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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Oranna catches Dane catching fish, and they discuss what's going on with Oranna and her letters, what Befound may or may not be up to end of winter, and what the future might hold for the pandaren of Pandaria. 5700~ words. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
A salt-tinged ocean breeze passes over the elevated building on stilts. Several crocolisk corpses still lie about, but the people are no longer under siege. The jungle in the distance looms darkly—quiet now, though still a formidable wall of green and purple.
Atley seems to be the only human present. He stands on the raised platform of the inn beside the gigantic fishing net, dressed in his casual clothes—though the vrykul dagger at his hip still glows faintly blue, and the Lion Horn of Stormwind hangs at his other side. His fishing pole is raised, held in both hands, its line disappearing into the water.
He wears a red workman’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his bulky forearms, suspenders stretched across his broad shoulders, and russet pants with matching boots. Behind him, sprawled against a nearby wall like a defeated iron golem, lie his armor and shield. Most outlandish of all is Thunderfury, its core perpetually cracking and humming with contained power. Only his blue-and-gold winged helmet is missing from the set, while his Cobalt Company tabard and cloak flap idly in the wind from a laundry line.
That helmet currently sits on the head of a Pandaren child, whose father stands not far off. The boy gazes up at the human, jabbering away.
Oranna's armor might do much to help her blend into the jungles and even the rocky beaches, but that's her only camouflage — she stands out by standing so short, barely of a height with some pandaren children and, and she's followed by a snow leopard of whites, grays, and blacks far from the snow she's meant to be near invisible among.
They come in overland, rather than by flight, with Oranna waving hello to the pandaren she recognizes. She stops to speak to one of them, eyeing the crocolisks and their trails with a trained evaluation, relieved by what she sees.
It's only as she makes a survey of the village that she catches sight of a familiar face, well, a familiar back. "Dane!" she calls, waving an arm vigorously in the air, as she steps up her pace to cross the distance between them. Befound keeps pace unhurriedly, lazy on her day off. You hear her, Oranna, her day off. She was promised naps.
Atley glances over his shoulder at the exclamation and nods slowly, raising and lowering his head. “Oranna,” he calls out, briefly lifting one hand off the fishing pole to raise it in greeting. The pandaren child keeps talking as Oranna approaches, the oversized helmet teetering back and forth on his fuzzy head.
“I’m going to grow a beard,” the cub says, peering up into Atley’s face from beneath the blue and gold while stroking his black-and-white chin with an aspirational glimmer.
“There you are, then,” Atley tells him.
As Oranna comes closer, the child hums and turns toward the wall of the coastal structure, immediately beginning to scale it for a better vantage of the strange outlanders. Atley leans to the side and swipes the helmet off mid-climb. The cub doesn’t break pace and continues scaling.
Atley turns toward Oranna and Befound, leaning sharply to set his helmet down before he straightens again. “How are you, then?”
Befound plops down onto the warm, dry sand with a petulant huff, immediately settling her head over her tail and closing her eyes.
Oranna tracks the progress of the pandaren cub with an obvious worry eye and thought to wonder how old pandaren children are in reality, if she's watching a six-year-old or a sixteen-year-old.
At the question, her attention snaps back to Dane. "Oh, ah, we're both fine." Befound growls. "Ach, lass. All right, I'm fine, Befound's tetchy. I just… thought we'd take a patrol up and down, check in on things of the jungle and beach, since the cullin' of populations. Get a walk though. Not that I was expectin' ta see anything amiss, just… checkin' in." The longer she speaks, the more clear it becomes that there's a touch of agitation to her, a restlessness somewhere in the dubious line between anxiety and anticipation. "You?"
Atley lifts a brow and slowly turns away from her as she speaks, tending his line in the water. He does glance over his shoulder at Befound, then back to Oranna again, scoffing with amusement as he observes. “More of the same.”
His gaze rises. “Check in on the folk here. Watch for the Horde,” he says, eyes dropping to the bauble drifting in the water. “And fish these waters. I’ve had a mind to since we first made it out to the jungle here.”
