a slew of trials for me. First I'd injured my leg after taking a spill in the mines that was only recently healing after a Priest of Mara had taken care of it. And then, this.
"They are only spiders," I grumbled. "Surely a well-armed guard can take care of a few spiders."
I could smell mead on the guard's breath when he leaned in to say, "I definitely can." I could feel his eyes traveling over my body and imagine the sleazy grin he wore behind his helmet. "Maybe with a little more persuasion."
"Pig," I hissed.
"Let it go, Sylgja," I heard Filnjar say from behind me.
I turned and followed him to the fire where the other miners of Shor's Stone were whiling their time away with mead and food.
"You were right," I went on. "The guards are as useless as a fifth wheel on a carriage."
"Aye," Filnjar said, checking on the stew that was cooking in the pot. "Not much we can do about it right now until we hear back from the Jarl." He shook his head, then looked up as if for good news. "By the way, how are you parents faring? Doing better than we are I would guess."
"It's no feast in their neck of the woods either," I told him as I settled in by the fire. "Last time I was up there, father said they were barely scraping by."
Filnjar sighed. "This civil war is taking its toll on all of us. Miners are some of the hardest hit."
I thought about my parents, fretting over not being able to see them any time soon, or even to get a word out to them.
"That's what scares me. I'm afraid I'll travel to Darkwater Crossing and find it burned to the ground," I said.
Filnjar was quiet as he stirred the stew.
I inwardly groaned when Odfel took the seat beside me. He brought his chair in close to me and, predictably, said, "Since we have all this extra time on our hands, how about a walk?"
"No, Odfel, no. I am not interested, and now is just not the time!"
"And why not? There isn't any work to be done. It is a lovely evening and what better way than to spend it with someone handsome, strong and smart?"
He always, always brought out the 'handsome, strong and smart' line, even though I found him to be neither. Odfel ought to take himself to Solitude and enroll in the Bard's College there. I was about to reply when he laughingly added, "I don't see anyone better for you, Sylgja. Don't tell me you are one of those women who believe that some hero is going to come riding in and sweep you off your feet?"
Frustrated, I turned to him and said sweetly, "Yes, maybe I am. So, perhaps you can be that hero. Why don't you walk into that mine and clear it of the spiders?"
The discomfort on his face was brief but satisfying. He was about to speak again when a smooth voice, the texture of honey on moon sugar, made us all jump: "May I warm myself by the fire?"
No one had seen or heard the stranger approach. Suddenly there he was, bits of him the in the light and all others in the shadows. He came in closer and I saw that the red-eyed thing he was leading by a rein was a horse, sleek and black, powerfully built and unnaturally silent. Something about both the stranger and his steed was disconcerting, and as if he knew it, the stranger drew back his dark hood and assured us that he meant no harm.
I watched him as he took from his saddlebags bottles of mead, ale, and some food that he handed out to us. He was an Argonian, green and tall by Argonian standards. The dark leather armour he wore had more pockets than a builder's apron, and it fitted him like a glove. I averted my eyes hastily from the toned evidence of his body to look at his face. It was scarred like nothing I've ever seen. There were scarring claw marks across his snout and half of his face was still raw from a surface burn.
"Dragon," he explained when Filnjar asked, almost dismissively as if it was an everyday affair, "west of here, not many hours ago."
"By Shor! That was the sound we heard earlier? A dragon? And you took it down alone?"
The stranger gave him a half-smile. "The soldiers that were fighting in that area set their differences aside long enough to help."
"Good thing you took it down before it got here, then, uh…"
The stranger inclined his head. "Sharvic, and I am glad to help."
"So, you think you're tough, huh? Wandering Skyrim is a picnic compared to tunnel crawling!" Odfel spoke up.
"Oh, be quiet, Odfel! The man's tired from the road. Let him be," I snapped, pushing the bowl of stew that Filnjar had passed me to him.
Filnjar handed me another bowl and jerked his head towards Sharvic who'd settled down across from me. Our eyes met briefly as he accepted his stew before he turned to Odfel, saying, "Perhaps you can teach me a thing or two about tunnel crawling come morning?"
"If there is anything to teach," Grogmar grumbled from where he sat.
Sharvic looked to Grogmar and then Filnjar for answers, and they told him.
If we didn't know what to make of him before, we believed him to be godsend the next day. He'd taken care of the spiders while we were all asleep. The guards had made bets about whether he would come out alive. Not only did he come out alive and unscathed, but we found all the dreadful creatures with arrows through their heads and their venom sacs cut out. And while the guards and the men were twiddling their thumbs in embarrassment, he took up a pickaxe and cracked rocks to help us meet our backlog of quotas.
Just like that. Not a word more than necessary.
