20.1.10
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Vyrian. Arenvald. Natharai. Cadence. Procrastin. Auroran. Dorien. Bantarion. Leodoric. Astarin. Jaxith. Hesper. Ruepert. Grin. Miles.
Miles. There is ink staining the page here, as if the quill or pen was pressed to the page for too long in thought. The next few sentences are circled lightly, underlined repeatedly.
This is my family. These are people who are my family. I’ve written these down to remember. This is real. I won’t forget. I’ll get better.
The following is written in run-on, meandering sentences. It’s clear he’s struggling in writing his thoughts, and judging by the various colours of ink or various widths of words on the page, this is something that has been added to repeatedly rather than turn to the next side of the parchment. It seems to describe a significant span of time, a week, perhaps. There is no apparent order or indication of markers to judge when any particular thought or event occurred. There’s no rhyme or reason to the entries.
Auro’s gloved hand on my cheek, his lips to my forehead. Quiet. No more pain. No more emptiness. No more loneliness. No more nothingness. The scent of his gloves. The stillness of the clinic. Weight of his body sitting next to mine. His patience in helping me eat. A bath. He brushed my hair for me. No one has done that since Merosiel and I were little. He told me he loved me. He wasn’t leaving. He and Pro didn’t hate me. They love me. Not like I want. They love me.
Miles, his face close to mine. Cigarette smoke stinging my nose. Good scent. Warm scent. Made me think of Grin. Shaking hands. Rolling cigarettes for him. This is not a recent memory I don’t think, but it makes me miss him and I think I cry as Miles talks. I tell him sorry sorry sorry I am sorry. He gives no forgiveness, he owns me. He owns me but it isn’t like the old man, and it isn’t what I want. Tears that Miles has to point out to me because I don’t feel them until I touch my face. Bowing, pain in my back, but pressing my forehead to cold stone ground anyway, kneeling and bowing and his anger and the smoke in the air are bitter tastes. I can’t taste anything. Bitter. I’m given a mission. Letter. Notes. His handwriting’s strange.
There is a copy of the letter penned carefully, but the penmanship is unsteady all the same.
Merosiel,
I've heard rumours of some manner of 'tea' that the ice trolls use to keep warm, seemingly hallucinogenic in nature. It appears to be distilled from parts of Talendra's Rose and other items of indeterminate nature to make a congealed jelly.
I need you to gather whatever information you can find. Inquire; interrogate; garner a sample: it doesn't matter. Just come back with results. Additionally, they seem to call it 'Ice Milk' in their language.
-MC.
Northrend. I’ll do my job. I’ll do it right. I’ll get better. Miles will be proud?
Procrastin finds me waiting at the clinic. Auro isn’t around, I want to wait. I want to see him. I want the quiet and calm he keeps giving me with shadows and hands on my face and whispered prayers in my ears. The clinic is safe. Stranger. Yelling. Procrastin fights, and I’m useless in my quiet. It’d take energy, effort. I’d have to leave all of the quiet behind. He yells at me, too, later, for not helping, then offers to go with me on Miles’ orders to Northrend. I’m grateful. I love him. Love Auro. They’re good to me. We go home. Home--Pro says, come home, Meros, and he talks with me while Auro sleeps. I tortured torture my boy girl it he says, and this is shameful, awful. I’ll get better. I’m a terrible parent.
I told Bantarion goodbye. I like him; he smells good, he’s kind. But I said goodbye. Northrend is a place people go to die, and Miles doesn’t like me, doesn’t forgive me. I think this is my culling, even though Mother Moon told me she would not kill me if I got better. Goodbye Bantarion. He says I will pray for you, Merosiel, and I can only shake my head. Auro prays, but it does little good. I don’t tell Bantarion this; I want someone to know where I went. Someone to remember me. Northrend is a place people go to die. A sin’dorei harassed us. He called himself Kay, but I didn’t find him very agreeable. I’ll probably never see him again. That thought doesn’t hurt as much as not seeing Bantarion, or Auro, or Pro.Okay, it hurts a little. Will Kay remember the notDead elf sitting at the side of the road to the stables?
Sparring with Lazaar. This is written, cramped, on one side of the margin. He kicks hard, and I lost, but it was fun. Sparring is a little like the quiet Auro gives. Ruepert says Miles is a good man and showed me a letter; Ruepert also went on a date. I don’t get any of it.The dead girl says Auro hates me. Pro and Auro have been gone for a long time. This is true?
Jesmari in a box. Fuck me. Goddess bless, Jesmari in a box; Mother Moon what did you do. It’s myfaultmyfaultohElune my fault myfault
Meeting called, letter. Paperwork I don’t want to fill out. I just write my name, but it’s not mine, not really, and it’s kind of sad, kind of funny. Natharai forces me to agree to examination. I’m scared. Auro is supposed to do it, but I’m scared. I don’t believe words like confidential.
Auro and I talked. For hours. It was like when we met. I learned his favourite colours but now I can’t remember them and it seems so important. Must ask again. He likes frogs. All kinds of animals. Frog prince. Charmer. Exalted with frogs.He likes sex. I wish I did. I want it, crave it. Supposed to like it. Hate it. No good. I’m broken. Don’t tell him this, but say he can look anyway, can take my thoughts. He won’t. He has dirty books, too. I wonder if we could trade. Natharai showed, hand to my shoulder. Whispered. Natharai knows. Natharai isn’t the kind of man I thought he was. Broken. I’m broken. Natharai knows. I’m scared.
Ebonrook. I keep forgetting Natharai’s surname is Ebonrook. Ebonrook sounds like an elf name. Him and Aren both behave like elves sometimes. But Natharai would make a better elf. I should tell him this; would he like that I think this? He told me to read toit the my kid. I don’t understand. I’ll have to ask. Must remember to ask why, it doesn’t make sense. He held me. Hugged me. He has secrets, and somehow, I don’t care what they are because he acted like I was okay. I’m okay. He believes me. He’s not going to hurt me for it, won’t use what he knows to ruin me break me more than I am. Am I broken? He says someone has studied these things. He called it a funny name. Can’t remember. He believes.
I don’t want to remember and at the same time it feels important. So much has happened, I know this, but I recall bits and pieces in a kaleidoscope of scents and sounds and images in my mind. None of them are really in any sense of order, which gives me a growing sense of panic fluttering in my chest. I don’t want to remember, but I do. I must.
I’ll ask Auro again if he’ll let me
I still have more bad days then good days. Existing hurts, breathing hurts. Being awake and conscious hurts. But being asleep hurts, too. I’m okay. I’m getting better.
I’ve got to get better.
I’ve got people around me. I’ve got help. These people around me are helping me. I need to remember this.
Names. I’ll write them all a hundred times, if it will help me remember that there are people who care, even if I can’t be fixed.
Miles. There is ink staining the page here, as if the quill or pen was pressed to the page for too long in thought. The next few sentences are circled lightly, underlined repeatedly.
This is my family. These are people who are my family. I’ve written these down to remember. This is real. I won’t forget. I’ll get better.
The following is written in run-on, meandering sentences. It’s clear he’s struggling in writing his thoughts, and judging by the various colours of ink or various widths of words on the page, this is something that has been added to repeatedly rather than turn to the next side of the parchment. It seems to describe a significant span of time, a week, perhaps. There is no apparent order or indication of markers to judge when any particular thought or event occurred. There’s no rhyme or reason to the entries.
Auro’s gloved hand on my cheek, his lips to my forehead. Quiet. No more pain. No more emptiness. No more loneliness. No more nothingness. The scent of his gloves. The stillness of the clinic. Weight of his body sitting next to mine. His patience in helping me eat. A bath. He brushed my hair for me. No one has done that since Merosiel and I were little. He told me he loved me. He wasn’t leaving. He and Pro didn’t hate me. They love me. Not like I want. They love me.
Miles, his face close to mine. Cigarette smoke stinging my nose. Good scent. Warm scent. Made me think of Grin. Shaking hands. Rolling cigarettes for him. This is not a recent memory I don’t think, but it makes me miss him and I think I cry as Miles talks. I tell him sorry sorry sorry I am sorry. He gives no forgiveness, he owns me. He owns me but it isn’t like the old man, and it isn’t what I want. Tears that Miles has to point out to me because I don’t feel them until I touch my face. Bowing, pain in my back, but pressing my forehead to cold stone ground anyway, kneeling and bowing and his anger and the smoke in the air are bitter tastes. I can’t taste anything. Bitter. I’m given a mission. Letter. Notes. His handwriting’s strange.
There is a copy of the letter penned carefully, but the penmanship is unsteady all the same.
Merosiel,
I've heard rumours of some manner of 'tea' that the ice trolls use to keep warm, seemingly hallucinogenic in nature. It appears to be distilled from parts of Talendra's Rose and other items of indeterminate nature to make a congealed jelly.
I need you to gather whatever information you can find. Inquire; interrogate; garner a sample: it doesn't matter. Just come back with results. Additionally, they seem to call it 'Ice Milk' in their language.
-MC.
Northrend. I’ll do my job. I’ll do it right. I’ll get better. Miles will be proud?
Procrastin finds me waiting at the clinic. Auro isn’t around, I want to wait. I want to see him. I want the quiet and calm he keeps giving me with shadows and hands on my face and whispered prayers in my ears. The clinic is safe. Stranger. Yelling. Procrastin fights, and I’m useless in my quiet. It’d take energy, effort. I’d have to leave all of the quiet behind. He yells at me, too, later, for not helping, then offers to go with me on Miles’ orders to Northrend. I’m grateful. I love him. Love Auro. They’re good to me. We go home. Home--Pro says, come home, Meros, and he talks with me while Auro sleeps. I tortured torture my boy girl it he says, and this is shameful, awful. I’ll get better. I’m a terrible parent.
I told Bantarion goodbye. I like him; he smells good, he’s kind. But I said goodbye. Northrend is a place people go to die, and Miles doesn’t like me, doesn’t forgive me. I think this is my culling, even though Mother Moon told me she would not kill me if I got better. Goodbye Bantarion. He says I will pray for you, Merosiel, and I can only shake my head. Auro prays, but it does little good. I don’t tell Bantarion this; I want someone to know where I went. Someone to remember me. Northrend is a place people go to die. A sin’dorei harassed us. He called himself Kay, but I didn’t find him very agreeable. I’ll probably never see him again. That thought doesn’t hurt as much as not seeing Bantarion, or Auro, or Pro.
Sparring with Lazaar. This is written, cramped, on one side of the margin. He kicks hard, and I lost, but it was fun. Sparring is a little like the quiet Auro gives. Ruepert says Miles is a good man and showed me a letter; Ruepert also went on a date. I don’t get any of it.
