We sit on the front porch of the old villa I fixed up with the Hearthglen family, the authentic Kaldorei wind chimes my sort-of-adoptive sister and brother had imported from the House of Edune all those years ago. When I notice you looking at it, I speak.
"It's one of their more touching stories," I begin to explain to you. "That's the one I'm finishing up currently. It's why I wanted to wait until everyone else was out to settle down here, actually; I'd be honored of you would proofread it with me. You know, I read out loud, you comment or review at the spots where anything catches your eye as exceptionally well-written. Or in need of improvement, of course."
The cool breeze catches my hair and yours as we rock in our chairs on the dark violet wooden veranda, and from the ledge the property is situated on, we can see the ocean waves slowly cresting southward on the beach surrounding the bustling port city of Ratchet. The wind chimes sing beautifully in the wind, their sound enhanced not by arcane magic or strictly druidic power, but something else both magical and natural. I straighten out my blouse - you remember how I detest dresses despite you suggesting I would look good in that light green outfit you saw the other day - and the two of us enjoy the orange sun over the sea. I'm wearing simple sunglasses rather than the robotic gnomish goggles you seem to get a kick out of, and we can both tell that it's just after noon even without the mechanical clock you were eyeing inside the sitting room of the villa. Where would we be without the gnomes?
"It isn't that many pages," I explain as I pass the first manuscript over to you. The cover of the journal is light green just like the dress you took from the rack and held against my form yesterday, and I notice the smirk on your face when you rub you palm across the smooth surface. "I didn't count the pages yet, but it isn't a novel or anything."
The soft grass sways in the wind like a gilded sea, signaling that we're in the Barrens - still in Kalimdor, halfway between the home territories of the two people I share the villa with. You remember the discussion we had the other day when I showed you the veritable forest we have out back - a lush combination of both the temperate pines of Nightsong Forest and the tropical ferns of the Echo Isles. You have a good view of it from the guest's room you're staying in, and locals often visit to pick out choicer plants for their personal gardens - one of the main sources of income for the family now and another benefit of owning the only tillable land on the rocky outcropping overlooking the bay of Ratchet.
"The three of us lived in that place, down among the rest of the townhouses on the northside," I mention while pointing to a winding, ascending road lined with houses with red shingles on the roofs. "We didn't have much in the beginning, but we made do. That's when I started writing the story of my best friend."
You flip through the pages of the journal, noticing that the handwriting glows with the same runes found on the wind chimes. The presence of two more journals of the same color and dimensions reminds you of some of the book-copying methods of my people, how we can write in one book and have the manuscript copied into other blank books effortlessly. It seems like such an ingenious means of preserving the written word.
A ship docks at one of the several new piers in Ratchet, and a troop of gnolls led by an arakkoa from Outland begin unloading spools of what looks like steel cables. It reminds you of one of my favorite points about Ratchet I mentioned during our late night discussions over the fire in the front yard here surrounded with high stone walls. Whatever you need, whatever you want, whoever you want to see, you can find it in a port city like Ratchet - and without all the filth and crime you'd get in Booty Bay.
As you look up at me - and I am always both stunned and flattered by your patience - I take the cue to explain my aim.
"Cecilia Hearthglen, my best friend in the whole wide world, married Khujand - a troll, by the way. Yeah, a night elf married to a jungle troll. It isn't so strange anymore, apparently, and they even met others like them. This specific story," I say as I tap the journal in your hands with my index finger, "is of their last adventure. It's the story of how they retired from fighting, left behind their former lives and truly embraced their shared civilian life with each other."
I refill your glass of lemonade as I speak, still amazed at your attention span. I notice you tracing the wooden planks beaten into the soil one after the other, forming a path from the front gate of the little wall of the front yard off to the right and down the hill leading by the three other small hacienda-style villas overlooking the north edge of Ratchet. The Hearthglen residence - for lack of a better term that includes Rainsong, my family name, since they include me in their family - is the last on the end. You can see a good amount of land on all sides and the otherworldly combination of temperate and tropical has spilled out to occupy land large enough to provide a measure of privacy but small enough such that potential developers would have no use for it.
