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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Aszera Sunstrike, newly sworn to the Alliance, pays a visit to the friends of a new friend in the Stormwind Guard, and discovers some interesting parallels she has in common with her Common speaking friends. 7550~ words. Personal plot RP. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
The house that once belonged to the Moore family in Old Town fits perfectly into its environment, an older style of Stormwind's gentility and minor nobility, on a street that never saw the same wholesale devastation from the Fall of Stormwind in the First War, and whose family cared deeply for the house enough to restore it with character. There are other houses that stand stalwart and sturdy next to it, lending it a whimsical cottage air by contrast.
It's small, especially compared to the grand Fallon estate, but well formed, a cheeky amount of windows that were replaced somewhere around Year 10 to be clearer and formed with gnomish influence, a modern upgrade, a sign of its last occupant.
But, the people who live there now have imbued it with something of their own selves now, with boxes of flowers meant to draw certain butterflies to them — exceptionally well weeded, it should be noted — and a wreath of paper butterflies framing an older style bronze knocker. And within, audible from the front door, the cobblestones of the city coming right up to the edge, is the sound of someone singing. The voice isn't spectacular, certainly not one that would draw a crowd from a performance, but it's pleasant, and there's something in the very air that feels charged, a connection to a well of mana pulled out and splashed around without direction.
The person walking down the street in the general direction of this house does not fit perfectly into her environment. Most of her clothing is casual and unguarded, at least — brown pants and black boots, a dark purple blouse — but she is also wearing a red-lined, hooded cloak that obscures her face in shadow. It does not obscure her slighter frame, which would mark her as elvish to those who know what to look for.
Aszera Sunstrike mutters the address to herself again, as a reminder, and then takes a breath, maybe focusing on other clues to help her locate the particular house. She is on the right street.
There are not many people walking this particular street at the current hour, as late afternoon bleeds into evening, but there are some. One, a man still dressed in the blue and gold leather armor marking him as a member of the Stormwind Guard, walks with a casual surety towards his destination. His path takes him straight towards Aszera, and when he notices her, his casual pace slows even further, giving him time to assess her before they pass.
Aze slows as she approaches as well. Maybe she notices the guard uniform (she doesn't) or maybe she notices something else — it's difficult to tell with her face in shadow.
She turns towards him, twitching the hood back slightly to reveal an expression of curiosity on an elvish face and eyes hidden behind a dark blindfold. She raises one hand in greeting, and says in fluent Common, "Excuse me, can I ask you a question? I'm looking for an address, but I don't know the area…"
The guard's expression switches from mild to a smile in an instant. "Ask away," he says. "Givin' directions is half my job. But if y'don't mind, I've got one for you, after."
"Of course," Aze says with an easy smile in return. She recites the address to Lathrik and Natalyah's home in Stormwind, and adds, "I'm supposed to be meeting a friend there, but like I said, kind of new in town."
"Aye, that confirms it," the guard says, holding out his hand. "You're Elle's friend, Dancer. Name's Reniya Hartrim, and we're headed to the same place. Fancy an escort?"
"Dancer, is that my name now?" Aze says with a surprised laugh, but she's already reaching to take his hand. "Elle mentioned you, but he didn't say you were… that is…" she does not finish that sentence, instead immediately shifting to, "You can call me Aszera, or Aze, as you like. And I would love an escort."
Reniya gives her hand a firm shake, then offers his arm, still smiling. "He didn't say I was what? Charming?"
Aze returns the shake with equal firmness, and then slips her arm in his with little hesitation, stepping in close to him. She looks up at him and says, "Something like that, definitely. Dazzling. Though he did tell me you were very good with your hands." Her smile is almost innocent as she adds, "I'm not sure what he meant by that. Woodworking, maybe?"
"Aye, woodworking, y'could say that," Reniya says, eyes twinkling as he guides them to the proper house. "Quite a specific example, that. Have you a fair bit of experience in it yourself?"
"Hmmm, I guess it depends on the type of wood we're talking about," Aze says, with just a slight twitch at the corner of her lips. But she follows up with, "Woodworking puts me in the mind of shipbuilding for some reason. Maybe it's all the time spent at Fallon's. Do you sail?"
"Used to," Reniya says, his expression sobering as they arrive at the door. He turns his back to it, facing her, to continue talking. "I had a small sailboat, once. Nothing the scale of Fallon's ships, mind, but a cute little lass. The new boat's a bit smaller, even, and she's got a motor on 'er."
"A motor on a boat?" Aze asks, coming to a stop just a little inside ordinary Stormwindian personal space and turning her face up towards his. "That sounds fancy. And I don't have a boat at all, so I wouldn't say anything about scale. As long as it's the right size for what you want to do with it, it's probably the right size."