Jesmari in a box. Fuck me. Goddess bless, Jesmari in a box; Mother Moon what did you do. It’s myfaultmyfaultohElune my fault myfault
Meeting called, letter. Paperwork I don’t want to fill out. I just write my name, but it’s not mine, not really, and it’s kind of sad, kind of funny. Natharai forces me to agree to examination.
Auro and I talked. For hours. It was like when we met. I learned his favourite colours but now I can’t remember them and it seems so important. Must ask again. He likes frogs. All kinds of animals. Frog prince. Charmer. Exalted with frogs.
Ebonrook. I keep forgetting Natharai’s surname is Ebonrook. Ebonrook sounds like an elf name. Him and Aren both behave like elves sometimes. But Natharai would make a better elf. I should tell him this; would he like that I think this? He told me to read to
I don’t want to remember and at the same time it feels important. So much has happened, I know this, but I recall bits and pieces in a kaleidoscope of scents and sounds and images in my mind. None of them are really in any sense of order, which gives me a growing sense of panic fluttering in my chest. I don’t want to remember, but I do. I must.
I’ll ask Auro again if he’ll let me
I still have more bad days then good days. Existing hurts, breathing hurts. Being awake and conscious hurts. But being asleep hurts, too. I’m okay. I’m getting better.
I’ve got to get better.
I’ve got people around me. I’ve got help. These people around me are helping me. I need to remember this.
Names. I’ll write them all a hundred times, if it will help me remember that there are people who care, even if I can’t be fixed.
"Of Fixing Family."
It's cold, and it's wet, and it's winter. Inevitably in this dreary place, the weather can never decide on if it wants to be snow or rain, and so it always settles on a freezing, damp mist. To Merosiel, the entire town and the surrounding forest smells of death and the muck you find under rotting logs. It isn't pretty, it isn't calming, and he's here for business which makes his already ragged nerves fray a little more.
It probably doesn't help that he's wearing a thin, patched robe over an even thinner, linen robe meant to be worn underneath. No boots--his feet squish a little in the wet grass, but he can't feel his toes much these days so he's pretty indifferent to it--and no pants or gloves. He has a hat though. This gives him some meager sense of security within the mercurial, ever-shifting thoughts that roil in his mind and keep him from truly focusing on anything for more than a few seconds. Most of the time, he just spends his days huddled in a corner of his head, far away from anything resembling trying to think, and drifts.
He can't do that right now, and it hurts. He has his teeth clenched against that hurt, and the knock that follows the scrape of his half-frozen knuckles against the wooden door seems muffled to his hearing. Everything is muffled, but he can't tell right now if it's the forest around him or the distance he's put between himself and the majority of his body.
Wiping a palm on his robes, Merosiel shifts his weight a little, shivers at a breeze that sighs through the leaves and the dank air. His other hand is occupied, fisted tightly around the crumpled parchment peeking through his fingers. He doesn't seem aware of it, really, as if the tendons and muscles and ligaments have all locked up hours ago and he's forgotten all about it.
Then the door is opening, announced moments prior by more muffled hoofsteps. Merosiel is reminded briefly of other quiet, delicate hoofsteps, but the thing that peers out at him is nowhere near that person. He's too tired and as grey inside as he is without to feel or register much shock or disgust, or anything but the shivering from the cold and the soft sigh that escapes and births tendrils of blue, fine fog. It seeps from behind his teeth and lips, half winter breath and half lighting from the false tongue glowing inside his mouth.
"Um, hello."
She's wizened and grey and leathery, and she's smiling at him. Mother Moon, Merosiel thinks, inexplicably, and despite all of the things that say she's not--a draenei, by Elune's Light--there's still something other in the lich-blue eyes that stare at him and he shivers again and swallows the mewling sound that wants to whine its way out of his throat. He tucks the ears that had stood up on end and steps through after room is made for him.
She smells of leather, of lady's perfume, the expensive kind that is subtle and sweet. It burns his nose anyway.
“Welcome, milenka, come in, come in!”
Merosiel 's ears twitch, then tuck some, and he shuffles in. Remembers to close the door behind him, but not to wipe his feet. Wet, muddy footprints trail behind him as he walks, but the quel’dorei is staring around him dully and either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. The house is cold and sparse and smells of tea; it’s incredibly clean. Painfully clean.
He pauses in his steps, head craning slowly to go with the silvery eyes flicking to stare around the room. There’s curiosity behind the tired, confused expression. He tugs at one flap of his hat absently, a little like one might twirl hair around a finger, then looks back to the draenei in time to catch Yeva’s grand, polite gesture as she beckons for him to sit at the small kitchen table.
Eyeing the chair offered, then Yeva, then back once more, Merosiel finally lurches into motion again. He reluctantly pulls the chair out with a muffled scrape of legs, turns it backwards and straddles the seat. It’s not as easy as it used to be, but he manages.
She’s leaning in while he settles, and he watches the dead thing in front of him gracefully pour tea for them both. The teapot looks old and well-kept, foreign in make. “It comes to my attention I have not met you, dievka, have not made introduction proper.”
Her voice sounds like rustling leaves, but he isn’t certain if this is projection or how she actually sounds.
“Okay,” he says, and knows his voice sounds small and weak and as dead as she looks. He doesn’t have the energy or will to care, too subdued. Perhaps this dreary acquiescence can be seen as polite, or afraid; he doesn’t look very afraid, yet, but there’s certainly time. He’s in Mother Moon’s cottage in the middle of the fucking woods, having tea with her. There’s plenty of time for his numbed brain to trigger fear response.
The woman finishes attending to said tea, then sets the pot aside to splay a mottled hand across her bony chest. “I am Yeva,” she says with that neat, house-wife smile in place. “And you of course, are Merosiel Riversung."
Silence settles in save the trickle of water outside and the occasional creak of wood as he shifts his weight. Silvery gaze follows as Yeva picks up her teacup, holds it so lightly, delicately, like it’s a feather. She sips. He stares, blinks at last. He might dredge up the interest to wonder how this dead thing that is his Mother Moon knows his name, but it’s not so surprising after all, given where and who he works with these days. Given who she is. Now, if she had said his other name, that might have rattled some sort of crisper reaction from him.
Instead, Merosiel leans forward too, bony fingers--that thankfully do not yet resemble the woman’s who sits across from him--curling over the back of his chair. He sniffs at his teacup and the liquid in it that sends vapor and warmth wafting against cold-bitten, thin cheeks.
He’s unaware of it, but Yeva smiles at him and watches this, a tiny smile from the living corpse that perches on dark lips. “It is only tea, milenka. There is no reason for you to faint or to talk very much or to die.” Her voice is meant as reassuring, but all Merosiel can smell from her is death and he finds no reassurance in her smile--he sees it now as he looks up with ears lifted--or her manners or her tea.
Yet abruptly, he can feel a smile of his own curving over his own face, and his ears quiver and fold and he’s laughing so tiredly, so hollowly, careful not to show teeth.
Yeva is smiling all the more broadly for this, but Merosiel decides to return his attention to the tea. It has warmth, she does not. He sniffs as delicately as she’s been sipping, and after a few moments, his concentration shifts from deliberation to pleased. A tiny flicker of comfort: he can’t taste it and he doesn’t trust it, but scent is all he has to enjoy much of anything consumable so it doesn’t matter much, anyway. His eyes lid, then open for a slow blink.
She’s speaking again, but it’s what she says that has him paying attention. “I am promised is very good, but I can only taste ash, now. Everything like paper, like stone.” How cheerfully she says this but Merosiel fancies he can see the bones under her skin, superimposed, and it is a bewildering specter to him to imagine, so his focus wavers almost immediately.
“I can’t... I can’t tassste anything,” he says in a hissing sigh of voice that sounds like snake coils rasping to him. Wisps of that pale mist trickle from his lips as they move, as he breathes to speak.
Mother Moon in her draenei suit makes a sympathetic little murmur of a noise. He resumes ‘enjoying’ his tea, mind drifting, and energy wavering into ever-lower levels that have already been running well past empty. The quel’dorei is pretty uncertain as to just why he’s here at all but he doesn’t really care enough to wonder for very long. Being told to travel all the way out into the middle of winter, to one of the wettest, coldest places--not to mention dreariest--bothers him more than being told to go visit a goddess masquerading as a dead woman.
Another polite sip of tea, another pleasant inquiry.
“How is it you lose your tongue?” She asks, and he’s dragging his attention back to her, struggling. He’s in a marsh, a mire, in the mud trying just to breathe, and his table-companion expects him to fly.
He thinks for a while. Memories flood into him, slamming his senses because his sense of recollection has always been perfect until recently, but all the things he never wants to recall are all the things he retains the most of.
“Cut out,” the elf answers shortly, disinterested. “For ssspeaking againssst my former prince.” This is all said in flat tones, the kind one tends to acquire after so many repeated retellings.
The dead woman trills a little laugh, tilting her head. Large, unblinking eyes are fixed on him; Yeva is curious? “Which prince, dievka?” Is the patient prompt. “My history of this place, so bad, so bad.”
His eyes tilt up, away from his tea once more to peer at the draenei in silence.
“Is only now my Common where I do not sound like idiot,” she adds, and he finds himself responding with “Prince Tortheldrin,” a click of teeth, and “not the Sssin’dorei prince--although he wasss mad, too.”
She’s ‘hmming’ at him, expression molded into quiet acceptance. “In Eldre’thalas,” she says rather than questions, and pronounces the word smoothly albeit strangely. Is she clarifying for herself, or is it simply another excuse to speak? To needle his attention with the pricking claws of her voice in his ears? It’s gentle and subtle enough, sure, but always present, and it keeps him from sinking or closing his eyes. A thorn or splinter under the skin.
“Yesss,” Merosiel answers, and the response feels dredged out of him, a metal trap scraping the bottom of a riverbed, catching silt, catching debris.
Cluck of the tongue and Merosiel stares, because she’s saying, “Is missing for very long, then! So sorry to hear,” and he can’t tell if the sincerity is in his head or in her voice, because he suddenly finds it difficult to tell if he’s even here, or awake, or if this is some continued part of his nightmares. A new segment tacked on cheaply and gaudily.
“You tell me, you enjoy working for my family?” Slosh of liquid, he registers it belatedly and looks as more tea is poured into the tiny cup in front of the draenei.
Slowly, he finds his lips twitching, and wonders if there’s a faint hint of the crooked smile he keeps losing along with everything else.
“Not really,” he answers, truth carded from his lips better than wool between the fine combs assigned to such a task. “No offenssse, Bosss Lady, but thisss iss the mosst disorganized group I’ve ever had the misssfortune of hiring my contract to.”
Did he shrug his shoulders, or did she shrug them for him? “But, I sssigned up, ssso.”
His honesty, or her honesty masquerading as his and free will, is rewarded with a grin, a broad and white, toothy smile that shows the tiny, perfect little draenei fangs. He clicks his teeth again absently in response.
“Would you see it fixed? Or, you are content for leaving it like this?”
