(2025-12-16) As Patient As A Mountain Itself (Orastan In Pandaland Part 4)

Details

Author:	Athena
Summary:	With an adventure of a day behind them, Thalstan and Oranna return to the Lazy Turnip to take care of each other, slowly and patiently, learning more about the other in big and small ways. From hair care routines to a deeply painful recollection of a dark memory to a long held small secret to the meaning behind tattoos to a consideration of teammates of all types, the two dwarves spend the rest of afternoon and evening in Pandaria’s hospitality with love and laughter. Romance RP. 34k~ words.
Rating:	M for Mature 17+

Chain: Orastan

+ Show additional content warnings

non-explicit partial nudity, off-screen intimacy, discussion around intimacy, description of past suffocation/death, brief descriptions of past sexism, romance, couple in monogamous relationship, brief description of non-violent past animal death, innuendo

The Stoneplow community was not any more thrilled than expected to hear about the trouble up north and west (or up and right or any other defining characteristics of the location), but relieved to agree that it didn't sound like a new breach so much as more leftovers roaming around. Several conversations later, it was decided that a few patrols with enough to deal with any similar pockets of trouble would be sent out as a precaution again soon. Cobalt Company's reputation (and Oranna's own personal name recognition) was increased, and the Alliance's friendship with the Pandaren grown that much closer from the experience, a reminder that no job or rumor was too small for them to help with.

Despite the intensity of the experience, and the time taken, it's somehow still only afternoon when Thalstan and Oranna board the flying kites back to Halfhill, the sun shining defiantly bright and shiny in the clear sky as if the day had no idea that it should be tired and wrung out from a harrowing, unexpected battle of insectoid life or death with ancient prime emotional corruptive powers. On the way back, the kites fly over Halfhill's farmers market, which is teeming with life and pandarens, as busy as a Stormwind street market, the conversations audible if unintelligible in overlap as they whoosh overhead.

Halfhill in the daytime reveals itself to be a hub of community in this part of the world, especially now in the daytime, and the two dwarves are both a subject of frequent interest of curiosity of outsiders, and also equally ignored as so many have their own business that takes up their own full attentions.

Oranna groans and stretches with a pop of something in her back when she gets off her kite, as green around the gills as ever, reaching first for Thalstan, as if now already starting to expect that he'll be there when she steps off the deathtrap, to get up into the inn. She's half-scattered thoughts, undecided about if lunch and then things, or things and then lunch, and spiral thoughts about what if she does one first and then it was the wrong choice, and should they have eaten first in Stoneplow, and no then the kite, and should she ask Den-Den now about the mask, but she really doesn't want to be standing there in her armor and the blood under it, and she wants to go upstairs, but what if he knows now or where Ken-Ken is now. And the buzz of that is a bee around her head and in the nervous start of her words even before she starts talking.

"Should we get something to eat sent up? Or later sent up? I don't know if we should eat or should have eaten but the kite and I don't — should we, I'm not, and I'm tired, and the blood is but what if — should we — we ask Den-Den now about things, or later about the mask, I don't know if he and Ken-Ken even know each other, I don't know how much hozen know hozen or — " There she goes, like a mad hamster on a mad wheel, and he can practically feel how uncomfortable she is. She drops her head on him, mutters weakly, "Tram?"

"Tram stop," Thalstan says with a little nod, and he pulls her in closer to his side, a little physical reminder that he's here, and he's not going anywhere. "I think we should get something sent up. Maybe we can eat by the window in your room or some such, have a nice view of the Valley."

To confirm there are no mantid or sha flying in to attack the inn? Maybe, but also it's a lovely view.

"Den-Den'll be here tomorrow," Thalstan continues, "And anything he knows now, he'll know then. I think our best plan for us is to take a little time, get our armor off—" Thalstan pauses, and corrects, "…change into our non-combat apparel, that is, and take a little time to eat. Maybe talk a little about the battle. What do you think?"

Oranna nods, banging her head on his armor clumsily with a small ow, and rubbing her forehead. "Aye, that's… right. Aye. That. Plus, if there's a sudden mantid or sha attack flying in to attack the inn, we'll have a good first view of it, at least from the… a direction of the inn," she mutters. "Although, I'm pretty sure Bran would say I'm not supposed to say that part out loud. Muttering it shouldn't count, though."

Befound hits her face into Oranna's hip. Yeah, yeah, come on. She heard something important in Thalstan's suggestions in there, which was that the best plan was to feed the cat. At least that's what she understood.

"Aye, if they're coming in, we'll see it," Thalstan says, with another little nod. "And if not, we'll have a great view of the rolling farmlands and the birds and everything else. A nice, peaceful view, don't you think?"

While he speaks, Thalstan slowly wanders with Oranna over towards the inn, with no sense of rush. Just moving away from the kites.

"I could use a peaceful view, I think," Thalstan says, squinting up at the afternoon sky. "I might not… show it the same way, but that was not what I'd expected to find out there. When it had me pinned down, and I couldn't move, I…" Thalstan trails off, and then his gaze slides over to Oranna again. "You were wonderful, Oranna. I know I said it before, but seeing you there, one shot after the next…"

Oranna blushes, that rosy glow, but she glances at Thalstan with a certain look, a certain type of seeing that goes deeper than the surface, and although she doesn't say anything, doesn't pry (especially not then and there), when she reaches out for him, it's not all for her, not this time.

"It's some of that's Jo, too. I mean, I have almost infinite bullets thanks to her. You shoot differently when you aren't trying to conserve anything," Oranna says. "And some of that's Bargrimm, too. SUNBEAM is a hell of a gun. I'm only a part of it all." Right, and a warrior is only a part of his sword and shield, but most will tell you that they don't really do much at all if you prop them up in the dirt, not anymore than a fancy gun and a lot of bullets will do. Nice try, Oranna.

"You're really something, too, you know, in action, in real life. Did you see how Erixa was looking at you when you showed up? She thought was imagining it, I'm fair sure of it." Oranna laughs a little at the memory, not at Erixa, but a bit at herself. "I recognized the look, because I've felt it myself. It's really not everyday you expect to see a handsome book character come to life and come to your rescue. And Erixa was there in the library here. I'm sure she had a whole moment of wondering there, until she saw me, and I'm much too ordinary for that sort of thing to fit."

She lets Thalstan set the pace, walking and talking.

There's no rush inside the inn; in fact, it's at a near full stop, quiet and a little empty, with little local activity in a luncheon at this time of day. Den-Den must be somewhere in the small back area near the bar, judging from the sounds of things clinking coming from the area, and the innkeeper isn't anywhere immediately to be found, not anticipating any need from the usual slowness. There is one old pandaren nursing a hot tea in a corner either reading through very narrowed eyes, or napping while holding a scroll. One of those.

"I bet she looked over at you and thought it was some kind of a squad cross-over story, brought to life," Thalstan says with an appreciative smile, shaking off his earlier moment of discomfort. "Of course, I'd never worked with her before, and she's had the chance to see you in action all through the Jade Forest. Might've been that when she saw Oranna was there, she knew she had the reinforcements she needed, for sure."

Thalstan looks over at the bar, missing it's usual hopping hozen in front, and notes the possibly-sleeping pandaren. He turns back to Oranna, and asks in a quieter voice, "Do we just ask for your usual? Do you have a usual afternoon snack?"

"Oh, ahhh I'm not usually here for lunch. I've been out most of the time down, uh, in a direction of the jungle and eating on the go. Uh, maybe the cheese curds, some pounded rice cakes, red bean buns, and some rice? He should have most of it made already, only has to heat up the buns and rice," she says, having leaned in to answer him in a matching quieter voice and getting a little caught up in the closeness. He can practically read the words on her face that she's thinking about his eyes, and no longer any thoughts at all about the food. Or the hozen.

"Oranna Nana!" Den-Den calls out joyfully, banging a spoon on the counter. The sleeping and/or reading pandaren doesn't even flinch, filled with inner peace or something. "Thal Stan! You want steamy buns?!"

Thalstan flinches on the pandaren's behalf, and turns reluctantly away from close eye contact with Oranna to the hozen.

"Aye, steamy buns," Thalstan says in Common, back to his usual volume now that it's clear the pandaren is un-botherable. He pauses briefly, maybe reconsidering how that request sounds, and then clarifies, "Can you send some steamy red bean buns, cheese curds, pounded rice cakes, and some rice up to Oranna's room? Enough for two."

"Yes, steamy buns for Oranna and Thal Stan," Den-Den agrees cheerfully. "And rice cakes, pounding for two!"

"Thanks," Thalstan says, starting to turn to the stairs, and then pauses. "Do you know a fellow by the name of Ken-Ken? Or anything about an old story about masks?"

Den-Den peers at Thalstan for a moment, and shakes his head. "I cook, don't make masks. Ken-Ken not a hozen in Halfhill."

Oranna can't hide her disappointment, or the undercurrent of anxiety, although she tries hard to push a forced smile on her face. "That's all right, Den-Den. It's… a'course. Thanks, anyway. Maybe he'll… stop by fer some reason, next day or so." She doesn't really believe a word she's said, but it's something you'd say, to try to have a hope, and she wants it to be something, so she says it. She gives Den-Den a small wave, and turns to go upstairs, dropping the forced smile as soon as she can.

Oranna glances at the pandaren in the corner. "That pandaren's either really deeply asleep or he's a master of Lorewalker Cho's training," she mutters in Dwarven, heading to the stairs, holding onto Thalstan as she heads towards her room, which also happens to be the same direction towards Thalstan's. "Still don't know if that was real training, or if he was messing with the others, or bit of both."

Thalstan moves up the stairs and towards the rooms with Oranna. "Lorewalker Cho's training? Was that around the trouble at Serpent's Heart, or back when you were making the odd brew? If you're talking about the odd brew itself, did it actually help? I know you found Ian afterward, for a little bit at least, but I don't think you ever said how that worked out."

Oranna opens the door to her room, and Befound pushes past her in a feline shove, and Oranna scowls at the snow leopard. "Oh, aye. It did. We divided it up a bit, with Dane, Shine, and Bran drinking it to go into a meditation to follow a sort of vision? And Erixa and I stayed, ah, sober? I suppose is sort of a word for it, to watch over, in case things went squirrely. And to get the others to access the dream state a'purpose, they had to find a spark of something inside with a purposeful focus, and he did all these sorts of things to 'test' their concentration and focus."

She reaches up with both hands, and she telegraphs it obviously — she isn't trying to really startle him — but demonstrate. "Things like, sneak up on them and clap his paws right by their ears! Poked them with sharp sticks. And then banged an actual whole gong right by them, it was so strong you could feel it right in your bones, all the while being, 'aye, focus on the spaaark, so caaaalm, very patieeent.'" Oranna shakes her head. "I'd have failed it so badly we'd not have found Ian, er, Anduin, for… actually we'd probably still be waiting on me, I don't think I've had ever made it past the… sharp stick stage," she says and her eyes slide to the right, lingering, as Oranna goes somewhere else for a bit, even as she keeps walking into her room.

"Well, then, I'm glad you and Erixa got to watch over them, and didn't have to be clapped and gonged and such, unsuspecting," Thalstan says, and he doesn't mention the sharp stick, not after the little snag, "If it did help, then maybe it doesn't matter if it was a tradition harkening back from the old pandaren empire or something Lorewalker Cho improvised on the spot."

Thalstan pauses on the threshold of Oranna's room. "Should I go get my armor off and come back, give you a chance to do the same?"

Oranna tugs her braid over her shoulder, running a hand over a piece, looking back at Thalstan there. She's got smudges of dirt all over her from where she hit the ground and rolled; her hair's got to be brushed out for certain, and possibly washed because of the farmland and all that entails. Sweat from fear and exertion have gathered around her temples and in creases, and under her armor where the sword got through between the leather and the mail there will be blood on the padded under clothes. She will not smell like a fresh daisy. And from the look of her there, she is now suddenly very acutely aware of it all. Not exactly the stuff of romance novels. Well, not many of them, anyway.

But…

"Is that… what you want to do?" Oranna asks, searching his expression with a vulnerable sense of doubt of someone aware that she has a bit of a blindspot, and some things are harder for her to read than others.

Thalstan is not so fresh himself. His armor is scratched in places that can't be easily fixed in an inn room, but it's also dirt-smeared where the mantid smashed him into the ground. His hair and beard were tied, at least, but still mussed and with bits of dirt and detritus. His usual shampoo likely has the scent of sweat now added on top. But still… he doesn't answer right away.

If Oranna isn't the stuff of romance novels right now, you wouldn't guess it from the tender look in his eyes. What he finally says is, "Or… I could stack my armor just here, and we could help one another tidy up. Talk a bit."

Oranna chews at the side of her lip in uncertainty in the waiting, nervously smoothing over the same part of her hair over and over. At his answer she smiles, although he can see some old uncertainty, a fear that the suggestion isn't quite the same thing as an answer to her question, but it's overwhelmed with the trust that he's not a dishonest man to lie by dodging with placating with something he doesn't want.

Befound knows what she wants. She's taking a bath. Now. Loudly.

"I would like that," Oranna says. "I…want you to stay. There's a… a water pump down the hall by the bathroom there that I use to fill up the tub for washing, and — " She leans slightly to point around to the corner with the screen. "There's a fireplace behind that. For drying up after washing up. And I have a heating kettle in my bag that can get the water to be less frigid, and for smaller basins of water for scrubbing." She's starting to blush, but she keeps her eyes on Thalstan, not down or away in shame. "I don't mean to strip down bare or anything like a bath, but to clean up, together. I've got a lot of experience with that, at least. I would… really like it if you would let me take care of you. And." A swallow, a deeper blush. "I'd like to feel you taking care of me, too. I'd really like you to stay."

Thalstan takes a step over the threshold, into the room, his actions making the decision clear. "Then I'll stay. I would like to stay." He steps further into the room, closing the door behind him. "I try not to push too much, is all, but that sounds… that sounds much nicer than doing everything on my own. That is, I would much rather we took care of one another."

Thalstan removes his weapon belt and settles his sword and shield by the door, and turns back to Oranna. "I'm a little less experienced here, maybe, than you are. I've only been working with Cobalt for the past few years, and the Cobalt Blade, we just all go our own ways just after a mission, for the most part. Fighting alongside you was…" Thalstan pauses, "…terrifying, in some ways. I want to protect you, but I can't predict everything that'll happen in a battle. But also, we worked together so well, didn't we? Like we did before, in the Nightmare."

Oranna's smile loses the uncertainty, softens and gentles and relaxes. She undoes the holster strap for SUNBEAM, setting the gun carefully in its proper place, and then the smaller field bags, before she makes her way to the giant former pandaren-laundry washbin turned into now a combination bathtub-laundry-all-purpose washbin. As advertised, as she moves the screen, the pandaren style fireplace is revealed, as is the little kettle set up Oranna has that must be how she bathes and deals with her laundry.

"Aye, we did. I — I know what you mean. And don't discount the sha there. That was a Fear, I'm sure of it. It's not that I'm never scared for Dane or Ben or Bran or anyone else in the field. I always am, really. It's only a bit different, that fear. But, I think we work better together than I even thought we would, than I remembered even. That was — we didn't even know each other back then, it was a lucky sort of synergy. Today when I yelled for your shield, I thought I'd have to shoot around your shoulder or around the mantid's claw, and you just, you knew, opened up the whole shot. It was incredible."

She bends over to pick up one side of the washbin, her hair draping over her shoulder, looking up at Thalstan with that beaming smile of hers, and a look in her eyes like if she wasn't in the middle of a task, she'd be putting her hands on something else entirely, like she isn't even feeling the handle at all, she's seeing him and his shield all over again. A man could be forgiven for forgetting he's supposed to be doing something when a woman's looking at him like that.

"The angles," Thalstan says, coming over to the other side of the washbasin and putting his hand on the handle. From the look in his eye, he must be talking about Oranna, and probably curves would've been a better word, but then he smiles and clarifies, "I saw it, after you yelled, what you meant to do. Like you'd pointed it out to me. It was incredible, and what a shot, too."

He lifts the side of the washbasin a little, testing the weight. "Let's carry it together. I expect it's a lot heavier with water in it."

"Oh, aye, and awkward. I usually only fill it a bit more than halfway, and it gets a bit sloshy with only me because I don't have all the reach, but we could get it fuller with more hands, so we can have a lot more for soaking," Oranna says. She didn't hear it. She's thinking of something else though, something that she's not sure she should mention, but the hesitation is only a few seconds before she's talking it out loud, as she lifts with him.

"Bargrimm and I didn't work together in the field often. We had a… trip when we were sort of between friends and more and he got hurt. Badly. Protecting me. Got a fever and had the scars for the — the rest of his life. He wasn't… we were more the same than different, our skills, I mean. Meant to both be at range, and he'd want to keep me safe, but he often… couldn't. It'd make him make decisions that would only put him at risk, and make then me worry worse, or panic. We could sometimes go out on hunting trips with the animals, and we'd work small jobs together but nothing big, nothing a squad would do. He liked to take care of me after I'd come home, but he was more independent, set in his own ways, had his own routines."

The walk with the washbin gives her something to do, a place to look to watch where she's going. "Bran and I work together too, and we can do sort of the same a bit. Small things, mostly. And after, that's where I have some experience in taking care, too. He never takes much care of his beard, but I think he likes the idea of it. He has that Big Book of Beards, you know the one? I like it though, helping a friend take care of himself, especially after it's been a terror of a day. There's nothing else atween Bran and I but friendship, but I think something like that caring, it's something I'd like to do, regular, for you," she says, her face a convenient portable red glowing lantern.

"I'm sorry for the injury — for Bargrimm," Thalstan says, and he's watching Oranna carefully, making sure she's okay. "I can see how that'd be difficult, with two folk at ranged, but the hunting seems like it'd fit well." Thalstan jars the washbasin, just a little, and then has to shift his attention to focus more on the walk, for safety.

"Aye, I know the Big Book of Beards," Thalstan nods, watching his path now. "They've some interesting styles in there. I've not tried all of them, naturally. Mostly, I keep my beard down, but I try out more intricate things every now and again. I would…" he pauses to look up at Oranna, and hope he won't misstep, "…I would love for you to take care of my beard.

"As for yours— is it easier if someone else brushes out your hair and the like? I do know how to do some simple braids, though I'm no professional hair stylist. But still I would…" here Thalstan actually blushes slightly. "I would love to brush through your hair. It's beautiful, and I love the way it feels in my hands, and… I would like to care for you, in return."

Oranna giggles, that shy, happy one, and she wobbles the bin herself as she helps set it down by the water pump, tucking some of that hair back behind an ear. "I like it long for a lot of reasons, but it's not exactly easy to take care of. I'll tell you what I told Lireen, anyone willing to deal with the bother of taking it down and putting it up is always welcome to it, but for you…" She runs a hand over the braid in a way that might be intentionally flirtatious, the way she's moving her fingers over those glossy curves. "If you want it, it's yours. I don't need anything fancy for it to feel like a luxury itself, and it'd be special because it's you. So, my braid for your beard. And I think that's a fair exchange, aye?"