"Speakin' of being good with my hands though," Reniya says with a playful grin, as behind him the lock on the door clicks open. He opens the door without knocking to let her inside.
"Impressive," Aze touches a hand lightly to his chest as he opens the door, raising an eyebrow. "Such close friends they don't mind, huh?"
Behind the door is a six and a half foot silken black worgen standing on one leg — the only leg she has — towering in the doorway, a clawed hand clutching the frame. The growl she sends out is not metaphorical; it rumbles through bones in a bestial warning. Some of the intimidation is undermined by the fact that she's wearing one of her butterfly dresses, the Mourning Cloak, which has the effect of making her look like she's off to some fancy noble party rather than a throwdown.
"Damned graceless gods, Ren, if you ever pick that lock again, especially while we're right here to answer the door, and it's not some emergency whatever, I swear you will regret it," she threatens with a snarl. But, she can't be that angry, not if she's calling him Ren. "Just think about all the things I could unlock and leave drifting." She's a fight fire with even more, worse fire, Reniya Marie Hartrim. Think of your beloved boat.
Aze steps back — was she flirting with Ren? Maybe, but you can't prove it now, unless she starts again — and turns toward the six and a half foot worgen. Her long eyebrows raise, but it's more an expression of curiosity than fear or surprise. She doesn't look up at the worgen's face, but then again it wouldn't seem like a particularly useful gesture anyway, given the blindfold over her eyes.
Reniya raises his hands in a gesture of surrender, a nervous laugh escaping him. The lockpicks are already tucked away somewhere, out of sight. "Oi, oi, easy there, Swallowtail," he says. A pause and a smile. "So it's more fine if you're not—"
"Stop stretchin' your luck, Ren," comes a relaxed, possibly even weary voice from further within the house.
"Don't even think of it. Remember that if you do come here when we aren't, I will know, Ren," Natalyah warns, pointing a clawed finger at his chest. "You can't fool my nose." She sniffs in illustration, and then finally notices the other scent present, peering around Reniya curiously.
"That's strange. I don't know you," Natalyah says, and there's an odd, abrupt shifting of her energy, an iridescent shimmer within her, and she shrinks an entire foot into a human shape, as simple as taking a breath. The golden Light within her, both the Light and something else — something more primal, alive — swirls and settles once more. She stretches out a hand past Reniya. "I'm Natalyah Kensington-Whit, published lepidopterist, Lathrik's girlfriend, and one of the cursed worgens who isn't Gilnean. You are?"
"Oh," Aze breathes reflexively as Natalyah changes size and shape, but then she reaches forward to take worgen's hand without hesitation.
"I'm Aszera Sunstrike, acclaimed dancer, new member of the Alliance, and one of the ex-Illidari who didn't die in Outland," Aze says with a flash of a friendly smile. "You know Joelle Ebek, right? He invited me here — I hope that's alright. And you're only the second worgen I've met socially, though the first was Gilnean. I hope I don't smell too strongly?"
Natalyah is first slightly startled, not by the introduction, but the fact that Aze took her hand, as the worgen processed a moment too late the blindfold, and might have expected her hand to go ignored. The rest of the information only seems to take Natalyah by further surprise of unexpected forthrightness as much as the content of it.
Natalyah laughs at the question, a wicked sound, delighted. "Had you asked me a month ago I might have said something else, but now you've got me after enduring weeks of attacks from goblin perfumes, and my entire scale of too strong has been entirely reset," she says. "You're a spritz on the breeze in the new scent world order."
Aze laughs in response, a sound more relieved than wicked. Part of the benefit of forthrightness is knowing right away if you're going to get kicked out. "I avoided most of that this year, staying at Fallon House. No buckets of goblin perfume. So you're the… paladin's girlfriend? Priestess? The two seem to go together a lot."
It's a reasonable excuse for the guess, if one didn't realize she could see the Light.
"Is it that strange that you don't know me?" Aze asks, shifting on her feet, towards Ren, towards Natalyah. "And uh… what's a lepidopterist? Not my first tongue, Common."
Reniya opens his mouth to respond to the tongues comment, but Lathrik appears in the doorway and he wisely quiets down.
"Oi, how about we continue this inside?" Lathrik asks, opening the door a bit wider. He wears a lazy smile, though his light brown eyes are focused on Aszera.
"You're inviting me in?" Aze asks, turning casually towards Lathrik, and for a moment there's a pause in the fluidity of the movement, a faint drawing in of her brows, before she flashes another smile.
Lathrik's brows rise. "Unless you'd rather camp on the doorstep?"
