SPOILERS FOR STORMRAGE SPOILERS FOR STORMRAGE SPOILERS FOR STORMRAGE
The Ninth Life
He is younger than the night elves Maiev came to know during her years as a priestess—a bit over nine-thousand years old. (1)
She curls her lip; Fandral is nothing more than a damp kitten suckling on a dead mother's pink belly, the milk supply dried hours before.
Why does Moonglade have to be so damn green?
Why is it that Maiev is always stuck dealing with druids?
These prickly, insatiable druids with their ongoing claims of dominance, burly frames, unintelligible yammering, unrelieved tension taut in their rippling, protruding muscles as they shout and demand.
Shadowsong prays to Elune that nobody ever hears that last part.
A traitor.
(Not that Maiev could blame an elf for poisoning Furion, no matter how atrocious the act or the intent.)
Why is she here?
He resides in a house of typical night elf infastructures—of curves, purples, and lighter purples.
Maiev once hoped to die, and she decided she no longer cared about the intricacies. Perhaps she will collapse in ogre dung or she will cradle a knife against her breast—bound by duty—with the hopes of plunging it into her heart, snapping bones and bursting her heart in a dramatic and fitting death.
Yes, Maiev is a tad theatrical, she supposes. Maybe even a little insane, really. After years of straggling forth and forth and forth against demons in a ruined land . . .in her mind she deserves every right to be insane.
Pretentious, sure, but at least she isn't a traitor.
Poisonous green eyes glare in the dim room, unwavering, causing more of a start in the former archdruid.
Though Fandral supposes he shouldn't complain.
It's better than human company, after all.
They don't speak much; after all, what's to say? What glories can they revel in? There's no room for small talk, such as: I sat on my sad, purple ass all day brooding and festering in my self-loathing or I drank more liquor than a dwarf because there's nothing better for me to accomplish.
But the man lapses, sometimes, babbling about how his dear wife just died and left him with a motherless, screaming bundle of blood and amniotic fluid that Fandral couldn't hope to care for; he's not the caring type.
He weeps innumerable, pitiful tears, and Maiev finds herself—her ol' stony self—almost ashamed to stare and garner the bitter satisfaction that at least she isn't Fandral Staghelm.
Almost.
Unlike him, she's freed of her chains. No purpose.
Well, perhaps they're not as different as she cares to admit.
A guard jokes that the great Shadowsong could be decent as the nagging wife type. Since when did they let trolls inside of here?
Fandral sees none of it.
Twitching lips, endless cries of sorrow and dread; it's kind of like having a soulmate, together in a confined space for stretches of time. Then, you bear no choice but to stare at a person's weaknesses until it blinds.
Or binds, whichever.
Staghelm retains little desire to leave the confines of his secluded, well-guarded home that peers over stretches and stretches of demure forest and brush.
A traitor.
The former warden should hate him.
Maiev Shadowsong only visits because she has nothing better to do, really.
Author's Note: Night elves are too overdone and too wangsty and too pretty, like vampires, but I love the frustrated ones like . . . Fandral and Maiev. Yup, that's it. Illidan could fit in too if he didn't derail into personality-devoid raid bait.
(1): I know, I know.