As if on cue, the line goes taut. He nods once and starts reeling in, the finely crafted rod bending just slightly. A writhing Krasarang Paddlefish finally breaks the surface at the end of his hook. Atley reels it in fully and swipes it free of the line. After a brief inspection, he crouches and mercifully, pragmatically, cracks its head against the wooden deck in a sharp swing.
He turns toward his gear, double-takes Befound, deliberates for a heartbeat, and then tosses the fish into a nearby netted basket. “I can tell no one’s ever been kind to that one,” he jokes dryly, raising both hands to place a glow worm on the hook of his fishing pole as he looks back to Oranna and nods toward Befound. “How's she handling this heat?"
"Oh, she hates it somethin' fierce. She's always uncomfortable, rain or jungle. If snow leopards were louder, ye'd have been hearing her complainin' all this time, chuffin' away," Oranna says. As if in punctuation, Befound huffs again, shifting in her 'sleep.' "But she's a brave, well-trained lass, and she's more accustomed to it than most, having spent so much of yer youth following me around the world." Oranna smiles broadly, and then lowers her voice a bit more. "I've actually been talkin' — well, I mean writing, not talking talkin', because he's not here, not that I don't wish he wasn't here, I do, but he's not —"
What is she even talking about? Who is she even talking about? Oranna clears her throat, having gone a brighter and brighter red, and tries again, "I've been writin' ta Thalstan, I don't know if you know him or nae, about maybe taking some time off this winter for Befound ta maybe cub. She's of an age fer it, an'…well ye've seen how she's been with Bun."
Atley knits his brow and lets out a grunt. "I have," he says at first, winding the fishing pole before he launches another line into the water far below with a brief 'pop!' as the surface breaks.
"I know Thalstan Stouthammer. Handsome devil," he says, briefly side-eyeing Oranna. "On the cover of all those novels," Atley growls with amusement. "He was in the Nightmare War. Blackwing Descent, as well."
He starts to carefully tug the fishing pole left and right, shifting his gaze back to the water. "I hadn't known the two of you were writing."
Oranna turns so red that she might be casting something of a faint glow around her. "Uhhr…" she says, eloquently. She takes up her braid, nervously fidgeting with it, smoothing down hairs. "Well, I… we, we met in the Nightmare War, the dream. Not, not properly, aye? Ye remember how erryone one was, a bit dreamlike? So, when a cover novel dwarf rescued me from, well… Bran, but nae-Bran, and then I shot his ma — I didn't know she was — in the dream, she was a dreamer… I didnae really think it was like the look o' the person. I'd known 'Thalstan Stouthammer' from the administration papers, but nae…
"And then, then we met in person when I came down fer a bit atween jobs in Northrend, and he has — his family has, a, a tavern, The Thirsty Dragon, and his ma was there, and I was…" Dane can probably imagine. Oranna waves her hands in the air like she's trying to erase something. "Anyway, they were both verra kind, an' so when I was up in Northrend again in the Storm Peaks, I wrote ta him again ta thank him. And then he wrote me back. And then I wrote him again. I — I'm sorry, ye know how writin' works, I'm jus'… that's, that's where it started."
Atley's stern, rugged features twist with restrained amusement as he raises his head and looks down his nose at his line at the water. "Right," he growls after a long moment.
"And where's it going, then?"
There it is, that shifting of her feet, one foot drawing a circle on the platform with something between anxiety and anticipation. "I don't… know?" she says softly.
She looks out over the water, at the line. "Ye know, the first time I met Bargrimm, it was fishin'. I'd come down ta Westfall ta check on things, an' he was there with Elo, talkin' over about Cobalt Company. We went down ta the shore, an' fished. Second time we met, it was fishin' again, him out there along Duskwood, and me wanderin' by." She inhales a shaky breath, and exhales a smooth one, but her eyes are overbright with tears. "An' then I lost him ta the water in the end. It'll be three years this January. Two years o' havin', and three years of lost, and it will only get longer. How does that happen? I ne'er know how ta move on, the way people say, but… I've been looking forward inta a future an' I see… somethin' different than I have fer the past three years."