To anyone else he might appear an ordinary man; well-muscled, rough hands from working, but nothing at surface level announces him as a paladin. For one who can see magic, however, the Light is definitely present — but so is the Void. It coils around him in snaking vines, stemming from a purple rune on his chest, its dark tendrils drinking deeply of his mana to sustain itself. The way it wraps around him so entirely seems almost possessive, claiming him as ivy claims a building.
There's a faint twitch of Aze's hand toward her own chest before she forces it back to her side, but she keeps her smile aimed at Lathrik. "Fel no, I've had enough camping for a lifetime. I'd say let me tell you about Northrend, but there's probably nicer things to talk about on first acquaintance."
There's less than a blink as Natalyah shifts back to her worgen form, having already made a put upon noise at the word priestess, as Lathrik comes to the door. She lopes into the living room, picks up two canes left by a couch, and shifts back to human as the others discuss camping.
"Really, you're among people who count being cursed by rampaging monsters, several counts of homelessness, and so many near death experiences that it's become a nickname. You'll fit right in with whatever horrors Northrend brought you," she says.
"And I'll have you know, I'm not a priestess. I use the Light, which I can't even imagine how you guessed, but as a matter of fact, I'm not of the Church. I've taken no vows. I'm not an acolyte. I'm a scientist." The tone is as clear as the look on her face — not a fan of the Church of the Holy Light, this one. "And a lepidopterist is someone who studies butterflies and moths, and one who is published is one whose work on the subject is considered definitive enough to be used as a standard, which mine is." Modesty and humility have never been part of Natalyah's personality, not when it comes to her chosen profession.
"Sounds like we'll get along — lots of common experiences," Aze says cheerfully, but she doesn't clarify which exact ones for the moment, as she moves with Lathrik and Ren towards the living room. "Butterflies, moths… ever been up to Eversong? I can't say I'm any expert on the butterflies, but there's a fu… a lot of them up there. And there's the teromoths by Shattrath, too, if you've ever been out that way. Even I notice those."
She tilts her head to Lathrik and adds, "You are a paladin, right? That's what Elle said, but…"
"Ye have reason to doubt him?" Lathrik asks, his voice and body language still lazily casual as he moves towards the couch, himself.
Joelle is sitting at the dining room table, tinkering with a clockwork animal of some sort — possibly a worg. He looks focused, and probably hasn't noticed the new arrivals.
"Oi, Elle!" Reniya calls, heading for the table. "Your Dancer's here, and — ain't that the toy I got you for Winter's Veil? Why're you takin' it apart, mate?"
"To see how it works," Joelle answers automatically. He looks up a few seconds later. "Hello, Aze. These are my friends." The smile is in his eyes, if not on his face.
Aze doesn't answer the question, letting Joelle and the subject change cast it away. Maybe Joelle's smile is audible in his voice in some way, because she smiles back and says, "Yeah, thanks for inviting me to meet them. Is that, uh… the only thing you told them about me? Dancer?"
She moves over to take a seat at the dining room table next to Joelle, and adds, "I guess I'd rather that be how I'm known first, better than the eyes or whatever. Did you teach your friends any sin'dorei dancing?"
Lathrik settles himself on the couch with a mana potion close at hand. He doesn't seem particularly focused on Aszera, but maybe that is intentional. Reniya, meanwhile, joins Joelle and Aszera at the table, holding respectfully silent.
Joelle considers the first question. "I told them you were pretty," he says. "Lathrik didn't want to dance, so I tried to teach Ren, but I don't think I'm good at teaching dance."
Here, Reniya chimes in. "He's got this thing about time, aye? It's hard to follow 'im when he talks about it. From what I saw, though…" he flashes a grin. "Ol' Lathrik wouldn't've been too excited to dance it with anyone but his Swallowtail."
"That's supposed to be me, by the way," Natalyah says tartly, as she practically leaps back onto the couch, shifting in midair, a human form once again leaning up against Lathrik's side, sliding an arm to curl around one of his, propriety be damned. "Even though 'Swallowtail' is almost generic enough to be calling someone like 'Nymphalidae' which covers around 6,000 species."
Natalyah tosses her head, and a bitter lemon snap infuses her words. "And the only dances I can do are the Hop-on-one-leg Dance and the Sway Between Two Canes Dance, which somehow never grew very popular in any circles for some strange reason."
"Oh, right, because of the leg," Aze says, leaning one elbow on the table. "I don't know… I think you could do a certain version of ban'dalare without any footwork, if you trust your partner to keep your balance. I could teach sometime, if you wanted. Or not, if not."