She peeks up at him, before ducking her head, but she's grinning happily, a bashfulness of someone speaking directly about desires through what has to be a galloping heartrate from a thrilling newness and lack of experience, rather than nervousness or fear.

And then — "I'll hold on, while you pump? It comes out hard and fast once you work it enough, and you've got more power, and I've got a steady grip," she says and even Oranna hears that one. She means, of course, she'll hold onto the washbin, while he works the water pump, but the words are out as is, and she groans and half folds over the wooden side, but she's shaking with the laughter of it. "Ohhhh, noooo. Oh, that was…. that was almost bad enough to have been a line from that one book… what was the name? 'A Forge in Heat' by Claybourne Gritgrind? Ach…"

Thalstan laughs, holding onto the side of the washbin, his eyes sparkling with mirth. "It might've been with a different tone, in the book. But that would be something, to hear somebody reading it aloud all matter-of-fact like they were dealing with a stubborn water pump. Now I'm imagining it, and I can't—" Thalstan dissolves into… let's call it chuckles. Manly chuckles.

After a few moments he catches his breath, and straightens, trying to return to a more serious expression, though he can't stop the beaming smile. "I'll pump it, aye, the water pump. And it's a deal, braid for beard."

It's clear from the gleam in his eyes that he feels like it's less a deal and more of an all-around win for himself. It's possible Oranna might feel the same way.

It takes some effort to get things flowing, but not in an A Forge in Heat kind of way. Thalstan keeps at it, and soon there's a nice stream of cool water flowing into the washbin.

Oranna giggles repeatedly, probably half-remembering lines from the book read in a matter-of-fact way, while interspersed with not at all subtle appreciative stares at Thalstan working the water pump that probably belong in the the book — molten magma and thudding hammer hearts — and she does have a steady grip.

Hopefully Thalstan is paying attention to the water level rising because Oranna absolutely is not. She is paying attention to other important things like how Thalstan moves in his armor, and the way that gleam lights up his blue eyes, and yeah, she's gone. There's that band playing again, and somehow there's wind blowing indoors (just around Thalstan), time has slowed down (Bronze Dragons understand the importance of these moments), and mood lighting has been applied.

Thalstan is focused on the pumping for the moment, and making sure there's the right amount of water in the bin. Then he glances up at Oranna, and all that disappears for a second, as he sees that look in her eyes and he himself is transported (not literally, emotionally). If he's striking a pose, it's more subconscious than conscious, but the smolder in his eyes is unmistakable.

Then he looks down again and makes a small sound of 'oh', before he hastily stops up the pump. They might have a little more than they planned on, but not so much that they can't carry it.

"Aye, let's get this back around," Thalstan says, resting his hand on the handle. Then he continues, with a confident tone that covers over the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes, "And… I'd like to stop by my room. Just to pick a few things up. My hair stuff."

Oranna's face shows the truth of the thought as she says, "Oh, aye, I was thinking the same thing." She smiles at him, and maybe it's a little revealing that she caught the uncertainty in his eyes for the reassuring warmth in hers. "We're right here, and even it were a bit out of the way… it can throw hair off for weeks a sudden shock of change of products. I had to use a body soap once, and it was — straw. My things are all good for mine, but they're not what you're used to, and they're not the scents. Bran doesn't care, and doesn't have a routine, so mine's as good as any, better in some ways for it because it's new and different. But, taking care is personal. Taking care of Thalstan is taking care with all the right things that you've found work best. I want them all, and I don't care how many steps they are, or how many things, or how many directions they have, aye? I'll be happy to learn it. You've seen my gun. Complicated doesn't scare me off."

"I wouldn't have guessed so," Thalstan says, his expression relaxing into a warm smile. "We can just set it down by my room and I'll go in and grab everything up in a bag. It's not too complicated, but then I'd say that. I'm used to it. I did a lot of trial and error to find what worked best, over the years."

Thalstan hoists up the washbin with Oranna and they begin back down the hallway, first towards his room door. "I started out with whatever I could get easy in Ironforge, of course, and then starting looking a little farther afield. One thing I did not expect was — Stranglethorn coconuts. The oil really helps for the shine and the smoothness, though I've got to order it in from half a continent away."

Oranna lifts her own side, and she's no heavy lifter, but she's a sturdy dwarven lass. "Oh, aye? It smells a treat, too. Mine trial and error's secret to success is actually beard oil, and it's old. I — I mean, the maker, not that mine's ancient or anything expired. When I started growing it out at first, my hair, it was… a bit of defiance, really. I used to… sort of grip it, in the dark, at Great-Aunt Nettie's, and it was like grass growing sort of watching it come up through my fingers. And then… I had no idea what to do with it after that. But, you remember, my Great-Aunt Nettie had a beard, aye? Her hair wasn't at all like mine, fine and curly, but her beard was closer. And well, I'd had four older brothers, so I'd grown up watching them take care of theirs, so. With what she had, and what I'd seen them doing, I sort of… fumbled out a routine over a few decades." She gets a bit out of breath as she walks, grunting occasionally with effort as they walk, but she keeps talking, able to do both.

"Turned out a lot of the success was in not over washing, not at this length especially. Water means weakening the strands, and heaviness. I have a powder I use for soaking up oil I don't want, beard oil to put in oil I do want, I brush out anything that shouldn't be there, spread out what should be there, and mostly it's in taking the time and patience with it to know what it needs in the moment. If you rush it, or you treat it like it's some other type of hair, it'll break," she says. It's almost like a metaphor.

"Aye, you can't just wash your hair every day," Thalstan nods, a fellow lot-of-hair-haver. "You'd be drying it and styling it always, hours each time. I've got some powder too, for when I need but I'm — well, lucky or not, mine doesn't get oily all that quickly. Makes sense, how I started too, trying out what you've got access to. And if it works, no reason to change anything."

"I think mine's a fair bit coarser, but I've certainly got a lot of it. Really, every head of hair's different, so you've got to figure out what works best," Thalstan pauses to set down the washbin in front of his door, and smiles at Oranna, a reassuring smile that he's just leaving for a moment.

And it really is little more than a moment. He must have not really unpacked much yet, because he's barely in the door than he's coming back out of it, a little satchel thrown over his shoulder. As he settles back in at his handle, he adds, "I've got to be careful with tangles, too. I've coarser and finer combs, to work out snarls that get in while I'm in the field."

"Oh, aye, that's wise, comb as you go. I found that out the hard way afore I learned to braid, on the farm. Got tangles to matting to having to cut them clean off, no way to save them past a point. My biggest problems are I've got these, from regrowth," she says, blowing a breath up at the tendrils that do curl around her face, the ones that stick to her cheeks and inevitably escape the twist, as she lifts the basin and heaves ho the small way to her room across the hall. "They're a hazard for me, much as I do to keep them out of the way, but aside from shellacking them down to the point of wearing a glue helmet, it's a risk I have to take to keep the whole of it. But the rest of mine is long, thick, and heavy enough to stay put once I get it in place."

Okay, she missed that one, and luckily, it was in Dwarven, so, so did Deidan, carrying a tray of fresh, hot steaming buns, arriving almost at the same time outside Oranna's door.

"Oranna and her Thalstan!" Deidan greets with a twinkle.

Thalstan didn't miss it, and there's a brief Moment, before he turns to greet Deidan in Common. "Hello, lass! Thank ye for bringing up the food. If ye'll just leave it there at the door," he gestures with his head, "we can fetch it after we've got this settled."

"Are you sure you don't need—" Deidan starts, and Thalstan shakes his head in a genial manner.

"We're good up here, thank you for your consideration," he says, forestalling any potential offers of chopstick lessons or anything else the outsiders could conceivably require.

"All right, then. Enjoy your steamy buns," Deidan says with a friendly little smirk, glancing at the filled washbin as she settles the tray by the door and makes her way back to the stairs.

Oh, Oranna will. She gives Deidan a friendly wave, opening the door and right into —

"Ach! Lass!"

Befound noses her way into the doorway. Where did everyone go, what was everyone doing, why did no one bring the most important snow le — she hisses. Oh, ew. Water! Evil, evil water! She doesn't quite leap back, but it's a near thing, clearing the doorway at least, as she bears her impressive fangs, hunched up against the wall. Evil!!! EVIL!!!!

"It's just the tub, an' it's nae fer ye at all, we'll be in the corner, nae bother ta ye at all," Oranna says, half soothing and half exasperated, in Common. In Dwarven she adds out of the corner of her mouth. "You'd think we were bringing in Hakkar the Soulflayer to summon to curse her bloodline for all time."

Thalstan laughs, carrying his half of the bin through the door and towards the bathing corner with Oranna. "Has she run afoul of water in the— ah, well, I suppose in the Wilds, all that water. I don't suppose you bathe her, seeing as she's a wild creature, after all…"

Recalling an earlier conversation point as they settle the bin, Thalstan adds, "Have you ever tried any kind of barrette, for the regrowths?"

Oranna shakes her head. "I've tried a few things. Headbands, barrettes, and the like. I've got a lot of pins in, actually right now, as you'll find out shortly. That's how it looks like this, with the twist away. No dramatic romance novel take down here, where I shake it out dramatically and it somehow all falls into place. If you try to take out my braid and run your hands through my hair you'll find yourself hitting about fifteen, twenty pins about a quarter length down like running into a surprise princess' honor guard's spears," she says with a laugh. She wipes a hand over her forehead, smearing a bit of the dirt still lingering on her gloves over the sweat there.

"But, pinning up too close to my face, and I start feeling a bit… closed in too tightly, I suppose? And they still usually slip out anyway. Headbands mess with my sense of weight when I'm shooting, or they move too much. Barrettes in combat I run a risk of catching on something. The twist works well enough for me, imperfect as it is. In the end, the flyaways and regrowths are a bit of a bother, to swat or push away, but I'd rather the bother and the length, than have all efficiency by shaving it all off," she concludes, resting her hands on her hips. "I'll get the kettle set up, you get the tray?"

"Yes, I'll get it," Thalstan says, heading back over to the door and lifting the steaming tray. There's a delicious, faintly sweet scent rising with the steam. He moves over to set it on the table. "And that makes sense, then — balancing the annoyance with practicality. I would never suggest you shave it, even if I didn't know, and I do."

He sets down the tray, and looks over to Oranna at the kettle. "I reckon when I developed my look, I wasn't exactly looking for what would work in combat. And then later, I had my modeling career to think of, so I couldn't very well cut it short. Wigs are not the same, to me, and also they itch."

Befound skulks in the corner, watching the evil summoning of the evils darkly. Hiss.

Oranna gets the kettle working and it's definitely an engineer's invention, some sort of set up that works with a heating coil and an oil burning source that will heat up a small basin (clearly Oranna's, not the inn's, as it's dwarven craftsmanship), suitable for a beard or small washing, which she has going on a stool, and take the frigid edge off the big washing bin. Science!

And she sets up the pandaren fireplace with a cautious touch of someone who has probably nearly lit herself on fire a time or two.

She laughs a little at the image Thalstan paints, as she tosses in the tinder to light a spark up to the gas fireplace with a twitch of a whoosh. "Ach, it wouldn't be the same, you with a different set of hair. Not… that if something happened to it, and you had something that it wouldn't be all right in the end. Lots of people lost their hair with… well, you know. The Cataclysm and Deathwing. Lot of healing types can't heal hair." She straightens up, and smooths down her own hair a little self-consciously.

Fire going. Water heating in places. Washing bin in place. Food in room.

She stands there for an awkward second or two before she clears her throat and takes a few steps away to the window, standing in front of it, unconscious of the framing. She likely is there because he mentioned looking out it, not because of any reason of choosing it for what the afternoon sunlight does to her there, how it halos the glorious chestnut brown of that hair all around her, glints off her armor and gilds her a wash of gold that softens the grime.

"Come here? I can help with your armor?" she asks in a soft voice, shy and breathy. "You with mine? And we could eat here, instead of the table with the awkward size."

"Oh, yes," Thalstan says, taking a step towards her, the words coming out almost worshipful as he gazes at his lady dwarf haloed by the afternoon light. Then he blinks, and says with a little more presence of coherent thought, "Yes, let's do… the armor first, and then I'll bring the food over. Befound might begrudge us stealing the afternoon sun spot, but it'll be warm and comfortable. And we'll be closer than the big chairs allow."

He steps over to join her in the frame of the window, so the sun glints off of his blue and gold armor as well, and the two of them stand shining there. Then he reaches out to her and says, "Yours first?"

Befound isn't going anywhere near that side of the room, not with the water befouling it. She remains in darkness, the dry, dry darkness.

Oranna gazes up at him, and glances down at hers. "Oh, ah. I — we could, aye. I was thinking… I could do yours first, because I'm more flexible in mine… " she trails off strangely, and her face heats to that red blaze as she squeezes her eyes shut, and she makes an uncomfortable groaning, and then shakes her head, waving her hands in the air. "I'm fine, it's not you, it's not this, sorry. It's old, old memory. I — time ago. Kaldorey, flirting with me. I missed it entirely. There was a whole bit with the height difference, him being flexible, you know, to… and later Ivri had to explain that it was a whole… and I was — aye, let's — you do mine first." She still has her eyes closed. "That's a good idea. Great idea! Right now I can't remember how a buckle even works. I've never undone armor in me whole life. What's chainmail?" She squeaks. "Help me."

Thalstan nods along with the explanation, through the blushing and the flexible flirty night elf, and the realization of it… and then he moves in to help her.

"Just tell me if I'm doing something wrong, or if you'd rather I did it different," Thalstan says, as he goes over her armor, finding the buckles to unbuckle, and then gently moving to lift off her shoulder armor. "You're the expert on your armor, after all."

"I've only had this one a few weeks, so it's… newish. It's just armor, standard stuff, really," Oranna says, sounding like she's done a few laps around the room, and she opens first one eye, and then the other, as she returns to something of a normal person color, relaxing as the embarrassment of old mistakes fade. "I'm not especially particular. That might sound bad. I do care for it all, it's expensive stuff. But… I pour more money into the gun upkeep than the armor, truth be told. The armor's more of an emergency thing. And I prefer the easier to move in than the heavier stuff."

It's true. He can tell as he starts to remove it that she's invested in comfortable maneuverability, more cover with lightweight leather that will stop or deflect some blows landing, but not many, and only a few places of full metal for catching serious hits or anything that might be, like his shield, bullet rated. She has a lot of vulnerable open spots, which gives her more options for running or dodging well, but it's no question at all where she would simply have no chance if she was struck. And that's to say nothing of how little armor goes beyond her waist, with almost nothing covering her thighs, but for a bit extending down from over her hips. Those are just pants, made of sturdy material, but that's all.

It's an intimate act to take even those guarding pieces away from her, leaving only the small shirt of chainmail (easily lifted off), and the dark green padded shirt underneath that the armor fitted over.

There, above her left breast's curve, is where the sword struck, where blood crusted and dried around a jagged hole in the padded shirt, leaving the mark, even if there's no wound underneath.

Thalstan lifts off the armor carefully, and he is less flexible in his plate than she would have been, but he still manages well enough. When he sees the evidence of injury, he makes a small sound of dismay, even though the wound itself is healed.

He drops a hand to rest on the hole in the shirt, and then realizes exactly where he's reaching and leave his hand hovering an inch above. "I'm glad we had a healer with us."

Then he looks up to meet Oranna's gaze, pulling his hand away. "I can tell you value the maneuverability. Mine's a bit the opposite. I train up on strength, so that I can carry it on my body, not let it slow me too much. But I do expect to get hit, and often, and I need that to turn blades and projectiles."

"Aye," Oranna agrees, watching him, the indecision and carefulness both, and he knows he's stopped at the right point when there's also a strange tension that shows relief when he stops. Even if some part also is disappointed in herself. "I used to wear something similar, a long… time ago. The heavier armor. " That slide of her eyes to the right, and then back. Another slide, a shaky breath, and back to him. "It never suited me, the way yours does you. It does suit you."

She licks her lips nervously, and then unbuttons the side of the padded under armor herself, shrugging it off, not exactly able to look at Thalstan as she does, a strange battle of shame and pushing away of the shame. It leaves her in the final under shirt, which is not quite a shirt, more a bralette. It might be that she's on somewhere of the edge of a comfort zone for her, but it's by her decision, and she lets herself stand there for a few seconds.

It's a long few seconds, probably longer for Thalstan than Oranna, who breathes in those perfectly timed breaths. She reaches back out for his hand, bringing it slowly over to where the wound was, where there's now nothing but smooth, unbroken skin now, and carefully, watching his fingers as she sets them on herself. The exact moment of contact causes a little jolt, but it's a good one, a leaning into the touch, not a flinch away, an excitement of desire.

"There, see. It's all right. I'm all right," she says, looking up at him, her eyes caught in the light from the sun streaming in. She obviously doesn't only mean from the fight earlier, but she does also mean that, too. "It doesn't hurt."

"I'm glad," Thalstan says, meeting her gaze. He lets his hand rest there, not reaching for anything further, just feeling the warmth of her undamaged skin. "I don't want you to hurt. I want you to be happy."

Then he lifts his hand, but it's only so that he can lean in, slow and easy to read, if she wants to back away, to kiss her gently.

Oranna definitely doesn't want to back away, all too pleased to be kissed, stretching up to meet him halfway, bringing her other hand up to rest on the back of his neck. She doesn't seem to be going anywhere with the kiss, not unlike some of the hugs she's given him in the past, as if she likes being there for it in itself, more than she wants to get somewhere else with it. Her kisses are also growing more and more specific, like she's noticing a pattern he might not even be aware he's doing, but she's responding to all the same, fitting into it like a path she's learning how to walk one step at a time.

When she pulls away, it's slowly, a little dreamily, and with a smile, and that look that makes her seem like Thalstan should come with a label with an alcohol proof count.

"I am happy," she tells him, as honest as the look on her face. She manages to tear her attention off his face to his armor. "I think I remember how to do buckles. If I start drooling and babbling about blue eyes like lakes though, you can always nudge me."

"I'll listen for it," Thalstan smiles warmly, his own gaze gone a little pleasantly dazed by the kiss. Then he holds his arms out to his sides a little, to make the de-armoring easier.

His armor is, as indicated, not flexible. It is however, very strong, and it doesn't seem particularly new. There are places where dents have clearly been repaired, and there are a few new dents from the battle today that will probably need to be seen to sooner or later. Luckily, nothing is so bad as to render it unusable.

Thalstan is clearly perfectly happy to remain still and watch Oranna remove his armor, clad as she is.

Oranna wasn't kidding though — she has decades of experience with armor like his, both in wearing and on the outside, and if she sneaks some looks up at him, it's while she's also undoing bits and pieces so efficiently and easily that she's probably putting his armorer to the unintended test. She might have been the ugly duckling of the family of warriors, but some things you don't have to be good in the training arena to succeed at.

