"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.