She falls silent for a moment, and then straightens in startlement, before she collapses forward into a brief laugh. "I was about to say my friends never gave me nicknames like that, but then I remembered from — wow, it was a long time ago. Like a decade? But also a lifetime. A few of my friends used to call me butterfly. Even more generic than Swallowtail, for a lepidopterist, but I think mostly it was so they didn't have to remember my name."
Natalyah shoots a suspicious, narrow-eyed glance, just this side of a glare, at Reniya, then directs her attention back to Aze. "Were they broadly flirtatious and generally hedonistic, too? If you tell me that they also were best friends with a good hearted and extraordinarily brave paladin, I'm going to start wondering if Silvermoon is some sort of Upside Down Otherworld and we have mirrors over there."
"Um. Yes? The one who coined it anyway. And so fucking gorgeous," Aze says, with a touch of wistfulness. "I miss being able to really see people sometimes. As it happens, he was best friends with a woman who ended up as a blood knight, but I didn't really know her well. Not sure about good-hearted and extraordinarily brave."
"Obviously not a perfect one-to-one then. What's a 'blood knight?'" Natalyah asks, as the woman who missed some things over the past few years while she was busy being quarantined with a bunch of worgens. "That sounds somewhat unsavory. Oh! Or is it related to the whole name change thing, a translation of sin into Common? A knight but you know, memory of blood, or whatever?"
"I think that's probably where they took the name from, yeah," Aze says carefully, dropping a hand to trace a zigzag pattern on the table. "We took the name sin'dorei to honor the fallen, after the Third War. Children of the blood… our enemies are breaking through… all that stuff." She says this like she's quoting something that the others have likely heard many times before. "It was… if any of you were military in Lordaeron at the time, you probably have a good idea what it was like back then."
"The blood knights came a little later, after, well… people didn't trust the Light very much anymore. And then Sunstrider captured a naaru in Outland, and… the gist of the story is that the naaru forgave everybody involved, and now Silvermoon has a paladin order. So, happy ending." Aze gives a little shrug. She may have skipped a few details. Maybe some critical ones.
"Aye, happy ending, now we've Horde paladins to contend with," Lathrik says, downing his mana potion and tossing the bottle into the bin.
"You're Elle's friend, so you can be real with us, jus' maybe don't go repeatin' that story in the same words in any taverns," Reniya says.
"Ah. Right," Aze says, her expression falling. "I didn't mean… it doesn't matter what I meant. I appreciate the advice." Aze takes a breath, and says, "I don't think it's a good idea for me to go to any taverns anyway, oaths of fealty aside."
Natalyah cocks her head to the side. "Or it's not a good idea for you to go to a tavern alone. You just need someone who can shove off any wankers," she says, the Gilnean slang word a strange blend of a Stormwind-Gilnean accent. "Not many people are going to get into something when a giant of a guard is at your table. Right, Elle?"
Aze turns towards Natalyah with a look of surprise, and then a quick flash of a grateful smile.
Joelle blinks and looks to Reniya.
"What Swallowtail here's trying to say is, the more friends a person's got backing 'em up, the safer they are," Reniya clarifies, responding to some unspoken thought of Joelle's. "And Dancer, Lathrik might've come off harsh there, but he trusts Elle, an' he trusts Fallon, which means he's looking out for you in his own way."
"I trust what I can observe for myself," Natalyah says, a note of Scientific Tartness in her voice. "But, you're Elle's friend, which means you're our friend by extension, because if anything happened to you, it'd make Elle sad, and that's something we all stand against. So, if you want to go to a tavern for a night off, all you have to do is say the word and we'll form up. Although, for Lathrik's sake, don't pick one that lands on a holiday. He gets moody." The last is said affectionately, with a quick dart of a kiss to his cheek.
"I wouldn't want to make Elle sad," Aze says with a quick smile, and adds, "Or Lathrik moody. And Natalyah, if there's any evidence you need from me for trust, I'll be happy to give it. But you're right… I should probably just not talk about life before I joined the Alliance. Or maybe my time with the Argent Crusade is fine? I don't know, it's just hard because that is a lot of years of life, and it's… my context. What about all of you — Stormwinders always?"
"No one here's gonna fault you for missing home, or talking about the past," Reniya says encouragingly. "I'll bet Silvermoon's leadership didn't ask you if you wanted to leave the Alliance. That's why you're here, aye? Jus' like no one asked for the Scourge to come and mess everything up. Well. Someone might've asked, but it wasn't us. I was born Kul Tiran, and I didn't ask for them to go quittin' the Alliance either."
"I'm from Stormwind," Joelle says, answering the question. "My family fled to Lordaeron when the orcs attacked Stormwind, but we came back."