Atley nods slowly, gaze flitting down. He tongues the inside of his cheek as he listens before turning to her as he reels in his line. "We've been friends for some time. Companions. Faced many terrors. That grants me some liberty to blunt," Atley begins.
"I've yet to master 'moving on' myself. We merely must make space for the pain, but I know that love takes courage. Damn fool courage," he growls. "You are permitted to love again, and be loved, if you're brave enough for it, Oranna." Atley says. He turns back to the line, the glow worm still pierced by the hook.
"If I go, that's wot' I'd want of Ivrianna. I can't tolerate the thought of her living on, alone, never knowing the touch of a lover, again. Even if it's not mine." He scoffs with dry amusement. "I will be a dead man 'fore another touches her, of course."
Oranna laughs, a little awkwardly, but she nods. "It was Ivri, ye know, who I first really talked about the shift when Bargrimm went from bein' a friend to… being a friend and somethin'. She had a metaphor that I've found mostly works, of describin' the feelings like a cookie in a baker's window. That ye might nae intend ta purchase, but ye might wonder how it tastes or think it a good one. I've — I've ne'er been like that." She fidgets with her braid.
"I'd read these books with romance, of people seein' someone an' just instantly feelin' things, or even stranger, that they'd nae like a person ta start, but cannae deny that they think the person's a beauty or makin' them feel a certain way, an' it'd seem as much fantasy pretend as readin' someone rapid firin' an Albini-Braendlin 11mm rifle, one in each hand," she says. "It — it's impossible, I mean, if ye — ye probably know, ne'ermind.
"Jus'… it never worked like that fer me. I couldnae even tell ye really what made Bargrimm different. Only that he was, an' it didnae change anythin' when he was gone. But… with Thalstan, I couldnae tell ye either a when. Maybe in the Highlands? Maybe it was where it started. I wrote ta him because, well, ye were there. An' ye remember that one day when Kurdan told us ta go home, an' spend some time with our loved ones, ta prepare fer what was ahead? I went home, an'… wasnae sure what ta even do, and he jus'… he showed up. Like he could tell, somehow, an' it was easier with him there. I felt… settled, calmer. Ye know how I can get, windin' meself up, an' he winded me back down, got my feet back on the ground."
"Aye, I do," Atley begins, raising the pole again, casting out another distant line with a small grunt of exertion.
"'Tis a fine thing, finding someone who can settle you. Ought not to be for granted, f'course." Atley glances over at her. "Wot's his history of romance, then?"
Oranna shakes her head. "I've… naught even the slightest. I, uh. I'd never asked, or… it didn't really come up, at all really — ye remember when we were helpin' with the Jade Serpent temple? An' with tha' sha bein' what it was, an' havin' ta kill the people who'd gotten sha-ed? Bran said a thing, while we were comin' away from all that with Wise Mari, an' he said — 'think o' Thalstan, or sommat else that makes ye happy,' an' it was… I realized that'd I'd come tae think o' think that way. That when I was sad or achin', or wantin' a person near, and that even in only a letter, havin' him around made me feel — " Oranna shrugs, blushing harder, approaching levels that aren't usually seen on people who haven't face planted directly onto the sun.
"And I realized… so I… sort of wrote him about cookies? Th-the metaphorical cookies, the Ivri Metaphor Cookies, an' told him it was a metaphor, and he mentioned that, well, as a model he'd seen his fair share o' cookies an' that they start ta be an aesthetic sort of thing mebbe. I - I'd said I wasn't really a bakery cookie type o' person, but a homemade, personal sort of cookie person, an'… he sent me homemade cookies," Oranna offers in explanation (?). "Not like, a person-cookie, jus' normal cookies, regular cookies, ah, well, two types o' cookies, one was an adventure cookie, the other a safety cookie…"
She trails off as if realizing that much of this isn't actually making things any clearer.
Unfortunately, she may be onto something there. At least slightly, based on his expression.
