A Letter Home - page 1

Dear Mommy and Daddy,

Guess what - I've finally figured out a way to send you letters without blowing your cover. At first, I was SO upset that I couldn't write to you - the local couriers are really sweet and friendly, but not too reliable, I mean they don't even manage to keep all their clothes on while getting from one place to another! - but then... Well, I guess you've already figured it out by now who my very special messenger is. Bet you were in for the surprise of your lives, seeing Barbas again after over two hundred years? I met him completely by accident; he says he'd had some sort of falling out with Clavicus Vile, which made him leave... So now he is hanging out with me, filling in the position of my wisecracking sidekick - and using his superduper Daedric powers to deliver letters for me!

Some long introduction, that was! The one thing that troubles me while I'm writing letters is that there are SO MANY thoughts all buzzing in my head, stepping on each other's toes! Most of them are about you. How are you two? Are you taking care of yourselves? Running away from the Thalmor and making things better for the poor and downtrodden is an awful lot of fun, I know - but please, please, PLEASE don't get into too much trouble! At least, not until I come back; then, we can get into trouble together, like we used to! I miss you, miss you, miss you (multiply that by about a thousand)!

Over here, things are pretty hectic, but mostly in a good way - which makes me wish even more that you were here; we'd have a blast! I don't know if the news has travelled, but I will announce it anyway. The dragons have returned! Can you believe it? Actual dragons! WHOPPING FLYING FIRE-BREATHING DRAGONS! And I am running around kicking their big fat scaly butts! Though sometimes I feel sorry for them... Well, you know: one moment they are roaming the skies, proud and free, and the next along comes a tiny little speck of a joor that tries to shoot them down with arrows... Wait, what was that word I just used? Joor? I have no idea what it means; do you? That's so weird; it made perfect sense when I wrote it, but now I'm just sitting here and staring at it... Ah, well, I was just being random I suppose. As usual.

So, yes, where was I. Dragons. If they insist on popping up like they do, I'll out-hero you guys at this rate. Sure the Mythic Dawn was epic, and Umaril was epic - even though I still think he had a silly title - but dragons! They are, like, the ultimate adventurer's foe!.. Sorry for that ugly ink spot; I just got too excited to sit straight in my chair, and knocked the inkwell over.

But even without the dragons, there's plenty of stuff for me to do. It's just like you told me: there are always people with troubles that no-one cares about, and if I don't start caring, no-one ever will. Skyrim is as full of troubled souls as it is of snow - gosh, how I love snow; give me a shield, and I'll spend hours sliding down those steep white slopes on it! - and of ruined barrows, and of meddlesome Thalmor. Especially now, what with this nasty Civil War business. It's so sad, a huge, deep rift running through people's lives like that... You know, two of my good buddies, Hadvar and Ralof, grew up in the same village and used to be best friends as kids; now one serves in the Imperial Legion, another is all over Ulfric and his cause to free Skyrim, and they hate each other's guts! I still don't know how I managed to talk and sing them into making a truce while the three of us were escaping together during the very, very first dragon attack... They were still bickering all the time! 'Let's sneak past the bear!' 'No, let's grab some bows and shoot the bear full of holes!' 'I hate giant spiders!' 'Nanana, Ralof's scared of spiders!' 'This torture chamber is such an embarrassment! 'No, you are an embarrassment; this torture chamber is a crime against all sons and daughters of Skyrim!' 'Here, Kiara, give this axe a few swings!' 'Kiara doesn't need your stupid axe, she needs a sword!'... ALL. THE. WAY. OUT!.. Oh, wow, I think I'll destroy half of Skyrim's paper supply at this rate...