"Aye, an' I never left," Lathrik says, wrapping an arm around Natalyah casually. "And if I get moody, it's from trying to contain the chaos that holidays inevitably bring. Someone's got to."
"My family's been part of the Kingdom of Stormwind for who knows how many generations. I'm from the Elwynn Kensington-Whits, or at least I was until they disowned me for having been on the other side of the Gilnean wall when it was closed off and they left the Alliance," Natalyah says, and the flippancy of her tone doesn't do anything to disguise the storm on her face, a bitter reminder.
"I was cursed while I was over there, trying to study a rare shade loving butterfly native to the area, the Zebra Longwing, unable to get out of the restrictions of the wall to contain the worgen. I lost four years of my life to being feral, and came back to find out that it wasn't like the Alliance was thrilled to find out so many of us are now a bunch of mo —" She cuts her word off in half, looking to Lathrik, instantly apologetic. "Different. Now that we're different."
Aze listens with attentive curiosity as they describe their backgrounds. She can hear the flippancy of Natalyah's words, but not see the storm on her face.
"Ren, I figured, because you're… you look like a Kul Tiran," Aze says, and then pauses awkwardly, raising a hand to touch the side of her blindfold. Quickly, she plows on, "And yeah, I'm with you there. Surprisingly enough, the King and the Convocation didn't ask me what I thought about stepping back from the Alliance. Now they're dead, and like I always tell people, I was literally not even in the world when they decided on the whole Horde thing."
Then she nods to Lathrik."I was kind of a stick-around-the-hometown person myself, too, for the first hundred years or so. Then there was the whole leaving the world situation." She gestures to Natalyah, "And I also got to come back home as… are we against the word monster here? I got in the habit of using that one for myself, but I can try to remember not to."
"I look like a…" Reniya squints at Aszera. "Are you about t'tell me you've got this seein' through sound thing goin' on? S'pose it wouldn't be the strangest thing I've heard."
"Ye wouldn't see the Light through sound," Lathrik objects. "'Talyah and I aren't naaru. And aye, we're against the word 'monster' here, 'least when it's directed at friends and loved ones."
Though he doesn't push the sight topic further, something in Lathrik's gaze is sharper, more serious.
"Right, I'll keep that in mind," Aze says with a casual nod. Then she drops her hand again to the table, and continues, "I sort of started using it specifically directed at myself and my loved ones, more in bitterness than sincerity. But I get different people use words differently, and this isn't my mother tongue anyway." Her fingers curl into a fist, but her voice is still casual as she says, "Not sound, no. It's a mon… a demon thing. I don't know what color eyes any of you have, but I can see… other stuff."
Natalyah's reflexes might seem a little odd. She bursts into an impish laugh, but at the same time, she puts a protective hand over Lathrik's chest, as if she can shield him from something, a war of baffled amusement and sudden concern struggling across her face.
"What do you mean by 'other stuff?' Do you mean you can see through our clothes?" she asks. "Because that is one way to stride boldly through the world. It'd be like one of those public speaking techniques, you know, 'imagine the audience naked to not be self-conscious.'"
Lathrik, for his part, sits up straighter, his gaze locked accusingly on Joelle. Joelle gazes back, expressionless as ever.
Reniya glances awkwardly between the two, still smiling, but more of a nervous smile now. "I wouldn't mind the no clothes bit," he offers.
"Could be kind of hot, in particular situations," Aze agrees, maybe not picking up all of the nervousness. "Invasive though. No, I just mean like… like you said, I can't hear the Light. But I can see it, sort of. I call it vision, anyway, but it's not really the same, because it's not really affected by this," she taps her blindfold, "My eyes are actually beyond repair. I'm not trying to pry or anything, I'm just… being real.”
"I can appreciate that. It's not like I can't smell things on you that tell me things now that I couldn't possibly have known about you before," Natalyah says. She still has her hand over Lathrik, the almost-there shimmer of a [Shield] sketching the air around him, defensive and ready to enfold him.
"So then tell me the truth: if you can see the Light, can you also see Shadow?" Not the subtlest of creatures, Natalyah.
"If I could…" Aze says, very carefully, and something changes just slightly in the way she's sitting, a subtle tension that wasn't there before. "Would there be anything I might need to know, to avoid drawing the wrong conclusions?"
Lathrik sighs and leans back again, all signs of the lazy mask vanishing. "It's a curse," he says. "Fallon knows, along with everyone in this room. My mother cast it somehow, and removing it is… difficult."
Reniya relaxes when Lathrik does, slumping a little in his chair. "Oi, Elle, did you know she could see magic? A bit of warning might've been nice, mate, at least so we could've prepared for this talk."
