Learning to Love in a World of Hate (The Elder Scrolls)

This is a lorebook within the Elder Scrolls universe that I wrote for a lorebook contest back in 2022. I hope you like it :)

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My mother and father fought often - one worked a mill, the other a kitchen. They never lied nor put their knuckles to use, but brutal honesty lays the truth harder than a fist ever could. Our trips west were marred by icy demeanors and frigid replies, colder than the Alik'r heat had any right to allow. Yet they never parted ways. Not when I was a seed, not when I was a sapling, not even after my trunk stopped growing and my limbs stopped reaching.

I admired that. The dedication, the desire to see things through despite their misgivings. I didn't always understand it, but as the years wind down and my light dims further, I think I finally see it for what it was. Love, real love, isn't dictated by constant adoration and pandering, but by cooperation and understanding. Passion is spicy and short - home simmers long and sweet, rooting beneath the surface as the start of something greater than yourself. A family. A legacy.

I am that legacy. My life seems like a cliche, at a glance: born and raised in the southern reaches of Skyrim, living in a land cleaved by nature. Falkreath Hold has very little separating itself from Colovia, aside from the obvious mountain range; the same history, the same culture, the same people. What difference is there between a sawsman in a Colovian forest and one in Falkreath? The trees cut, the leaves itch and the wood builds civilization - should nationality define them when society places them in parallel?

For some, the answer is clear. For my parents, it mattered less how they were viewed and moreso how they viewed themselves. During the long days of winter, trekking to Hammerfell and High Rock filled out an otherwise empty schedule. Dunes as far as the eye can see, overlooked by the dull reflections of Masser and Secunda hanging above…so different from home, but those same moons guarded my dreams back in Falkreath. And every night, children the world over look at the sky and witness them as I once did.

Life isn't an equation to be solved - it is compromise, reflection and growth. A lesson that can only be gained, not taught: learning to love in a world of hate.

- Nowhere Niles