Merosiel scratches behind one ear. He’s tired. This is a lot of thinking to do for him, and he just wants to sink back into apathy, wear his hat, and stare at nothing. That’s easiest.
But his lips are moving, and the false tongue, but what comes out is not false, just slimed with that mist that seeps from him. His mouth is an open wound, he thinks giddily, abruptly. Bleeding blue fog all the time, bleeding lich mist. Is he dead? He feels dead.
“Fixed would be nice.” It’s soft, finite, sincere. He isn’t certain if he’s really speaking about the ‘family’ he ‘loves’ so very moon-damned much, or about himself. He decides that it doesn’t matter. Nothing does. Either way, it’s pretty truthful and that’s what he has to give.
“Who most needs fixing, do you think?” Sip of tea before, twirl of fingers from her free hand around long, desiccated black-tipped tendrils. It’s asked lightly, regarded lightly, yet Merosiel feels so much weight in his thoughts, on his shoulders, and when he lifts tired eyes, he stares for such a long time in silence.
He wants to ask, suddenly, if ‘fixing’ means ‘culling’ like Ley said, which means killing. Which means he’s in line for it as much as anyone and he can’t tell if he cares. Is this Ley’s doing, then? Is this why Mother Moon has finally deigned to speak to him, to sit and chat like they are friendly neighbors gossiping? If he answers and answers truthfully, regardless of the consequences it might bring, will Mother Moon love him finally? He wonders if that would make dying easier, to no longer feel shunned and abandoned by the goddess who is supposed to cherish every one of Her children yet turned Her back to him at birth.
Yeva is poised and attentive, the polite housewife she’s played the entire time, but he’s not interested in distinguishing what’s reality and what’s farce. All he has the strength for is to stay conscious, to keep plodding forward. He has to. He’s tempted, and maybe it shows in his face for a second.
Who needs fixing? Miles. He wants to say ‘Miles,’ just blurt it out. This is his chance. Lie, a part of him urges, lie and get back a part of yourself.
But he doesn’t. He just lowers a sad, tired gaze to the un-tasted tea. “If I answer that, doess it harm someone? If I don’t answer, doess it harm, anyway?”
She laughs, even as he says, too: “Am I to walk a tightrope with you, Bosss Lady?”
“All walk a tightrope, even if they do not know!” She shrugs, and he stares at the pink dress that does not belong with her corpse body with its dank, muddy colouring. “And for harm, for your question. I fix where I see is broken, and when I see it. Sometimes, it is easier to have suggestion, to speak with those beneath instead of only making decision from above, yes?”
“Yeah.” He notices with more than a little discomfort that Yeva has not answered his question at all.
Another sip of tea. “Ester, she displeases me, but also does very well in some things. I take one finger.” Demonstration is in the lifted, free hand, dark digit held up, the rest curled down, and his lips rise just a little, twitching. “One she does not need. I am fair.”
Merosiel clicks his teeth, stares more. The dress is ugly. She is ugly. So is he. Everything in this house is ugly but it is clean and neat and tidy, but it is all ugly. He is not interested in playing martyr, yet neither does he feel enough hate to point at someone else.
“And here, I didn’t think fair exisssted any longer,” Merosiel drawls; he doesn’t know if he is saying it seriously or simply pokerfaced.
“Fair is important,” Yeva agrees.
“Yeah.”
“Action without reason, this I will never do.”
His shark-like teeth snicker-snack together again. He’s trying to think. “Then you’re a sssight better than half of thossse I’ve worked for in the passt.”
“Now, you tell me. Who is it you think needs fixing?”
The change of tack, circling around unexpectedly, has the grey-skinned elf closing his eyes. He counsels himself to honesty, and exhales once, quietly. Tendrils of that wannabe lich-mist seeps free from nose and lips in predictable fashion, streaming like smoke only to never get far before dissipating.
“Aleyna.” Coffin nail piercing him. It shouldn’t hurt like this. “Jesssmarri.” Long pause and click of teeth to go with, “Lazaar,” but the last pause is the longest and he almost chokes on it. “Merosssiel.”
His hands can’t tremble because he’s fisted them in the fabric of his robe. “The resst... have done their job well. Natharai. He, most of all. Auroran. Procrasstin. Cadence. Dorien.” The names feel like oil on his tongue but that’s impossible because he’s drunk none of Mother Moon’s tea and he has no sensation from the prosthetic. “Arenvald. Lilifred. Marton.” He drones on, until he’s listed them all. These people are family, too. They have either done their part or have slipped beneath his notice and that is the same thing in the end. “Thesse are the oness that do well.”
It has been so very long, but Merosiel is singing again to Mother Moon.
The words are different and the song hurts, but betraying himself and those he works with because She has asked and he must answer, well, that’s just a part of the chorus, isn’t it?
His eyes slide open, mere silver crescents.
“Thank you, Meroschenka.” Clack of porcelain, and the teacup is set down.
He smiles thinly, tiredly. He has not shown teeth, once, not even when Yeva’s expression changes at last and becomes serious. The stare is more pointed. “For you,” she says, and his ears flip up, face forward; he is attentive even though his expression appears otherwise.
“For you, I will tell you only to do better. You will have not done so badly yet as to make me cause you for losing child, I think.”
He has lost the ability to breathe. His throat closes, chokes and throttles him, and his mouth opens but there is no sound for it and no mist curling past his lips.
“I will not run the risk. Yet.” Her gaze drills into him, keeps him captive. He can’t breathe. His heart quivers in his chest as much as his ears tremble where they stand on end. “Do better.”
“Yesss...” Escapes at last, a tiny, quivering sigh to go with his pulse and ears.
She knows. It really is Mother Moon. She knows, and Merosiel cracks like a poorly glazed pitcher.
It probably doesn't help that he's wearing a thin, patched robe over an even thinner, linen robe meant to be worn underneath. No boots--his feet squish a little in the wet grass, but he can't feel his toes much these days so he's pretty indifferent to it--and no pants or gloves. He has a hat though. This gives him some meager sense of security within the mercurial, ever-shifting thoughts that roil in his mind and keep him from truly focusing on anything for more than a few seconds. Most of the time, he just spends his days huddled in a corner of his head, far away from anything resembling trying to think, and drifts.
He can't do that right now, and it hurts. He has his teeth clenched against that hurt, and the knock that follows the scrape of his half-frozen knuckles against the wooden door seems muffled to his hearing. Everything is muffled, but he can't tell right now if it's the forest around him or the distance he's put between himself and the majority of his body.
Wiping a palm on his robes, Merosiel shifts his weight a little, shivers at a breeze that sighs through the leaves and the dank air. His other hand is occupied, fisted tightly around the crumpled parchment peeking through his fingers. He doesn't seem aware of it, really, as if the tendons and muscles and ligaments have all locked up hours ago and he's forgotten all about it.
Then the door is opening, announced moments prior by more muffled hoofsteps. Merosiel is reminded briefly of other quiet, delicate hoofsteps, but the thing that peers out at him is nowhere near that person. He's too tired and as grey inside as he is without to feel or register much shock or disgust, or anything but the shivering from the cold and the soft sigh that escapes and births tendrils of blue, fine fog. It seeps from behind his teeth and lips, half winter breath and half lighting from the false tongue glowing inside his mouth.
"Um, hello."
She's wizened and grey and leathery, and she's smiling at him. Mother Moon, Merosiel thinks, inexplicably, and despite all of the things that say she's not--a draenei, by Elune's Light--there's still something other in the lich-blue eyes that stare at him and he shivers again and swallows the mewling sound that wants to whine its way out of his throat. He tucks the ears that had stood up on end and steps through after room is made for him.
She smells of leather, of lady's perfume, the expensive kind that is subtle and sweet. It burns his nose anyway.
“Welcome, milenka, come in, come in!”
Merosiel 's ears twitch, then tuck some, and he shuffles in. Remembers to close the door behind him, but not to wipe his feet. Wet, muddy footprints trail behind him as he walks, but the quel’dorei is staring around him dully and either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. The house is cold and sparse and smells of tea; it’s incredibly clean. Painfully clean.
He pauses in his steps, head craning slowly to go with the silvery eyes flicking to stare around the room. There’s curiosity behind the tired, confused expression. He tugs at one flap of his hat absently, a little like one might twirl hair around a finger, then looks back to the draenei in time to catch Yeva’s grand, polite gesture as she beckons for him to sit at the small kitchen table.
Eyeing the chair offered, then Yeva, then back once more, Merosiel finally lurches into motion again. He reluctantly pulls the chair out with a muffled scrape of legs, turns it backwards and straddles the seat. It’s not as easy as it used to be, but he manages.
She’s leaning in while he settles, and he watches the dead thing in front of him gracefully pour tea for them both. The teapot looks old and well-kept, foreign in make. “It comes to my attention I have not met you, dievka, have not made introduction proper.”
Her voice sounds like rustling leaves, but he isn’t certain if this is projection or how she actually sounds.
“Okay,” he says, and knows his voice sounds small and weak and as dead as she looks. He doesn’t have the energy or will to care, too subdued. Perhaps this dreary acquiescence can be seen as polite, or afraid; he doesn’t look very afraid, yet, but there’s certainly time. He’s in Mother Moon’s cottage in the middle of the fucking woods, having tea with her. There’s plenty of time for his numbed brain to trigger fear response.
The woman finishes attending to said tea, then sets the pot aside to splay a mottled hand across her bony chest. “I am Yeva,” she says with that neat, house-wife smile in place. “And you of course, are Merosiel Riversung."
Silence settles in save the trickle of water outside and the occasional creak of wood as he shifts his weight. Silvery gaze follows as Yeva picks up her teacup, holds it so lightly, delicately, like it’s a feather. She sips. He stares, blinks at last. He might dredge up the interest to wonder how this dead thing that is his Mother Moon knows his name, but it’s not so surprising after all, given where and who he works with these days. Given who she is. Now, if she had said his other name, that might have rattled some sort of crisper reaction from him.
Instead, Merosiel leans forward too, bony fingers--that thankfully do not yet resemble the woman’s who sits across from him--curling over the back of his chair. He sniffs at his teacup and the liquid in it that sends vapor and warmth wafting against cold-bitten, thin cheeks.
He’s unaware of it, but Yeva smiles at him and watches this, a tiny smile from the living corpse that perches on dark lips. “It is only tea, milenka. There is no reason for you to faint or to talk very much or to die.” Her voice is meant as reassuring, but all Merosiel can smell from her is death and he finds no reassurance in her smile--he sees it now as he looks up with ears lifted--or her manners or her tea.
Yet abruptly, he can feel a smile of his own curving over his own face, and his ears quiver and fold and he’s laughing so tiredly, so hollowly, careful not to show teeth.