Joelle fidgets absently with the mechanical toy in front of him. "I thought it would be better if Aze got to choose how to explain her sight, or not. Everyone has secrets, and I didn't tell anyone what each others' secrets are."
"Then that's why…" Azs says, letting out a breath and relaxing back in her chair. "It does look pretty well wound up in there. You have to see why I'd be a little worried, with the Twilights around. I didn't mean to bring up… I don't know." She taps a finger against the table again. "I don't know what everything means, if that helps. I can recognize power if I've seen it before, but I'm not like, reading anybody's souls or anything like that."
"Part of me wishes ye could," Lathrik says. "We've been having a hard time weeding Twilights out of our ranks. But power like that'd be costly, and it'd put ye at risk, to say nothing of the interpersonal consequences." He offers a slightly bitter smile. "We'll continue how we've been, and hope it's enough."
"Has Fallon told you about tidesages?" Reniya asks. "That'd be why y'said I look Kul Tiran?"
"Yeah… I didn't know how secret that was? So I didn't want to say," Aze says to Ren. She adds towards Lathrik, "And I could keep an eye out for people who seem touched by Shadow, but I have no idea how to tell the why behind it. I'd probably just give you a lot of hassle over nothing. Anyway, I think I'd like being known as a Dancer more than a Soulchecker, if it's all the same to you."
"And I don't think you'd find much if you did go looking. The Church teaches this whole thing about how 'Shadow' is different from 'Void,' but as a matter of fact it's much more just about who is yielding it and why that makes up the semantics. It's all about intention. Just how an evil imp smells like the fel, but so does a good warlock." Natalyah releases her hand from its hold on Lathrik's chest, letting it slide down his abdomen to rest more naturally at his waist.
"I can't imagine how weird that must be, though," Natalyah adds. "Maybe it would have been less bizarre to just suddenly have the power to see through people's clothes."
"Then I would've had good reason to keep myself in situations where it wouldn't matter," Aze says with a touch of a wicked grin. Then the smile fades slightly as she says, "What can you tell about a person by smell, then, that you couldn't before? About me?"
Wait. Is that…does Natalyah smell… a dare?
Well, whether Aze meant it to be one or not, it's certainly how the worgen lepidopterist is taking it, because she unsnuggles herself from Lathrik, and grabs her canes, pushing herself upright to a stand.
"All right, I'll show you," Natalyah says, as she pushes over to where Aze is. "Give me your hand, and I'll show you why you should never trust a fortune teller if you can't tell they're a worgen."
Aze's long eyebrows raise slightly, but she lifts her hand and offers it to Natalyah, palm up. "Show me, then."
That last might sound more like a dare.
Natalyah accepts!
She also leans carefully, takes Aze's hand, rapidly shifts to a worgen — it's so fast that Aze might only barely have the opportunity to note the softness of her fur, but the roughness of the pads of her palms — and takes a single hard sniff, and then several quick quick quick sniffs.
The next shift back to human leaves Natalyah with a sheen of sweat on her forehead, her hair sticking to the back of her neck.
"You had an orange and a pomegranate for breakfast, neither of which you had to peel or open for yourself. You weren't using much of any wall or staircase to guide yourself down anywhere in the house, so you're either very confident or you can see enough to navigate spaces like that. You rode here on a horse, probably not one you own yourself, and you didn't ride hard or fast, didn't work up a real sweat. You spent time earlier around someone who smells a bit like a library, and something… like amber, a hug or two maybe. You wear a perfume based in lavender to cover the fel, and you spritz it on probably when you get dressed, before you're out of your room and meeting with people," the worgen tells Aze.
This close, it's also easier to catch the scent of Natalyah — a rich, sensual jasmine with warm notes under it.
Aze laughs in delight at the sheer detail of it all. "You're good at this. Do you do fortune-telling? Or detective-work? I bet you and I could work well together, with your nose and my eyes…" she pauses, and then adds, "I've come from Fallon House, their horse not mine, and the someone is… probably Isla? I did see her today. And I hope the lavender is a better scent than fel, that was a gift from my sister. She said it was chosen with warlock advice."
"Lavender for warlocks?" Reniya says, his eyes sparkling with humor. "Maybe we should give ol' Fireworks a spray down."
"Or ye could leave 'im alone," Lathrik mutters.
"Ol' Fireworks?" Aze asks, tilting her head. "A warlock… friend?"
"Aye, at least a friend," Reniya says. "My sister's out to make 'im family. Mixed feelings on that, myself."
"Mixed feelings on… principle?" asks the girl with a demon in her soul, "Or just about this guy personally?"