She definitely didn't do some things though before, he can be reasonably sure. Whenever she gets to a piece that's been repaired, or will need to be, after she carefully sets it down to the side, she touches the skin underneath, her eyes on his face watching to make sure he's all right with the contact. The touches are a little hesitant, more than a little shy in several places, but she clearly wants to do it, a strange relief and pleasure both when she meets with firm (wow, very firm) undented Thalstan.

Thalstan draws in his breath at each touch, but it's an expression of pleasure, not of any hesitance at all. He watches her remove the armor with a touch of professional admiration, and more than a touch of another kind of admiration.

Each place beneath a new dent is still whole and mended, and there's no sign of any lasting injury from the battle. Beneath the armor, he has only his navy blue padded under-armor, a long-sleeved shirt and pants designed to fit aesthetically with the pattern of the plate armor above.

When the last piece is gone, Thalstan smiles at her, just watching her for a long, contented moment.

When she's done, and the armor set neatly to Irona Stormbreaker's hovering ghost's exacting standards, Oranna steps into Thalstan's arms for an unarmored hug with a sigh. "It's fantastic armor, and what's underneath it, even more so," she says sincerely, turning to kiss his cheek with a rosy blush on her own cheeks, and then hiding to the side of his beard. This is her hide-under-a-beard-rock-place.

"Do you want to," she clears a dry sounding throat, "clean up a bit first or eat first? The water's still heating up, but the food's getting cold. Once I start my hair it really is a whole process, so it's best not to start really washing washing, but also with the dirt of the farm, but if we get started…" She's babbling into his beard, spiraling into the endless potentials of pros and cons of water vs food hots and colds, and not addressing any wandering hunter hands any further for now.

Thalstan welcomes her into the embrace, resting his cheek on the top of her head as she hides in his beard. He lets her air the various pros and cons of food vs. cleaning before he answers.

"I'd say we let heat dictate, " Thalstan suggests. "The food is cooling and the water's heating. Let's have a snack first, and then we'll be set for hair and washing, for however long it takes, aye?"

Again, there's that relaxing, like his easy decision making takes away anxiety, rather than makes it worse. "All right. Aye. The buns? They taste best hot, I think," she lets his beard know. She disentangles herself, and — nearly bumps straight back into the tripping snow leopard. "Light above, Befound, yer gonna take ten years off me life."

Yes, hello, Befound has ventured into the Darkside of the Evil Room because she heard the most important of words, which is that there are snacks happening. She collapses at Oranna's feet, showing her sad, pathetic belly, the belly that has never been fed, not once in her entire, whole life. She lets out a plaintive, if loud, mrrow. Please, oh please, Oranna. Feed her.

Oranna rolls her eyes so far up the whites show. "A'course, aye. An' a snack fer the best lass in the room, too, whose patience is unmatched," she says in a deadpan.

Thalstan chuckles. "It's a good house cat impression with the belly, but even a house cat that'd be a trap I wouldn't want to step in."

He moves over to pick up the tray, covered with Dwarf Food and not Cat Food, and brings the steamy buns over to the window. He looks over to Oranna with a touch of uncertainty. "Is Befound alright if I set this on the ground with us? Or is that asking for misbehavior?"

Oranna heads over to her own bag, taking out Befound’s food bag, which brings out an aroma of fish, as she sets a good amount over at Befound’s bed, which then has the snow leopard up and eagerly consuming, all pretense of weakness forgotten. While she's there, she picks up another bag, of what has to be — not at all an exaggeration — at least ten towels, based on the look of the stack peeking out from the top of the enchanted Cressidha Bag.

Oranna shakes her head at the question with a smile. "No, that's part of her training, why such a stickler with all the food training. She's been trained not to think of it as either food, or as something she can interfere with to get a reward of either attention or food. I could put a tray right over her bed, and mostly she'd be annoyed at me, but she'd know so long as I was signaling her to hold, not to touch it. She has a touch of a cat's mischief you can't really train all the way out, and a wild animal's instincts, but aye, consistency gives her the rules she knows," she explains, as she sets the bag back into place, and washes her hands all the way up to her elbows in the large, much cooler washbins.

Her arms were more protected already than the rest of her, but the water dip still clarifies the skin of the sweat and grime from the armor transfer, and the recent fish, revealing the crisp lines of the deep indigos and soft midnight blues of her Wildhammer tattoos over her forearms. She blots her arms on the top towel.

And then plops down by the window, and he can't miss the way she looks out over the landscape more like a sniper casing the territory for an invading force before she can see the rest of it.

"Alright, that's good to know," Thalstan says, settling the tray in front of the window by Oranna, trusting Befound to know her rules. "I've never trained a wild cat myself, so sometimes I don't know like… how far the wild goes, and how far the trained goes."

His hands were mostly covered by his gloves and gauntlets in the field, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're perfectly clean. Sweat and germs creep in. He moves over to the washbin as well, rinsing off his hands and forearms in preparation of touching food.

Then Thalstan plops down at the other side of the tray, and since Oranna has the landscape well and cased, he looks at her instead. His gaze is tender and admiring, and then his eyes drop to the tattoo on her arm.

"The tattoos," Thalstan says quietly. "Are they… a story? If it's not one you'd like to tell right now, that's fine."

Oranna, a bun in each hand (she's only a dainty lass in comparison to Thalstan, and it was a big day), pauses, turning her arms over like she's half seeing them for the first time.

"Oh, aye… they're, ah, a Bargrimm Story," she says, quietly in answer, grief casting its shadow over her face. But she smiles, if sadly. "And they're an Oranna Story. I can tell it."

She settles against the window in a way that harkens back to another time when she held a sniper's window perch, and she really doesn't seem to know any effect the lighting has on her, but her narrator does, and it's lovely. "Bargrimm had a whole upper body of tattoos. From his neck, all the way down over shoulders, down to his mid-back, mid-chest, and to right here, just above his forearm," she says, pointing with a finger around a bun where her own tattoo starts. "They were all these knots, all them that had meaning, from the Wildhammers and clans traditions, and a few runes woven in, little bit of superstition, for protection and good fortune."

She stares at her own, moving the steamed bun over to hold two in one hand, to have a hand free to trace the lines. "These were done by the same person who did his. They were meant to be sort of like a completing. These starting ones are the Love Knot. You can see it, the two hearts together. And then these are the Spiral Knots, which are a triad bit, and are representing the Three Prongs of Healing, and the Past, Present, Future, the Three Clans, all those things." She sighs heavily, and her eyes get over bright as she moves her fingers to the other round tattoos along a connecting path.

"The Knot is the base of the connecting, the loyalty and friendship, with no end and no beginning. And this is Ailm. The Sun. Sunbeam. The good luck, the good times, the happiness." Her voice breaks, and she takes a breath, swallows and continues to the last part, circling her wrist below it. "And this is the Sailor's Knot. It's friendship and love. They say it can be the easiest Knot to tie, the one that can seem the most superficial, but it can be the most powerful and durable of all. A bond that can't be broken. Women wear it on a bracelet often. So."

She holds onto her own wrist like that, staring at the tattoo, but she seems like she might be somewhere else a bit, too. "He was so happy when I got them. Well, with the idea. I don't think he was prepared for what it would really mean during. I knew, and I was ready, and I chose it. He was happier afterwards. I'm glad I did it. I don't regret them."

"It's a lovely meaning, all on its own," Thalstan says, looking down at her tattoo, his eyes tracing from the Love Knot to the Sailor's, and every step in between. "And I hope it'll always remind you of that happiness, no matter how much time passes. Happiness is always something to treasure, whether it's in the past, present, or future."

He settles in, taking a bun for himself while they're warm. "I don't have any tattoos myself, though I'm not opposed. There's not really the same tradition, of course, among the Bronzebeards."

"Some of it's that… it took time for it to be a Good Thing, a happy thing again, the tattoos. But, everything sort of did, at first. It was like taking two puzzle pieces, and taking one away, and leaving the outline behind with one alone. And that was a bad thought. And then the years passed and it didn't change exactly, but it did soften. And it stopped being such a bad thought, easier to see around to the good and the happy again. I don't have any pictures of him, and so it's a bit like the outline is a little proof of he was here." She releases the hold on her wrist, and looks back up at Thalstan, with a wobbly smile, refocusing on the present.

"The thing about the tradition though, Bronzebeard and Wildhammer, is that really, the separation's a bit of an illusion. We're all one clan, deep down, all dwarves, and it wasn't that long ago that we mixed a lot more," she says and leans forward, her eyes on a part of his chest above his heart, putting her hand there so comfortably and focused on some inner thought she isn't even a little shy about it.

"There's a few that have Thalstan stories in them. They have this one, neither Bargrimm nor I have it, it's called a Shield Knot. It's about Protection and Safety, a Guardian. And there's another one that neither Bargrimm nor I have… because, well, it's called the Motherhood Knot, and it's for that love of a mother, the enduring bond, like you have with your ma. And another one is a hammer, because Hammers, protection, courage, and a wee bit of fate, returning back to the same places, always coming back home. I think there might be more, but I don't remember them, they weren't for my stories, I was curious about them all so I had Halnir, the lad who did them, going through all them." She says all this while stroking his chest like she can sort of see them there. And then she seems to come out of it. Freezing.

"Not — not that you have to — not that any of this — or here, or these or — or anything — sorry, I was — I didn't mean to — " She backpedals both verbally and a bit physically, although she seems reluctant to actually withdraw her hand off his chest, leaving it there, and instead stuffing her mouth full of bun to stop the words.

"It's a good thought," Thalstan says, and he looks down at his chest, as if imagining one symbol there or another. He rests his hand on top of hers there, holding it safe and accepted. "A different story, to help shape the future. I like the idea of the Shield Knot — kind of marking into my flesh that I'm a protector. I don't think I'd ever regret claiming that role. And of course, my ma… but maybe if there's a dragon knot, that could be something to do with her and the pub."

"And aye, I don't think there's really much physical difference between the Bronzebeards and the Wildhammers," Thalstan nods. "Maybe they have a bit more red hair, and the culture's grown different, but we're the same folk. The Dark Irons are… well… they look different. And they're more interested in sorcery, I think. But maybe they're about the same deep down, too."

Oranna chews through her buns, at first like a panicked squirrel who is trying to beat winter arriving in ten seconds, and then more like a snow leopard chowing down on her fish stash the more Thalstan talks, and with him holding his hand over hers instead of pushing it off.

The actual snow leopard in the room dozes sleepily on her bed, having been fed (for once in her life).

Buns consumed (not the tanuki kind), Oranna nods. "Aye. And for the knots, you can… it's the shapes," she says, showing hers as she rotates her forearms. "Of the lines, I mean. You can — they do put in all sorts of things for them. Mine are simple for a lot of reasons but. You can take the lines of the Mother Knot and make them a dragon, for instance, twisting around. Halnir had a lot of his own knotwork as branches, on account of his family roots, both literal and magical."

"Are they magical, then, the tattoos?" Thalstan asks, and then eats a bun himself as he looks at hers again. He munches absently, one-handed, though his hand on Oranna's is less capturing it than treasuring it, and she could easily pull away. "I see them as a story, as an expression of feeling, but then if Halnir had magical roots, then… seems like there's ways to set magic down in ink, what with inscriptioners and everything."

"Oh, no, they're not magical, mine. They're just ink. Halnir's a shaman, and they've a long history of connection to things. 'His father went into big hammers, he went into little hammers,' he says. Because of the…" She probably is trying to mimic the tattoo hammers of the needles, but it more strongly resembles her doing a good impression of a combination maraca-tambourine instrument yet to be invented, but currently being dreamed up by a very loud goblin somewhere.

"But aye, maybe, they could be something, someday, maybe. I'm not sure I'd… want that. That seems like a possibly very bad idea with other things like, what if sha got into your magical tattoos and made them come to life and then your tattoos started eating you or fighting you on and…" Her worry line is its own tattoo come to life on her forehead. Her hand on his chest closes on his undershirt like she's imagining it happening for a tattoo he doesn't even have.

"Aye, maybe simple ink's best," Thalstan nods. "For reasons of surety, if nothing else. I don't really have a history of magic in my family, and I don't understand half of what Arthur's talking about, sometimes. I don't know that I'd want to fight one of those sha creatures born out of designs on my own flesh." He shivers a little, remembering the twisted creature of dark mist.

"I suppose Savar had something like that too, magical tattoos. Whether cause or effect, doesn't seem to have worked out for him," Thalstan smiles a little, trying to calm the worry line. "If I did get one, I'll get it in a style to match with yours. Not the same knots, of course, so not the same puzzle. But something that matches, at least."

Oranna's thoughts tumble over each other visibly on her face, happiness and uncertainty, hope and a bit of fear maybe of that same hope as it did the day before, when speaking of summer, of a future with any sort of certainty. "It's… it's a very… permanent sort of thing to – I think a part of me gets afraid you'll say that and then something will go wrong and you'll regret it, but." She looks at the place where her hand rests over his heart, and some of the tension of her face softens. "Sometimes we treat some things like they don't leave permanent marks behind on us for choosing them, because we can't see them on us, good and bad both. And so, maybe no matter what happens, there'd be something there anyway, and something like that would be like mine, too. It'd be your story, and… it'd be something good someday, too, no matter what."

She looks up to meet his eyes. "Sorry, I don't mean — I don't mean to talk like it's over, or something's going to — it's only that part of me that… it has happened. I can't not think it. I don't want it to. I really don't. I have to… play it out, and then I can sort of let it go. If that makes any sense," she pleads.

"Aye, that makes sense," Thalstan says gently. "It's like you said in your letter, about forever. That's not really a thing, not for us mortal creatures. I can't promise you forever, and you can't to me, because neither of us have it to give. But what I can choose to give is today, and tomorrow, and what time that I have."

He smiles, a little sadly, and says, "I think you're right that everyone marks us, whether on our skins or in our hearts. You've already heard some of the things that mark me, and I've heard yours as well. They're all part of our story, and it's like — that thing you say sometimes — not an unbroken line. But still a story."

The mention of something marking him, of his stories, makes her think of something — he can see it right there on her face, as clear as if she'd said it out loud, and it softens that line of worry into something, even if it makes her eyes seem a bit older and wiser both. She doesn't speak of it, not directly, but she does look down at their hands, and then at his beard, and at his eaten bun. She might not have any feet in the subtle realm, but she has both hands on gentleness, as she offers them to him with a warm smile.

"The kettle should be ready, and the basin water nice and toasty, good for beard washing, and we could get your hair set. Mine'll take a whole process, and we'll have to spread me out in front of the fire a spell," that is an image for him, "so, if you're ready? And you can keep on your shirt if you'd like or if you're comfortable with it off, I…" She clears her throat, blushes but smiles. "I will not be uncomfortable with it off. Uncomfortable is definitely not the word I would be. I — I would be enjoying it, if that's clear. Very, very enjoying."

Yeah, he probably picked up on that, Oranna.

"I think that'd probably be best," Thalstan nods, his own face a little flushed, perhaps at the thought of the fire and and Oranna's choice of words. "I'll be cleanest after, with it off — with the shirt off, as long as it's not too much."

Oranna has already said it's not too much, and he seems to realize that after a moment. He carefully pulls the padded shirt loose, fitting his beard through the neck and then sliding it up over his head. His hair stands up a little, afterward, but that can easily be fixed.

Thalstan folds the shirt, the muscles flexing slightly along his arms and shoulders in a possibly enticing manner, and then he sets the shirt aside, near the perfectly stacked armor. It's clear now, if it wasn't before, that Thalstan's bulk is strength, the rippling muscles clear along his arms, his shoulders, his torso.

"This is alright?" Thalstan asks, looking to Oranna.

Oranna is staring. The way she lifts her eyes suggests she was probably in slow motion again, and it takes a moment for her to reconnect brain thoughts to word making capabilities. "Oh… aye. It's very… very all right. It's very good." She puts both hands to her cheeks. "I'm having a cardiac event, and I think I'm tingling in three separate places, but it's good." Three places? Those are the sort of skipped over details that might linger in a man's imagination later, thanks, Oranna.

"If you mean for… comfort of certain things, it's harder for me to be showing than shown. Showing is overcoming a lot… things. But shown is… I get curious. And I — I have sort of seen you afore. Because of covers. But that wasn't — I wasn't really looking," she says, all the inside thoughts outside talks as she tries to get the cardiac event under control, busying her hands with the kettle, sneaking peeks at Thalstan the entire time she's trying to set up, and he can see it as she does, in her brassiere top with that skin moving with each hard thump of her chest, and the pulse in her neck. "And that wasn't… My Thalstan. So this is… it's very exciting. And a very good way. I hope it doesn't make you feel… objectified though, the staring or the talking," she adds with a sudden turn of concern. "I'd never see you as just a body, or anything like that."

Thalstan kind of mouths tingling, and then it takes him a few seconds to catch up with the rest of what she's saying.

"No, not at all. I like you objectif— that is, I like that it's exciting," Thalstan says, smiling and a touch flustered. "It's a bit like, well… I know a person's body is a lot of things out of their control, but not all of it. Some things are deliberately shaped." Maybe muscle-shaped. "I feel like you see those things."

"I… am definitely seeing things," she says honestly. "It's a bit of an experience, truth told. Half afraid I'll sort of stop talking and do something mad like lick your shoulder out of nowhere, and — I'm just…" She actually reaches in and takes some of the water, and splashes it on her burning face.

Befound hisses in the corner. Evil!

Thalstan glances over at Befound at the hiss. She doesn't like shirtless men? Oh, right, water.

"So, I'll have you here, I think," she says, pulling up the small stool in the corner by the kettle and small basin with steaming hot water. Thalstan dwarfs is much larger than it. It's probably even a bit small for Oranna, a portable three leg thing for washing laundry she fits in a bag. "I know it's small though, so if it gets uncomfortable, we can try another thing."

It does come with one other benefit though to consider— it puts him in a great position of being at eye level with certain parts of Oranna. So, pros and cons.

"I would not complain if you licked my anything," Thalstan says, and then possible interpretations of that statement arise, and he clears his throat. "That is, I bet that'll work just fine."

He moves over to sit down on the stool, and it's true that his knees stick up a bit awkwardly. Then he realizes the particular view this seat is going to give him, and he smiles up at Oranna. "This works."

Oranna, relieved that it turns out that the stool isn't uncomfortable (that isn't it, Oranna, but it's fine), brings the great view in closer, to work out the tie carefully with someone who knows her hair types and ties. "Right, so, with your things then… we'll start with the washing? The water's hot, a'course, for softening up properly, and once I'm sure it's all penetrated through, I'll use whatever you like best for getting in deeper, for a good scrub."

Oranna doesn't hear a single odd thing in there. She's talking about beard washing and beard washing only. He definitely has a close up and personal how some of her letters happen, that's for sure.