Yeva is smiling all the more broadly for this, but Merosiel decides to return his attention to the tea. It has warmth, she does not. He sniffs as delicately as she’s been sipping, and after a few moments, his concentration shifts from deliberation to pleased. A tiny flicker of comfort: he can’t taste it and he doesn’t trust it, but scent is all he has to enjoy much of anything consumable so it doesn’t matter much, anyway. His eyes lid, then open for a slow blink.
She’s speaking again, but it’s what she says that has him paying attention. “I am promised is very good, but I can only taste ash, now. Everything like paper, like stone.” How cheerfully she says this but Merosiel fancies he can see the bones under her skin, superimposed, and it is a bewildering specter to him to imagine, so his focus wavers almost immediately.
“I can’t... I can’t tassste anything,” he says in a hissing sigh of voice that sounds like snake coils rasping to him. Wisps of that pale mist trickle from his lips as they move, as he breathes to speak.
Mother Moon in her draenei suit makes a sympathetic little murmur of a noise. He resumes ‘enjoying’ his tea, mind drifting, and energy wavering into ever-lower levels that have already been running well past empty. The quel’dorei is pretty uncertain as to just why he’s here at all but he doesn’t really care enough to wonder for very long. Being told to travel all the way out into the middle of winter, to one of the wettest, coldest places--not to mention dreariest--bothers him more than being told to go visit a goddess masquerading as a dead woman.
Another polite sip of tea, another pleasant inquiry.
“How is it you lose your tongue?” She asks, and he’s dragging his attention back to her, struggling. He’s in a marsh, a mire, in the mud trying just to breathe, and his table-companion expects him to fly.
He thinks for a while. Memories flood into him, slamming his senses because his sense of recollection has always been perfect until recently, but all the things he never wants to recall are all the things he retains the most of.
“Cut out,” the elf answers shortly, disinterested. “For ssspeaking againssst my former prince.” This is all said in flat tones, the kind one tends to acquire after so many repeated retellings.
The dead woman trills a little laugh, tilting her head. Large, unblinking eyes are fixed on him; Yeva is curious? “Which prince, dievka?” Is the patient prompt. “My history of this place, so bad, so bad.”
His eyes tilt up, away from his tea once more to peer at the draenei in silence.
“Is only now my Common where I do not sound like idiot,” she adds, and he finds himself responding with “Prince Tortheldrin,” a click of teeth, and “not the Sssin’dorei prince--although he wasss mad, too.”
She’s ‘hmming’ at him, expression molded into quiet acceptance. “In Eldre’thalas,” she says rather than questions, and pronounces the word smoothly albeit strangely. Is she clarifying for herself, or is it simply another excuse to speak? To needle his attention with the pricking claws of her voice in his ears? It’s gentle and subtle enough, sure, but always present, and it keeps him from sinking or closing his eyes. A thorn or splinter under the skin.
“Yesss,” Merosiel answers, and the response feels dredged out of him, a metal trap scraping the bottom of a riverbed, catching silt, catching debris.
Cluck of the tongue and Merosiel stares, because she’s saying, “Is missing for very long, then! So sorry to hear,” and he can’t tell if the sincerity is in his head or in her voice, because he suddenly finds it difficult to tell if he’s even here, or awake, or if this is some continued part of his nightmares. A new segment tacked on cheaply and gaudily.
“You tell me, you enjoy working for my family?” Slosh of liquid, he registers it belatedly and looks as more tea is poured into the tiny cup in front of the draenei.
Slowly, he finds his lips twitching, and wonders if there’s a faint hint of the crooked smile he keeps losing along with everything else.
“Not really,” he answers, truth carded from his lips better than wool between the fine combs assigned to such a task. “No offenssse, Bosss Lady, but thisss iss the mosst disorganized group I’ve ever had the misssfortune of hiring my contract to.”
Did he shrug his shoulders, or did she shrug them for him? “But, I sssigned up, ssso.”
His honesty, or her honesty masquerading as his and free will, is rewarded with a grin, a broad and white, toothy smile that shows the tiny, perfect little draenei fangs. He clicks his teeth again absently in response.
“Would you see it fixed? Or, you are content for leaving it like this?”
Merosiel scratches behind one ear. He’s tired. This is a lot of thinking to do for him, and he just wants to sink back into apathy, wear his hat, and stare at nothing. That’s easiest.
But his lips are moving, and the false tongue, but what comes out is not false, just slimed with that mist that seeps from him. His mouth is an open wound, he thinks giddily, abruptly. Bleeding blue fog all the time, bleeding lich mist. Is he dead? He feels dead.
“Fixed would be nice.” It’s soft, finite, sincere. He isn’t certain if he’s really speaking about the ‘family’ he ‘loves’ so very moon-damned much, or about himself. He decides that it doesn’t matter. Nothing does. Either way, it’s pretty truthful and that’s what he has to give.
“Who most needs fixing, do you think?” Sip of tea before, twirl of fingers from her free hand around long, desiccated black-tipped tendrils. It’s asked lightly, regarded lightly, yet Merosiel feels so much weight in his thoughts, on his shoulders, and when he lifts tired eyes, he stares for such a long time in silence.
He wants to ask, suddenly, if ‘fixing’ means ‘culling’ like Ley said, which means killing. Which means he’s in line for it as much as anyone and he can’t tell if he cares. Is this Ley’s doing, then? Is this why Mother Moon has finally deigned to speak to him, to sit and chat like they are friendly neighbors gossiping? If he answers and answers truthfully, regardless of the consequences it might bring, will Mother Moon love him finally? He wonders if that would make dying easier, to no longer feel shunned and abandoned by the goddess who is supposed to cherish every one of Her children yet turned Her back to him at birth.
Yeva is poised and attentive, the polite housewife she’s played the entire time, but he’s not interested in distinguishing what’s reality and what’s farce. All he has the strength for is to stay conscious, to keep plodding forward. He has to. He’s tempted, and maybe it shows in his face for a second.
Who needs fixing? Miles. He wants to say ‘Miles,’ just blurt it out. This is his chance. Lie, a part of him urges, lie and get back a part of yourself.
But he doesn’t. He just lowers a sad, tired gaze to the un-tasted tea. “If I answer that, doess it harm someone? If I don’t answer, doess it harm, anyway?”
She laughs, even as he says, too: “Am I to walk a tightrope with you, Bosss Lady?”
“All walk a tightrope, even if they do not know!” She shrugs, and he stares at the pink dress that does not belong with her corpse body with its dank, muddy colouring. “And for harm, for your question. I fix where I see is broken, and when I see it. Sometimes, it is easier to have suggestion, to speak with those beneath instead of only making decision from above, yes?”
“Yeah.” He notices with more than a little discomfort that Yeva has not answered his question at all.
Another sip of tea. “Ester, she displeases me, but also does very well in some things. I take one finger.” Demonstration is in the lifted, free hand, dark digit held up, the rest curled down, and his lips rise just a little, twitching. “One she does not need. I am fair.”
Merosiel clicks his teeth, stares more. The dress is ugly. She is ugly. So is he. Everything in this house is ugly but it is clean and neat and tidy, but it is all ugly. He is not interested in playing martyr, yet neither does he feel enough hate to point at someone else.
“And here, I didn’t think fair exisssted any longer,” Merosiel drawls; he doesn’t know if he is saying it seriously or simply pokerfaced.
“Fair is important,” Yeva agrees.
“Yeah.”
“Action without reason, this I will never do.”
His shark-like teeth snicker-snack together again. He’s trying to think. “Then you’re a sssight better than half of thossse I’ve worked for in the passt.”
“Now, you tell me. Who is it you think needs fixing?”
The change of tack, circling around unexpectedly, has the grey-skinned elf closing his eyes. He counsels himself to honesty, and exhales once, quietly. Tendrils of that wannabe lich-mist seeps free from nose and lips in predictable fashion, streaming like smoke only to never get far before dissipating.
“Aleyna.” Coffin nail piercing him. It shouldn’t hurt like this. “Jesssmarri.” Long pause and click of teeth to go with, “Lazaar,” but the last pause is the longest and he almost chokes on it. “Merosssiel.”
His hands can’t tremble because he’s fisted them in the fabric of his robe. “The resst... have done their job well. Natharai. He, most of all. Auroran. Procrasstin. Cadence. Dorien.” The names feel like oil on his tongue but that’s impossible because he’s drunk none of Mother Moon’s tea and he has no sensation from the prosthetic. “Arenvald. Lilifred. Marton.” He drones on, until he’s listed them all. These people are family, too. They have either done their part or have slipped beneath his notice and that is the same thing in the end. “Thesse are the oness that do well.”
It has been so very long, but Merosiel is singing again to Mother Moon.
The words are different and the song hurts, but betraying himself and those he works with because She has asked and he must answer, well, that’s just a part of the chorus, isn’t it?
His eyes slide open, mere silver crescents.
“Thank you, Meroschenka.” Clack of porcelain, and the teacup is set down.
He smiles thinly, tiredly. He has not shown teeth, once, not even when Yeva’s expression changes at last and becomes serious. The stare is more pointed. “For you,” she says, and his ears flip up, face forward; he is attentive even though his expression appears otherwise.
“For you, I will tell you only to do better. You will have not done so badly yet as to make me cause you for losing child, I think.”
He has lost the ability to breathe. His throat closes, chokes and throttles him, and his mouth opens but there is no sound for it and no mist curling past his lips.
“I will not run the risk. Yet.” Her gaze drills into him, keeps him captive. He can’t breathe. His heart quivers in his chest as much as his ears tremble where they stand on end. “Do better.”
“Yesss...” Escapes at last, a tiny, quivering sigh to go with his pulse and ears.
She knows. It really is Mother Moon. She knows, and Merosiel cracks like a poorly glazed pitcher.
letters
Copies of awkwardly-written letters are stuffed between several other loose pages tucked into the journal. Its penmanship matches that of the loose pages but not of the journal prior to these pages, in which the writer is either a completely different person or severely unstable. They’re sloppy in penmanship and disorganized in thought, written in short, choppy sentences that seem to have taken a lot of effort to put down on the parchment. Unfortunately the ink was not dry on the first letter, and it's an unreadable mess that bleeds through to the second. His initial is signed in a surprisingly ornate and neat fashion. Compulsion or did he have someone else do it?
----
V
Hi
I don't know where you went. I miss you. Will this find you?
Um. Auro made everything quiet so I think I'm gonna try to write you. (I'm sorry, my writing isn't very pretty anymore. It's hard to think.)
I have to go to Northrend. And. Maybe I'll see you there? Doubtful. Gotta go to the trolls. Boss said so, so I go.
I miss you. Uh.
Do I mail your hat? I hope your ears are okay. If I die do I mail it back?
M
----
Tat Anna
I gotta go to Northrend.
Bye. You're a good friend even though I couldn't see you for so long. Sorry I'm a bad friend.
I miss you.
M.