I had never found an Argonian attractive before but Sharvic, even if he was a Nord or an Imperial, seemed apart from all men. Attentive but aloof, like a man who's distracted, his mind never quiet, and having to put himself into everything he did with single-minded purpose because it was all he had. It was actually pretty sad, she thought.
"Do you not see many Argonians?"
When he spoke, I knew I was staring. "No," I managed to tell him, "but I know one, Derkeethus, of Darkwater Crossing. Have you heard of him?"
He chuckled. "Not all minorities know each other, you know?" I dropped my head, mortified. "But I know this Derkeethus you speak of. Rescued him from Falmer not long ago."
"So, you have been to Darkwater Crossing?" I asked, perking up.
"Yes?" he replied, looking over at me curiously.
"Would have happen to be heading towards Darkwater Crossing again any time soon?"
"What has been sending you to Darkwater Crossing?" he asked me in turn.
"My parents live there. I usually make the journey to bring them gifts and to just say 'hello', but I haven't been well lately," I told him. "I've written some letters and placed them in a satchel. Perhaps you wouldn't mind delivering it to them on my behalf?"
"Sure, I'll deliver it," he said easily.
He left the day itself after, without even stocking up on food—"I can hunt," he'd said, flashing me what must be an Argonian grin. As I watched him leave, a part of me feared that he would not return.
But he did return, with my satchel filled with letters from my parents. It included a rather giddy one from my mother talking about how had she been unmarried and two decades younger, she would marry Sharvic in a heartbeat.
He continued to live with us in Shor's Stone over the next few weeks, digging up ore without pay, cooking and bringing us food so that I didn't have to, and at night, he slept outside, declining all of our invitations to stay in one of our houses. The subdued look of pain seemed to slough off of him bit by bit, and with his shirt smudged with the dirt from the mines, one could almost believe that he was one of us.
I found myself writing more and more about him, sounding almost as giddy as my mother as I did so. There was the first time he laughed, swigging mead like a common tavern bawd. There was the day he was listening to Odfel as the latter showed off his Rocksplinter like it was Dragonbane itself, and our eyes met with mutual amusement. And who could forget the day he came up one morning dressed in naught but a ragged pair of trousers. I didn't know where to put my eyes when he approached. He held something up to me then and I must have stared like such an idiot because he said, "Fish," like it was an explanation. I smiled, knowing he remembered our conversation from days ago, when I told him how I was craving for salmon.
He came up one early morning on horseback and reaching down told me to hop on, and that he'd spoken to Filnjar and found out that the ore supply's steady enough for me to make the trip to Darkwater Crossing.
"You don't have to walk," he reasoned, and that was that.
It was scandalous how we were arranged—me pressed up against his front, caught between his arms, gyrating to the roll of Shadowmere beneath us.
"Are you blushing?" remarked Sharvic, interrupting something I was saying about travels and roads.
"What? No!" I protested. Suddenly mortified, I began to push at his arms to try and free myself. "Maybe it is better that I walk. I am feeling much better now."
His arms were rock hard and steady on the reins. His posture was relaxed, almost lazy, and when I looked to him, I saw the glint in his eyes, amused…mischievous. And then just as quickly, his expression hardened.
Before I could react, he slid down from the saddle and tossed the reins to me. "If anything happens, spur Shadowmere and keep going. He will know where to go," he told me hastily.
"But—"
That was when I saw the bandits, rushing at us, hoping to surround us. Shadowmere neighed and turned such that I had to quickly grab hold of the reins to control him. The first of the bandits reached me. His hand tried to reach for the reins but Shadowmere reared, jerking them out of reach. I kicked out and caught a bandit full in the chest, sending him reeling.
I felt that Shadowmere was ready to bolt, to where ever Sharvic said he knew where to go. And perhaps, it was best if he did. But I took hold of the reins and did all I could to keep him there, looking around desperately for Sharvic, determined not to leave until I knew what happened to him.
A hand closed around my thigh, squeezing it painfully as the bandit it belonged tried to bring me down. Sharvic got to us before that could happen. They did not even see him coming, occupied as they were with Shadowmere and I. He cupped a hand over the mouth of one bandit in the back and slit his throat with a dagger. The other bandit turned away from me and as I watched with growing dread, drew his sword and took a swing at Sharvic. Sharvic dodged it cleanly, got behind him where he snapped the man's head right around. Too dazed to shout, I looked around and saw that the rest of the bandits had been taken out with an arrow in the head, each precisely through the left eye.
What happened next both surprised and puzzled me. He dragged the bodies to the side of the road, arranging them in a row, and after cutting their purses from their belts, left them with their arms crossed and weapons placed on their chests. He returned to where I was. Wordlessly, he placed the coin purses into one of his saddlebags. He made to swing himself up but paused to look over his shoulder at the bodies.
