A Bedtime Story About the Elves
“So, you want a story, eh? Hahah… Let’s see. Ah, you’ve heard enough of adventure and dragons and treasure for a week. How about a story of homes.”
“The world has always been divided into two camps. First there was the void, and in the void we-”
”Anu and Pad-oh-may, I know that already.”
“Fine, fine. And so the elf gods ripped out Shor’s heart and flung it across the ocean, and it made Red Mountain. And then the Men and the Elves went their separate ways.”
“Now there were two groups of mortals…”
“What about the Akaviri?”
“Three groups—”
“And the Hist and Argonians?”
“There was all kinds of mortals, but we only care about the biggest. They were called the Ehlnofey, and they split in half: the elves and the men.”
“Now the elves and humans fought a long time in the Dawn, and when Dawn broke they stopped fighting, but only because they were tired and also nowhere near each other. Hard to fight with your brother when he’s in a different room, eh?”
“No, I just go to that room.”
“Shut up I’m tellin’ a story.”
“So the elves was all in the southwest, and the men was all in the north.”
“What about the Redguards?”
“THE ELVES WERE SOUTHWEST AND THE HUMANS WERE NORTH. Then the men spread out and some went across the ocean and some went down to the swamp and some went to the heartland and some went even more north and came back, but they weren’t really tribes yet, they were just men learning how to live without their gods.”
“The elves still had their gods, though, because they won. Or they won because they still had their gods. Whatever. Anyway, the elves were all down there on an island and when you have all that many elves in one place, disagreements are going to happen.”
“Some elves, they fell in love with the sea, and they sailed off and became the Maormer.”
“Some elves, they fell in love with the sky, and they walked off and became the Ayleids.”
“Some elves were just plain weird and sailed away and now we call them the Left Handed Elves—”
“Were they all left handed?”
“No. Well, maybe some were. But they were called that because they were elves but different. Like how your left hand is a hand, but different from your right.”
“They’re the same…”
“But totally backwards. Want to hear the rest?”
Yawn. “I’m actually kind of tired…”
“Too bad.”
“Now some elves, they fell in love with nothing at all. In fact, they fell all the way out of love and couldn’t find it ever again. They looked out the window and they didn’t see a world; they saw a prison and a workshop. So they looked at their gods and saw nothing but a warden locked in with them. So they tunneled underground and built a big machine to break the prison and then they all got inside and that was that.”
“Did they escape?”
“No clue.”
“Some elves fell in love with men and money and went north and married all the men there, and they became the Bretons. But first they were the Direnni.”
“Some elves fell in love with the trees, and they became the Bosmer. And somehow there were also Khajiit. And now they hate each other, which just shows they’re family.”
“Some elves wished they were men and fell in love with the snow and came up north where all the men were, but the men had left by then, so they built quiet villages and sturdy homes just like us. And then the men came back and they realized they didn’t like them so they fought and the elves all died or ran underground and then died in the Deep Elves’ caves. And they was the Falmer.”
“Are you done yet?”
“Almost. Who’s left?”
“Uhhm, you haven’t mentioned the ashies.”
“So there were still a lot of elves left down south, and the Plot Prince talked to them and got them to fall in love with the world and then got them to follow him out to Morrowind. But the Strong Knight didn’t like seeing his family split up and especially not by the Plotter, so he took his army and went to stop them. But the Prince beat up the Knight and the Knight’s armies got turned into Orcs and now they don’t think they was ever elves.”
“And lastly the elves who were left fell in love with themselves and thought the world was stupid, but they couldn’t leave it, so now they just act all arrogant and they’s the Altmer.”
“Go to sleep.”