----
Grin
Going to Northrend. Bye. Love you no can't write or say that Miles will think wrong.
I'm not supposed to see you? I don't know.
Miles took things back but made a bunch of don'ts with it that I don't remember. So. I'm trying to write. But if I can't do that. Um.
I guess eat the letter? I ate a letter once. Got a paper cut.
Did you ever get the. The. Pipe? Pipe. It was my An'da's. I hope you liked it, he carved it out of a stag antler. I think.
This hurts. I'm done writing.
Miss you.
M.
---
Windila
Stop trying to find me. Gonna go to Northrend. You tell Astarin I will. Uh. Something bad.
Don't tell. I already hurt enough.
Stop messing in my life.
Miss you.
M.
----
V
Hi
I don't know where you went. I miss you. Will this find you?
Um. Auro made everything quiet so I think I'm gonna try to write you. (I'm sorry, my writing isn't very pretty anymore. It's hard to think.)
I have to go to Northrend. And. Maybe I'll see you there? Doubtful. Gotta go to the trolls. Boss said so, so I go.
I miss you. Uh.
Do I mail your hat? I hope your ears are okay. If I die do I mail it back?
M
----
Tat Anna
I gotta go to Northrend.
Bye. You're a good friend even though I couldn't see you for so long. Sorry I'm a bad friend.
I miss you.
M.
----
Grin
Going to Northrend. Bye.
I'm not supposed to see you? I don't know.
Miles took things back but made a bunch of don'ts with it that I don't remember. So. I'm trying to write. But if I can't do that. Um.
I guess eat the letter? I ate a letter once. Got a paper cut.
Did you ever get the. The. Pipe? Pipe. It was my An'da's. I hope you liked it, he carved it out of a stag antler. I think.
This hurts. I'm done writing.
Miss you.
M.
---
Windila
Stop trying to find me. Gonna go to Northrend. You tell Astarin I will. Uh. Something bad.
Don't tell. I already hurt enough.
Stop messing in my life.
M.
page 207-211
As has been the case for some time now, the handwriting on this page is looser than it should be, shaky, disjointed and meandering, clumsy. There are many mistakes and ink smears the surface both in fingerprints and from hesitation. A lot of thoughts go unfinished or jump ahead; likely, as seems to be habit, he's either interrupted himself and moved on or left and returned later to write, rather than simply moving on to a new page.
I haven't been back to the loft since I told Auro how I felt. I guess it's better this way, seeing what I learned just now.Everything's falling apart and I feel so dead inside. I'm so tired.
I'm falling apart. I think I'm dying a little, every day.
Some days are better than others, a little. There aren't really any examples of the good kind, lately. I think... Rue's company and nights with Vyrian where he's back and not out somewhere doing whatever it is paladins in disguise do are the only things keeping me from just... wandering away. When I'm all here I want to stay because I keep hoping one of them will tell me 'it's okay' and that I will finally believe them but most of the time I'm gone and it's just easier that way and then I'm walking and more time goes and I find myself suddenly elsewhere in the city, confused.I'm afraid. I'm so tired.
When Vyrian isn't here and I can't find him, I can't sleep, so I don't, and it just gets worse. I haven't been eating again. It's not like I'm really conscious of the decision any longer. I just... don't, I guess. Time passes, and more time passes, and I blink and it's suddenly another day and the cramping in my gut isn't even really that noticeable anymore. I don't want to eat. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of point. A few people get mad at me for what meager decisions I make any longer, but I'm pretty sure it's just on principle, like swatting a cur with a rolled up newspaper so's it doesn't shit inside the house. 'Things You Just Don't Do' you know? No feeling attached behind it. Reflex.
Cadence, particularly, seems this way. She's very insistent. 'Baby this, baby that.' 'It isn't good for the baby.' 'Why won't you think about the baby.' 'It isn't just your body.' I wish she'd leave me alone about it.I don't care. There's no reason to.
I'm just a body. A shell. I think she feels concern more for this nameless, faceless thing in me that I fear so much than she feigns for me. I think that, those that know, that's how they feel. I'm just a body. A female one made to house this reject of nature that I'm supposed to love and all I feel is apathy. Or when I'm all here, disgust and terror and confusion and thinking this hurts and makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time, but I already did that and it makes me violently sick later. Need to write, need to write and sleep and I'm okay. Okay. Okay. Okay okayokayokayoka
Just a body.
Auroran I miss you please come back Imsorry whatever I did come back and bring pro and tat anna and
Who am I?
What am I?
I'm nothing.
Those that know, they see me as one thing, those that don't, they see me as another, yet both are just as bad and neither are true. I'm just a body. No face. With tits. Those that know don't understand and don't believe me so I don't exist and everything runs together until I collapse into sleep and so I can't tell what's really happening and what I'm imagining or dreaming up. Everything is so gods awful and like some eternal nightmare that I can't claw my way out of. The hat isn't helping much. I don't know if it ever did or if I just wanted it because it meant someone, somewhere, had cared enough about Vyrian to make him this ugly beautiful disgusting thing.
I'm this stupid hat.
Except Elune made me and She hates me and gave me to these guys so I wonder if that means She hates all of them, too.
I wasn't a gift to anyone out of love.
I don't
I
I don't want to be this way but I don't know what to do
I don't want to be like this
I'm a leech. Useless. Dependant. Crying sniveling weak so useless terrified alone
I don't want
What do I do?
Ruepert says he'll protect me from the other Kamil. I told him my suspicions but he doesn't believe them. I'm pretty sure some of the 'family' want to kill me, that they're going to. Just taking their sweet fucking time about it. He doesn't believe me even though I gave him plenty of reasons.
I don't think Rue understands either. Doesn't believe me. No one does and it's so frightening
it hurts why does this hurt so fucking much to be alone why cant i just deal with it and Tat Anna probably still always around in the Bay but I can't GO there and I told him what Ley said later, too, about culling. He just insists they won't do anything to me because I'm his friend and they're his friends and he'll protect me and I was too tired to try harder to explain why he's wrong.
I don't understand why he wants me to believe he's my friend. It's so much easier to see the truth when I'm not around him and he isn't letting me cling to him like he's a life-raft and I'm the fuckup who forgot how to swim. Miles has taken Grin and Tat Anna and Pro and Auro from me. He'll take Rue, too. Time. Time and waiting and I'll be completely alone again, surrounded in the end by those that hate me and I'll die alone like I deserve.
I kissed Rue. Sort of. I was thinking about how nice he is even if it's not real and I don't have any way to thank him but me and that's a shitty way to thank anyone but it's all I've got and I don't even think he KNOWS what sex is and even if he did he wouldn't, not with me and I don't know why. It was just on the cheek though. His beard's scratchy, and reminded me of how the old man's feltwhen he didn't want to ask me to help him shave. Stubborn, blind old fool. Look what too much pride gets you. Scruffy draenei face, that's what.
He blushed and stared at me and I felt so disgusting that I just... froze. Didn't say anything. Then he was laughing nervously and stumbling on his words and I just felt more like an asshole who had no business even being near him much less curled up practically in his lap so he'd keep hugging me. I fuck everything up. He said some bullshit about how it was great that I found him a good enough friend to do things like that but that he wasn't comfortable with it or comfortable with returning the gesture or something. I don't know.
What it all really meant in the end was that I shouldn't have and he didn't want it or my clumsy attempts at thanks and I'm just a fuck up. If Rue even understands the concept of pity, I'm pretty sure thats why he's pretending to be my friend.
That's why he didn't even stick to what he said, too, when he reached out after a while and cupped the nape of my neck and then kissed the top of my head. I mean, what is that? I don't even Either keep to what you say or don't say it I'm a hypocrite like I'm not Whatever. It doesn't really matter, anyway.
I cried in his arms after that because no one does things like kiss me all caring-like on the top of my head
I think I said some of the things I think because he was telling me all the usual garbage about how it isn't true and
I talked with the kind-of-boss, Lazaar, some more. We said a lot of shit, too, and I don't remember most of itsomething's wrong with my memory I can't remember a lot anymore when my memory used to be so perfect except I've decided he's not the big bad thing I thought but he's still a jerk but at least he's got REASONS to be a jerk and I get them and so we can be miserable fuckups together. There was fighting with some dwarf chick who decided to interrupt us, and needling Lazaar about being afraid of liking dick and Cadence coming by and leaving and Lazaar kicking me square in the back. I got him to consider sparring with me though.
My back really hurts. Cadence lectured me more but I didn't listen to much of it and waited until she ran her mouth dry before asking if I could follow her around for the day. I was afraid of going back to the Argent barracks and finding Vyrian still out. So, I helped her at the Cathedral. I think. I don't remember much of that either. I think I was in my not there place again for most of it.
The last 'entry' for these handfuls of loose parchment pages is filled with a few large, scrawled sentences. They're, weirdly enough, painstakingly written and look more like his old, ornate handwriting.
I met Her. It's like how I imagine Mother Moon to be underneath all the bullshit and glitter that my people have painted Her as.
Mother Moon is dead and leathery and really a draenei and She Knows.
Oh, fuck, I'm going to die.
She Knew. Everything.
Mother Moon. I met Her and She's Dead and She drinks tea and doesn't do anything but smile.
She Knows. She'll tell.
There is nothing and no one to pray to or to save me.
I'm going to die if I can't wake up.
----
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/3doorsdown/whenimgone.html
I haven't been back to the loft since I told Auro how I felt. I guess it's better this way, seeing what I learned just now.
I'm falling apart. I think I'm dying a little, every day.
Some days are better than others, a little. There aren't really any examples of the good kind, lately. I think... Rue's company and nights with Vyrian where he's back and not out somewhere doing whatever it is paladins in disguise do are the only things keeping me from just... wandering away. When I'm all here I want to stay because I keep hoping one of them will tell me 'it's okay' and that I will finally believe them but most of the time I'm gone and it's just easier that way and then I'm walking and more time goes and I find myself suddenly elsewhere in the city, confused.
When Vyrian isn't here and I can't find him, I can't sleep, so I don't, and it just gets worse. I haven't been eating again. It's not like I'm really conscious of the decision any longer. I just... don't, I guess. Time passes, and more time passes, and I blink and it's suddenly another day and the cramping in my gut isn't even really that noticeable anymore. I don't want to eat. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of point. A few people get mad at me for what meager decisions I make any longer, but I'm pretty sure it's just on principle, like swatting a cur with a rolled up newspaper so's it doesn't shit inside the house. 'Things You Just Don't Do' you know? No feeling attached behind it. Reflex.
Cadence, particularly, seems this way. She's very insistent. 'Baby this, baby that.' 'It isn't good for the baby.' 'Why won't you think about the baby.' 'It isn't just your body.' I wish she'd leave me alone about it.