Um. To get back to news from this wonderful snowy province. I've repeated almost all of the steps Mommy made when she was starting out as an adventurer in Cyrodiil. I've joined two guilds - well, actually, neither of them has the word 'guild' in its name. The one guild that does is the Thieves Guild; but it is nasty. Not at all like what it was in your time. No-one seems to remember the Rules of the Grey Fox about stealing from the rich and sparing the poor; what's more, I think it's the other way round. I won't be joining this gang o' cutthroats, that's for sure - but I'll be fighting against them, like Oblivion I will! I even made a friend who will fight together with me! Her name is Mjoll the Lioness, and no, she is NOT a Khajiit... Oh, wait; I'm getting carried away again. About the two guilds I did join...

During my first week in Skyrim, I bumped into this tough warrior lady, Aela the Huntress - first, I pushed her out of harm's way when a giant she and her buddies just killed was about to topple down and squash her; then, we had a lot of fun running around from a farmer who was really, REALLY mad because that giant had dropped dead right onto his prize-winning cabbages... And she invited me to join the Companions! They are kinda like the Fighters Guild, only Nord through-and-through. I am the only Redguard around; apart from me, there are very few foreigners... There's one Imperial girl, Ria, - she starts her day with killing a bear; a bit creepy, but she seems friendly enough - and a Dunmer. His name is Athis, and he's amazing with swords - but his temper... Sheesh. This is what your friend Modryn must have been like... But I've managed to get him to talk about himself - you know me - and he tells the most amazing stories about Morrowind! He also keeps a bunch of carrots close to his bed; Farkas and I have a joke going that he's secretly a fluffy white bunny rabbit, only he won't let it on. Farkas, he's kind of my guild-appointed buddy - he's supposed to watch over me and take me to some kind of big battle test when I'm 'ready'... Everyone, even his own twin brother, tells him he's dumb, and he believes them; but I've been trying to make him respect himself more...

I've also joined the College of Winterhold, where they sit and learn magic. It's so great that I ended up being adopted by you, two elves, and not by a Redguard family - because, you know, Redguards often teach their kids that magic is bad... And if I had been raised thinking that magic is bad, I would have missed out on so much! Boy, this place is A.M.A.Z.I.N.G! There are these ginormous halls, and an epic half-ruined bridge over the sea, and a library with tons of books and the greatest librarian ever - I mean, come on, he's an Orc! Can anything be more epic than that?! - and a courtyard all buried in SNOW! And we are going on a field trip to a Nordic barrow next week!... Oops, there goes the ink spot again. I get excited so easily, don't I?

I'm studying Restoration, under the guidance of a lovely Breton lady, Colette Marence. I feel rather guilty, actually, because she is very, very cranky to Brelyna, Onmund and J'Zargo - that's my fellow Apprentices - and even to other scholars, but she absolutely dotes on me... I think it's because she thinks I'm the only one who takes her subject seriously.. It might be true, by the way; which is a real shame; blowing things up is lots of fun, and I'm more than guilty of that - J'Zargo, the sly cat, keeps egging me on! - but if I become a healer, I'll be able to make such a great difference in this crazy, war-torn place...

Oh, and the Arch-Mage has a Thalmor advisor; my friends and I prank him - a lot. Though Tolfdir - he's the senior mage that's supposed to take care of us - tells us off every time. Once, after we'd glued the elf's boots to the floor, there even were tears in Tolfdir's voice when he was scolding us... And now that I think of it, it WAS kind of cruel... But the crusty old meanie was asking for it! But I don't have to tell you that, right?

There's also one more thing I did recently, just like Mommy. I've visited all the main cities and marked them on my map! By the way, I only finished hanging around the last city on my list a few days ago. It was Markarth, the capital of the Reach hold - and by golly, NONE of my first visits to any other city has been as crazy!.. I think you need to know a little bit more about it, because I have quite a few confessions to make. I was really, really, REALLY unsure if I should write you two about it at all - but I think you might have noticed that, because of all the doodles on the letter's borders; I was making them while thinking... But then I figured: I had no secrets from you when I was fifteen - and that's the age when girls hide most stuff from their parents - so why should I keep any secrets from you now? So here goes. I got drunk. I went to jail. And I'm seriously considering befriending a Thalmor.