"My sister's a bit of a barnacle," Reniya says. "She'll latch on, and I dunno if Fireworks has got it in 'im to shake 'er off properly when he needs to. That, and I don't want any bad blood between our families if things take a bad turn." If he glances at Lathrik, maybe that's just a coincidence.
"Oh, hm, yeah, I don't really have any experience with that sort of thing. I guess maybe there was this time when I was out of town and I think my sister had a thing for my best friend, which that would've ended in tears. Which I guess it did anyway because they both…" Aze trails off and finishes with, "So yeah my sister married this other guy, which worked out. Maybe Fireworks likes barnacles? Some people are into that."
"As a matter of fact, I am moving into working with detective-like work. If you were looking for something like that, your skills could probably do wonders of adding in information that no one else can give us," Natalyah says.
Natalyah moves back to Lathrik, attaching herself like a barnacle something else that likes being right up against something. "Peril just needs someone to remind him that he can stand up for himself, and that he's allowed to say no when he means it. He can do it. I think pretty women just make him so nervous that he loses his usual spine for a moment."
Aze straightens, taking back her hand, and smiles. "Maybe, yeah? I am looking for the next thing. I'm also pretty great at violence, if your detective work ends up needing that."
"These days that's sort of a given. I'm capable of violence, but it gets sort of problematic, since I have only a few options with the Light or my teeth, and my teeth are sort of an all or nothing. If I bite someone, it's to rip out their throat, otherwise I inflict a lifelong curse on them and turn them into a rampaging feral monster that probably wants to kill me," Natalyah says matter-of-factly.
"Someone who could subdue would be very useful. I can heal, so we stack the odds on our side. But you have to be comfortable working with warlocks and death knights. Well at least one death knight, Harvey Morningdew. He's a friend." Natalyah seems the type to be open minded about her friendships, and not easily intimidated by the strange or deadly of Azeroth.
"Really? Who knew the Lord of Blood was such a socialite," Aze laughs again in clear delight, which is maybe not the usual expected response to warlocks and death knights. "It'd be kind of a bitch move for somebody like me to be against warlocks in general, and anyway I count the one at Fallon House as a friend. And my family's all death knights, anyway. Not Mourn. He's not my family. A… friend, though. I'd call him a friend." She pauses, and adds, "I guess if you want more warlocks and death knights, I could supply. My sister and her husband are pretty reasonable, as death knights go, and Lena knows her fel."
"Anyway, lethal is really my strength, but I can subdue, yeah. And if I bite somebody, all they'll get from it is injured." Aze snaps her teeth, and for a moment they gleam maybe a little sharper than expected for a blood elf. "What I am, it's not transferable like that. There's a whole… process. Nobody does it by accident."
"Way I understand nobility, socialite was Morningdew's job before his Kingdom fell," Lathrik says, settling his arm back around Natalyah. "As ye might expect of a room of guardsmen, he met us by bein' unfortunate with the law."
"You probably know 'im better than I do," Reniya admits to Aze. "I only know 'im as Ralaea's fiancé, and the lass gets spicy whenever I'm around. Does Fallon know you're out volunteerin' his warlock for things? Does she know? We met her uh… Well, I say 'met,' but 'twas really more an encounter — a brief encounter — when I… needed a summon."
"Oh, relax, Ren. Considering that the person this warlock would be working for would still be Siamus," Natalyah says in defense of Aze, easy with the inherent familiarity using Fallon's first name, "it's less volunteering and more suggesting that this Lena, who Azsera just said is a friend, might enjoy making even more piles of money with her skills.
"And I'd be interested in meeting your sister and brother-in-law," Natalyah adds, not knowing that she has, in fact, actually already met one of them, albeit not under the name he currently uses. "Although I know that it's not exactly easy for death knights to be around people who aren't stoic creatures."
Aze listens to the three of them with interest, and then says, "I think they can handle it. I'm hardly a stoic creature, and they both got over it. I even lived with them for a few weeks — in a manner of speaking — and didn't get tortured to death even once." With her casual smile, one might guess, or hope, this last was not a serious concern. "And wait, you're working for Siamus? I mean, that works out, but it makes me wonder how much of the Alliance is working for that guy…"
"Anyway, yeah, Lena can always say no. She knows how to do that — I checked. Maybe she could give your Peril a pep talk." She tilts her head towards Joelle and continues, "You know her too, from the dance, at least a little. Think she'd be upset to be vol… recommended?"
"Oi, ye better not be countin' me as workin' for Fallon," Lathrik says, the lazy smile returning to his face. "Occasionally I'll work with him, but I serve the Kingdom as a whole."
"I don't work for Fallon either," Joelle offers. "Ren did, once. I don't know Lena well. She seemed happy, at the dance. If she can say no, recommending might make her happy, too, even if she doesn't do it. If it's okay, I could meet your family, too. Ralaea doesn't like them, but I think it's better to see for myself. Ralaea doesn't like Ren, and I do."