As promised, and possibly thankfully as a good distraction from her words, she brings the basin up with both hands, setting his beard into it with a loving care that even for a man who takes good care of himself might feel more. Her hands are smaller than his own, and she holds it steady in her left as her right threads through in sections, in no hurry at all, working from the ends slow upwards, finger combing as the water soaks in. Her expression is soft, and warm, and pleased, a smile of earnest enjoyment as she works.

It's as she is working though, and it has grown quieter, and calmer, the sound of water and heartbeats, that she speaks, and there is something so gentle in her voice, so kind in its vulnerable offering.

"Do you remember how I said afore that there are some times I won't be able to not help but see a thing," she says quietly. "I know better than most how sometimes a person doesn't want to show a thing, isn't ready to talk about it, just because it's come up to the surface. But, I told you I'd also be honest with you. A few times now, I've seen something in you. A story, I think. It might be more than one, but I think it might be the same. Something sharp still, that hurts you when it surfaces." She strokes along his beard as she speaks, her fingers up along near his face, massaging into his jawline.

"Something that today reminded you of, when you were pinned. Something that yesterday, when we were talking about memories to be trapped in, you thought of something you might have been, and you had one you knew you'd not want to be. And… I don't know if it's the same thing or not, but ever since the Cataclysm, there's been something you've carried with you that wasn't there afore.

"You don't have to tell me, if you're not ready. You don't have to say a thing. All I want you know is that I can tell you, there's nothing you could tell me that will change a thing in how I — care about you," she says, and there's no lie in her words. If there's a pause, a choice in her words, there's a truth in her face about that caring. "And it's not a comfortable chair, but I'm hoping it's enough. And if not, don't say anything, and we'll talk about something else, aye?"

Thalstan doesn't offer any answer to her first comment, as to what products he prefers, because he is far too busy enjoying the comfortable view stool. And even knowing Oranna speaks how she writes, it still touches on a feeling of hopeful anticipation, one which doesn't diminish the enjoyment of what is.

Then, the beard washing begins, and Thalstan relaxes into it, his muscular shoulders relaxing, though for some reason he doesn't close his eyes. When she speaks, he listens, and his brow draws down a little, creasing in worry.

"You've a sharp eye," Thalstan says softly. "I can talk about it, but I… I don't want to hurt you with my stories. I didn't even tell my ma, because after we lost da…" he falls silent for a long moment, "I didn't want to see that look in her eyes, not on my account, and not when it all came out alright in the end anyway. I think that gives you some idea of the nature of the story, if it'll hurt to talk about. I'm here now, and safe."

Oranna's hands keep going, those soothing, soft little motions, patient paths through his beard, as the water clouds with debris and dirt from the day. He might not even notice any time she hits a snag or tangle, her fingertips more gentle and purposeful than any comb.

"I'm not saying it'll be easy to hear of you hurt, or that you won't see it in my eyes to hear of you being lost. I know telling you my own stories of pain, and knowing it pains you is the same for me of being hard to make that pain in you, and I think it's probably even worse so for you with me. It goes against an instinct maybe, to protect and shield. But, I promise you this, aye? I can see enough to know what I'm asking about, and I'm asking still, because I think it's something that's hurting, and I think talking about it will help you wear down the sharp edges, and I want to be that for you," she says in that same quiet voice, and she finally looks up from her task to meet his eyes, and there's that depth in her eyes of deep mountains. She's inexperienced with a lot of things, but pain isn't one of them. "I can feel you right in my hands. I know you're safe and here, and you can feel me holding you right back. You're here now, with me."

It might occur to him that her timing isn't an accident. That she's chosen a moment of caring for him to ask, to comfort him, not herself, on purpose, for him.

"Okay, then I'll try… doing the second prong," Thalstan says with a weak smile. "It was in the first days of the Cataclysm. There were all sorts of natural disasters going on, all over Azeroth. Tidal waves, volcanos… earthquakes. A bad quake hit Kharanos, I'm not sure if you remember. Collapsed a lot of buildings there."

He closes his eyes now, which must mean this is serious, because the view. "I was in Ironforge at the time, so of course I went down to help. It had come up all of a sudden, so people were trapped in the… the buildings. I was with a team at the time, mostly from the guard, but also some healers, of course. We had to hurry, because time makes a big difference with injuries. With crushing injuries. And who knew if there were some trapped who'd be running out of air or the like."

He doesn't see what Oranna's face does, but he can hear some of the catch of it. "I — I know. I was — I was in Ironforge too, aye. I went… I went down to Kharanos, for Search and Rescue," she whispers. "But I was sent out into the — wilds, for those who were caught out in it, scattered. Where… where were you in Kharanos?" She doesn't ask about the collapse directly, but it's obvious she knows that it got worse. She was there, in the area. And he can hear that it's not that she doesn't want to know, not that the distress is so high she's trying to side step it, but that she's asking in smaller steps for him to tell it how he needs to tell it.

She doesn't stop what she's doing, breathing in those sniper in, hold, out, as she massages the water into Thalstan, warm and soothing, and not at all like the cold, terrifying day of the Cataclysm's sudden April quake and collapse.

She'll soon need the next step of the beard wash in Thalstan's care bag with him, an unspoken thing, unrushed.

"To think, you weren't so far away," Thalstan says, and he seems to take some comfort in that. Then he continues, "I was in the town itself, going in and helping people get out, digging through the rubble where we needed to. It was exhausting, and sometimes we were too late, but we got a lot of people out safe, or out where they could be healed."

"It was later on in the day when I went into a place unstable," Thalstan says, and his shoulders tense slightly as if he's carrying a heavy burden. "It was all heavy stone, and the entrance had collapsed. There was a gap inside, and a few gnomes were trapped in it. We cleared out a tunnel they could escape through, but it was steep and they were injured so I… crawled in to help get them out. And I did, I'd just helped the last one through when… the ground shifted again. Another earthquake."

And, just like that, a moment's breath later as his shoulders tense in memory, is the warm touch of a woman's hand on his left shoulder. Oranna's hand is nearly hot to the touch from the water, and it glides over his skin smooth, an easy journey from beard to neck to shoulder, soothing and slow, the hot water drips caught with fingertips before they can get too far.

She swaps her grip on the basin, and repeats it on the other side, slow and hot, water and steam, and soft fingers and nothing of stone and pressure at all.

"Aye, the aftershocks, I remember," she says quietly.

Befound watches them both, with bright sapphire eyes from her corner. They're talking about something bad, but doing Evil Rituals. They're on their own.

"It was enough to destabilize the rock," Thalstan draws a breath, but he can't seem to tense under her touch. "I tried to crawl out, but it shifted, trapped me in place. I… couldn't move. That's maybe what I flashed on, a bit, thinking on when that big mantid had me pinned. It was different there, because I could see all around me, and under the rock it was just… dark."

"I don't know how long I was there. I was not conscious for very long, I don't think," Thalstan says with a subtle shudder. "But it felt long. Just, in the darkness, not able to move, and… thoughts wheeling faster than they should. And then there was a sound, and a kind of… gap in time, and I was out on the snow with a paladin fellow kneeling by me."

Touch him she does, and doesn't stop.

There's no withdrawing in horror, although he might feel something of the heavy sorrow in the sympathy, and she doesn't seem to care at all that it'll get her clothes wet, as she shifts the basin with his beard to one side to rest the warm bowl gently against her hip and pressing in closer, encouraging him to rest his cheek on her chest, smoothing her hand over his opposite shoulder, down his upper back, warming and massaging the muscles of his neck.

"Ah, Thalstan. My Thalstan."

Thalstan rests against her, letting him cradle her, his eyes closed now. He doesn't speak for a while, just resting, and letting the warm touch of her hand soothe him. Eventually, he pulls back to look up at her, the stool wobbling a little beneath him.

"I just told my ma that there'd been falling rocks and I'd been hurt," Thalstans admits. "I did tell the Blade, after a fashion, but not in detail. I know it could have been worse, in so may ways. Most of the time I don't even think about it. Just sometimes I remember that feeling. Being trapped, the dark."

Oranna fits her hip against him to steady the wobble (it's a good all purpose dwarven steadying hip), and gazes down at him. She has tears in her eyes that make them bright in late winter afternoon light, but she doesn't cry.

With his face tilted up, she sets her water warmed hand on his face, trailing the water with it, washing through his moustache, and over his cheekbones, massaging it through and up along his temples, cleaning up along his brow. No washcloth but her own palm, her own fingertips. Dip, smooth, dip.

"What a hard thing to carry," she says as she does. "To sometimes have a part of you still there, trapped, in the dark. But, just because it might have been worse, doesn't mean it wasn't what it was, aye? It's all right to feel it. I'm so sorry, love. I wish I'd known somehow. I'd was right there, hardly a mile off, but…" A heavy sigh of regret and acceptance of can't change the past. "I'm here now. You can tell me when you do feel it, and I can sit with you when it happens, if I'm there, or after if it came up and you want to talk about it with me about it. You don't have to push it away as fast as you can, if it will help take that sharpness away of remembering being alone and trapped, to wear it down to a story out loud instead of that feeling inside in your head."

What was that little bit in the middle there? A word slipped out, and Oranna, more focused on her task and saying what she was thinking as she was saying it, seems to have missed it.

Thalstan did not miss it, but he does nothing to draw attention to the slip. He just gazes up at her with a deep trust in his eyes, letting her fingers gently wash his face and hair. There's a moment of guilt at the tears in her eyes, but it fades as she speaks.

"It was what it was," Thalstan says quietly, accepting. "And we're both here now, and that's what matters. I try not to let it bother me, and I don't think anyone else has noticed. That is, my ma could tell I was a bit rattled, but I don't think it crossed her mind. But if it won't hurt you, I won't push that fear away, not when we're together."

Oranna shakes her head, brushing along an eyebrow, sifting off a caught bit of dirt from it, rolling it between her fingers and into the basin, as she smiles and leans forward to press a kiss to his temple. "No. The hearing of the story, aye, it's… not a pleasant feeling, to think of you there, or dying, there's no denying that. It's a pain, and it's over, and I wanted to know.

"But, no. If it comes onto you again, a sudden in thought together, or somewhere else and you mention it after to me when we're together again, and I know what it is, it won't hurt to be there with you, and help you out of that place gentle like, and wear it down bit by bit as a story outside you. I promise, aye? I can hold onto you, lay there in the dark and bring a light with me into that kind of memory, and you'll not do me a single harm." She leans farther down to kiss his lips to seal that promise. And maybe a few other reasons.

The stool wobbles a little as Thalstan shifts slightly upwards to press into the kiss, leaning into the touch of their lips.

Then he sighs happily, as he sits back. "I'll trust you to bring the light for me, and I'll try to do the same for you. You're beautiful in light."

Thalstan reaches up one hand towards her hair, not quite touching (it's not his turn yet), but clearly imagining Oranna illuminated by the afternoon sun's glow.

Oranna is making her own glow with a blush that almost casts a light, and she tucks her hair around her ear that now sticks in place with water when she does. "That's a… well and I carry around a heavy rifle as a personal SUNBEAM so that's… handy," she says with a laugh. And she dodges the compliment a little with looking at the water and his beard. "Erm, your um… you have your beard wash with you?"

"Oh, aye," Thalstan says, reluctantly rising from the stool to fetch the bag he grabbed from his room earlier. It seems rather a full bag, but then he did say products, plural. He retrieves one glass bottle and settles the bag near the stool, to be in reach for later. Then he offers the bottle to Oranna.

"This is the first, the wash," he says. "I can line up the rest afterwards."

Oranna inspects the bottle curiously, and peeks towards the rest of the bag with equal curiosity — it's easy to read on her face that there's no judgement, as her words have already said, she's just interested. As she reads the label, and the dramatic promises and the name, she smiles, and opens the bottle to take a sniff.

"Oh, it has some… a faint bit of vanilla? Something that smells like it? I can't… really smell a soap agent, you know those sort of strong things that they usually put all the other stuff to cover up. It smells… gentle, a little herbal," she comments, with the bright eyes of someone who likes finding new things, not a woman wondering what a man is doing with gentle soap. "It's nice."

She puts a cautious dot, about the half size of a copper, in the palm of her hand, and checks with Thalstan for the amount in a glance up — she didn't play him false before. She might not know his exact products or his precise routines, but experience with general things, and she's gauged the amount fairly well for the ratio of the consistency and his beard amount. If she ends up needing a bit more, she can always add, but it's a good start.

"Aye, some of the stronger fragrances dry out my skin, underneath," Thalstan says, and nods at the dot of liquid in her palm. "Or irritate it. That might not sound like a big problem, but that sort of thing lingers for a week or two sometimes." He smiles, and adds, "It doesn't look heroic to be constantly scratching at your beard. I've never had a problem with this one, and anyway I like the smell. Reminds me a bit of hearth and home."

Oranna has him hold the basin, before she starts to rub her hands briskly together to first start mixing before she adds any water at all, and she builds up the lather like she's had her own beard for decades (a girl can can hope) to care for, and by the time she gets both her hands in his beard he can already feel the bubbles. Of the hair product.

"It reminds me of Thalstan, and his voice, and how it feels to be held by him," Oranna says with a little laugh. "So I like it, too. And, aye. My older brother Copperun used to try to dodge out of some of the other things like oil and balm, because he thought it was too 'soft.' My mother… thrashed him for it." She drops her eyes down, as some of the laughter dies away with the downturn of the memory. "It was the distraction, less the heroic image. 'A warrior scratching away at his beard isn't focusing all his energy.' And it was a stupid thought, anyhow. A soft beard has nothing to do with how hard a man is at any time."

With a woman's hands in his beard, and her view right up close in her half-dressed state, and her curvy thighs touching his, and all her caring attention focused on him, yes, Oranna, you're probably very right, a soft beard has nothing at all to do with it at any time.

Thalstan does not comment on how hard a man might be at any time, despite a soft beard. He just enjoys the sensation of being cared for, of Oranna caring for him.

"You really can't skip out on those things," Thalstan says with a wry grin. "I recall when mine first started coming in, itched something fierce. At first, I just thought my da was the toughest fellow alive, with all that beard that must be an agony. But then he noticed me 'trying to be strong' and walked me through a routine. Not exactly what I do now — I had a little scrub back then, and in the end what my da used wasn't quite perfect for me — but it got me pointed in the right direction."

Oranna works outwards to in, keeping the hair closest to his skin to last, scrubbing with the soft parts of her fingertips.

Befound, though she will not be any part of the Evil Ritual with Water, looks on with envy for the chin scritches. Oranna gives good scritches.

"I still don't how Bran stands it sometimes. I think he edits it out as a small thing. When we were up in Northrend, he'd get the driest skin under his beard, the poor lad," Oranna says. "But then he'd see a new Titan Thingamajig, and it'd be, 'I have a beard? A body?'" She laughs fondly. "He's a good lad, Bran, but sometimes I do wish he'd take more care of the little things. But, I'm sure sometimes he wishes I'd zoom out and be able to stop looking at a wee little worry until it's all I can see, but… aye, here we be."

She gives Thalstan a small smile. "You're a good medium. I don't know if I've been able to say it properly yet to you but, you really do… settle me. It's like I'm calmer every time I get around you. Or even think of you. And some of that is I know you take care of yourself enough that I don't worry constantly."

Oranna doesn't leave the wash on for long, rinsing the hair with the still warm water, now cloudy and fragrant. She starts to reach for a towel, which would be assuming only a wash, straight to oiling, but that would be skipping a Thalstan step.

Thalstan raises a hand to touch her wrist lightly, and says, "There's more — I feel a bit demanding, asking you to do the whole process, but you did say you'd like to learn it. And you know, I want to learn yours, as well, however long and complex it might be. I can be a patient man."

He tilts to reach into the bag again, pulling out a second bottle. "I use conditioner next. It keeps the hair softer, and makes it easier to comb through. When it started getting longer, the risk of tangles grew."

As he hands it over to Oranna, he says, "It sounds like you and Bran work together well on a squad. One of you to see the big picture, and the other to spot little problems that might derail the whole thing. It's good to have friends like that, people you can trust to take care of you in ways you might not think to do yourself."

Oranna drops a kiss to Thalstan's cheek in reassurance, and opens up her hand, palm up, to indicate not to put the bottle in her hand but to put the amount in — she's not familiar, and doesn't know how much to use — with a warm smile. "Aye, we're a good team, Bran and I, in our own ways," she agrees. "Conditioner for a beard. I'm not familiar with though. Is it like with hair? Does it stay in for a time at all, or get rinsed out right away? Does it only go on the ends, or all the way up?"

She does like her questions, Oranna Stormbreaker.

Thalstan tilts over the bottle then, and puts a small spot of conditioner on her palm before sealing and tucking the bottle away.

"A bit like the wash," Thalstan says. "You work it in, then rinse it right out. It's a little extra moisture, before we get to the oils and the rest."

Oranna's more cautious with this one, it's new! But, not entirely unfamiliar, and it certainly doesn't seem like a demand the way she's exploring with it, starting at the ends, working her way up. As directed, she doesn't let it sit too long, rinsing it out.

This time when she grabs for the towel from the towel bag — revealing that it does seem to have a truly extraordinary amount inside it — she folds it around his beard, setting the basin aside, and gently squeezing and blotting in a way that might reassure a man of any doubts of trusting her with even more delicate head hair. "All right, ready for the oil, I think?" she says, wrapping the towel around his shoulders, and gently testing his beard to make sure it's damp, but not soaking.

"So with talking about friends and people you trust, and teams of squads… you mentioned the 7th Legion and everything, a few times, and I know there's no decision yet, entirely, and everyone's currently gone all their own ways. But, have you… how serious is it that you've looked into it? Have you talked with Jo about it yet? Or… anyone in the 7th? Is there a… recruiter person?" Oranna asks, her expression revealing some of the anxiety hamster wheel thoughts peeking up through the calm.

"Oil, yes," Thalstan nods, retrieving a small, flat-bottomed and otherwise spherical glass container from the bag, with a little golden-colored round lid on top and a little etchings of palm fronds around the center. "From Stranglethorn, this one. And this step I think you know, aye?" He offers her the bottle.

"As for the 7th, as far I know, nobody's talked with anyone," Thalstan says. "Only, you know Tadget was a respected 7th Legion soldier before she joined the Cobalt Blade. It was a little bit of rehabilitation for her, after the little ones. Less strenuous work, smaller stakes. We're not exactly that anymore, but also she's pretty well rehabilitated. I think talking to Captain Sparkwire might be the next step. We might not be the 'friendly neighborhood strike team' anymore, but I wouldn't want to make any career moves that would hurt Cobalt. Right now, it's just chatter among the five of us." He pauses, looking up to Oranna's eyes. "Are you and Captain Sparkwire very close? Just thinking, how you always call her 'Jo'."

This step Oranna definitely knows and very obviously takes an honest degree of earnest enjoyment in. With her hands warmed and gliding with oil, spreading from hair to skin, thoroughly covering each strand and making sure to go with the grain for under, and getting the neck muscles under, Oranna is likely not the only one enjoying the experience.

