(2026-03-26) A Veiled Melancholy Walk In The Vale

Details

Author:	Athena
Summary:	As the Golden Lotus begin to establish their defensive war front, Lena makes the executive decision for her young, inexperienced warlock apprentice to go and rest up, to be ready to fight another day, and she and Second Lieutenant Baird escort her back to the Shrine with albatross fun facts and poetry. 4800~ words.
Rating:	T for Teen

Melancholy's recitation of the poem is steady, a practiced delivery of someone who often speaks poems aloud. Unlike Bun, however, it's possible that the warlock apprentice is not ready for establishing the defense of a new war front. The day has already been three times more combat than she's ever seen before — and being attacked with a loss of control — in her life, and the strain is starting to show. She's normally pale, but now she appears ghostly, and her hand not set on her focusing cane has a tremor to it, as do her lips set in a hard line.

And yet, she seems like she will carry on with the others so long as her teacher does, uncomplaining, and unwilling to beg off for special treatment, for better or worse.

The others are beginning to organize strike teams for the Golden Stair, when Lena glances over to her apprentice and pauses. Quietly, she tilts her head toward Shine, and says quietly, "I think I ought to see her back. I don't think she'll ask out, but… I don't want to burn her. No telling how long this war will take."

Shine turns his head, scanning the group for Melancholy. He nods at Lena. "Aye," he says low-voiced. "I'll meet ye at the village with the rest, when you're able?"

Baird, standing nearby with his rifle propped on his shoulder, regards Melancholy steadily. "I can walk back with you," he says, to Lena or Melancholy or both. "Catch up with Lieutenant Shine after."

"What?" Melancholy says, tearing her attention away from the Pandaren giving orders and the slight cacophony of various overlapping voices of the others organizing their various places, blinking several times at Baird through her black lace veil. She looks between him and Lena and Shine, visibly attempting to catch up on a conversation she hasn't heard most of.

"Mistfall," Lena agrees with Shine in a matching low voice, and she touches his arm briefly. "I'll find it."

Then Lena turns to Melancholy and Baird and raises her voice, putting on a friendly smile. "Aye, I was just saying I thought we ought to head back to the Shrine for the time being. Doesn't look like pushing the mogu out of the Vale is going to be a short thing, in the end, and there's plenty here to carry on the fight. Best we pace ourselves."

Baird nods mildly. He glances over at Shine, tips his chin up, and adjusts his grip on the rifle he's holding.

Shine's gaze drops to his hands. After a moment he looks up to meet Baird's eyes again and nods once. "Aye, pace ourselves," he echoes. "It's been a good day's work. A hard day's work. Ye get back to the Shrine for now and rest up."

"Aye, sir," agrees Baird, and turns back toward the two women. His cloudless stare is serene.

Melancholy glances among them and exhales a small laugh. "Oh, I see what's meant. You mean, pace me." She holds up a black lace gloved hand as if to forestall any attempt at a protest. "No, that's fair. I'm not quite on everyone else's here level, and if you think it's best, then I will obey the parameters of your judgement on my abilities, as agreed on with our apprenticeship. Truthfully, I'm exhausted," she admits blithely. "But I would keep going if needs must."

With that slightly shaking hand, she refreshes the soul stone on Estel, and pales even further, leaning on her focusing cane as more than just a magical conduit. "There. Shall we then?"

"I don't doubt but that you would," Lena says serenely, turning in the direction of the distant Shrine, and raising a hand in farewell to her husband. "Still, no need to. That's a thing you'll see in war. Sometimes a thing needs to be done, but it doesn't need to be done by you. We've done our part and the others will manage. When they're ready to drop, we'll be able to step back in, hold the line." She glances at Baird for confirmation.

"Yes ma'am," says Baird. "Like watches aboard." He addresses Melancholy. "Not meant to be patronizing, and not judging your abilities. Just your stamina. You've got to stretch to it, like a muscle over time. Don't think anyone here doubts you will."