I'm just a body. A shell. I think she feels concern more for this nameless, faceless thing in me that I fear so much than she feigns for me. I think that, those that know, that's how they feel. I'm just a body. A female one made to house this reject of nature that I'm supposed to love and all I feel is apathy. Or when I'm all here, disgust and terror and confusion and thinking this hurts and makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time, but I already did that and it makes me violently sick later. Need to write, need to write and sleep and I'm okay. Okay. Okay. Okay okayokayokayoka
Just a body.
Auroran I miss you please come back Imsorry whatever I did come back and bring pro and tat anna and
Those that know, they see me as one thing, those that don't, they see me as another, yet both are just as bad and neither are true. I'm just a body. No face. With tits. Those that know don't understand and don't believe me so I don't exist and everything runs together until I collapse into sleep and so I can't tell what's really happening and what I'm imagining or dreaming up. Everything is so gods awful and like some eternal nightmare that I can't claw my way out of. The hat isn't helping much. I don't know if it ever did or if I just wanted it because it meant someone, somewhere, had cared enough about Vyrian to make him this ugly beautiful disgusting thing.
I'm this stupid hat.
Except Elune made me and She hates me and gave me to these guys so I wonder if that means She hates all of them, too.
I wasn't a gift to anyone out of love.
I don't
I
I don't want to be this way but I don't know what to do
I don't want to be like this
I'm a leech. Useless. Dependant. Crying sniveling weak so useless terrified alone
I don't want
What do I do?
Ruepert says he'll protect me from the other Kamil. I told him my suspicions but he doesn't believe them. I'm pretty sure some of the 'family' want to kill me, that they're going to. Just taking their sweet fucking time about it. He doesn't believe me even though I gave him plenty of reasons.
I don't understand why he wants me to believe he's my friend. It's so much easier to see the truth when I'm not around him and he isn't letting me cling to him like he's a life-raft and I'm the fuckup who forgot how to swim. Miles has taken Grin and Tat Anna and Pro and Auro from me. He'll take Rue, too. Time. Time and waiting and I'll be completely alone again, surrounded in the end by those that hate me and I'll die alone like I deserve.
I kissed Rue. Sort of. I was thinking about how nice he is even if it's not real and I don't have any way to thank him but me and that's a shitty way to thank anyone but it's all I've got and I don't even think he KNOWS what sex is and even if he did he wouldn't, not with me and I don't know why. It was just on the cheek though. His beard's scratchy, and reminded me of how the old man's felt
He blushed and stared at me and I felt so disgusting that I just... froze. Didn't say anything. Then he was laughing nervously and stumbling on his words and I just felt more like an asshole who had no business even being near him much less curled up practically in his lap so he'd keep hugging me. I fuck everything up. He said some bullshit about how it was great that I found him a good enough friend to do things like that but that he wasn't comfortable with it or comfortable with returning the gesture or something. I don't know.
What it all really meant in the end was that I shouldn't have and he didn't want it or my clumsy attempts at thanks and I'm just a fuck up. If Rue even understands the concept of pity, I'm pretty sure thats why he's pretending to be my friend.
That's why he didn't even stick to what he said, too, when he reached out after a while and cupped the nape of my neck and then kissed the top of my head.
I cried in his arms after that because no one does things like kiss me all caring-like on the top of my head
I think I said some of the things I think because he was telling me all the usual garbage about how it isn't true and
I talked with the kind-of-boss, Lazaar, some more. We said a lot of shit, too, and I don't remember most of it
My back really hurts. Cadence lectured me more but I didn't listen to much of it and waited until she ran her mouth dry before asking if I could follow her around for the day. I was afraid of going back to the Argent barracks and finding Vyrian still out. So, I helped her at the Cathedral. I think. I don't remember much of that either. I think I was in my not there place again for most of it.
The last 'entry' for these handfuls of loose parchment pages is filled with a few large, scrawled sentences. They're, weirdly enough, painstakingly written and look more like his old, ornate handwriting.
I met Her. It's like how I imagine Mother Moon to be underneath all the bullshit and glitter that my people have painted Her as.
Mother Moon is dead and leathery and really a draenei and She Knows.
Oh, fuck, I'm going to die.
She Knew. Everything.
Mother Moon. I met Her and She's Dead and She drinks tea and doesn't do anything but smile.
She Knows. She'll tell.
There is nothing and no one to pray to or to save me.
I'm going to die if I can't wake up.
----
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/3doorsdown/whenimgone.html
14.1.10
"Of Flowers."
It is cold today, but then it is usually cold every day here. Northrend is only what I expected it to be and little more: it is a land not always covered in snow, but all of it is unyielding and implacable, full of death and sorrow.
To make a point, I suppose, I have seen very little in this forsaken northland to make even him smile. His smile is usually so quick to show itself, his expressions of amusement and joy are things that I used to find somewhat annoying and now find myself secretly missing whenever they are absent.
(Merosiel.) Even in my head, he is rock and stone, a crushing weight that is not entirely unpleasant. He smothers me through our link but only with gentle patience. This bond between us is thanks to my ingenuity.
Ah, Meros, I think to myself briefly as I touch the wooden bead tied at my throat, you’re so immodest. The physical chains connecting us act as foci his prayer beads sans one bead for him, the missing bead for me
(Yes?) My thoughts and my sight are always inevitably drawn back to him; usually I fight it, today I cannot muster enough energy to ward off both the chill and my impulses.
He pauses in front of a vendor’s stall at our right. I stop obediently just to his left, completely invisible, unnoticed; I wait. I can feel the welcome heat of him next to me where my shoulder barely brushes his arm, a constant, unspoken reminder that I remain at his side. This mountain of a man does not intimidate me despite his larger size--although it is a strange thing indeed for a kal’dorei to find himself shorter than another being. I only just crest his shoulders.
Waiting at first in silence, I blow into my cupped hands in a useless attempt at chasing away the cold that seeps into them through the thin leather gloves.
(We’re due at the Flight Master’s quarters in less than ten minutes,) I remind him when several moments pass without action or response.
He says nothing still, and when I turn my head to look up at him, his dark cheeks are darker with cold and breath mists out from his thick lips. I suppose that I am brazen in my stare, perhaps more so because his inability to notice is an advantage I abuse frequently. Against a blind man, stealth is hardly the only cloak shrouding my voyeurism from discovery; the boldness he cannot see, he also cannot defend against.
(May I have the use of your eyes, please?)
He always asks for permission, like a small child hoping for a rarely-afforded luxury; I will never understand this pretense of consideration. I signed a contract, did I not? This body is his, these eyes are his. I am guard, guide, servant, assistant; whatever my employer has need of because I care little what he does with what he pays for. I am a vessel for him, nothing else.
(What are you doing?) I counter silently, but allow my eyes to drop from his face to run casually over what the stand has to offer.
There is a small irony nestled here for me to find. The vendor’s wares are various flowers, and when he reaches through the link binding us and looks through me--a dizzying feeling that I am certain I will never grow used to--the sensation can really only be described as the unfurling of petals. Something rich and warm blossoms behind my eyes, and then they are no longer just mine to use. It is not a merging of our sight, only a slight widening of the thin thread connecting us so that where my eyes wander, he can see.
He could simply take control of my body and move my eyes where he wills them: he certainly has the capability--and the paid privilege--to do so. But he only ever asks, and then only for this much and no more. My employer is neither a man fond of using force nor of exhibiting dominance. He never takes, and never abuses what advantages he has. I hate the part of me that wishes he would.
(Why are we looking at flowers?) I force my tone not to contain curiosity, to speak only with boredom instead.
As expected, he ignores my question. My employer is apt to do so when it suits him. At first it irritated me, but now I find it almost a game between us and so the irritation is feigned more often than not. I ask the questions, start the conversations, and he continues to ignore them unless I successfully startle, distract, or trick him into responding.
The subtle pressure behind my eyes vanishes as swiftly as it has insinuated itself, telling me that I am free once more to look at him without consequence. The woman hovering near us still has yet to speak, likely too nervous with this giant of a draenei crowding her stall all by himself. The stink of her nervousness clogs my nose, distracting me from the more pleasant musk of the male next to me and the soap he chose this morning to shave with.
Although I want to fault her for her reaction, she has no means to either sense me or realize I am even present. She cannot know that of the two of us, I am the one far more likely to harm her out of sheer whim alone. And it is quite true that my employer looks fiercesome to those unused to him.
When he is lost in thought as he is now, there are many not-so-subtle differences throughout his features that turn him into a completely different person on the surface. His muscles and his dour face work against him, never hinting at his pacifism; they only speak of the immense strength and the ability to use it, rather than the true intentions behind them.
For me, my employer’s bulk only engenders approval; is it so wrong to enjoy the harsh, oblique lines that comprise his form, rather than to fear or respect them? I wonder sometimes, considering others’ responses to him. Regardless, the unvoiced pleasure I take in his company certainly is not part of why I am here, nor part of the use he has for me.
“Is... is there something you wish to purchase?” The girl’s voice is reedy, thin; I don’t like it at all, but then I rarely like other people or their voices. My employer has suggested more than once that my dislike is really masked envy for their ability to speak where I cannot. Perhaps, perhaps not.
He nods slowly in response to her question and his brow furrows heavily, shading small, kind eyes and breaking up the monotony the smooth planes of his face usually create.
Snow begins to fall in abstract patterns, dusting us with a light coat of white within a minute or two. Instead of another attempt at urging him onward and out of the cold, I watch as snowflakes land on his nose. Impulse has me pulling off the glove of my left hand to brush the melting slush free.
Perversely, as if to defy me, my fingertips linger a moment or two longer than necessary, tracing the smaller ridges scaling the bridge of his somewhat flattened nose. He gives no complaints for this, yet my touch is as light as the falling snow, and likely as cold. Emboldened by the lack of restraint, my wandering fingers casually ghost upward and stroke over the beginnings of one ribbed horn where it melds into the overlapping plates at his temple, while my eyes trace the path I cannot reach, privately admiring the graceful weapons of bone that arc from his skull like the coiled spiral of nautilus shells.
Because of this impressive rack I have often idly mused that my employer’s head would likely be far too top-heavy if not for his thick neck and shoulders broad enough to sit on. It would take a rogue of far more brute strength than I to snap his spine or to smother the life from him; but as that is most certainly not a part of my current employment, I can freely enjoy how the lighter skin of my hand looks against the velvety dusk of his throat.
The tendrils connected to his strong chin are missing the embellishments I am accustomed to seeing on other draenei, yet my thumb finds the scarring the metal rings have left behind--or perhaps these are not scars, only lighter bands of flesh rubbed raw where the rings used to be? I have not asked yet; I should.
As I touch the second tendril they firmly cut short my explorations and hold me captive. These strange extensions of himself are quite strong, too, and I believe that they could snap the bones in my wrist like kindling sticks. Instead, he strokes their tapered ends over my palm and inscribes small but tantalizing promises on the tender instep of my wrist so that I shudder involuntarily. Closing my eyes, I swiftly become enthralled both with the possibilities these dexterous parts of him might be capable of and their suggestive, lazy movements.