"Oh, aye. Jo's been a friend since the early days when I came down the mountain and joined up. We were both in a similar sort of situation back then. She was there for Elo, as a favor to a friend, and…needed something to do, and you know my reasons. We got to being friends, and she's been there for me every step of the way, and I was there through all the changes, when Elo stepped back and she stepped up. A — a bit literally in some cases, there was — a barrel. Anyway. She's always liked doing things to help, and when I shifted over to helping manage the paperwork, we did a lot that behind the scenes working together, too. After… Bargrimm — " A heavy, heart weary sigh. "After. She helped me with picking up those pieces, and understanding in ways that I needed. She'd gone through… well, those are her stories to tell. But, aye. She'll always be 'Jo,' to me. I probably talk to her a lot more about other things than Cobalt things, truth told. She's always just a person, like anyone, no matter what title there is."

Of course, with Oranna, everyone always really is.

"I was mostly thinking… like with the portal and in general sort of way… if you in particular were to really take that first step, I have a feeling… the others would probably take a step with you. I don't think they'd want to lose what they have, what you've built up, all that synergy," she says, and there's that worry line digging in deeper in contrast with her fingers smoothing out the knots in his jaw muscles.

Thalstan is definitely enjoying the oil massage, but his eyes widen a little as she continues with her discussion of Elo and Jo.

"Aye, I think they do value the team we've built, over the past few years," Thalstan nods. "We work well together, and we've fought all the way from Ironforge to Outland. If we go 7th Legion, I suppose we'll get a few more members, unless they do something special for us — the EUs are usually 7 people. I'll talk to them, and then to Jo, before I move any direction. I feel like even if we stay in Cobalt, there'll have to be some kind of change. A shift in the missions we take on, as we grow in Company seniority." He grins, "Maybe eventually, I'll be on first name basis with some of the people I call by title now."

Oranna smiles and laughs. And then there's a thought, and the smile slips off, and away before she can really catch it, much as she obviously tries. And she does try, that part of her that wants to put it back it, wishes she didn't immediately show that she's thinking of something else, before she has to give up and admit. "I — I couldn't be one of those other people in the team, in the 7th, I mean. For all that we work so well together, and that I know Lord Springblade, and that I'd probably get along with the others, probably.

"I … it'd be the whole 7th Legion thing part, even if something could be worked out with a collaboration. I don't think I'm… military material. I think I need clearer exits, softer orders, easier places to question. I need to know if I realize I'm in a bad way, I can step back and do what I need to do, and that stepping back in doesn't mean… everything being so much harder, or that they have to think my reason is good enough, you know? Sometimes my reasons are going to sound… weak." She smooths out his beard one more time with a sad smile. "I'm not that kind of hero material. I'm more fragile and breakable. Cobalt Company's a good place for me, but an EU would be… too much."

She holds out her hand for the next step. Oh, of beard care. Not of military joining.

Thalstan pulls out the next step, a smaller ceramic container in a wide and short cylinder, with a metal screw-on lid. He holds it out to Oranna and says, "I use a bit of butter before the balm. It helps, together with everything else, with keeping strands from going too wild with the wind and all."

That handed over, he answers the other topic, the military joining. "As much as I'd love to work with you on the regular, and as good as we work together… I would not want to lead you into a room with no easy exits. It would be different than Cobalt. I understand they give a lot of dwell time, but when and how is determined by others. But…" he looks up at her, "Even if we join up, there's still be time for us to be together. It wouldn't be all that different from the Blade, on that account. And you are exactly the kind of hero you need to be."

Oranna makes a little ooh at the beard butter texture, but she does seem to also know what this is — if it's a lot fancier than she's used to.

There's still a bit of a look away at the term hero, but she's snagged on something else (not his beard, luckily). "Dwell time?"

"Aye, they don't fight all the time," Thalstan says, settling in to make it easier for her to access his beard, or anything else she might want to access. "Way I hear it, it's about half-time fighting and half-time training and working in Stormwind, over the course of a year. It's a stressful job, and they go into dangerous situations, so they do give time for a person to settle. Which means, if we go that way, there'll be long stretches I'm not on some apocalyptic assignment."

Oranna follows that through to the other side of the thought as, "Because… there will be long stretches where you are?" And that's why she'll never make it on the Team Optimism. A sudden urge to pick at a fingernail or bite one must strike her because it's halfway up to her mouth before she remembers — beard things — and she blinks. Well, that's why her nails are so short and look like that. She instead begins nervously setting his beard into some sections that look like she must be thinking about one of those complicated Big Book of Beards designs.

"And then dwell time, long stretches of not apocalypses. What happens… if the apocalypses come to you while you're on the not-scheduled time?" she asks, because this is Azeroth. "Do you get to stay off or… do they put on anyway?"

"I think that's… sort of a thing you and I talked about once," Thalstan says. "It's not down to one person, or one team. If I'm scheduled for stopping the apocalypse, I'll do my very best. But there's always other EUs, and I think the whole system is so that they don't put people on apocalypse duty if they're not sharp. So if there's an apocalypse on my dwell-time, I think they'd rely on the ones who are on duty."

"Right, and that's… assuming a lot of things and that it all happens, and…" And an entire cascade of what ifs, most of which Oranna doesn't have an answer for, and she's in a land with ancient shadow creatures that prey on feelings of things like fear and doubt, and she no longer has a mask. She closes her eyes, seems to think that makes it worse actually, reopens them, looks at Thalstan instead, breathing carefully in sniper precise breaths.

"I think… I think tomorrow I should go back to Ironforge," she says, a little shakily, and a bit of a turn.

"Or now?" Thalstan asks. He watches her face carefully. "I can ask around for a mage. Might be one of Cobalt's is still in Halfhill."

"I… oh, I know how to get back," Oranna says, but she smiles at him gratefully, caressing his beard. "The — the exit thing. I've had to know how to leave since I got here, of… needing to know. The portal in Paw'don, they can let you back through to Stormwind, with the paperwork all set, so that's probably how I'll do it. And, my hearthstone's still bound to Ironforge, which is another way, and I'm allowed to use it as an emergency, if it comes to it, though they want me to do a thing of alerting them, so I'm not marked as missing in Pandaria."

She looks over at his bag, for the next beard step, and some of the deciding has calmed her down a touch. "It's… without the mask, and how long I've been here… it gets hard to think about things and not start to worry, that if I think about something, what if I think about it wrong? What if I'm only trying to have a thought, and there I go, and a sha gets in, and then what if I don't realize it, and then what if I do go back and I have a sha with me? Or something else? It was already wearying afore, and now I… I want to have thoughts without it circling into those places, and I want to relax as much as I ever do, and I want to be spiral and be anxious and not worry that I'll break open the world on accident. I need a rest, and I don't think it can wait any longer."

"That makes sense," Thalstan says, pulling out another little cylindrical container, this one in thin metal. He offers the beard balm to Oranna. "And no matter where the Blade goes next, it's not going anywhere tonight. Tonight I'm here, and I'm safe, and there's nothing we need to fight. We can go back to Ironforge, and not come back till either Cobalt's learned more about how to handle the sha, or we can get a new mask. I'll go back with you, through the Paw'don portal."

Oranna takes the beard balm and the offer with a relieved smile. "I'm glad. Of both, aye. And — you can't — don't do anything different, aye? With Cobalt or the 7th Legion, thinking to try to… do anything or not do something because of me. The way my mind will work sometimes, I'll get a way if you go out to get — groceries," she says, as she takes a small amount of the balm, warming it in her hands and breathing it in. Mmm. Thalstan smell. She works it through slowly, and yes, she's definitely doing something Fancy. "Sometimes there's no reasoning with it. I can't say, oh, relax, nothing bad ever happened to someone getting some fruit!, because a'course something has. And I do know how things work. Some things are safer than others, so running into danger is worse than fruit shopping. But… some things are owed, too. Some things a person has to do, because it's what they need to do, or how they're made. I'll be all right."

How many braids is this going to be? That's at least twelve sections.

"And I know my weak points. Doubt and fear are quick darts I have to watch, and despair is a creeper, but I can recognize them. I can handle the sha most of the time. It's only that it takes so much effort to always be on guard, and I've only seen one pandaren ever push a sha out without a mask. All the other times, we've had to kill them. It's a lot easier with you right here, and I can think of you and things. Right now, me and the sha is you and," she darts a sneaky look at his bare shoulders, and forgets to look away, and then her eyes drift down to his chest, and she also forgets to finish her sentence.

Thalstan watches Oranna's hands with interest, and at least this time the curiosity is in what his beard is going to look like at the end of this. There's no sign of concern, though, only anticipation. Then he notices her trail off, and his gaze travels up to her face.

"It's tempting, but I won't," Thalstan promises. "The same as I would expect you to do what you need to do, and not let me worrying about you shape anything. It's true there's a measure of risk in anything we do, and we can't just live in hiding. Or at least, I won't just live in hiding." He pauses, and then says, "The sha is…?"

"Mmhm?" Oranna looks at him, not a single thought on her face has anything to do with the sha, he can tell that for sure. She's having thoughts about some of those deliberate shaping words from earlier, possibly, and maybe a bit about the hair trail that goes — even in the dimming light of the room, her rosy cheeks are brightly visible. "The sha is… oh! I was… I was, how right now, me and the sha is you and getting tired again, like it was afore the mask. And then I got… distracted with other thoughts of other things, and how it's really something being able to look at you like this, up close and have you right here. Which was probably very obvious and now I'm over explaining myself."

She's also braiding, the complexity somewhat belied by how simply her fingers are moving, like it's nothing, as she weaves four braids through each other, a pattern that would be dizzying to follow a first few times that forms a sense of a tree to a center trunk "branch" in the center, taking advantage of the silkier softness of Thalstan's looser structured beard. It won't be something to wear for maybe more than the night or through to the morning, but it'll look incredible up until then at least.

"You're incredible at this," Thalstan says, looking down at the complex pattern of braid emerging beneath her fingers. "And aye, after so long at a distance, it's something else to be able to hear you, to see you, to touch you…"

He smiles. "Right now, at least, my thoughts are happy ones, and I don't see that changing by tomorrow. And to say, anytime you'd like to talk through the worries, if I can I will. And if we're parted, you can put them in letters, and I'll answer."

Oranna smiles, and nods, and…runs out of beard. "Aye, I do know. I… can't say I won't sometimes cross a thing out, because… I think I shouldn't have said it after all, but you're the one I write to when I'm talking a thing out of my head." She washes her hands off in the basin, and looks over her shoulder at the larger washbin, eyeing it for how to get his hair to it, and making a judgement call. "I think — one moment."

She takes the basin of water, and walks to the window to open it — with a strange crank that doesn't resemble anything in Ironforge — and carefully tosses it out. While she's over there, she lights the lantern nearby, and heads to refill the larger washbin with the now much warmer water with new water for his hair.

"I'll use this I think. You're just that much taller than me. I can bend back easy for the big washbin, but for you," she says, and demonstrates holding the basin of water against her breasts as a place for him to tip his head back into. "If you can sit a bit longer?"

Can he sit and have Oranna balance a basin on her chest, and put her fingers all through his hair? Hm, tough question.

"Aye, I can sit a while longer," Thalstan says, eyeing the basin balancing on Oranna's chest with interest. "Maybe that's easier than me tilting back, indeed."

Thalstan holds up his hands, indicating a willingness to be posed as needed, for the ease of hairwashing. "I don't know if it came through, but the letters, they've helped me as well. I love hearing from you and writing to you, and it's seen me through some difficult times. I hadn't really been talking much to folk outside of the Blade about the Blade missions. I mean, I wrote reports for Captain Sparkwire of course, but not about things circling around in my own head."

"Especially in Outland, there's not much of Cobalt out there," Thalstan says. "There were a few other human ladies passing through, the Ladies Dara and Sophiette, but they moved on after a while. It's a bit like the Alliance, they've left just the minimal people there to hold the outposts. Not much conflict with the Horde, but that's mostly because they've as few out there as we have. What I mean is — you're the person I write to, too, when I've a lot of thoughts to share."

Oranna didn't know that, and it shows on her face, and she's shyly pleased. "Oh, aye? Right, uh, hair. Uh, I need your… brush or comb, and the shampoo. For first things first," she says. Hair. Task. "I remember back when Elo was starting up the Blade, that was part of it, Outland was so… that's where Cobalt was, and he worried people would think that was where we were. I — I wasn't there, in Outland, at that time. I was back in Azeroth, I mean. I didn't go through back then. That sounds so… quiet and isolated, even with the portals. And it's not much like there's anyone immigrating to it, even now. But you weren't… not much of a tavern sort of chatting? I don't know what I'm really trying to say of … I think I was always sort of picturing you as moving about a lot, talking to people. You're so friendly and outgoing. I didn't think I was much of a blip on the radar, and that was…"

She frowns, thinking, the worry line a full line.

"Comb, shampoo," Thalstan nods, and retrieves both from his bag of hair supplies. This is a different shampoo than the beard wash, one optimized for a different kind of hair. He hands them over to Oranna.

"It's true, not really anybody immigrating over," Thalstan agrees. "Mostly folk coming to Azeroth, at least for all the peoples who have a society here. Haven't seen many sporelings or ethereals or the like over on Azeroth side, so I suppose they're mostly staying in Outland. And aye, I'm a friendly sort of chap, but conversation in a pub isn't the same. You… you were important to me. You are."

Oranna starts at the bottom and works her way up through his hair, taking out the hair tie, and it's easy to see that it makes her happy to hear it, and soothes something, a small anxiety perhaps. "I — I think I wanted to be?" she says, more than asks. It's not really a question he can answer, after all. "I was thinking of it, right now. I don't think it's true to say that I thought I was just another person, and that I was content with it, because I think… that's not all the way true. I was talking to Dane about it, like I said, aye? That I'm not sure when I really could say a when exactly things changed, when you were a friend and then you were something else, but I can tell you that you've been special to me for a long time. I think I hoped I was, too. I think I sort of knew that I was, after… when you waited for me, after Grim Batol."

She slowly tips his head back with a light pressure, that same gentle fingering combing replacing the comb, the hot water soaking in. She's gone quieter again, her voice punctuated by the sound of water dripping, though she keeps his ears above the water line. "That's how — when you said that if I called for you here, no matter what, you'd come running. I knew. I had the thought of it. I knew I could write just a word, no explanation, and send it off, and you'd be here, and not a thing could stop you. And I hadn't even told you how I felt. But I knew… you'd be here. So… I think I knew."

"I would have, and not a thing could stop me," Thalstan confirms with a smile, leaning back with the gentle pressure until he's in the right position for the basin. "I don't intend to let anything stop me from being there when you need me, not if I know it. Even if this hadn't… even if we hadn't realized the particular kind of like, you would have stayed a treasured friend."

"That is, I like you, and I'm attracted to you. And those are connected, but also separate things," Thalstan tries to clarify. "All that is to say, I don't think you were ever just another person to me, not since the day we met. And in the time since, you've only become more precious to me."

He might notice that the basin isn't entirely steady, and that's because it's balanced against Oranna's chest, and her chest isn't exactly steady at the moment either. Even as she works through his hair, shampoo another soft pressure of her touch, that sense that she's taking such precious care, that it means something to her to have this moment with him, that he's letting her do this for him and with him, he can see her absorbing the words, too. When her eyes are bright again, it's not for the bad reasons this time.

"You would have kept waiting." She brushes her fingers along his hairline, over his temple. "Not thought it less for that, but hoping." There is a look on her face that has that word again, that she hasn't said on purpose, but she's thinking, and it's there for him to read. She might not be able to say it, but she might know it's there, too. "You can be a very patient man," she says instead.

"I can," Thalstan says, smiling up at her, and the shine in his own eyes carries an answering word. "As patient as a mountain itself."

He falls silent for a while, then, relaxing into Oranna's touch on his hair. He doesn't seem concerned about the basin instability — only trust.

Befound has no idea how you do it, buddy. It's like she's holding a knife right over your throat. Befound can't even watch.

Oranna doesn't speak for a while, not in words at least, though her hands and eyes do a lot of other types of talking. She isn't rushing, although she's not taking too long either — she knows he's leaning back, holding the position for her sake. The sun sinks down below the horizon before she's done — although that's not quite so late a notice, not this time of year —but it sends the room into a dark, more intimacy, lit by the lantern and the fireplace, and by Oranna's warm little blush of feeling.

"Next step?" she asks, a breathy whisper into the quiet that's formed, breaking it reluctantly.

"I've a conditioner," Thalstan answers in a low whisper of his own, and then he clarifies, "Should be the only bottle we've not used in there. My hair's not quite as complicated as the beard."

The bag is in reach, likely, for Oranna, though Thalstan can't move at this point without splashing warm water.

He smiles at her and says, "It's almost your turn, for your hair." He sounds like a fellow enjoying a treat, while anticipating another treat.

Oranna reaches into the bag, with the mild anxiety of what if, somehow, magically, she managed to grab the wrong bottle anyway, and double checks that it does say conditioner — twice. Just in case. It does. It really can only be the only bottle.

"I'm trying not to warn you off it," she tells him, which explains the little dance of her eyebrows when he says it. "I'm used to saying something about it like, 'oh, it's a lot more hair than you think,' or 'however much work you think it is, triple it, and then maybe double that,' but I think you're probably a bit more prepared and also… maybe I don't mind being a bit more a trouble for you than someone else. It can be deceptive though, coming out of the braid. You'll think, oh, that's not so bad, or you'll have seen it down, and think, I remember there being more, and you'll start brushing, and you'll think I've enchanted the brush. But no, it's just dense. It gets packed in and then it spreads out. Kind of like my talking," she says with a smile, looking at him from upside down, as she gently spreads in the conditioner, holding onto that basin like she does it professionally. Which she doesn't, but given how often she's probably had to do similar things to manage her own hair, it might explain where her steady arm comes from. That and she's a sniper.

She's still talking quieter than before, maybe from the way the room lighting seems to set the tone.

Befound huffs. She can't believe how long they've been playing in the water. It's like they don't even want a nosy cat all up in their business!!

Thalstan doesn't even seem to notice the nosy cat right now — he's too occupied with beautiful dwarven lady with near-infinite hair.

"We've got plenty of time," Thalstan says with an upside down smile, in that same soft voice to acknowledge the shrinking of the light around their cozy room of hair care. "And I'm confident I can dodge the suffocation. Maybe it's a bit like constellations."

There doesn't seem to be a connection there, except maybe in his own mind, which Thalstan seems to realize after a moment. "That is, I went out stargazing with my da some, when I was a kid. Before, he showed me the constellations, what they ought to look like, the kraken and the raven and a few others. He warned me they'd be bigger than I expected. So we go out of Ironforge and look at the sky, and I didn't see these pictures anywhere. My da had to hold me and help me see the one wing of the raven, and then the other, and I realized… I was looking for big, but I'd underguessed how big. Then it was like, the whole sky opened up, and I could see the pictures in it."