"That's how I take it," Melancholy says genuinely, once more falling into step with Lena's lead. "It's why I chose an apprenticeship, rather than muddling forward on my own. I don't know these things already — neither the warlocking nor the warring — but I'm willing to learn and listen to what someone tells me is the proper way. If I wasn't, then I'd be working against my own decision to put my instruction in someone else's hands, wouldn't I?" She gives a red lipped smile. "When I know more, I can make my own decisions, but until I have that knowledge and experience, there's no point in pretending that I do."

Baird flashes that one-sided smile, white against tan. "Captain's going to like you," he says, and tucks his free hand in his pocket as he falls in with the two women. He ambles casually, but his gaze on the landscape around them is that weirdly unblinking focus, like he's seeing through things.

Lena smiles briefly at Baird's assessment, and then leads the way in the direction of the Shrine. At least there's no visible sign of mogu aggression to the east of them.

"This was, a bit, your first taste of war, I suppose," Lena says, musing. "It's a touch different from a simple fight, like up in the Kun-Lai Mountains. Was anything that happened unclear? I do expect that Zhao-Jin will continue a nuisance."

Melancholy's expression flashes with a white hot rage at the mention of Zhao-Jin, as her hands form into fists again. She doesn't manage to toss it off so easily, although she tries. "That was certainly not an expected event. Was I meant to do something that I didn't think to with that — horrid chaining? I couldn't think of a single thing to try in the moment. It was — " She breaks off, staring straight ahead with those angry tears forming up again as she blinks rapidly. She doesn't finish saying what it was.

"Yeah," says Baird. If the word 'yeah' can be sympathetic, it is. "You kept your head, though. Is the main thing."

"There's an ability…" Lena says. "A thing I could teach you, to break free when folk try to restrain you with magic. Maybe having that will help. Still, though, there are times it doesn't work, so keeping your head is always the main thing. If you can't break free, you observe, and you wait, and when you find an opening you act without hesitation."

Baird nods, with a flicked glance at Lena.

"I would like to learn that technique, if you please," Melancholy decides. "I don't wish to lose any more of my favorite skirts to these sorts of circumstances." Yes. It's the skirt that she's upset about. That's it. It's fashion, not sudden loss of agency over herself. She does seem to rally though, thinking about the skirt as the Problem.

"I have always had a particular fondness for this one," Melancholy continues. The skirt does seem nice, a blend of crepe and black velvet with a lace hem, which now has a tear in it on the front, dragging in the dirt. "I don't know what I'll do to fix it. I suppose I could ship it back home to the tailor, but who knows how long that will take. Or I suppose I could try to find someone here, if I could trust them with the stitching."

"It is a nice skirt," Baird agrees. "You don't sew?" The question is again that pure curiosity, no judgement: Siri, does Melancholy sew?

Melancholy shakes her head. "No. Not at this caliber at least. I did a little embroidery and bracelet bead thread weaving for a time, but it's never been necessary for me to learn more."

Baird nods amiably. "Never done anything with fabric like that myself."

"There's folk at Fallon House as do excellent tailoring," Lena suggests, casting an appreciative eye over her skirt. "Or Cressidha Aspenwood in Cobalt Company, which we've got connections to from my history and Shine's present. I've no real tailoring skill myself, either, just basic mending." Lena pauses, and then adds, "I have to say I'm not a stranger to ruining a dress, though my mishaps often seem to involve caves or water these days."

"Is Lady Cressidha here with Cobalt Company, do you know?" Melancholy asks. "I would easily entrust her with it, if she would take the job."

"I couldn't really say," Lena says apologetically, spreading her hands. "I know she's not with the squads and I've not seen her elsewhere. But still, I've likely not seen everyone here. Even if not, she's likely reachable in Stormwind, and her twin was here at the Golden Pagoda today. I can say as well that she's not one to be unfriendly on account of fel magic, though there's some parts of it as make her personally uneasy."