Releasing my wrist, he tilts his chin downward while I lean up, resting my ungloved palm against the broad expanse of his chest. Feeling the quickened thud of his heart under my fingers and the cold puff of his breath in my face, I open my eyes to watch his mouth near mine, only to be quite abruptly shocked out of my daydream when he speaks.
(Bored so quickly, Merosiel?) My employer’s soft and craggy voice is a lightning bolt in my mind; I blink and there is no gentle snowfall, just a few lone petals scattering in a mild--albeit frigid--breeze.
My hands are still gloved and tucked under my armpits for warmth--a telling gesture. Just another idle fantasy; very smooth of you, Meros, I grouse to myself mentally.
I am helpless in this obsession to worship with my eyes what I do not have. The ghost of his scent haunts me and the ripple of muscle as he moves is seared to the backs of my eyelids; every sound he makes--down to the minute way he breathes a little more slowly when he’s excited--are all with me from the time I wake to the time I sleep. But what kills me is the need to touch him in ways that are wholly not platonic: I want to taste him. I want to map every inch of rook-dark flesh with my tongue, to trace the ridged lines of his abdomen with my palms, and to grip the proud horns as he thrusts up into me.
Thoughts of him are always like this: full of heat and need that wrings me out like a rag. I can feel wetness on the inner side of my thighs, trickling slowly to soak into leather as if he’s already come and gone, only it’s just me and my own imagined desires to blame for my discomfort.
Once more I wonder at what is wrong with me and once more I strive to ignore how hot I am for him and once more I cannot distance myself from the sensation of flesh rubbing against leather; with every idle movement I make I wish that it was his large hand stroking me.
(Are you there, Merosiel?)
(We’re going to be late,) I whisper silently rather than answer his gentle confusion. His mild reactions always force me to speculate on if this mental projection of my voice betrays me like it would if I were to speak to him aloud. That option is closed to me, of course, but the possibility that he knows and says nothing is there and torments me.
I decide that there is very little danger of him picking up my thoughts or the lust lacing them, not with how careful he is to give me privacy despite our bond. I probably should be more grateful that even for a priest, he is unassuming and courteous, but there is a traitorous part of me that yearns for him to be more suspicious and less trusting.
His generous mouth puckers at the corners, draws downward in the barest of frowns. Like always, he takes his time in choosing a reply, and his serene dismissal of, (Then we simply take the next flight out,) has me pulling a face at him behind my mask. Yet another thing that I am braver to do with no one, especially him, to witness it.
(Fine,) I retort, (it’s your gold, not mine.)
A sudden flicker of movement in the corner of my vision and a tentative touch to my leg startles me into looking down. It is only his tail, I realize after a moment’s uncertainty, and watch the supposedly lazy sweep it cuts the air with. He’s making sure I’m still here, I note with some surprise; I was unaware until this moment that I had taken a step back, thus severing the assurance I had previously afforded him.
As free from the expected jewelry as his tendrils are, his tail usually holds itself prudently aloft so as not to drag in the street. At this moment, however, for every couple of heartbeats that stutter in my chest, the tip of that dark appendage quests innocently to his left, whispering upon the back of my calf. To an observer, it would merely look as if he were restless, which he must be, I reflect quietly, unless that moment of lost contact startled him that much.
Forcing myself to disregard the potential of that equally prehensile limb rubbing artlessly against my leg, I try once again to distract myself with my surroundings. Inexorably my averted gaze magnetizes itself once more to his body, following his tail to the wide hips and the hint of groin that even the loose, shapeless mass of his traveling robes do not entirely conceal. The goatish legs and the lustrous black of his hooves are details I cannot see at the moment but are quickly filled in by memory bubbling unbidden to the forefront of my mind.
The previous night I cleaned his hooves and treated the minute cracks repeatedly caused by the stress of constant travel over uneven and often rocky terrain. Now the liniment’s sharp scent mocks me along with the recollection of other evenings spent attempting to knead the tightness out of his tense and knotted muscles. My employer refuses to admit it because he is a stubborn old bastard, but the cold of the northlands does him much ill.
His submission to these attentions required of me is a reluctant one, and I have yet to figure out if he dislikes this part of our contract because he is wary of physical touch--however innocent--from another man or because he dislikes needing help at all. It is difficult to tell when I know he has been independent for so long; to him the idea of any assistance, whether minor or not, instantly turns him from mild-mannered giant to irritable little child. His opinions on gender remain his own and, as of yet, completely unknown to me.
He hands the flower girl enough coin to send her eyes wide and her pert little human mouth curling in delight--stupid wench must get paid on commission, to be so pleased at so little. Hardly even a few gold, really, yet when she hands over the few roses that he's purchased, I get the feeling that he'd gladly pay more, pay anything, for who they're meant for.
A brief, irrational surge of jealousy spikes through me when I realize that, naturally, flowers bought at a flower stand from a flower girl mean one thing: they are a gift to another. I smother this envy; the wound is clean at least, there is no poisoned hate festering inside. I keep expecting that to accompany these little injuries.
(We’re late, now,) I mutter, injecting more boredom into my tone while I watch those that pass us by, bustling on their way through the streets. He glances up, blind eyes staring ahead sightlessly, staring for long enough that the flower girl-- Aerith I think, is how she introduced herself to my employer--questions him with that irritating expression of pity everyone seems to give him because he cannot see.
"Yes, probably." He says in that voice of crumbling stone that never fails to make my gut clench in useless anticipation. I know without having to ask that he answers me, and not the flower girl, but she lacks this knowledge and smiles that empty smile humans have when they think they are humoring someone.
(Talk here, that’s what it’s for. Infuriating old man.)
"I know." His stony expression hardly falters as he answers me a second time. For his one-sided conversation, the flower girl must think him senile, or perhaps half-mad; it would hardly be a new sight, I think, with all the madness pouring out of the northlands like mist and crushing all in its path as relentlessly as the glaciers that surround most of the continent.
(Why buy these things? Why waste precious resources? Don't you see?) Here his lips twitch for my mental gaffe. (Only going to die in a few days.)
(Yes.) The one syllable masquerading as answer is mercifully silent at last.
(Why?)
“Because some things must be observed no matter where I go.”
Although all I am is a contracted killer turned to contracted butler, he calls me his shadow with a reserved kind of affection. This minor possession in the endearment does not annoy me quite as much as I make him think.
We move away from the perplexed flower girl; I am as bewildered as she and dislike this notion immensely. Diving back into the crowd, I am at my best--or at my worst, I suppose, considering just how much I truly vex him at times--keeping still to the shadowed side of the world and concealing myself from the light and the touch of other gazes. I rarely walk with him in public and remain visible; his are the one pair of eyes I want looking at me, and yet I know that they will never run in appreciation over my body or trace the line of my hip.
I shy away from this thought: it pricks at me as much as the uncut roses prick the priest's hand. Instead, I drift and listen to the dull click of his staff and the duller clack of his heavy hooves on the paving stones as we walk. And in a way, at least with this man at my side to tease my senses, I will never truly be cold in Northrend. while shadow magic weaves a knot, a mental bridge, between us.
To make a point, I suppose, I have seen very little in this forsaken northland to make even him smile. His smile is usually so quick to show itself, his expressions of amusement and joy are things that I used to find somewhat annoying and now find myself secretly missing whenever they are absent.
(Merosiel.) Even in my head, he is rock and stone, a crushing weight that is not entirely unpleasant. He smothers me through our link but only with gentle patience. This bond between us is thanks to my ingenuity.
Ah, Meros, I think to myself briefly as I touch the wooden bead tied at my throat, you’re so immodest. The physical chains connecting us act as foci his prayer beads sans one bead for him, the missing bead for me
(Yes?) My thoughts and my sight are always inevitably drawn back to him; usually I fight it, today I cannot muster enough energy to ward off both the chill and my impulses.
He pauses in front of a vendor’s stall at our right. I stop obediently just to his left, completely invisible, unnoticed; I wait. I can feel the welcome heat of him next to me where my shoulder barely brushes his arm, a constant, unspoken reminder that I remain at his side. This mountain of a man does not intimidate me despite his larger size--although it is a strange thing indeed for a kal’dorei to find himself shorter than another being. I only just crest his shoulders.
Waiting at first in silence, I blow into my cupped hands in a useless attempt at chasing away the cold that seeps into them through the thin leather gloves.
(We’re due at the Flight Master’s quarters in less than ten minutes,) I remind him when several moments pass without action or response.
He says nothing still, and when I turn my head to look up at him, his dark cheeks are darker with cold and breath mists out from his thick lips. I suppose that I am brazen in my stare, perhaps more so because his inability to notice is an advantage I abuse frequently. Against a blind man, stealth is hardly the only cloak shrouding my voyeurism from discovery; the boldness he cannot see, he also cannot defend against.
(May I have the use of your eyes, please?)
He always asks for permission, like a small child hoping for a rarely-afforded luxury; I will never understand this pretense of consideration. I signed a contract, did I not? This body is his, these eyes are his. I am guard, guide, servant, assistant; whatever my employer has need of because I care little what he does with what he pays for. I am a vessel for him, nothing else.
(What are you doing?) I counter silently, but allow my eyes to drop from his face to run casually over what the stand has to offer.
There is a small irony nestled here for me to find. The vendor’s wares are various flowers, and when he reaches through the link binding us and looks through me--a dizzying feeling that I am certain I will never grow used to--the sensation can really only be described as the unfurling of petals. Something rich and warm blossoms behind my eyes, and then they are no longer just mine to use. It is not a merging of our sight, only a slight widening of the thin thread connecting us so that where my eyes wander, he can see.
He could simply take control of my body and move my eyes where he wills them: he certainly has the capability--and the paid privilege--to do so. But he only ever asks, and then only for this much and no more. My employer is neither a man fond of using force nor of exhibiting dominance. He never takes, and never abuses what advantages he has. I hate the part of me that wishes he would.
(Why are we looking at flowers?) I force my tone not to contain curiosity, to speak only with boredom instead.
As expected, he ignores my question. My employer is apt to do so when it suits him. At first it irritated me, but now I find it almost a game between us and so the irritation is feigned more often than not. I ask the questions, start the conversations, and he continues to ignore them unless I successfully startle, distract, or trick him into responding.
The subtle pressure behind my eyes vanishes as swiftly as it has insinuated itself, telling me that I am free once more to look at him without consequence. The woman hovering near us still has yet to speak, likely too nervous with this giant of a draenei crowding her stall all by himself. The stink of her nervousness clogs my nose, distracting me from the more pleasant musk of the male next to me and the soap he chose this morning to shave with.