Thalstan grins, "I'm not saying there's ravens and krakens in your hair, but maybe it's not a bad thing if I underguess how much you've got. It'll be a wonder to see."

Oranna applies the conditioner as he speaks, massaging it into the strands, and letting it have its due time to soak in, wrapping his hair gently around her arm to keep it out of the water.

She laughs at the thought of ravens and krakens in her hair. "Well you've seen it and felt it at least, and I think if there were any popping out on brushing that I've been missing on account of not being able to see, Lireen would have said on spotting. Calm as can be, scooping and shooing, not even pausing in the brushing, 'Dearie, there's two ravens back here, and a kraken, and there, off they go,'" Oranna says, trying to mimic Lireen's serenity, which comes out more like a Lireen who has been known for taking 100 year old naps and not waking up all the way. Let's just say, Oranna will never have a career on the stage.

"Aye, I can't see her being surprised, but she would've told you," Thalstan says with a grin. "Calm as a mirror lake, that one, but she'll say if she thinks you ought to know a thing. A good teacher."

He lets out a low, relaxed sigh. "I missed her, when she went up to the Northrend campaign, but she said she thought I was ready. I was a little uncertain about leading back then, if you can imagine. Maybe I don't show it in the field, much, but it was my first real command."

There's guilt, not for the first time, as it was before when he mentioned it, back when they first talked after they met properly out of the Emerald Dream, that shrinking into herself like she's trying to make herself smaller. "I'll always be a bit sorry for that, for being the reason it was cut short. I appreciate you calling it the Northrend Campaign, it sounds… better than saying, 'the Oranna Watch.' And, in the end, it did become more about staying to help for the whole Northrend working, but that… that was the reason she went up. It was me. I… made her make a decision, and I really am sorry that a consequence of that meant you had to go out sooner and test that command with less certainty, because I wouldn't wait, and Elo asked me to make a choice about taking someone, and Lireen was one we could both agree on."

She strokes a pattern along Thalstan's forehead, maybe a bit for him, maybe a bit more for her. "You're good at that shield up that a leader needs. Elo, Ben, and Dane all have it, too, which makes them so good at field leaders in Cobalt. I can see it, sometimes, what you mean with that uncertainty, like a doubt that you'll push away, and decide not to let yourself really have, because if it's allowed to exist all the way, it'll drag everyone else in. You have a talent, too. Defending comes natural to you, and same with command, I can see it both. You're decisive, without being thoughtless. Things settle into place in your head, and a leader needs that. And a bit of uncertainty, too, because no one's perfect, and mistakes happen. Questions are good. You're a good leader, Thalstan, and you're getting better at it the more you go."

"I hope so," Thalstan says, closing his eyes a moment to appreciate the touch on his forehead. "I am trying to learn as I go, not to fall into being too inflexible. And that's an impressive group, so I'm glad I don't look too shabby in comparison."

"But Oranna, you don't need to feel sorry. She made that decision too, and I trust he knew what she was doing. I think she was right, I was ready to raise that shield on my own."

"Well, and if you think you're ever getting too inflexible, you could always work with me some. I can follow all right enough, but set me at it, and I can also question and stray off to beat new paths, be flexible." Wait, wasn't being flexible a whole innuendo in another context? "Oh, I mean as a — with the leader — in a being flexible thinking way not a — " Hmm.

Does she only mean that way? Oranna thinks about that as she dips her arm into the water, releasing Thalstan's conditioned hair into it, and tenderly stroking the strands clean. "I… suppose I mean that in more way than one, actually," she says in the end, face aflame, and keeps going, a bit doggedly in seriousness. "And there's not a single shabby thing about you in comparison to anyone, of any team or any person. And I'm not talking about armor or looks, — which, aye, are very nice, and part of the whole Cobalt Blade deliberate choosing, I know. But, I mean your heart, and your soul that made it more than a book cover and a poster. It's in how you see the world as much as you how move through it that makes you the right guide. 'Helping and asking. That's the way a hero should build bridges.'"

It's something he wrote in a letter, almost a year ago, not long after the Blade first set out into Outland in April, and obviously struck a chord in Oranna for what it said about Thalstan as a person, and what he stands for.

"Aye, like with you and the dwarves in the Highlands," Thalstan says with a smile, remembering their letters in the spring. "The Alliance way of doing things. Our way of doing things, yours and mine. And I know I've said it before, but that's a thing I value about you, too. Your desire to understand other people, to see other perspectives. To treat each person individual, even if they're not friendly at the moment, and to balance that with protecting your own folk." Then, looking up at her blushing face, he adds with a grin, "And your flexibility, in whatever way you mean it."

"Oh — I — well. That… I'm not really — I don't think I'm that flexible in that way," Oranna hedges bashfully. "I mean, I — I can touch my toes. I could touch your toes. Not… not that… is really what you'd want me — or not that there's anything wrong if you'd like that sort of touching, toes, or anything down that way. That'd be good to… do if it's a flexible…thing." This is rapidly falling off the tram rails. She reaches behind her for the towels as she mutters to herself, in a half-desperate voice, "Stop talking about toes."

Befound spreads out her own toe beans for another cleaning. Since, obviously, no one has brushed her, as they have engaged only in Evil Rituals, and continue to do so, neglecting the cat horribly, who has also never been fed in her life (disregard any earlier statements that suggested that the cat has, in fact, been fed; these were lies).

Despite Oranna's derailment into awkwardness, it is in direct countermeasure to a different confidence and competence as she enters the final stage of Thalstan's haircare, and the one with the greatest of trust falls — the moment of applying a drying towel.

There is no more vulnerable a moment for the hair than when it is saturated with water, when the wrong application of texture, force, or movement can cause quite literal irreparable harm to the follicles that no amount of creams or conditioners can fix. A single rough brushing and harsh toweling can cause enough breakage that there's no recovering but cutting and regrowing.

But you don't get hair like Oranna's treating hair like that, and Oranna knows what she's doing — her towels are soft, absorbent, and gentle, and her technique is a thing of beauty akin to her gunwork. She has his hair wrapped, and folded within a delicate twist, as she presses down with her palm and fingers to squeeze the water out like she's been doing it for decades (accurate), at first one handed, as she sets the basin down, and then with both, as she steps in closer and encourages him to lean back against her body to relax after having had to lean back for so long.

It just so happens Oranna comes with a built in double cushion right around his head, so that works out.

Thalstan relaxes back against her with a released breath, and maybe for the moment some of the muscles on his torso are less defined as he no longer has to flex them to hold position. He trusts Oranna's handling of his hair, and there is nothing in any of the movement of her hands with the towel that gives him any reason to regret that trust.

"I've got no particular fondness for toes," Thalstan says, as though that's what she was discussing. "I've nothing against them, they're excellent appendages for keeping balance and the like. But no special interest, if you take my meaning. I think most of my interests in that way are likely considered… mainstream."

Her handling of his hair is professional grade. Her handling of the talk about interests is more in line with her level of experience in that, which is significantly less. There's a bit of oh and ah. And then finally, "Mainstream… like what… people might talk about? I don't have maybe as much knowledge about that as… some. But I don't need to know most people's, just yours, and I can ask that as I go. Or like… books sort of mainstream? Should I — should I be thinking of getting a lot of rippable bodices?" she asks, and it's probably encouraging how comfortable she is with him that she asks it leaning over so he can see that she's smiling — shy but with a wink when she catches his eye.

"I'm sure we can figure it out as we go," Thalstan laughs. "Bodice-ripping seems a bit impractical, doesn't it? What if you liked the bodice, after all? I mean, yes, like folk might talk about… but I won't assume we're on the same page with anything without asking."

Oranna gives his hair a few more of those strong handed squeezes, and soft strokes along the towel to reposition it over his hair, sliding it carefully to not tug or pull the sensitive strands, as she releases it in pulses. It's hair care. That's all this is. All resemblances to other things is entirely coincidental and narrators cannot be held accountable.

She does seem reluctant when she sets the towel over his shoulders, smoothing it over the muscles there with appreciation, and settling his hair carefully from the roots with a massage of her fingers at the scalp, and letting his hair come to rest naturally where it does, without any other disruption for the time being while it's still this damp and fragile with it.

"Thank you," she says, releasing him enough to make it obvious that he can stand up and leave the world's tiniest stool, but not quite all the way, her hands lingering on his shoulders again at the edges of the towel. "For letting me do all that. I know it was longer — a — a lot longer than it'd have taken you if you'd done it yourself. And not as comfortable. But… I liked it."

"Thank you," Thalstan says, rising finally from the little stool. "It's a whole different thing when it's someone else handling it. It's… care, instead of just daily routine. It means something different, and how long it takes doesn't matter to me. I'm glad you enjoyed it, and… thank you for trusting me, to see to yours. I'll have to ask you, your process, each step of the way."

"It's not as… it's mostly dealing with the — volume. There's some tricks like with the washing that might be where I can teach you a — " Oranna says, as she steps back, and pats at her hair, and then at her face a bit. She is definitely not as clean as Thalstan is now. "Erm. Right, uh. The — let me get you the — " Flustered, she flaps her hands twice, and steps away to collect a bag from one of her bags (the system of which remains a mystery, and a glance does nothing to clarify), which must be a general Hair Care Bag. And then looks between the stool, Thalstan, and herself, and the floor.

"I think I'm too much smaller than you that — maybe if we're both seated on the floor? Me in front of you? For washing, you might have kneel, because I know I'll need the stool to tip back into the washbin," she says, and he can read the urge to apologize on her face, like she's already starting to feel like she's too much trouble, and trying to stop herself from apologizing. She reaches into her bag to remove a sturdy, boar bristled, very wide (one might even call it stout and hammer-like if one was feeling so inclined) brush, and a rectangular tin so old that it is definitely pre-Dark Portal era dwarven make that rattles a little when she pulls it out, holding them out to Thalstan. "This is the brush, and this is the tin where the pins go. There's about fifteen or twenty of them. So. Unbraid, and then…unpin." She bites her lip. And… hesitates. Thoughts start to build up on the edges of her expression, and he can practically see an oncoming tram.

"I asked to do this," Thalstan says gently, taking the brush and tin. "I want to do this properly. Don't worry about me, just let me know what to do, each step. I'll let you know if there's anything I need. Let's sit here on the floor, while I take it all down."

The hair, he probably means. Not the inn.

Befound half rises from her bed. Wait a second. Is it brushing time?? ARE THEY AT LAST ABANDONING THE EVIL RITUALS? No, they are staying by the water. Hiss, hiss.

Oranna fidgets with her hands, and picks at her nails briefly, as she moves to in front of him, facing the fireplace, and folds into a sit. She nervously pulls her whole braid over her shoulder and immediately realizes the mistake, and pushes it back over her shoulder. Right.

"Are you sure you want to do it now? If you're tired of sitting, you could walk a bit? Or if you're hungry? Again? I didn't mean to — if you're not ready — you've been sitting and — I could — "

"I'm sure," Thalstan says firmly, settling on the floor behind her. He takes her braid in his hands, and works the tie loose, careful not to pull her hair. Then begins the long process of undoing the winding of the braid, moving slowly upward, link by link. He smooths the loosened hair down carefully as he goes, preventing the unwinding movements from rewinding the lower strands.

It is, as forecast, a lot of hair. Thalstan seems to enjoy this, rather than feel dismay, and he smiles as he watches the dark locks flowing through his fingers, and across his palms.

"Are you hungry?" He asks as he works. "We could always move the tray closer, if you'd like a bit of rice or some such during."

"Not really, no," Oranna says after thinking about it. "I'm fine. I really stuffed those buns in me."

He hardly gets to appreciate that sentence as Befound lets out a pathetic sound as they talk about food, her language. Oh, no… she is wasting away… Oranna… what about her tray…

"Yer nae even close ta wastin' away, ye overgrown housecat," Oranna calls out. "And yer supper's nae comin' faster fer bellyachin' and ye know it."

Befound huffs dramatically, flopping bonelessly to her side, because she cannot even lift her head, such is her calorie deficit.

No one can see Oranna rolling her eyes, but everyone can sense the vibe.

As the braid uncoils, so does some of the farm, as debris and dirt fall to the floor, what was caught in the braid's lock is now released. And as warned, even before the brushing begins, the longer the strands are freed, the more they seem to expand, like a semi-living thing, soft and warm. There is history in this hair, decades and decades of growth, strands that knew a world before orcs and other worlds.

He's had her hair in hands already, but that was in fully brushed out, prepared form. This halfway stage presents new textures, different senses of the weight of it gathered up in the braid, and how each thick section feels in the palm of his hand — and as promised, when he gets past the nape of her neck, the first sneaky hidden sudden heavy metal bobby-pin locking hair down in place around the crown of her head.

Thalstan gently removes bits of debris from the hair as he goes, though some of it will certainly only come out with the brush. When his fingers strike the metal pins, he pauses and feels around carefully to make sure he sees how it's set around her crown. He works the pin out slowly, taking care not to pull out any hair with it, and then begins the process of feeling through her hair for the next, and then the next. There's a careful, methodical feeling to his work, and no sense of impatience.

"Do you have to groom Befound?" Thalstan asks, as he works. "I know cats do a lot of self-grooming."

"Oh, aye. It's more a treat, that she likes. Snow leopards are independent creatures in the wild. She'd not even really keep around a mate after a cubbing, to help with grooming, sort of thing. Mostly it's a bonding thing, and a reward of attention. She'll not want to be over here until we're done with the water, and she's not hurting for attention. She's had a lot of it in the past few months," Oranna says.

Befound would protest if she could. She could always have more! Sure, she's had first Oranna attention, but what about second Oranna attention?

Befound isn't the only one who seems to like being brushed though, and getting the extra attention. Oranna is already getting melty in his hands, first a loosening of her shoulders and her neck, and the longer he goes, it's as if he's plucking out pins that are holding her upright somehow. She leans more and more into him, and then sets her hands onto his legs to each side, fingers spreading out on his thighs in an expression of contentment, as she makes a low, soft little sound in her throat.

Thalstan does seem to enjoy how this is affecting Oranna, and if anything it urges him on to even more slow, gentle care. Each pin makes a small sound as he drops it carefully into the tin. He shifts his legs a little to give her more support, a better positioning. The he comes to what seems to be the end of the pins. He searches around her crown, his fingers probing her scalp in a way that may feel something like a massage, though one careful not to damage the strands of hair and create more flyaways and breakage.

As he works, he says, "It's a bit interesting, isn't it? For such an independent creature, that her primary bond is with somebody outside her own species."

He's about to shift to the brush when he encounters one last pin. There's always one more than you think. He carefully extracts it, drops it into the tin, and then shifts his attention to the brush.

Oranna makes a sound of agreement. "She was young. Not as young as Mywill. Adolescent. When we first met. Bran was there. He came out with me in case things got… well, in case things went wrong. I'd never tamed a fully wild snow leopard afore, and it was a bit different sort of luring one in. She was…incredibly hard to find. We spent…mmm… had to have been an hour I think, wandering around looking. Couldn't be found."

She drifts a little to her left side, curling her legs up closer, and dropping her head back when he runs his fingers through her hair.

"She isn't the only one I tamed. I… had a wolf for a while. She was older, by a lot. 'Nother. Short for 'Another Chance.' From the same naming convention as Befound. She'd lost a lot of mobility on her right side from some old battle, and she had to be at least eleven, maybe twelve, which is…old, especially for a wild one." Oranna sighs heavily. "She was surprisingly willing to adopt me. I — I say adopt me, because that was more what it was like. It was like took me on. Followed me around the Hinterlands, looking out. I don't know what happened to her pack. Wolves aren't solitary at all, but she'd ended up alone somehow."

Thalstan carefully feels through with his fingers, checking for any more pins or sizeable debris as she talks. When that is complete, he starts the brushing process, carefully working his way up in small segments from the bottom of her long hair, making sure to avoid damage and not to force any tangles.

"If only we could ask the animals what they're stories are," Thalstan says quietly, as he continues brushing near the ends of her hair. It is quite dense, and the volume of her hairs seems to be expanding with the brushing. "Oftentimes, they seem like they must have some long ones, for their lives. Did she stay up in the Hinterlands?"

Oranna takes a moment to answer. "Ah, you… could say that in a way. She passed away. It was quiet. Went to sleep a night after a quiet day, afore the fire on her wee bed, and she was gone in the morning," she says quietly.

Befound is silent, in both the usual ways, and the other ways.

"Bargrimm said there was nothing really that was wrong. He knew more about wolves and their keeping than I did, and that it was likely just her time, and I'd given her a good… last few months. I had to trust in that." Oranna's voice grows thicker, and she swipes at her face with a hand. She clears her throat with effort.

"I… uh. I have a giant turtle, too. One Bite. 'Tryin' Ta Eat The Whole World In One Bite,' which is not really much of an exaggeration. My best guess at his age is somewhere around his late 40s, and of a species that could go up to around 100, maybe 150. He acts like he's already 100, mind you. He growls. I took him down with me to the Abyssal Deep when White Squad was down helping that way in Vashj'ir, and we helped that Neptulon fellow."

The… Neptulon fellow being the elemental lord, the supreme being of water, the lord of all water? Yeah, uh, That Guy.

Thalstan pauses in the brushing for a moment, respectfully lowering his head in the wolf's memory. He runs his fingers along Oranna's scalp, a gesture of comfort more than haircare, before he accepts the change in subject.

"Neptulon, that's the elemental lord, the supreme being of water?" Thalstan asks, just confirming, so it's clear they're both talking about that guy. "I didn't realize you had more companions now. Did he stay back in Ironforge when you came here, or is he out by one of those Pandarian lakes?"

"Oh, no, I set him up nicely at a good spot out at Loch Modan. Er — uh, Onebite. Not Neptulon, and aye, the elemental one," she adds hastily. "He's not the coziest of fellows." A thoughtful pause. "Actually that one, that could apply to either of them," she says honestly.

"Onebite's been on his own long enough that he's about as comfortable on his own as being kept, and since I knew I'd be away, and didn't know what to expect, I set up him where he'd be happiest, or some version of it for him. The couple that used to own the house I live in have a house out that way, and they keep an eye out for him for me. Keran's always claiming he owes me something for nothing really. He doesn't, but I can't convince him of it, and it's been years now." It might be different to hear Keran's version of the story, but that's Oranna. "Onebite was more of a necessity. I couldn't take Befound down with me under the ocean. The conditions were impossible. Her fur couldn't take it. I could barely take it. It was find an animal who could handle the depths or go it alone, and I knew my chances with Search and Rescue would be better with help. So, I found Onebite. And, every so often he disappears on me, but sometimes, I disappear on him, too. Like now."

Not to be dramatic either, but the more Thalstan brushes her, with nothing but the brush, the more she's, well, sort of disappearing in a cloud of hair. It grows and grows and grows. It's so fluffy. A man really could get buried by this much hair. There's enough to cover his entire body. There's more hair than Oranna now.

