Dear Ulvin,

You spin a decent yarn, but your rhetoric is flawed for one simple reason: Thiesekh is not the ocean, and it is not foolish for mortals to struggle to live. It is not foolish for mortals to be hopeful in the face of despair.

Mortal history is not merely a history of cruelty. It is a history of compassion. Empathy. Kindness. Sacrifice. The path of mortal lives, and indeed the path of history itself, is determined by those qualities we choose to emphasise and uphold. If we turn away from the good works that mortals do, if we choose to stare only into despair and ruin, we destroy our very capacity to act. But if we bear in our hearts those times in history where mortalkind behaved magnificently, where we came together, supported one another, and stood fast with courage and hope, we bolster ourselves and each other, and hope gives birth to action, and action gives birth to potential: the potential to correct our course, right our wrongs, and choose a better path forward.

Perhaps we succeed. Perhaps we fail. But to live as we believe we ought to live, in this day and tomorrow and the day after, in defiance of despair and darkness, is itself a grand victory.

In Song,
Taelle Starling

Penned by my hand on the 16th of Lupar, in the year 951 AF.