Reniya smiles. "Thanks, mate."
"I don't work for Siamus, either. Let's say work with him, then, I've done that too. In Vashj'ir, against the naga," Aze says, gesturing vaguely, maybe in what she thinks is the direction of the sea. She has no idea what direction the sea is in right now.
"And sure, you can meet my family too, Elle. I'd be happy to introduce any of you. My sister especially could use more friends, seeing as she's not only a sin'dorei, but a m… walking corpse." Aze is learning the local vocabulary rules, give her time. "And she's not gonna murder any of you. You can trust me, I tested her out. They're both great, if you like dangerous dead people."
Natalyah's laugh peals out with that wicked sound to it. "Well, that's a metric of assessment I can get behind. And I'm always happy to meet a friend or a family member of a friend who's not going to murder me. I suppose you could tell them the same thing. I haven't murdered anyone in ages, unless you count an ogre, but I don't think we should."
"Oh, yeah I don't think we should count ogres, it'll throw off the count," Aze agrees readily. "Or demons, for that matter."
"Or murlocs," Reniya chimes in. "Elle and I got sent out once to help in Elwynn after a pair of guards disappeared, aye? Turned out they got eaten. We helped thin the ranks a bit while they found longer-term replacements."
Natalyah first makes an eugh sound at the mention of the eaten guards, and then shoots a worried look at Lathrik in a sudden awareness of how guards aren't just random men and women in armor; it's personal now.
"Murlocs are difficult to thin out. They're like one of those magic tricks where a magician pulls out a scarf that won't end out of their sleeve. Maybe they could use another go at it, and I bet someone's posted a bill somewhere," Natalyah says. "What do you say, Azsera? Think you might want to go out on a bounty or whatever, productive violence and local goodwill?"
What, like…now? It sounds like Natalyah means now, in the full spontaneity of someone who doesn't always plan things but definitely goes all in on whatever idea she gets.
"Sure, yeah, I… didn't bring my swords, but really I can work with anything sharp. Or just beat them to death with my bare…" Aze pauses, perhaps realizing she's leaning too far into 'demon girl who hasn't had satisfying violence in too many weeks'. "Do you have any spare swords I could borrow? I typically use two, light. And I could go without armor, it doesn't really matter. I'm fast."
"I'm… more of a spare daggers sort," Reniya says, patting himself down and producing three fair sized daggers. He lays them out on the table. If he has more, he doesn't suggest it — but he probably has more.
"Oi, Ren," Lathrik begins.
"What? If the lasses want t'help, Tides know we could use it. 'Sides, it's not that late yet." Reniya winks at Aze.
"Come on, Lathrik, we'll go along the roads, and we'll stay in Elywnn. The only real Risk we'll take is the horse if we need it," Natalyah quips.
Aze grins at Ren, though she may not have seen the wink. She reaches for one of the daggers, testing the balance. "I'd love to help. I haven't killed anything since January. Maybe I can show you how good I am with my hands?"
"I do admire a lass who's good with 'er hands," Reniya says. "We could make an evening of it. I've got a mate who shipped out to Tol Barad sent me some Gilnean Brandywine he found out there. Haven't tried it yet. Could be a drink over a pile of dead murlocs night."
"Ye sure ye want a night of that?" Lathrik asks Natalyah, gesturing in Reniya's direction.
Uh oh. Was that… a dare Lathrik Hazard Dinnsfield? It sounded like a dare.
Natalyah's eyes spark with the challenge, as she tosses her head, metaphorical fur bristling. "I can handle anything that sort of night brings," she says defensively, which is also the answer to a different statement than whether or not she wants a night of it, but tomato potato.
And then, in another mood altogether, shifting as quickly as she shifts forms, she darts forward to kiss Lathrik like a shock of lightning. "Besides, no matter what happens out there, I know what night I'll be coming back to, and who with, and so I know exactly how good my night ends."
"Brandywine and making a pile of dead murlocs sounds wonderful," Aze says, leaning her head on her hand and smiling, as she rests one of Reniya's daggers casually in her other hand. "Though I'll probably leave the rest of my night up to chance — nobody's waiting for me anywhere."
"You could borrow my room," Joelle offers out of nowhere.
Reniya gives him a slightly awkward smile. "Thanks, mate, but I'm… Not really up for explainin' to your folks… anything."
Natalyah cackles, as she rises up once more with intent, a gathering storm of energy.
"The kind of night you can't tell anyone's parents about sounds like it's going to be fun," she predicts. Is she right?
Who can say?