Atley initially fosters a thoughtful frown, but it gradually deepens, his brow knitting further, before he turns to peer at her. After a while, he grunts, and allows a brief silence to pass between them before returning his gaze to the fishing line.
"He fancies you, then," Atley begins. "Wouldn't have sent something so meaningful if he didn't. Wouldn't have sent it if he wasn't paying attention either, then, would he," he says. "Have you eaten either of them yet?"
Oranna's expression is as easy to read as a book, if the emotions contained are a bit muddied: hopeful anxiety and questioning relief. "The, the cookies? Oh, aye. Well, I ate all but two, but then I did eat them, because I - I wrote ta him, ta tell him that I… fancy him." That color in her face surely can't be comfortable, but since Befound remains where she is, napping, it's probably not dangerous. "Ye think so, though? Aboot the cookies, tha' it couldnae ha' meant something else by it? I didnae misread it, the sendin' of them? If ye'd said somethin' like it ta Ivri, if she'd told ye her metaphor, that's how ye'd have meant it?"
In the Dane Bakery AU, of course.
Atley scoffs with amusement and nods. “Aye. That’s how I’d meant it. He cares for you,” Atley says, still idly waving the fishing pole back and forth. “I’m certain of it.”
He works his jaw before lifting a brow, glancing back at her with wry approval. “Told him outright, then, did you? A direct approach. That’s my preference, as well,” he says. “I trust he’s not written back yet, then. He’s a busy man, innee’.” He squints. “Last reports I read indicated the Blade was off in Outland, mm?”
Oranna nods, still fidgeting with her hair, watching Dane's line in the water. "Oh, aye. They've been workin' on tasks with the arakkoa and some of those sindorey. An'… well, nae ta say it's anythin' bad, but we're nae on human time, ye ken? Not tha' human time isn't useful fer immediacy but — it's jus' nae strange ta go days or weeks atween letters. I used tae check my mail once a year, but that was… a while ago. An' didnae really have much a choice in direct or not. I couldnae leave him well hangin' in the wind, an' I'm terrible at talkin' around a thing, an' the only way I'd get it is ta stop writin', so I'm sure that it's bravery or directness, really, jus'… I'd rather tell him awkwardly than avoid writin' tae him."
She steps up closer to the edge of the platform, peering into the waters. "Do ye and Ivri write? Or the wee ones? I ne'er can keep it all straight when humans are old enough fer things. I know it's similar at first, but the details…" She trails off, looking up at Dane.
The line snaps taut, and Dane instinctively lifts the pole to account for the sudden weight. The reel clicks in steady rhythm as he works the line, occasionally flicking it left or right to tire the catch.
Someone who didn’t know him as well as Oranna might think he’d stopped listening altogether — the hard knit of his brow suggesting pure concentration on the task. But the slightest hitch in that brow when she mentions checking her mail once a year betrays he heard every word.
“Better to fail because you charged too hard,” he remarks, “than because you were crawling backward.”
A scoff follows, brief, almost amused, just as another Krasarang Paddlefish breaks the surface, tail lashing. “The little ones are too little. My boy Karson’s still mastering words. Strings pairs of ’em together these days. Understands a command well enough. He’ll put a marker to parchment — scribbles, spirals, lines. Calls ’em horses, sometimes.”
His expression tightens in something like fondness as he pries the fish from the hook. “And Lila says ‘Da-da.’ Properly barks it.”
Crack. He ends the fish cleanly against the planks and drops it into the waiting basket.
“We write,” he confirms with a slow nod. “I’ve kept everything she’s sent. I leaf through the pages now and again. The older ones, especially.” He turns, eyes settling on Oranna. “Good way to see how she’s changed. How we’ve changed. Aside from my fondness for ’em.”
Oranna smiles back at him, though there's a measure of sadness in her expressive eyes. "I was glad I saved Bargrimm's letters, important ones and trivial ones alike, and since he saved mine, I can do the same. See what, or who, changed." She shakes her head, and the sadness grows softer into empathy. "Ye must miss them all. I can tell by the way ye speak of them. It's a sacrifice ta stay here, isn't it?"