"Oh, was Lord Colson there?" Melancholy cranes her neck to look back at the others, a mostly futile endeavor with many of them already gone, and the distance. "He's a paladin, isn't he? I remember hearing about — " She really should be more focused on where she is going though; the backwards staring makes her step on the ruined hem, and she pitches forward with a gasp.

Baird's reflex is lightning-fast. He catches at Melancholy's arm with his free hand and, rather than yank her back upright, just plants his own feet to counterbalance her: a sailor's long familiarity with balance and counterbalance.

Melancholy is momentarily static, before she realizes she is not continuing to fall, and why, as she regains her footing awkwardly at first, on clearly shaking legs. "Mutter forking hunt," she… curses? She's got some color back in her face though — an embarrassed blush.

She doesn't meet Baird's eyes as she steadies. "Not you, obviously. Thank you. Oh, no." The latter is likely for the skirt. Her trip has worsened the hem tear, ripping more of the lace away.

"Cinnamon peach," Baird agrees mildly. "You okay?" He lets go of her arm and surveys the damaged hem. "It's still fixable, I'd guess." He glances at Lena as if for confirmation. Y/N, other skirt-wearer?

Melancholy presses a hand to the hollow of her throat, but nods with a weak laugh at his repetition of her minced oath. "I'm okay," she insists. She uses her free hand to lift the skirt off the ground to close to her knees, clenching it in a fist, revealing the black fishnet over the black tights that she wears with her black lace up boots. It's a theme.

If Baird has thoughts on the theme, they go unvoiced. He resumes scanning the landscape with that peculiar tranquil focus of his. "Have you ever seen an albatross?"

Lena raises an eyebrow at this widening of Melancholy's non-cursing vocabulary, and mouths mutter forking hunt, or possibly something similar and more familiar to a farmgirl. She eyes the skirt and nods to Baird — maybe less as an expert skirt-haver than a person with a high opinion of Cressidha's tailoring skills.

The final question catches her off-guard, and she blinks at Baird. "An albatross? I don't… think so. It sounds impressive enough I'd likely have noticed."

Melancholy focuses away from the skirt — and the cause of its current state of disrepair — with a delicate sniff that attempts to not draw attention to the lingering effects of angry tears. "No, I haven't either," Melancholy begins, and then frowns in thought. "Well, actually, no, wait — I can't say that for certain. I don't know what an albatross looks like, so it's fair to say that I might have, but I wouldn't know that I have. I don't know birds well enough to identify any except crows and ravens, for obvious reasons." Local Goth Girl commits to her bit, after all.

Baird nods. "You wouldn't have seen one, most likely, unless you were well out at sea. I'd have expected to see them up in Northrend, maybe" — this addressed to Lena — "but I don't believe we did. You'd know if you'd seen one. They're seabirds, related to petrels, but much bigger. They're white and black, really beautiful, and they have the widest wingspan of any bird. They can spread their wings and then just hold them static and glide for hours and hours on end. Some of them stay at sea for years at a time without touching land, especially when they're young."

"Where we were in Northrend…" Lena says, her own gaze going distant as well, "It wasn't quite right there. Fallon could explain it better. Up around Icecrown, it wasn't just wild and cold, there was something unhealthy in the place. Evil. Might not have been the right environment for a bird like that."

Baird nods agreement.

"Are they here in Pandaria?" Melancholy asks. "And does Pandaria feel anything like that to you, like Northrend did? I don't know that I would notice certain nuances of unhealthy land except that perhaps it would feel familiar — Duskwood is Duskwood, and it's what I know as normal."

"Well, they say there's something wrong with the land here. Doesn't feel like Northrend did, though. Northrend felt like you were being watched all the time." Baird glances back at Lena. "And there were the fogs."

He looks straight ahead again. "I haven't seen an albatross here, no. I was just reading about them. They can fly at speeds up to 65 knots." He pauses. "65 nautical miles per hour. 74 miles per hour."

"That's a lot of bicycles power," Melancholy says, converting further to speeds she understands. The climb uphill towards the Shrine is clearly wearing her further, but she is not paying as much attention to exhaustion because she's thinking about albatross.

