Located less than day’s walk south of Cheydinhal but still very much a rural town, Balroth had found Harlun’s Watch to be quite an agreeable location to settle down. One of the locals had told him that a cave near the village had been the site of some grisly killings at the hands of trolls in the final years of the Third Era. It had been the last interesting thing to happen in the area, which suited Balroth just fine. The forest and the grasslands that surrounded the town were as green and lush as the orc remembered Cyrodiil to be, and the houses just as quaint with their straw rooftops and stone walls. It was peace.

It was raining that day, but that didn’t stop Sarah from training out in the yard. Balroth sat on the porch of their cottage beneath the wooden overhang, warm and dry by the portable stove, and smoked his pipe as he watched the girl gingerly grip the hilt of the sword with both hands. Her tongue poked out of her mouth in concentration and caught a few of the raindrops that were rolling down her face. She was practicing the basics and, while very eager to start swinging, one has to learn how to properly hold the weapon first. The orc shifted in his seat and chuckled to himself.

“What?” Sarah asked and cast a sideways glance at Balroth. “Am I doing it wrong?” She lowered her arms slightly, frowned, and lifted them back up again. She held the sword at arm’s length, like she was afraid it was going to bite her.

“Your feet are too far apart,” Balroth replied. His voice was low and deep and sounded like two large boulders grating against each other. “And it looks like you’re about to give the blade to someone else, it’s that far away from you. Keep it closer to your body. Strength comes from your core, not your forearms.”

For a second it looked like Sarah was about to spit out a retort, but she bit her tongue and complied as best she could. Balroth noticed and nodded encouragingly. The girl had been troublesome and bad with authority at first, but she was slowly improving. Watching your parents being murdered and then being abducted yourself to be sacrificed to the Old Gods did things to you. Balroth couldn’t blame her, and he didn’t. Patience and understanding were key to getting her back to her old self. Sarah reminded Balroth of himself, way back when.

“Good.” Before Balroth could say anything else, lightning flashed in the clouds above them and a peal of thunder followed shortly after. Sarah yelped, then laughed nervously. “Okay, that’s enough,” the orc added and motioned for the girl to join him under the overhang. “We’ll continue later.” She hesitated but the rainfall intensified, as if Kyne herself was telling Sarah to go inside, and she slogged through the now-muddy yard with resignation. Balroth got to his feet, grabbed the linen towel he’d brought outside specifically for this purpose and began drying Sarah off when she stepped onto the porch. He had to bend very low. She was so small. Balroth could still be surprised by that.

“That tickles!” Sarah said and giggled, swatting at Balroth’s huge paws with her own tiny hands. The orc snorted and tousled her red hair before pulling up a second chair to the stove. Sarah sat down, her feet dangling above the floor, and laid the sword across her lap. It was a simple iron blade that Balroth had forged for her and was barely any bigger than a dagger. She loved it anyway and in her infinite creativity she had named it Stabber. Balroth rolled up the sleeves of his wool tunic and grabbed another log from the pile of firewood he kept on the porch and fed it to the stove. Sarah’s large and curious eyes, brown as autumn, followed his movements intently.

“Why do you have so many scars?” she asked eventually, her gaze tracing the lines of knotted flesh that crisscrossed his massive forearms. “You weren’t cut or anything when you killed that monster.” It’s what she always called the Hagraven; ’that monster’, never anything else.

Balroth sat back down with a grunt and listened to the pleasant crackle of the rejuvenated flames for a few seconds before answering. “Well, I wasn’t alone that time, and we had the element of surprise when we stormed the tower,” he said, turning his head towards Sarah. She looked up at him with those big eyes of hers, hanging on his every word, and Balroth was once again struck by how reliant she was on him now. He was her sole guardian and guide to the world. It was simultaneously an uncomfortable and motivating sensation. The orc cleared his throat and continued. “But I am very old and I have been in many, many fights, and sometimes I was alone. If you don’t have any help and you’re outnumbered bad things can happen to you, no matter how hard you try. And I’ve also fought creatures and people that were stronger than me.”

“That’s not possible!” Sarah exclaimed and pointed at Balroth’s arms. “Nobody is as big or as strong as you.”

The orc laughed heartily. “Well, maybe not stronger than me. You’re right. I am the biggest. But size and strength aren’t everything. Some small people are very fast, and that makes them dangerous. I think you’re going to be very fast when you grow up. And then there’s wizards and witches.” Balroth paused and pressed a hand to his stomach as the memory of the fierce pain he’d felt when the Thalmor sorcerer had almost killed him in the Great War came back to him. “You can never be too careful when it comes to them.”

A pensive looked passed over Sarah’s face. “But you know magic,” she said.

Balroth hummed. He held up his palm and watched as tiny flames danced over it, conjured out of thin air. “Only a little. A real wizard can do a lot more than I can. Some of them are powerful enough to set a whole house on fire. I even heard the Dragonborn could shoot dragons out of the sky with lightning,” he whispered and looked at Sarah. She looked suitably impressed.

“Have you ever heard of the dwarves?” Balroth asked and closed his fist. The flames disappeared. Sarah shook her head. “They’re all gone now, but they were very, very clever. They made all sorts of… contraptions, I suppose, that can move and fight on their own. Nobody knows how they did it. Those things gave me a few scars too. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t know why we call them dwarves. I think they were elves.”

Sarah absorbed this new information in silence and looked out over the yard, trying to discern individual raindrops in the now positively torrential downpour, but there were too many and they were falling too fast. Sensing that the conversation was over, Balroth leaned back in his chair and interlocked his fingers behind his head.

“I wonder where they went…” he idly muttered to himself.