You move me.

You move me like no other: my mind, my body, my very Heart beats for you. An all-consuming love: you keep my everything locked within.

"This Heart is the Heart of the world, for one was made to satisfy the other." I said those words once, a bitter laugh flavoring them. I spat into the faces of the Old Gods, your new slave drivers. And I laughed, because I had watched their powers dwindle to shades, been the architect of their fall. And it had all been worth it.

When the light first touched my mind, I saw you, my Nirn. I knew that the power of Gods lay not in stagnant existence, but in the fluid act of creation: making from nothing, what will return to nothing. And when I birthed you, carved this Arena from senseless nothing, I knew: you would be my death, but also my only life. I whispered to you, Nirn, and you became Life.

I watch you still, from between links of my earthen chains. I witnessed the way my Betrayers treat you: the bonds of 'life' and 'death,' where your taskmasters are the ones who comfort you at your end. The false 'mercy' from those who would savage you 'til you dropped to your knees to pray. The false 'love' declared by those who ripped my heart – still beating, still bleeding – from my chest.

I saw your taskmasters confine and chain you, too. The onward drive of Time is but one such link, when such restrictions are anathema to the ageless paradise I envisioned. The others are more insidious still: the Earthbones and other such nonsense. Paradise is fragile. It was never meant to last.

I watched also when your 'gods' nearly tore your world from its hinges, to arrange you just so: petty struggles for power, grappling at nothing. The suffering of man cannot be marked by gods; we are 'cruel,' 'arbitrary,' (I laughed, too, when I heard that). But I you and I are one. Thus, I did not see; I felt: your finite lives, the very source of your delicate beauty, torn from you.

From within the Red Prison, I gave you what I could.

Pelinal, imperfect and Star-Made, was my gift to you. I watched as he tore into your form, and I watched as he let Chaos make you whole once more. Interplay between Anu and Padomay again; the universe I gave you is not without symmetry.

I sent you Ysmir, and Wulfharth, and ageless Tiber. Their lights, like candles in Aedric-smothered darkness, led you on when I could not. Picture them, if you still can, as a sacrificial offering, an apology for allowing the Betrayal to separate us.

But my Nirn: I, too, have endured for you: first the arrow that pierced my – our – Heart, then the long interment, when I dreamt of your past, present, and future, too. And too soon after: the upstart Divinities, the three and one who use my power to their ends. I would congratulate them, bold plan-makers as they are, but that I see what this entails: false worship, decadence, decay.

But me, I would have you for my partner, my love. My heart was made for you, and your heart for me. Worship was never to come between us.

And sometimes, I look to the sky, and see my own body rotting among the stars. My Nirn, do you ever look up at me, and wonder what might have been? A world that I created for you, an Arena I nurtured for you in heart, mind, body. What would it be if I could give you Perfection?

Because perfection is not in magic Aetherius, nor does it make home in endless Void. It is in you, my flawed, finite, war-scarred, beautiful Nirn.

My flawed heart beats on, awaiting you.


A/N: Yes, strange, I know. I love Elder Scrolls lore so much, and I'm kind of hoping that other people in the fandom will give it a chance, too. (I'm still all kinds of nervous about posting this.) Anyways, I like the idea of a Lorkhan/Nirn ship, but I'm baffled as to how to write pr0n for it, so this is what you get instead. :P

And yes, I know there is no proof that Pelinal was a Shezarrine. But there's no suggestion he wasn't, short of his associations with Akatosh, etc. His actions seem to fit well with Lorkhan's motives, so he's here.

Anyways, enjoy. Concrit appreciated!