"Faster than I can fly," Lena says dryly.

Melancholy laughs, a dark bell. And then pauses. "Wait, can you fly? Can I fly? Is that a warlock ability?"

Baird, not a warlock, looks at Lena with interest. Can she fly?

Lena waves a hand in dismissal, and laughs, a light girlish sound. "No, not unless we're on gryphons. Some demons can, though, so who knows? Maybe one day."

"Which I'm sure Mr. Carlay will vastly disapprove of until it's been studied carefully for a decade or so," Melancholy says blithely. "When you say albatross are bigger than petrels, how big is that? I don't know the size of a petrel to envision bigger. Are they like gryphons? Could I tame an albatross to glide on?"

"No, you couldn't ride on an albatross. Because they're airborne so much of the time — and gliders — they're not heavy-built. Just heavy for birds. They only weigh up to a maximum of like thirty pounds. Their bodies are about three feet long, but their wingspan is up to twelve feet." Baird makes a sort of emphatic sweeping gesture with his free hand, presumably inviting the viewer to imagine a twelve-foot wingspan.

Melancholy nods. Sure. "Also a number of bicycles then," she says. The universal measurement tool.

"Never ridden a bicycle," Baird says. He looks again at Lena. Maybe bicycles are also a warlock thing.

"Oh, I have mine with me. If you wanted to learn how to ride one," Melancholy offers. "I haven't been riding it as much. The dreadsteed is simply infinitely more portable and I wouldn't be bothered if Terrific was temporarily destroyed. It's a demon horse, after all. My bicycle is practically a member of the family."

Lena raises her hands with a slight shrug. "Don't think I ever have either."

"Yeah, I'd learn how," Baird says. A thing to learn!!!

"I'll stick with horses," Lena says with a small smile, as she watches Baird's reaction. "I prefer to ride a thing with a mind of its own, not likely to run into things from my poor guidance."

Melancholy gives Baird a smile wide enough to show her teeth, revealing the bit of a gap between her two front teeth.

She considers Lena's statement, still smiling. "Meanwhile, I prefer the bicycle for precisely the reason that it goes by my own judgement. I don't like arguing with an animal, or having it startle out from under me about something. If I am going to run into something, or cause an accident of harm, I would rather it by own fault, and myself the only one hurt." The words are not in that blithe tone, but deeply serious, a distant look in her face for a moment before she deliberately casts it off to pull back on the red lipped smile. "Well, learning how to ride a bicycle is interesting because once you learn, apparently you never forget how."

Baird is watching her steadily again, but he just nods. "I'll be honest," he says, "and don't tell the Captain" — that addressed specifically to Lena — "but I think I'm too much a city kid for horses. They're interesting, but I never really got all the fuss."

"Reckon I'm too much of a country kid for bicycles," Lena says with a grin, as they approach a pond on the right. "But your secret's safe with me, so long's you don't bring up my country background at fancy parties." Her gaze tracks over to the water, and she adds, "Have either of you talked to Lord Arric about his machines? If you'd really rather contraptions than creatures, he's got some kind of flying machine worked up."

Melancholy's brows go up in genuine interest. "No, I haven't, but I will be certain to the next time I see him. I expect I will, assuming it doesn't take another twenty five years for our paths to cross in our parallel sort of lives." A brief consideration to push against waiting for Fate. "Oh, I could always write to him, of course. I found the book he wanted about the troggs, the one I mentioned at the Lorewalker's story about the grummles."

"Haven't talked to him, but he visits the Captain a lot," says Baird. "I met some grummles."

Melancholy gives him a red lipped smile, tapping her cane in a bounce on the road. "Aren't they charming? Oh, how did the skull go over? Did it smell lucky to any of them?"