And there was that pain again.
Things began to click into place right then: the efficiency with which he took out each of the bandits, his silence and disquiet, and why he tended to be so evasive with questions about his life. Shadowmere was unnatural, as was what he consorted with and served.
"Does it weigh on you?" I asked softly.
He turned to me, his eyes wide with astonishment. And then his expression softened. He gave me a sad smile and replied, "Every soul I take."
I felt for him then, not pity but understanding. Later, when he came to trust me, he would teach me about the words of power. I would learn the paradox that was how this man of well-chosen, gentle words could shout another off a cliff. Later, when his body was familiar to me and his voice a lover's whisper in my ear, he would come to tell me that I was the ro he sought—that balancing force he needed to awaken him from the battle sleep of a trained assassin. When the world looked set to tear itself apart, something must give for everything to settle back into equilibrium. His equilibrium was coming home, to me, to the children we would come to adopt and who were already swinging their pickaxes before he taught them to wield a sword.
However, right then, it was all I could do to reach my hand down and tell him, "You don't have to walk." Grinning, I added, "Not alone at least."
Dah
Five corpses of man, mer, and one orc—bandits all for Skyrim would never tire of them. I turned out their satchels, cut the purses from their belts and emptied the coin into my own. I would spare them the indignity of a stripping, dig a hole, and bury them in their armour. One had a gangrenous foot, another, a Dunmer, barely past a quarter century, had the telling belly swell of an unborn babe.
I was still regarding the face of the young mother when I heard the gasp of in-drawn breath nearby. A sixth was just coming to and on seeing me, the Breton inched away on one arm and his only good leg, clutching at the sword wound in his side. He backed into a boulder, eyes widening with fear. I merely glanced at him before turning back to the five bodies, deciding I did not have the time. I made do with dragging them to a shady alcove beneath a natural arc within a rock outcrop, arranged them in a row, arms crossed over chest, fingers curved around the hilts of their swords, and laid by them a flower each before offering a prayer for Arkay to receive them.
I paused by the remaining bandit when I made to leave and considered him as he scrambled for his sword even as he stared at me with new wonder. I saw him tense when I reach back. I cocked my head and smiled as I pulled out a bottle of health potion and some poultice. I tossed the items to him. As I returned to Shadowmere, who was waiting for me by the way road, I thought about why I even bothered to do it—to smile, that was.
People saw nothing of me between the ample black hood and the mask, and yet they trusted me as a wandering hero, as implicitly as they'd trusted Mama all those years ago. Perhaps, seeing her walking armour was all they needed to come running up with favours, or mead to wet the lips. I think, sometimes, they were disappointed that the eyes staring back at them were not Dunmer ruby.
Her ebony boots were big ones to fill, her aetherium circlet heavy on my brow, and as we reached a hidden enough spot to set up camp for the night, I removed the mask, her Masque, for it was beginning to feel stifling. The sword and the bow I bore were hers. Shadowmere too. Her morals were my morals; her achievements, the same I sought to achieve.
If only her expectations were what I chose to meet.
"A life of adventuring is a life fair enough, but there would come a time when you grow weary of it, of a world that never changes no matter how much you do," she once said to Sofie and I. "You kill their kings to make room for new ones, replace the banners of their armies, and destroy the powers that plague them; and nothing changes. Nothing ever does, for it is the same blood that is spilled by and from pawns, the same angry orphans seeking answers, the same destitution sleeping in sewers and warrens because the world would suffer no beggars. You would do better to live normal lives as grown women tending their farms and managing their kitchens than a solver of unending problems."
Mama would have been content to see us become fishwives, but the blood of the magi ran thick in her and what she really wanted was for us to be scholars and alchemists. Sofie took to the books better than I did, spending hours in the library of Lakeview Manor while I practiced my sword-fighting down in the basement. She showed an aptitude for magic and left to study the arcane arts at the College of Winterhold, where she excelled in all the fields of magic, alchemy, and history.
I was the 'half-Orc' as Papa teasingly liked to put it: better at breaking bones and feeding smelters than knowing which leaves mashed together made the best poultice for a burn. I loved the open sky and the roads. The thought of adventure was always foremost on my mind. I pestered Mama about it. I begged her to fit me for my own armour. As a maiden girl, I disappeared for days on end in defiance, trawling the nearby woods and making friends with the hunters, until someone from either the household or the Companions caught up with me.
And still she wouldn't let me go. In time, we spoke less and less; some days none at all. I was her first daughter—a package of sellsword brigand and disappointments. At the time I didn't seek to better myself, to find her fears in her admonitions, to understand where her flawed overprotectiveness was coming from. I wanted merely to see the world and earn glory for myself. I wanted to be an adventurer and had always wanted to be since the day I met her in Whiterun.