But he can tell she's there because he can feel her. The more he brushes, and the more she talks, the more her hands seem to wander, growing increasingly comfortable with exploring now another half of him in range.

"Oh, aye, I didn't mean to suggest you'd tamed the Elemental Lord of Water, though I wouldn't put it past you," Thalstan says with a chuckle. "Latter bit I meant Onebite. Good you've got friends to look after him, or make a place for him to look after himself. I've never really had any animals of my own, so most of what I know about how to handle them I've learned from you."

Thalstan does not seem to mind the growing cloud of Hairanna, and he seems actually pretty content and comfortable with Oranna's wandering hands.

"I suppose that makes sense, keeping an eye on the environment and choosing a companion for it specifically," Thalstan says thoughtfully. "Not bringing a leopard to the bottom of the ocean. Who knows where else we might go, over the years?"

The quiet on the other end of the Hairanna suggests that the we caught her again. That maybe she spent a quick few seconds of fast thoughts to try to get to the Cobalt We, the Azeroth We, the Great Big We that doesn't have to mean anything.

But it does. And something else must be different this time, something changed, because this time it's easier for her turn in place, with a complicated smile and soft eyes to press a kiss to his lips in some answer.

It moves the giant hair mass with it and she puts a hand up to it to check if it's brushed through. It's… hard to tell.

Thalstan leans in to kiss her back, lingering a little in the kiss. It's a good answer. Then he notices her checking her hair.

"I'm almost done," Thalstan says. "I suppose you'd know more than I, but I think there's enough time for me to finish up while you tell me the next part. Do we use the big washbin? I can't imagine it fitting in the basin at all."

"I actually can't tell as well as you can right now, just feeling out. You now more of what sections you've done," she admits openly. "I could find out if I brushed it myself… but I don't need to, but I don't really want to do that. I was just curious."

She turns back in place, and it's not his imagination that she's used the opportunity to scoot in closer to him, pressing up tighter into his lap. "And aye, it's the big washbin only. There's no other option. So, when it's me, I sit on the stool, and I lean forward, you know, because bending. But, I think I can also bend backwards with a towel on my neck to pad the side, balance on, and that'll make it easier for you to do the same sort of thing from your angle.

"It goes dunk all in, and then we pull me up to rest on the side. I have an herbal washing powder. It goes direct on the scalp, not on hands, and you work it into a lather there. And then… I don't know how else to describe it but you'll sort of slowly pull up the rest of the hair out of the water to kind of pile fold it onto my head to wash it about a half foot at a time? You add it basically as you go, in sections like that, with the lather helping it stay on my head and out of the water, always washing down and away, and keeping up the lather. As it gets towards the ends, you sort of don't want to do too much washing-washing. They're the oldest parts, and mostly need a light hand, a rinse with a touch of the soap to get clean, no agitation at all, and then… back down it all goes for another dunking in the rinse."

Thalstan listens carefully to the instructions as he finishes brushing out the ever-expanding cloud of hair. As he does, he lowers one hand to her waist, to gently assist her in settling closer into his lap. As she concludes, he sets the brush aside.

"Leaning back sounds more comfortable for you too, I think," Thalstan says. "And not to mention I'll be able to see your face as we go, and you mine — I like that part of it. And… I think I'm finished with the brushing. I'm pretty comfortable here too, but maybe it's time to head over to the washbin."

"I… wouldn't mind staying either, but… the drying will take forever, and — so, we could maybe… be comfortable again?" Oranna suggests, doodling a circle on his right leg. "I'll — I probably have to be the one who…moves first." That is how this has to go, she is in front. She does take an extra moment to brush a hand over his hand on her waist, before she gets up to an awkward sort of kneel and bit of a clamber up. She brings her bag with him, although brush and tin remain with him.

She drags the stool close to the washbin, and plucks out a towel from the many-toweled bag, as she sits down and starts folding, her hair a massive cloud around her. She looks over to him. "I'll set it up here on this, and hold it in place," she says, patting the little cut out where a laundry board could go. "And then you could help me lean back, and get my hair all in the water?"

"You must have neck muscles of steel," Thalstan says in an appreciative tone, watching her move with the cloud of hair. He stiffly clambers to his own feet, stretching legs that may be getting a little sore from the fight. He hardly seems to note it, so it's probably the usual amount of post-battle soreness. "But aye, I'll help you lean it back such that you're less likely to strain anything."

He moves over to the washbin, setting up behind her and reaching one hand under the hair to rest in between her shoulder blades, while the other waits to support the weight of the hair itself.

Oranna laughs, and pats her neck, half proudly, half-self consciously. "I think it helps with the shooting, truth told. I've got the muscles for keeping my head steady. It's a fair few pounds of hair, but I did get used to it over time, so I built up the strength bit by bit," she says. "But, less, er, the leaning back muscles, so I think I'll wobble here."

Not much of a ripped abs girl, Oranna, so much of a soft belly, and she knows her weaknesses truthfully as she leans back, and does, in fact, wobble significantly, having trouble keeping her feet on the ground and controlling her lean back with underdeveloped core muscles for it, and in the end has to fully drop her weight into his hold for it, a moment of trust he can feel happen as she lets herself fall, trusting that he has her.

Thalstan does have her, and he gently helps her lie back until her neck rests on the cushioning towel, compensating for her core muscles. From his angle, and with his upper body strength, it is not difficult for him to make sure she settles smoothly and without any small sudden drops.

"I bet it does, prevents wobbling," Thalstan says as she lies back. "You must have the arm strength for that, too, to hold the gun steady when you've not got the tripod set up." At the end of the procedure, Oranna is settled back and Thalstan has shifted to supporting the bundled hair. He looks down at her and asks, "Ready to let it down? Then I'll take your powder."

Oranna tries to nod, which is made awkward so she halts mid-motion, and then says, "Aye." She doesn't have to look in her bag to know which one is the powder for wet washing (there is another one that is for dry washing), and she takes it out to hold onto it, while Thalstan lets the hair down into the waiting now very warm, bordering on hot water. The washing powder is in a bag inside a tin that once again is definitely older than Thalstan, but is also probably older than Oranna. The tin unscrews at the top, and inside is a lined bag with a metal scoop, and Oranna undoes it maybe to have something to do with her hands, and also because it's best done with dry hands.

"It's a scoop and a bit. That's — that's vague, sorry, I should have thought of… Er, about a…quarter? Bit more than? I don't really — It's all right if it's a bit more, probably won't want to go less. You can always add usually, but it's harder to get the lather back up once it's going, so better to start with a tad more and have a wee bit over, than too little. So… a scoop and a half let's say, and then we can always feel it out over time."

"Then erring on the side of over-lather, a scoop and a half," Thalstan says with a nod, as he carefully lowers her hair into the water. He comes back over, looking down at her with a smile, and takes the tin from her. He does one scoop, sprinkling it directly onto her scalp as directed, and then a partial second, and then moves his fingers in gently next to her scalp to work it up into a lather.

"I imagine it's hard to keep it this healthy, at the length," Thalstan says. "I've never had mine quite this long before. It's good you found a routine that works well with it."

The powder has almost no smell at all to it, but for a very faint, slightly earthy scent slightly perceptible as the lather comes up, with maybe something else that adds to the lather that has something like a vinegar, but the rest is virtually odorless. The texture is probably the most unfamiliar part at first, a bit of graininess like something between soft milled sand and finely shaved soap that rapidly turns into a thickening paste and then finally into a more familiar lather.

"Oh, not so hard, no. I got lucky, I think, too. It's a bit like it was made to be this length, and all I have to do is treat it right, and it's easy to keep healthy so long as I take care of it the way it's meant to be," she says. "It's mostly the time it needs, that's all. Patience, I guess you might say. Which I just did, and now it sounds like I'm sort of saying something else about something else." She's also getting rosy cheeked, as she looks up at Thalstan. It is sort of a bit of a metaphor. "I… anyway. At — at my house, I have a bath for soaking for bathing, and I have a shower for washing, and a way to keep my hair out of both. But also for, erm, helping… with washing, the… both have easier options than… this. Both would be a lot more — uh. There would be — clothes would be — " There would be a lot less of them, her face says.

Oranna's hair in the water is also something else, an entire other thing from her surface hair, like a mystical mirror of an inky creature, floating and swirling softly. Every movement Thalstan makes in touching below the surface, silken tendrils crowd around his arms and hands, caressing his skin, like it has its own life within the water, and it likes him, playing coy and clingy all at once. Even left on its own when he moves to work on her scalp, the strands never fall into true stillness, shifting and moving in slow, perhaps even seductive undulations, unbeknownst to Oranna, who has no control over what her hair may be up to below her.

Thalstan is paying attention to the lathering, but the gentle waves and swirls of her long hair also draws his eye. He watches it like it's a painting in motion, a work of art shifting in response to his touch.

"I've more regular things for washing at home than on the road as well," Thalstan says, unbothered by any awkwardness. Her starts to fold up the first section of hair to include it in the washing. "If you're happy with how things go tonight, maybe we could do this again, back in Ironforge."

It's just a suggestion, and he says nothing about the associated dress code (or lack thereof).

"I — well, I don't wash my hair like this — often. I wash me often. I — we could — you." She does seem to really like that idea, with a peek again at his fancy braided beard and his hair. "And that's… a'course another sort of… And since you'll be coming back with me, you'll be staying at your — oh." Oranna's expression does the thing as finally a thing slides into place, and she is caught around relaxed and dreamy eyed and on an edge of uncertain anxiety. It's an odd place to be. "You said you made the picnic with your ma, which means — so, she — you — did you? Does she… did you tell her about…? And tomorrow, do we… should we? I don't know… uh. What… normal people do." An awkward pause where that sounds a bit too broad, and also maybe a little true. "About this, I mean. Parents meeting, normally. Bargrimm's family was… not normal."

Thalstan looks genuinely puzzled by the anxiety, but then the last seems to clarify something, at least, for him.

"You've met my ma already, aye?" Thalstan says gently, moving to the next section of hair. "She likes you, and I think you like her. So there's no big formal to do about it. Yes, she did help prepare the picnic, and she did know I was going to visit you in Pandaria. I don't think I said all the context in so many words, but she probably has the general idea. I think she'll be happy to hear."

"Aye, met her, and I like a lot, and she's always been so kind and generous. But the… I was a friend, which is a… a different thing. You think she'll be happy to hear about that I'm… a girlfriend?" Oranna asks anxiously, fidgeting with the hair powder, sealing it back up and putting the top back on, settling it back into the bag with the energy of someone who has to have something to do with her hands and when she finishes with it, she taps her thumb against the hand of the other for a few moments before she changes her mind — and instead reaches out to instead put a hand on Thalstan's arm to hold onto it, stroking his forearm. "She won't be upset or disappointed or thinking I overstepped a welcome?"

Thalstan's brow furrows, and he pauses with with lathering as Oranna takes hold of his arm. "If she liked you as my friend, why wouldn't she like you as my girlfriend?" He seems to realize Oranna might not take that as a rhetorical question, and quickly continues, "I don't think she'll be surprised, to be honest, and I expect she'll be pleased. You are welcome, Oranna, in my life and in my ma's tavern, and there's no overstepping about it."

Oranna watches his face, and he can see that moment of doubt, that lack of surety, the are you really sure? in hers. And then something internal, some thought of trust that softens it, steadies her on him, that has nothing to do with Oranna's surety in herself as an appealing girlfriend, and much more in this moment about her belief in Thalstan as an honest man, and his knowledge of his ma, and that he wouldn't lie to Oranna. He watches her relax into that thought, and she turns up a tentative warm smile at him. She doesn't say anything about her hair, but she does run her hand lightly up and down his arm encouragingly, and slightly moves her head in a nonverbal way — he doesn't have to stop. He's only a comforting touchstone.

"That's — that's a relief. I'd have — I'd have been terrible sad to have lost her good opinion of me. And, I'll be honest, her food. I can't tell you how often it's been a comfort. I think even she knows how often I've been making excuses to not do proper shopping so I 'have' to stop in, whenever I'm at the house, and especially if I'm only there for a bit."

Yeah, Oranna, famous for her subtlety has possibly let that slip somewhere here or there.

Thalstan, looking down at her, has nothing but honesty in his expression. He smiles as she speaks, and continues on to the next section of hair, lathering it with careful care not to rough it up or damage it. "She's a great cook, isn't she? That is, it's very much traditional dwarven fare, so as long as you like that sort of thing. I think you do, though, and I do too. I used to help her in the kitchen when I was a lad."

Thalstan pauses to collect the next section of hair. "Not a small lad of course, once I was old enough to be trusted with food. I don't have her touch, but I've picked up some basics, at least. Like the cookies — the actual ones, I mean."

"I like your touch," Oranna comments immediately, and then starts to explain her meaning and realizes… no, that applies broadly, actually, and she lets out a small giggle. "I do mean in cooking, too. I don't have any sort of touch that way. Some of it is that of the whole process… I mostly only like the… eating part of it, so I don't put a lot into learning complicated things. And I've no idea how to bake at all, honestly. That might have gotten things really squirrely if I'd tried to match the metaphor with my own cookies, sending all sorts of the wrong message. 'Here are some burnt and inedible cookies of extremely dubious origin, don't read anything into this,'" she says with a laugh.

Thalstan laughs as he works down to the bottom of her hair. As instructed, he handles this part especially carefully, a light touch and not much washing-washing.

"Well, I can handle the cookie baking for both of us, then," Thalstan says with a smile. "The literal cookies, that is. I can do some simple fruit tarts, too. I'm afraid that's about as far as my skills go. I can learn more, though, if we end up wanting to try anything fancier."

He can already tell how heavy her hair is getting piled on top of her head — and how fast he has to go, since while it does sort of stay put with the later, gravity also wants to reclaim it, and it constantly tries to slow slide back off. Oranna keeps her head steady; she's familiar with coping with the weight of it.

"I — I don't want to make it seem like you have to learn a — mmm. I mostly like food I don't have to make myself." She strokes his arm uncertainly. "But, aye. Like with the cookies, I do like… special occasion adventurous foods, and trying new things. I get curious. And I also like cozy, comfortable food, and traditional things on the regular. I think it's hard to imagine asking you to learn something special though, a'purpose. Too demanding, maybe, especially since you're taking on so many other big moves of things, like asking for another extra thing, and… I don't know if I'm explaining myself right at all." She chews at her bottom lip worryingly, although also leans into his hands. Washing feels nice. Anxiety hamster also processing.

"You saying you like a thing, or you're interested in a thing, it isn't a burden on me," Thalstan says, as he tries to keep her hair from falling while he handles the last half-a-foot of hair. "Even if it's not a thing I can make or get at the moment, maybe it could be a present sometime. Lot of present-giving holidays in a year."

"Oh, gifts on holidays… aye. Oh. Right, that's — I don't actually celebrate them all, not like humans do. I don't know if you do, or not… not that there's anything wrong with celebrating like humans, especially when you know a lot of them, or like celebrating…" Oranna, you have to use a subject in there for all of that to make sense. "Sorry, uh, birthdays, I mean. I — my birthday. Uh, it's coming up. Last day of the year, December 31st. Same as Ben and Bran's, actually. It'll be my…" She squints up at him, thinking about it. "97th. Aye, that's the one."

And she doesn't look a day over… no, actually, she does look about 97. But, it's a good, healthy dwarven 97, so that doesn't mean the same thing as it does for humans at 97.

"I don't really do a thing for them, but I'd… accept a present? That sounds… that sounds terrible somehow," she says with a touch of a laugh. "I'll get you something, too. I'd like to, I mean. For yours. It — it's not — it's not tomorrow or something, is it? I'll still get something for certain, but I might be a bit, uh, 'didn't I just see this in the Paw'don giftshop right afore you told me you thought you saw a goat stuck in a fence that I should try to rescue and was mysteriously self-rescued when I got there?'"

"Oh, I don't really celebrate so many yearly holidays myself, either," Thalstans says with a laugh. "But they're a good time to do presents, aye? And I'd like to get you a present. Just a few weeks now, then — 97's a good, respectable year. Mine's not till September, so you've plenty of time there."

Oranna's hair is ready to drop back into the water, and gravity is doing its best to make it happen whether Thalstan chooses it or not. He supports it as best he can, and says, "Ready for the rinse?"

Oranna almost nods — remembers just in time — and says, "Oh, aye." And leans her head back to help, arching her back. There's a decision to be made: he can either get the basin to bring the water up to Oranna, to get all the way up to her hairline; or he can lift her up himself, and lower her down into the water, to bring Oranna to the water. One is, admittedly, a little more impressive than the other.

Thalstan usually chooses the most impressive option. After he lets her hair down, he leans over her, and asks, "Is it alright if I lift you, to help with the rinsing?"

Oranna does have to think about it, but not for as long as he might have maybe expected, given her fear of the kites — as she reaches up her arms to fit around his shoulders with a rosy hue to her cheeks and a delighted perk of a smile. "Oh. Aye. If — if you're sure. I won't be too heavy?"

"I can't imagine you would be," Thalstan says with a smile, as he leans over to get his arms beneath her to lift.

She doesn't seem to be too heavy, and he tilts her smoothly until her hair is submerged in the bin's water.

She's told him of two of her big fears that might apply here — falling and drowning, specifically — but it says a lot about how she thinks about him that she's most definitely not afraid, not even a little. A small giddy, breathy giggle escapes her at how easily he lifts her and smoothly dips her.

"I'm a princess," she says in what was probably supposed to be an inside thought, which is now an outside thought.

There are some fairy tales that would certainly think so, with that coil of hair caught in the confines of the wooden oval, like a portal to a vision of an ebony dragon rippling through billowing clouds of foamy soap, a mystical unfolding of the beautiful natural physics of hair and water.

"You are," Thalstan says with a smile, smiling down at her and the rippling dark mirror of her hair. When it's had time to rinse, he slowly sets her back down on the stool. He hesitates for a moment, holding her there, before he lets her go. "What's the next step?"

"Towel," Oranna says, holding her head carefully back against the tub to keep her hair down in the water for the moment. "I've got to sort of try to heave-ho all at once up into the towels. It'll be heavy with all the water at first, and that's when it's most fragile as well. So, it's bundle up and get it all in as quick as possible, starting at the bottom as priority. Takes about three to wrap up the whole, and sort of layer." She is probably trying to demonstrate wrapping her hair up in towels, layering them over each other, maybe? What is actually happening with her hands looks a lot more like demonstrating two weasels locked in some sort of slow motion wrestling match over her lap. "I'll help, a'course."

"Aye, I think I'll need you to," Thalstan agrees, looking down at the soaking hair. "I could try to gather it as you heave up, so it'll lay easy on the towels. Or I could just man the towels. I know the less handling the better, while it's wet like this."

For once, Thalstan does not hear any innuendo, so focused is he on how to transport so much hair to the safety of the drying towels.