"Yeah, actually, a fellow called Nine Teeth smelled it right away when I showed up. He traded me a luckydo for it." Baird digs in his pocket and produces a flat gray stone a couple of inches in diameter, with a smooth impression worn in one side. He holds it out to show the women; the impression in the stone is almost exactly the size of his thumbprint, as though he'd worn it into the stone himself by rubbing. "It fits. He told me it's a worry stone. I told him I don't really have worries, and he said yeah, that's because I have the stone."

Melancholy laughs in delight, craning her neck to inspect the fit of the impression on the stone. "It really is a perfect serendipitous fit. It must be a luckydo of yours, fated to find its way to you somehow." She nods in agreement with the grummles.

"They have that way about them," Lena says with a nod. "A kind of merchant's knack, maybe? Knowing what things might fit with who. They're good friends to have made, I think. Might be we'll need their trails and their luck in the days ahead."

Lena shields her eyes and looks toward the approaching structure of the Shrine. "I'd keep the stone if I were you. Seems to be doing its job."

"Oh, yeah, I will." Baird sounds a little startled, like it hadn't occurred to him he might not keep it. He tucks it back into his pocket and addresses Melancholy. "That poem — you said Lord Tennyson?"

"Hm? Oh, oh yes, 'The War,'" Melancholy says, pulling her attention from the sight of the Shrine of the Stars. She seems to be rallying as they approach the potential for sitting down and snacks, and the reminder of poetry sets her on familiar, well treaded ground. "It's not particularly illustrative or inventive. It repeats the same few simple lines at every stanza, for example — which made it easy to memorize the parts more by accident than deliberate choice for me — but it has a certain evocativeness for what it speaks to emotionally, and it knows what it is attempting to convey of a concept of war from the perspective of footmen soldiers."

Baird nods. "Grimlo- your brother, he's got a Tennyson book, but that one wasn't in it. 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'"

Melancholy nods with a smile for her brother. "'Though much is taken, much abides; and tho / We are not now that strength which in old days / Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; / One equal temper of heroic hearts, / Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,'" she recites.

"That one I memorized on purpose," Melancholy informs them. "That's one of his older ones, in the second volume. 'The War' came much later, and when he was in a different frame of mind entirely after witnessing so much of war and death, which seemed to crush his poetic spirit." There's a brief pause of distant thought at that, before she flicks it off and continues on determinedly, "I started with 'In Memoriam A.H.H.,' which has 2,916 lines divided into 133 cantos. It's a tragic elegiac narrative poem, and clearly written with a great deal of personal feeling, precisely as poetry is meant to be written."

"Twenty-nine hundred sixteen lines in memoriam," Lena says, turning slightly to Melancholy with a touch of surprise. "At least wherever A.H.H.'s spirit is, they'll know they're well-remembered. But so you made a goal to memorize the hundreds of poem? I had thought maybe it was a side-effect from the librarian training. How did you choose which ones, then? The ones with the most personal feeling?"

Melancholy blinks back in surprise, and laughs. "Oh, no, no, no. When I was in training as a librarian was when I had the least amount of time to read for pleasure. The vast majority of my time was spent in learning the system with almost a hundred numerical codes with thousands and thousands of possible combinations of specifics. I was lucky if I got in a limerick at a glance, let alone an elegy," Melancholy explains.

"I started memorizing poems when I was a young child. It's how I learned how to read. I would make anyone who I could convince to do so read me my favorite poems over and over and over, until I had the whole thing memorized, and then I would put the letters to the sounds of words I knew, and eventually I unlocked the words entirely for myself.

"I choose them by whichever ones speak to me most, on the whole, and my particular tastes at the moment, which change every so often. Sometimes I memorize parts of others by accident, or because it was simply easy to remember. And then they come to me again when I experience the feeling they evoked, or the shape of the words."

Baird nods seriously. "Do you have a favorite? Or favorites?"

"Yes — to both," Melancholy says. "Some of my favorites are — oh, how to explain it precisely?" She taps her cane idly as she walks in thought. "They were once my favorite because at the moment, they spoke to me, or I felt they were exemplary models of a poetic experience. But, then I read more, and I grew up, and they didn't change, but I did. Yet, even with seeing their flaws now, or I no longer feel what they attempt to embody, I remember loving them, and so in a way I still do.