Dane's gaze lowers in an instant, peering at but not seeing the crystal clear water of the Lagoon. "'Tis," he says, voice low. "The little ones will look for me when they are sad… or afraid, and I will not be there. I will be here," he growls, tonguing the inside of his cheek as his eyes lift.
He reaches into a pouch on his belt to fasten another glow worm to the hook. "I only trust they know they've not done anything wrong, to be deprived of a father for so long. The thought hurts the heart." He goes quiet for a moment before grunting. "They're young, and little ones are resilient. I'll make up for the lost time when I return. Ivri bears the brunt of it all, as ever, but she's properly tough, herself."
Winding back the pole, he launches another line. "We're all making sacrifices here. Our time here has been trying on each of us."
Befound huffs loudly with a snow leopard's cough. At last, recognition for all her hardships!
Oranna is startled into a quick laugh, as she rolls her eyes, and calls back over her shoulder to Befound, "Aye, aye, lass, how ye suffer," she says. reaches out a hand to touch Dane's arm. "I cannae say fer a human child how it is, or what it does. I cannae even say fer a dwarven child, for I'd not use my own upbringin' fer a template fer anyone. But, I can say that… maybe sometimes a bit of separation can be good — well, nae good like, happy good or feelin' good…good, but… useful good. There will be a lot o' times when a person will be gone, away fer a time or away fer all time, and ye have ta know how ta be without that person, who ye are and what ye do when they aren't there. The world's… dangerous and you and I know that well."
She looks out at the ocean before them, the wind blowing the smaller strands around her face. "Ye can make all the promises in the world that ye'll never leave them, that ye'll always be there, an' the world'll make ye a liar. Those small separations can sometimes be the difference atween buildin' that scaffolding ta be without them while ye know they're still comin' back, and havin' ta build it the first time freefallin' when they dinnae ever come back."
Atley briefly glances down at her hand on his arm and takes a long moment to digest her words before he grunts and starts to gently tug his fishing pole left and right. "Right," he says at last, nodding slowly. "Makes the wife miss me, at the least," he mentions, taking on a wry growl as he glances down at Oranna.
"Wot'f you? Ever thought of having your own?"
"Aye. Bargrimm an' I talked on it. He wanted a gaggle, and I… wanted ta bring back the Stormbreakers. It seemed a chance ta make somethin' of what happened, why I was the last one left. Ye remember when we talked about it up in Alterac with Sandy, when ye and Ivri weren't yet married, of a legacy of passin' on a name?" She sighs heavily. "Now, I'm nae so sure of that future, or if I still hold all the same reasons as afore. I dinnae know that I still think I owe that ta my family's name or what I think I owe ta meself." She laughs sadly with a helpless shrug. "I'm nae sure I'm makin' any sense."
Atley shakes his head. "It's no easy decision. Ivri always knew she wanted them. I didn't. For reasons of my own. Many reasons." The line goes taut, very briefly, before it seems to slacken again.
"But it's among the finest choices I've ever made. I can't speak to wot' you owe your name, but I was the last of my line. I had Ivri, I wasn't alone, but — there's more of my blood out there, now. They can be healing creatures, children." A beat. "Proper pains in the arse, as well. And loud, f'course, but well worth it. Well worth it."
Orannna laughs again. "Tha' I dinna doubt. I think as long as ye want them, then it's a good enough place ta start. I'm still young ta decide if or when and why. I'm nae even a hundred yet." She glances back at Befound, who remains petulantly pretending to nap. "But, Befound's gettin' closer and closer ta middle age fer a snow leopard. She's around seven or eight by my best guess, an' nae likely ta live past her early twenties. So mebbe while I'm still waitin' and deliberatin' on mine, hers come first. I've raised one cub afore, and she was a good amount o' work, and a litter can be anywhere atween one and five of them."
Atley tilts his head away from her and lifts a brow as the line snaps tightly once again. "How's that work for a snow leopard, then? Are you to find a stud for her? I've a mind to stud out my hound once I return."