"No, I want you to get comfortable with it wet, and I trust your hands all over it, no matter what. I know how yours feels, and I know you know how to treat it right. We'll go slow, and feel it out together," she says, and if he didn't hear any innuendo before, it might be a bit more… Oranna-ed. She rubs his arm encouragingly with a warm smile. "Remember, it survives being out in the field in a braid in rain and rivers, too, so it can take a bit of action under certain circumstances. And aye, it doesn't have that protective style, which is the point of taking such care now, but you'll not ruin anything with a bit of working out the how to. I'm never perfect at it either, because I can't see what I'm doing, and I only have two hands, and I can only work so fast myself. You're gentle and you want to do it. It's all right, aye? You won't break anything."

Thalstan definitely hears this innuendo, or maybe he briefly gets confused about what she's actually talking about. It takes a good long moment before the meanings settle into their proper places, and he takes a steadying breath.

"We'll go slow, feel it out together," Thalstan repeats, and then he gently sinks his hands into the sides of the dark swirl of hair, starting to gently raise it from the water.

She wasn't kidding about how heavy her hair is though, fully saturated with water — all told, it's honestly heavier than his sword (the metal one, if we're being specific for reasons). The shampoo has left it soft, rather than stripped, although not as slippery as might have been with a conditioner, and it sticks to Thalstan's hands and arms like it likes him.

The towels are within reasonable range at least, and it's not a too difficult matter to get them from point A to point B, and as he knows from his own experience with them, this is where Oranna has put some of that Cobalt money of hers — they are well made, and absorbent, and meant for a dwarven size for a good wrap around without being so large that they couldn't be maneuvered by Oranna alone.

He can imagine how much of a whole process this must be for her though on her own, and it's another reason why she likely doesn't do it often, beyond it being largely unnecessary.

She really doesn't seem nervous or stressed or worried at all, allowing Thalstan to take the bulk of the work, prepared to assist with support.

Thalstan does the best he can to support the hair with one arm, getting the mass of it up and out of the bin's water, and reaching out to take a towel with the other. He carefully wraps the bottom part of her hair without agitating it, letting the absorbent material soak in the water gently without agitation, and then moves to more towels and more hair as quickly as possible. It is a bit like constructing a very careful hair-towel burrito.

It is.

She smiles at him as she holds the top one in place, helping to squeeze at it. "See? Not so terrible, aye?" She says it confidently at first and then actually does pause to check at his face, a touch of worry creeping in that maybe it was a little terrible. "It — it'll take a few — these will get soaked, and then I go through another one or so, and then it's time to stroke through a softener."

Time to do…what?

Thalstan does not look as though he found it any degree of terrible. He's still smiling, already looking to make sure the next batch of towels are ready. And then she gives the next instruction, and he blinks.

"Stroke through…" Thalstan repeats, and then reaches maybe some understanding. "With a comb, then? It'll be dry enough for that?"

"Oh, no, with your hands mostly, unless it's gotten tangled up, but I don't think it did, from what I could feel. This is a heavier creme oil I only use if I've used the wash, and it goes in while it's wet like this. I have a wide comb for those times when it needs it, which sometimes happens, especially when the water is hard. But, I think you could put your palm and fingers along it today, especially if you don't mind going slower," she says, absolutely only talking about hair care, all soft brown eyes and open expression. This is how Oranna letters happen. "Later, when it's dry, I have the usual oil, and then that'll be brushed through. That'll be awhile though."

"My hands, then," Thalstan nods agreeably, as he tests one of the towels to see how waterlogged it is. "At the point, maybe we can settle by the fire for warmth and drying, too."

"Oh, we can… move over now, there's no — it'll take time and that's… probably nicer?" Oranna suggests. She helps unfold the first wave of towels, which have swapped with her hair in which is waterlogged. Her hair is still wet, but approaching damp from soaked through. "Did you want — we could… we could put a blanket down? I have a nice sort of beaver fur one, in a bag, since I wasn't sure if we'd need a heavy warm blanket when I was packing and it's good in a lot of situations. It's nice to lay down on, although it's not very big, but I don't think that's…a problem. And I… would prefer it, actually, to be closer. If, that is, you'd like to… stay there with me. I… would like it if you did."

"That sounds lovely. You and me on a blanket, warming by the fire," Thalstan says, reaching over to help set the soaked towel where it won't drip all over the floor. "Let me help you get the next towels on, and then I'll spread out the blanket so you don't need to move so much."

Befound lifts her head. Wait, the blanket? Her blanket? (It is not her blanket. It's Oranna's blanket, that is often stolen by Befound any time Oranna gets up.)

Oranna nods. "Should need only one towel this time, I think, mostly for the middle bit, and upwards," she guesses, feeling at her hair. "The blanket is in my brown bag over there. On the left side are two dividing sections, and on the bottom side is a stitched in part with canvas, that's all things inside it are for covering up, and gathering up. There's three blankets folded up, a cotton, a small sealskin, and the beaver fur. The other things aren't blankets, they're things like scooping bags and nets. Should be — it's the only fur blanket in there, so probably… obvious, I think." The Oranna Systems, which make sense to Oranna, although they don't usually follow a standardized system.

"I can't imagine I'd mistake it for cotton or sealskin," Thalstan says with a chuckle, helping her to get the next towel in place.

Then he heads over to her brown bag. He doesn't rummage, but goes directly for the bottom side, where the blankets are. The beaver fur is fairly obvious, and he gathers it up and spreads it on the floor by the fire.

Oranna stands up, squeezing at her hair with the towel, and holding onto her hair care bag with her other hand.

Befound clearly considers but no — the water. The Evil. She huffs loudly so they know that they have displeased the cat (they are surely devastated).

Oranna makes her way over, and kneels to get a starting position, with her back facing Thalstan, her hair temporarily over one shoulder still.

As she said, it's not an especially large blanket, the sort of thing that would be a good choice to fold up and pack up as something that could serve as needed on an unknown trip of unknown length in an unknown place. The dark brown fur is heavenly soft, relatively short, and very thick, which gives it a good cushion feeling. It would cover about a single dwarven bed, which means getting quite cozy and close. It carries with it a residual scent of Oranna, mostly the clove, and some telltale white hairs of Befound.

Thalstan settles down behind her, not up against the wet hair, but relatively close to her on the small blanket. He runs a hand gently through the soft fur, and settles down comfortably cross-legged. He looks over at Befound at the huff, but seems less devastated at the cat's displeasure than she might have hoped.

"Did you grab the softener?" He asks, looking over the clean, damp hair.

"Aye." She takes it out of the bag, and sets it to the side, by his knee. Much like his own beard balms and butters, it's in a tin with a screw top, an oil cream that will rapidly go from a solid to more of a thick oil as it warms in his hands. It has only some scents of some simple oils, and what's keeping them in the more solid state, with not much of a fragrance at all, but for maybe a bit of something warm, a little earthy.

"About the same ratio for your own, not too much. You'll not want to get it all once, either. It goes in stages, of about a few feet at a time. I usually do about two feet in a go, about a coin amount per. It's about the same as beard butter, in a lot of ways." She folds up the towel, tosses it back over towards the others, and shifts her hair over to her back, where it hangs down heavily, soaking a little into her clothes, but she doesn't seem to mind. They're close enough to the fire.

"Aye, this seems very familiar," Thalstan says, as he picks up the tin and unscrews the top, tapping the contents lightly with one finger to check the consistency. He then uses that same finger to extract about a coin's worth of oil cream, and warms it in his hands before turning his attention to Oranna's hair. As directed, he starts at the bottom two feet, gently smoothing the oil over the oldest strands of her hair, moving with the grain so as not to cause any damage. It's a soothing kind of motion, for him and possibly also for her, as he works the warm, thick oil into her locks.

"When we get back to Ironforge tomorrow," Thalstan says, "People might be surprised how fresh as daisies we look after adventures in a foreign land."

"Oh, if I didn't, I'd only have myself to blame, really. The Pandaren all have such nice things and places, even if I hadn't packed as well as I could have, and I — I don't know if they have daisies, actually, but… you know. I hope that I don't look too tired and worn out, honestly. I don't want people looking at me and thinking it's Pandaria's fault, and not that I'm a bit… of a harder time here. Pandarens learn a lot of techniques to rest easier and get along fine without masks and everything." She reaches out for something of his to touch, but it's a bit harder with his legs crossed, and she ends with only a hand on his knee, her thumb tapping out an anxious rhythm.

"Maybe… maybe I should make sure I don't — maybe I should keep to myself a few days, afore meeting people. So I don't — so they don't see anything amiss, and think it's… it's that Pandaria's a way. Not that — it's good for people to know if they're planning on coming, the sha are a real thing to prepare for, and people have to know what they're getting into, and be honest with themselves about it, but lots of people will be able to do some of the pandaren techniques I can't."

"I don't expect anyone would take one look at you, and think anything other than Pandaria must be a place of beauty," Thalstan says without thinking, and then makes a slight sound of dismay at himself. "Not to say you weren't beautiful before, just that you are still now, and so if people—" Thalstan chuckles, cutting himself off. "There you see I can get off on a track as well. I trust you know what I meant."

He moves up her hair, getting another coin's worth of oil to warm and work into the next two feet. "I don't think anyone would see things amiss about Pandaria from looking at you, was my point. But it's also a good idea for people know what they're in for. Maybe when you talk to folk, you can let them know what it's like for a non-pandaren."

"I'm mostly hoping I'll not be told to keep it all a big secret on the way out," Oranna says nervously. "Not that I plan on shouting about it or anything, but I don't know how to possibly talk about it all without somehow mentioning the sha to people. There's entire parts that make no sense if you can't say, 'oh and there's a mystical being that will erupt out of the ground as a manifestation of a cornerstone of an enslaved people's deepest, darkest emotions given form' and instead have to imply that somehow we were being really careful for some mysterious reason and putting masks on people because it was rainy, and then we knocked over a statue and that was upsetting the landscape somehow, trust us?"

Thalstan has moved to the final section of hair now, working another dab of oil cream through the hair closest to her head. He doesn't massage it into the base of the hair at her scalp, instead stopping just below where the pins had been, smoothing it through and softening the hair.

"I don't think they'll want it to be a secret," Thalstan says, moving his fingers soothingly through her hair. "The time to declare it secret has long since passed, with all the newsletters and everyone coming in and out of the land. I don't think you've got to worry about that."

The nervous tapping on his leg subsides to something closer to a fidgety rubbing. "Oh, aye, that's probably true. I'm a bit of a worry-professional, though. Always training up my muscles for the next big lifting," she jokes, but also she honests. "Sometimes the newsletters have things that we can talk about amongst ourselves, but not outside the Company, though. Like with Ian/Anduin, I don't think the Stormwind people want that too far and wide, but I — I don't have a lot of people I'd be mentioning that to for no reason in particular. It's not like it comes up over groceries or anything.

"It's not like it's common to go around saying things like, 'I heard you had a great year for swamp grown squashes, and I'll take three, which is like that time I picked up a few crocolisk eyes to have a vision for chasing down the prince of Stormwind, Anduin, who is currently lost wandering around Pandaria, oh no, I let that slip.' …. unless… what if I did — maybe I don't… maybe I don't buy swamp grown squash this year — "

"Oranna, you'll be fine," Thalstan says, smoothing his hands through her hair one last time. "Look at me, see that I believe it. If you do let anything slip about Anduin, it'll probably be to somebody Cobalt or somebody in Ironforge, and none of those folk mean the lad any ill. I also don't see how it'd come up in conversation, really, unless you were talking with somebody already in the know."

Oranna turns in place to look at him, moving the mass of hair with her as she does, and it does immediately work to relax her already to face him, and hear the reminder out loud. Also, he can see that she's also resolved to avoid the swamp grown squash. You know, just in case. It's not like it was a favorite.

She pats once at her hair, notes that it's done with a little oh, and sets her bag off to the side, adjusting how she's sitting, already setting in motion how she'll lay out by the fire — there seems to be a degree of routine to this already, at least in generalities, as she picks up the length and arranges it in a bit of a loose coil, scooting towards the side closest to the fire.

"It's the thing I do whenever I know I'm not supposed to say a thing, sometimes it becomes the only thing I think about, and it feels like I'm wearing a sign on my face already, and then all my thoughts become don't say the thing about the thing! and I can't think around it, and it gets worse and worse as I go," she says as she settles in on one side, and then reaches out her hands to check his own still drying hair, and the towel around his shoulders, to fold in a way with him. "If I know it's not a thing I have to keep, I don't even think about it."

"It seems like it's an open secret at this point anyway," Thalstan says, moving closer to find a way to curl next to her without ruining all the hair effort on either of them. "So maybe don't think of it as a thing you've got to keep? Then if it comes up, you can carry on like it was no big deal, because it probably isn't. And he'll be back in Stormwind soon enough, I wager. Or he'll be well-guarded in any case, if he isn't already, and it'll be fine."

Oranna nods, with a touch of the worry line between her brows. "Aye, maybe." She doesn't fully believe it, but she does seem to hope it. And then, she is definitely thinking about something else, a thing she's tried often to not think too much about, and now she's thinking about how she's thinking about it.

As she moves a hand around his waist and lays down more fully on the blanket, staring deeper and deeper into his eyes, she says, not for the first time, "I am really bad at keeping secrets." Yeah, uh, he knows, Oranna. "Especially from people I care about, when I know that I know something they don't. And I know that I'll keep knowing it, and they don't know it. And that it'll keep coming up. Over and over."

"If there's a thing somebody else has trusted you to keep secret," Thalstan says carefully, looking into her eyes. "I don't need to know it. I trust you, and if it were anything that might hurt me, I know you'd handle it." He pauses. "I don't have a sha in me, do I?"

Oranna wasn't thinking that before but now she is. "What — no. I don't — no? I don't think so. I mean, if you do, I don't know about it," she says worriedly in haste, patting him over like maybe she could pat a sha out of him, and then getting a wee bit distracted in the patting if we're being honest. "No, it's not… I wouldn't keep that a secret — I don't think I'd even make it past a first glance at that sort of thing."

There's patting down and then there's stroking sections of deliberately crafted muscles and somewhere in there Oranna's passed from one of those to the other. It's definitely a very effective distraction at least from a brief rise of panic of a what if that subsides.

"No, it's nothing like that. It's a secret I found out because of a lot of reasons, and I can keep it not too terribly because it's a small thing, and I don't think about it a lot as a secret-secret so much as a bit of a side step of a detail of a thing and then once I say the right part, I can talk about the rest. Like knowing Lord Springblade goes by Tadget and Mayhem and Sharpgear," Oranna says, remembering that Thalstan's eyes are up here. And then she drops the secret.

"Niris is Elanor Steelbloom. That's how Elo got her to write the Cobalt Blade books. That's why I slip all the time on her name. And what's why we talked about romance novels and stories differently, and that's a secret I've been keeping all this time," she says in a whoosh. Whew. At last. It's out.

Thalstan blinks. Whatever he was expecting the secret to be, it was not that. Completely not even on the radar.

"…aye?" he says finally. "Reckon that makes sense, I figured Sir Ference and Steelbloom had some kinda professional connection. I'll keep quiet on it, then, as you've been. And not bring up Steelbloom in situations makes it hard to keep."

Oranna sags in relief. At last, the secret is out. At least with Thalstan.

"It's not such a terrible one, at least. And once I get the name in place, I can usually keep it up, but… sometimes, it comes up a certain way, and I have to talk around it, and I get sweaty." Possibly literally with Oranna. "And it's not like you'll tell people or that if it did get out it would do a harm, but she keeps it a secret for her own reasons, so. I try my best, and I've kept it pretty well for over four years."

That has to be some sort of Oranna record.

"Which is some sort of Oranna Record," Oranna adds.

Called it.

The release of the secret combined with the fire and Thalstan himself is transforming Oranna. He's seen it more than a few times the effect he has on her, like a radiator of calm, and the effect of that is changed as well — rather than stillness it's inspiring a sort of soft restlessness, as she starts to move closer and closer, thighs pressing upwards along his, her hands trailing over his shoulders, arms, and then his chest in ways that start generating a bit of a blush and a visible thought chain on Oranna's face that has only a tangential relationship to Steelbloom because of a character of her Cobalt Blade series and her usual genre of romance.

Thalstan sees this particular transformation, and it quietens any continuing discussion of secret-keeping for now. He raises his own hands to her waist, gently inviting her closer, as he leans forward for a kiss.

She recognizes the body language with an obvious thrill that speaks of how new it still is, only a day two, and with enough time to see that little thought that flits over her face as she takes in a glance of his own with the lighting over his handsome features and the full braided beard — how much he does look like he's a fantasy she's somehow snatched off a cover and convinced to be here by magic, and that this is a slow motion, I can't believe this is really happening, but it definitely is moment for her.

It does mean he closes most of the difference (on account of her staring dreamily at him), but she is an enthusiastic participant once engaged. There's definitely something stirring in the kiss, from her lips all the way down to her hips, a soft yearning, a pressing and a pulling that both desire closeness, in Oranna's unguarded but undemanding way.

It's in a breath of that kiss that Oranna, chest heaving, and lips still on his, and lashes fluttering half open, says, "Thalstan? I need to tell, and ask, you something."

"Another secret?" Thalstan asks, breathing heavily himself, his eyes closed.

"I don't think so? I'm probably sort of already saying it in other ways, but I promised you I'd not be ambiguous," she says, which already tells him some of it. She pulls away enough so he can see her face clearly. She's flushed, with that vulnerable earnestness of the day before, but this time, a confident sureness that wasn't there. "I think what I want is to touch you, all of you, right here, right now. I don't think that I'm ready to be touched, all of me touched, all of me showing. I — I think about it, and I get a bit nervous, a little anxious, and I know from experience, if I'm even a little bit, just thinking…trying to do, I'll freeze. Or worse. Panic." There is, even in talking about it, a brief touch of nerves that twitch around her cheeks, and then softens again, because she is calm, and there are better, good thoughts.

"But, when I think of touching you, I'm not nervous at all. I'm curious, and comfortable, and excited. I like the idea of seeing everything, and feeling everything. So, if that's something you'd want, if it'd be all right that it'd be a little one sided for now, tonight — not that I wouldn't be happy from it, too, or that I might not be able to…" A body wiggle that suggests something, with a bashful eye contact avoidance. "Myself, so if not fully together, at least…close together. What — what I'm trying to say is." She makes eye contact, fully, because this part is important. "I would really like to make love to you with what parts of me I can tonight."

Thalstan opens his eyes as she pulls back, and watches her expression with a touch of concern. Still, most of the rest of him is flushed and earnest in return, and his eyes gleam with desire. His hands are still on her waist, but he's been careful not to move them to more interesting places, places that might cause distress.

"I would love…" Thalstan says, his voice a little low and breathy. "I would love to make love with you tonight. With whatever parts of you can."

Oranna smiles, meltingly warm, as she wraps herself around him fully, and this time, when she tells him where he can put his hands, and how, it's not an accidental innuendo.