"'Changed? Yes, I will confess it — I have changed. / I do not love you in the old fond way / I am your friend still — time has not estranged / One kindly feeling of that vanished day,'" Melancholy recites, because there's a poem for everything. She stares off distantly at the Shrine. "As for now, I have a favorite that I would not have chosen as such just two years ago."

"What is it?" Baird prompts, because he will never leave a question hanging when it's right there to be asked.

Melancholy hesitates enough that she temporarily stops walking, and there's a touch of color in her pale cheeks. "It's rather personal, that question," she states. But she continues. "'Memory' by Siegfriend Sassoon." She takes a breath, and recites,

"When I was young my heart and head were light,
And I was gay and feckless as a colt
Out in the fields, with morning in the may,
Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom.
O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free
And all the paths led on from hawthorn-time
Across the caroling meadows into June.

"But now my heart is heavy-laden. I sit
Burning my dreams away beside the fire:
For death has made me wise and bitter and strong;
And I am rich in all that I have lost.
O starshine on the fields of long-ago,
Bring me the darkness and the nightingale;
Dim wealds of vanished summer, peace of home,
And silence; and the faces of my friends."

Baird is silent for a while, though he continues to watch Melancholy. At last he says, "That's very beautiful. I'm sorry."

Lena walks in silence during the poem recitations, but she watches Melancholy and Baird both, with something of a mix of curiosity and concern. Whatever she reads from them, she doesn't say.

"Rich in all that I have lost," Lena repeats instead, turning towards the approaching shrine. "I like that way of putting it. Maybe I ought to look more into poetry myself, too."

Melancholy casts off her melancholia deliberately, pulling on a red lipped smile. "Maybe there's poems about a 'Lena.' I went through an entire period of 'melancholy' poems myself." She brushes her focusing cane against her veil, as she picks up the pace for the Shrine's shadows. "'Aye, in the very temple of Delight / Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, / Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue / Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; / His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might, / And be among her cloudy trophies hung.'"

"'Veil'd Melancholy,'" says Baird, and smiles crookedly. "I was going to say that."

Melancholy laughs with a dark delight. "I, of course, didn't quite read it properly when I was younger. I also went through a phase of declaring grapes my favorite fruit, until I realized it's not meant to be literal. And then I — " She halts mid thought, and there's that oddly melancholy expression on her face again before she shakes her head. Dismissing whatever that was going to be.

"We see things different, when we look from different angles," Lena nods. She stops at the base of the Shrine, looking up at it, and then at the other two. "If you're good here, reckon me and Baird'll head back to Mistfall to meet up with Shine, see how things lay there. It'll be time for us all to get back on the field soon enough."

Baird nods and falls back a half-step to stand beside Lena. "See you later, Melancholy."

Melancholy rallies as she takes quicker steps until she's on the official start of the Shrine, relaxing like a baseball player crossing home base — only to tense a second after, like someone who reminded herself that there is no such place as safe. She turns neatly on a heel to face the other two, red lipped smile fixed into place.

"Yes, I'm good here. I have all my notes I should write up from what I learned today," she says. "I'll speak to you later about that technique, and how to train for it, Lena. And I'll check with you later about learning how to ride a bicycle, Just Baird. I can teach you — oh, what we should call the 'Albatross Maneuver' for maximizing getting around for long distances. Ta-ta." She taps her cane twice in lieu of a hand to wave, the other still clutching her skirt in a tight, slightly shaking fist, before starting up the stairs towards rest and snacks.

"'Ta-ta,'" Baird repeats thoughtfully under his breath.

Lena smiles after her for a moment, before she tilts her head, gesturing back towards the road. "She's a way about her. Reckon this'll be her training in combat, the fight here with the mogu. Hope we can push them out sooner, rather than later. Any case, it's time we got back to it." Turning away from the Shrine, she flexes her fingers. "We'll make the fleet proud."