"Oh, aye. I'm sure there's someone in the hunter folks back at home round Khaz Modan who has a male snow leopard, or knows someone who does. I've ta end o' winter ta figure it out," Oranna says. "They'll need some time ta be around each other. Snow leopards are solitary by nature, an' usually they only get around each other in the winter fer the poolin' of resources, when food's scarce. So, it'll take them a bit ta get ta know the other, an' agree. Some'll play fer a while, or hunt together as a duo afore they decide they're willin'. An' it's the female who decides, an' since Befound's so capable, she might decide a male's nae her equal, an' reject him. That's why I think mebbe another hunter's own, someone'll who can keep up with Befound."
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Befound stirs only to reposition herself in her pretend napping, but her ears show she's listening to Oranna. Damn straight she has high standards.
"An' then once we have the cubs, it'll be a matter o' deciding which ones will stay with us, an' which might be handed over fer trainin' ta other hunters."
Atley nods a few times and leans forward to inspect Befound from afar, lifting a brow as he slowly starts reeling his line in. “Warrant you’ll get good coin from her litter? She’s a prized beast.”
Oranna blinks in a surprise that reveals she hadn't considered it. "Oh, ah. I hadn't considered it. I… well, I suppose if I did, it'd be… somethin'. I've been running on a tighter budget past few years, with paying down the loan ta the house, and the upkeep on jus' my own salary. I should have sold off what Bargrimm had fer the shop, but I jus'… couldnae do it."
Atley grunts as the third paddlefish bursts through the surface, thrashing on his line. He doesn’t spare her a glance.
“You’ll not regret keeping all that,” he says. “P’raps you sell a course with the cubs. You’ve tracked for the Company near five years, and I can’t name a soul I’d trust before you to break a snow leopard.”
He flicks her a sidelong look.
“Use the reputation. Do something calmer while you get sorted with Thalstan," he suggests.
Oranna's blush returns, with a vengeance. "Oh, he — I told — he did the … he, he offered already ta, if I did, with the timing and maybe." Those are words in an order that might mean something. She clears her throat and fishes out a waterbottle from a bag. "But, he also, he also has been aimin' fer the 7th Legion, so the timing might…"
She takes a sip, trying to swallow down that line of questioning, or speaking, perhaps. "Fer the cubs though, well, there's really nae 'breaking,' like with a horse. Snow leopards are always wild animals, no matter how they'll play at house cat. Yer always in training with them, no matter their start. But… fer someone with some experience with that sort of — I wonder if maybe some pandaren might have an interest. They know tigers sommat at least. But that might assume if they ever — do ye think they will come over ta the other continents? I - I mean I know some are, but I mean more, an' nae ta visit, but ta stay?"
Atley furrows his brow for a long moment, reaching out to unhook the fish, adding it to the growing pile near his basket.
"It'll be some time before that's common," he says. "The Tushui are wanderers, at heart. I doubt many of them will stop for very long for some time indeed. And the natives," he says, jutting a nod vaguely over the Lagoon, and the countless fishermen there on their rafts.
"They'll need time yet to adjust to a larger world beyond the Mists. But aye. I warrant it could happen, especially if the natives have a mind to join the Alliance once all's said and done."
"Ye think some might nae join? Or…. some join the Horde? But why would they even want ta…" Oranna's worry line deepens. "I s'ppose it might depend on how things are by the end of… all of this. I mean, the end of the, the immediate, the whole — nae the end of the world end of things, but this seems ta be a crisis o' now. Somethin' shook up that needs ta be settled back down afore we can call it stable."
Atley grunts. "Too right." He moves to set his fishing pole aside before he spots the snow leopard basking in the sand down below. Instead, he attaches another glow worm and casts a line.
"King Phaoris — his Ramkahen and the Orsis have no interest in joining. Same with the Kalu'ak. Though they all owe us a great deal, and are friendly towards the Alliance, they're all free folk — like them," Atley says, nodding to the fishermen on their platforms.