I remembered my birth as the day Mama, beautiful and regal in her midnight mage armour, came upon me in Whiterun. She gave me bread and a sweetroll, and sat with me on the bench by the blooming Gildergreen while I ate. She spoke of places she'd visited in Tamriel, but, then, I was barely listening. Between gorging on my food, I couldn't help but stare for I have never seen a Dunmer before, with her skin the colour of ash and eyes like rubies. Her hands showed the calloused wear of Destruction magic but she was perfumed in lavender oil, a scent I came to associate with her.
I had hoped that she would adopt me and she made a promise to do so after filling my little hand with coin. She said she had other things to finish first.
As it were, past deeds always had a way of catching up with you and the things she thought finished never stayed concluded in the imperfect world she spoke of. I couldn't know for sure if it was those past deeds that caused her to leave that day.
I would have dismissed it as her having to leave early for another one of her meetings with some Jarl or other, had it not been for the silent house and Papa standing mutely in the library, a letter crumpled in his hand.
I held on, and I believed Papa did too, to the hope that Mama would come back one day, like she always did. With sweetrolls. But a year and few more later, it didn't look like that was going to happen. I wondered if she went to the Dark Brotherhood because the terrifying red-and-black armour was the only set she didn't leave behind. I wondered if an assassination had gone wrong.
"She never could stand the idea of outliving her family," was all Papa said when I dared to ask.
Papa ran the household, filling in a role he'd always had but was never acknowledged by the outside world for, and handled all of the Mama's affairs, from meetings with the Jarls to formal events at this castle or other without a scale out of order. He was there for Sofie's advancement at the college and was there to see her off when she left for Solsthiem to take up residence at Tel Mithryn.
With Mama gone, I could have left and set out on my adventure. I knew he wouldn't have stopped me or spin me down a gyre of guilt if I chose to go. However, even in the familiar company of our old steward and housecarl, I couldn't bear to leave him. His Argonian face might be unreadable to some, but there was no mistaking the distant eyes with which he gazed out across the lake in the observation deck of the library tower. When he wished to be alone, he sought out the spaces which were solely hers, or theirs, before—the deck, the Nordic shrine by the lake, her forge and workbench, and the enchanter's tower she liked to lock herself in to do her work undisturbed.
We fished together and I went nearly everywhere with him. When his eyesight and his health began to fail, I sat by reading to him. I was his "lovely little lady" and the "hist of his eyes" as a jab at my stark lack of grace. I was all those things to him even when his memory blurred.
His leaving was marked by the kind of pain that closed around your neck and squeezed out tears you thought yourself incapable of shedding. For weeks I kept vigil by his grave overlooking the lake, reading to him, watching the turns of the weather and of the days that waited for no one. I wouldn't go back in even when Erik and Rayya begged me to.
The manor was mine but I found myself disinclined to stay within its walls. It didn't occur to me until Papa's death that Sofie, Papa, and even Mama in her severe and uncompromising way, were the reasons I stayed. I gave the old manor over to Erik. It was his to do as he wished. Last I heard he'd turned it into an inn and the 'House of the Last Dragonborn' attracted a lot of adventurers.
I avoided inns when I could; didn't really like it when I hear the bards sing songs of the Dragonborn, Mama's songs. I preferred it out in the wilds anyway.
The day had grown dark by the time I was done with my evening meal. I set down the runes that Sofie had taught me and prepared to turn in for the night. In the solitude of my tent, I got out of Mama's armour. On principle, I always slept in armour while on the road. However, I had taken from my saddlebags the leather armour set I have been carrying around since the day I started my journey.
It was the only armour I'd ever forged with my own hands. A bad fit—loose in some places while uncomfortably tight in others. I hooked my fingers through the hole in the tuille where a bandit's arrow had gotten me just above the knee. It was from a while back, almost a lifetime ago when Papa was alive and Mama was still around. They never knew, or this would not have remained with me. I put it on and settled down to rest with my dagger within easy reach of my sword hand.
I am a lone rogue now, well past the prime of her charming womanhood and dedicated to chasing every lead I can to find Mama's whereabouts, while finding work where work's to be had on the side. I don't know what I will do when I finally find her. All I know is that I needed to find her. Maybe, I will tell her, just tell her how Papa grew to an old age and died with her name on his lips, whispering it without anger or malice. I will tell her that Sofie is a respected mage living in a giant mushroom with her Dunmer husband and their brood of magically-talented children.
Me, I walk Mama's path, for the constant companion of adventure types, like she and I, is the unceasing dah from the ground beneath, which births us anew at every turn and launches us, with every upheaval, just that bit closer to the sky.
Finis