Although I want to fault her for her reaction, she has no means to either sense me or realize I am even present. She cannot know that of the two of us, I am the one far more likely to harm her out of sheer whim alone. And it is quite true that my employer looks fiercesome to those unused to him.
When he is lost in thought as he is now, there are many not-so-subtle differences throughout his features that turn him into a completely different person on the surface. His muscles and his dour face work against him, never hinting at his pacifism; they only speak of the immense strength and the ability to use it, rather than the true intentions behind them.
For me, my employer’s bulk only engenders approval; is it so wrong to enjoy the harsh, oblique lines that comprise his form, rather than to fear or respect them? I wonder sometimes, considering others’ responses to him. Regardless, the unvoiced pleasure I take in his company certainly is not part of why I am here, nor part of the use he has for me.
“Is... is there something you wish to purchase?” The girl’s voice is reedy, thin; I don’t like it at all, but then I rarely like other people or their voices. My employer has suggested more than once that my dislike is really masked envy for their ability to speak where I cannot. Perhaps, perhaps not.
He nods slowly in response to her question and his brow furrows heavily, shading small, kind eyes and breaking up the monotony the smooth planes of his face usually create.
Snow begins to fall in abstract patterns, dusting us with a light coat of white within a minute or two. Instead of another attempt at urging him onward and out of the cold, I watch as snowflakes land on his nose. Impulse has me pulling off the glove of my left hand to brush the melting slush free.
Perversely, as if to defy me, my fingertips linger a moment or two longer than necessary, tracing the smaller ridges scaling the bridge of his somewhat flattened nose. He gives no complaints for this, yet my touch is as light as the falling snow, and likely as cold. Emboldened by the lack of restraint, my wandering fingers casually ghost upward and stroke over the beginnings of one ribbed horn where it melds into the overlapping plates at his temple, while my eyes trace the path I cannot reach, privately admiring the graceful weapons of bone that arc from his skull like the coiled spiral of nautilus shells.
Because of this impressive rack I have often idly mused that my employer’s head would likely be far too top-heavy if not for his thick neck and shoulders broad enough to sit on. It would take a rogue of far more brute strength than I to snap his spine or to smother the life from him; but as that is most certainly not a part of my current employment, I can freely enjoy how the lighter skin of my hand looks against the velvety dusk of his throat.
The tendrils connected to his strong chin are missing the embellishments I am accustomed to seeing on other draenei, yet my thumb finds the scarring the metal rings have left behind--or perhaps these are not scars, only lighter bands of flesh rubbed raw where the rings used to be? I have not asked yet; I should.
As I touch the second tendril they firmly cut short my explorations and hold me captive. These strange extensions of himself are quite strong, too, and I believe that they could snap the bones in my wrist like kindling sticks. Instead, he strokes their tapered ends over my palm and inscribes small but tantalizing promises on the tender instep of my wrist so that I shudder involuntarily. Closing my eyes, I swiftly become enthralled both with the possibilities these dexterous parts of him might be capable of and their suggestive, lazy movements.
Releasing my wrist, he tilts his chin downward while I lean up, resting my ungloved palm against the broad expanse of his chest. Feeling the quickened thud of his heart under my fingers and the cold puff of his breath in my face, I open my eyes to watch his mouth near mine, only to be quite abruptly shocked out of my daydream when he speaks.
(Bored so quickly, Merosiel?) My employer’s soft and craggy voice is a lightning bolt in my mind; I blink and there is no gentle snowfall, just a few lone petals scattering in a mild--albeit frigid--breeze.
My hands are still gloved and tucked under my armpits for warmth--a telling gesture. Just another idle fantasy; very smooth of you, Meros, I grouse to myself mentally.
I am helpless in this obsession to worship with my eyes what I do not have. The ghost of his scent haunts me and the ripple of muscle as he moves is seared to the backs of my eyelids; every sound he makes--down to the minute way he breathes a little more slowly when he’s excited--are all with me from the time I wake to the time I sleep. But what kills me is the need to touch him in ways that are wholly not platonic: I want to taste him. I want to map every inch of rook-dark flesh with my tongue, to trace the ridged lines of his abdomen with my palms, and to grip the proud horns as he thrusts up into me.
Thoughts of him are always like this: full of heat and need that wrings me out like a rag. I can feel wetness on the inner side of my thighs, trickling slowly to soak into leather as if he’s already come and gone, only it’s just me and my own imagined desires to blame for my discomfort.
Once more I wonder at what is wrong with me and once more I strive to ignore how hot I am for him and once more I cannot distance myself from the sensation of flesh rubbing against leather; with every idle movement I make I wish that it was his large hand stroking me.
(Are you there, Merosiel?)
(We’re going to be late,) I whisper silently rather than answer his gentle confusion. His mild reactions always force me to speculate on if this mental projection of my voice betrays me like it would if I were to speak to him aloud. That option is closed to me, of course, but the possibility that he knows and says nothing is there and torments me.
I decide that there is very little danger of him picking up my thoughts or the lust lacing them, not with how careful he is to give me privacy despite our bond. I probably should be more grateful that even for a priest, he is unassuming and courteous, but there is a traitorous part of me that yearns for him to be more suspicious and less trusting.
His generous mouth puckers at the corners, draws downward in the barest of frowns. Like always, he takes his time in choosing a reply, and his serene dismissal of, (Then we simply take the next flight out,) has me pulling a face at him behind my mask. Yet another thing that I am braver to do with no one, especially him, to witness it.
(Fine,) I retort, (it’s your gold, not mine.)
A sudden flicker of movement in the corner of my vision and a tentative touch to my leg startles me into looking down. It is only his tail, I realize after a moment’s uncertainty, and watch the supposedly lazy sweep it cuts the air with. He’s making sure I’m still here, I note with some surprise; I was unaware until this moment that I had taken a step back, thus severing the assurance I had previously afforded him.
As free from the expected jewelry as his tendrils are, his tail usually holds itself prudently aloft so as not to drag in the street. At this moment, however, for every couple of heartbeats that stutter in my chest, the tip of that dark appendage quests innocently to his left, whispering upon the back of my calf. To an observer, it would merely look as if he were restless, which he must be, I reflect quietly, unless that moment of lost contact startled him that much.
Forcing myself to disregard the potential of that equally prehensile limb rubbing artlessly against my leg, I try once again to distract myself with my surroundings. Inexorably my averted gaze magnetizes itself once more to his body, following his tail to the wide hips and the hint of groin that even the loose, shapeless mass of his traveling robes do not entirely conceal. The goatish legs and the lustrous black of his hooves are details I cannot see at the moment but are quickly filled in by memory bubbling unbidden to the forefront of my mind.
The previous night I cleaned his hooves and treated the minute cracks repeatedly caused by the stress of constant travel over uneven and often rocky terrain. Now the liniment’s sharp scent mocks me along with the recollection of other evenings spent attempting to knead the tightness out of his tense and knotted muscles. My employer refuses to admit it because he is a stubborn old bastard, but the cold of the northlands does him much ill.
His submission to these attentions required of me is a reluctant one, and I have yet to figure out if he dislikes this part of our contract because he is wary of physical touch--however innocent--from another man or because he dislikes needing help at all. It is difficult to tell when I know he has been independent for so long; to him the idea of any assistance, whether minor or not, instantly turns him from mild-mannered giant to irritable little child. His opinions on gender remain his own and, as of yet, completely unknown to me.
He hands the flower girl enough coin to send her eyes wide and her pert little human mouth curling in delight--stupid wench must get paid on commission, to be so pleased at so little. Hardly even a few gold, really, yet when she hands over the few roses that he's purchased, I get the feeling that he'd gladly pay more, pay anything, for who they're meant for.
A brief, irrational surge of jealousy spikes through me when I realize that, naturally, flowers bought at a flower stand from a flower girl mean one thing: they are a gift to another. I smother this envy; the wound is clean at least, there is no poisoned hate festering inside. I keep expecting that to accompany these little injuries.
(We’re late, now,) I mutter, injecting more boredom into my tone while I watch those that pass us by, bustling on their way through the streets. He glances up, blind eyes staring ahead sightlessly, staring for long enough that the flower girl-- Aerith I think, is how she introduced herself to my employer--questions him with that irritating expression of pity everyone seems to give him because he cannot see.
"Yes, probably." He says in that voice of crumbling stone that never fails to make my gut clench in useless anticipation. I know without having to ask that he answers me, and not the flower girl, but she lacks this knowledge and smiles that empty smile humans have when they think they are humoring someone.
(Talk here, that’s what it’s for. Infuriating old man.)
"I know." His stony expression hardly falters as he answers me a second time. For his one-sided conversation, the flower girl must think him senile, or perhaps half-mad; it would hardly be a new sight, I think, with all the madness pouring out of the northlands like mist and crushing all in its path as relentlessly as the glaciers that surround most of the continent.
(Why buy these things? Why waste precious resources? Don't you see?) Here his lips twitch for my mental gaffe. (Only going to die in a few days.)
(Yes.) The one syllable masquerading as answer is mercifully silent at last.
(Why?)
“Because some things must be observed no matter where I go.”
Although all I am is a contracted killer turned to contracted butler, he calls me his shadow with a reserved kind of affection. This minor possession in the endearment does not annoy me quite as much as I make him think.
We move away from the perplexed flower girl; I am as bewildered as she and dislike this notion immensely. Diving back into the crowd, I am at my best--or at my worst, I suppose, considering just how much I truly vex him at times--keeping still to the shadowed side of the world and concealing myself from the light and the touch of other gazes. I rarely walk with him in public and remain visible; his are the one pair of eyes I want looking at me, and yet I know that they will never run in appreciation over my body or trace the line of my hip.
I shy away from this thought: it pricks at me as much as the uncut roses prick the priest's hand. Instead, I drift and listen to the dull click of his staff and the duller clack of his heavy hooves on the paving stones as we walk. And in a way, at least with this man at my side to tease my senses, I will never truly be cold in Northrend. while shadow magic weaves a knot, a mental bridge, between us.
1.1.10
page 206
Aleyna pulled rank and made us all play a really stupid game.I don't care. I have a hat.
Some bitch hunter's lizard chewed on me. My shoulder kind of hurts, but I didn't want Vyrian to look at it.
A horrible evening. Ley, on a dare, snuck over and grabbed me from behind, her hands groping my chest. I can bind pretty tightly but not that tightly. I know she got a handful of tit and I was so embarrassed and
I'm okay. I'm okay.
I don't care.
Vyrian came to the barracks where I was curled up on his bed with his hat on. He kept his word even though I used the stupid game rules to make him give me the hat in the first place.
I get it during the day.
It's really warm and smells like Vyrian and if he's wearing it at night then the scent won't go away too much during the day. I like that.
Today was terrible. But I have a hat.
----
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http://www.upontherainbow.com/games/katamari/cherryblossom.html
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