Oranna mulls it over visibly, and speaks the mulling aloud. "Aye, ye've a pattern there, I think. Even the Ramkahen, with a king fer one group, there wasnae a single leader at the most top fer all the clans, an' they had a few factions even within it. Same with kalu'ak, with elders, but nae a single top leader. An' the pandaren seem the same way. They had an emperor, but now… no one's mentioned a single leader at their top who they all pledge ta now, their king or whatnot. It's leaders by town or area, s'far as I've seen. So, if they dinna all have a singular point ta pull, mebbe they'll only join a piece at a time, personal rather than national."
Atley grunts.
"There's a peacefulness to that sort of living. A simplicity. Small villages. Fishermen, hunters…" he looks off for a moment, narrowing his eyes in thought, before he shakes his head and addresses her, lowering his voice as he gently leans the fishing pole left and right.
"But it's not sustainable. Not in this world. Not for long. Living without a unifying king makes a people vulnerable, especially to the whims of Hellscream's Horde. It'll hold, so long as you've got a mist to shield you, or bloody ancient Titan artifacts cloaking you. Still. Can't force it upon them — not without conquering them."
"Aye, no a'course not. I'd say tha' it might nae come a point if both sides see it as a woo-ing, i-in a very non-literal marriagey, ye know what I mean. If we were jus' each a piece trying ta diplomatically win o'er, then that's a shield of sorts. But… I s'ppose I'm worryin' that… the Horde have been sayin' the old thing of, 'You will serve the Horde, or be crushed beneath it.' I don't think Hellscream's a mind fer patiently wooing anything or anyone. Whether they join the Alliance proper full or not, I think in the end, the right thing ta do will be ta keep defending them, because it'd be more wrong ta watch the Horde conquerin' if that's the way they go."
Atley goes quiet for a few more lengthy moments, rugged features briefly grimacing in thought as he stares down at his bauble in the water.
"I fought against his father, and his Warsong, in the War, and for sometime before it," he begins. "No. Hellscream's Horde won't have the patience to win over any natives, not in our fashion…"
He raises his head and squints at the dense jungle in the distance. "I hate the prospect of a farmer's son from Elwynn, a sentinel of Darnassus, or a mountaineer of Dun Morogh being pulled from their homes to fight on someone's behalf other than their own peoples, or the Alliance as a whole. I believe that if someone fights for you, sheds their blood for you, then a debt is owed. That's how alliances formed in the old days. Mere friends shouldn't have the same privileges as sworn, battle-tested allies."
Still. Seems we've little choice. This place, these villages, these lands, are assets, and if the natives aren't able to defend themselves against the Horde, we've either to stand aside and let Hellscream paint the land as he likes, or resist him ourselves."
Adjusting his gaze, he turns over his shoulder to observe the pandaren still clearing the beach of fallen crocolisks. "And aye. Allies or not, I wouldn't see these people enslaved or slaughtered, regardless. It'd be undeserved."
Oranna nods. "Aye. I can see yer point o' it, and… aye. I guess we'll have ta see where this all goes… but, one way or another, we'll nae leave anyone ta a fate o' crushing." She glances back at Befound, and then pats down her now much frayed braid. "We should get headed back. I can tell ye the roads are clearer. Nae since hide nor hair o' tigers comin' into the territory where we've taken some out. I don't expect it'll last forever. Eventually some other tigers will claim the territory, but fer now…"
"Take a fish there, for the Terror," Atley says, nodding over his shoulder to the fish basket.
Befound raises her head. A FISH? FOR THIS POOR DEPRIVED SOUL?? She shuffles weakly up to her feet. Oranna, pls, a fish… one fish… she doesn't have the strength to carry on back through the hot jungle without it…
Oranna rolls her eyes at her giant wild cat. "She had a ration an' a half afore we left, by the by," she says, but she reaches over to the fish collection, selecting a mid-size, neither smallest or largest. "But, aye, it's good fer her morale. Thank ye, lad. An' ye send my best ta Ivri and the wee ones next ye write?" She signals something with her hand, and Befound is up and bounding towards them on the platform, all fatigue mysteriously cured.
Atley grunts.