We both sip our lemonade for a moment before setting the glasses down on the tiny wooden table between our chairs. The breeze has tapered off and we enjoy the sound of the ocean and the busy docks below before continuing.
"Cecilia is twelve-thousand years old, by the way," I chortle in that way you always say infects you. "She lived on the banks of the first Well of Eternity just after our people had discovered arcane magic, and knew a world much more primitive than this both culturally and technologically. Still, even before our people were granted immortality the Well extended our lifespans and Cecilia was already more than two millennia old by the time the War of the Ancients broke out. That, in and of itself, includes a ton of stories I first began writing - she remembers that time better than much of the Long Vigil, but still…two thousand years is a long time, even for an elf. Images are incomplete as bits and pieces fall away. I can tell you from experience - I'm just over a thousand years old myself. I never knew what it was like to truly be alive until after the Battle of Mount Hyjal, and I remember the past decade and a half or so far better than even the decade right before it."
I frown for a moment and you know what's coming. You've complemented me numerous times and truly, you have already convinced me that my efforts are appreciated and my pace of writing has been fast enough, but my frustration with my best friend's passive attitude toward her own wisdom and experience always shows through.
"It's not fair, you know. Cecilia has seen so much. She saw two invasions of our planet by the Burning Legion. She grew up at the beginning of literacy, astronomy, math, aqueducts, cities…real high civilization and culture. The troll empires were there, but even Khujand concedes that they were a level below what our people built. Cecilia saw the world ripped apart twice, saw the Silithids expand twice, and was alive for invasions from the Dark Portal twice. She saw night elven society transition from a patriarchal, aristocrstic, urban society to a matriarchal, militaristic, theocratic forest-dwelling society and was one of our fine, strong women who survived the transition.
"She knew a world without druidic arts, and she grew up as a youth in Suramar. She knew Tyrande Whisperwind, Malfurion Stormrage, Maiev Shadowsong and her brother Jarod, Shandris Feathermoon, Illidan the Betrayer…they were kids together in that city. Younglings. She was there when Cenarius taught our menfolk how to become one with nature just as our womenfolk had become one with the night, and she was there when the dragon aspects blessed Nordrassil and charged our women with protecting the planet from invasion and our men with managing the balance. She was there when our people regrouped at the base of Mount Hyjal and the Sisterhood of Elune assigned everyone to posts throughout northern Kalimdor in the most organized way possible. She said goodbye to her father and uncle when all the men entered the Emerald Dream and for ten thousand years, she did the same thing day in day out in Serenity Grove as her mother, sister and friends helped her watch over the forests during the lonely, monotonous Long Vigil. Every day melded with the next as experiences and even individuals became indistinguishable from one another, but regardless, there is so much knowledge to be shared there…
"And yet, she doesn't feel the need to share."
You reach over and give my hand a squeeze when you see the melancholy look on my face. Despite my usually standoffish, loudmouthed nature, I drop the defense mechanism and look you in the eye at the same time you sense my sad wistfulness. I even let you hold my hand for a minute before finishing what I want to say.
"It still boggles my mind. I understand that humility is in her nature, but there's a limit; she has so, so much to share with the world. Yet once the two of them left the craft of war for good, they both became so domesticated - even her troll of a husband. Cecilia always says it's enough that her close friends and family know; she truly is the pillar of the household and every person she meets holds this reverence for her. You can see it in the way she moves, the way she is sometimes lost deep in thought, the way she speaks so carefully even when her time - indeed the time of all Kaldorei born before immortality - is so limited.
"Well, I don't accept that. Since I left adventuring with them, I discovered my passion for writing. I haven't yet jotted down her stories from her life prior to her first meeting with her husband - Khujand busted her out of a jail where he was the jailer - so I consider this like practice, more than anything."
You flip back to the beginning of the book and spy the table of contents I painstakingly drew up.
Introduction (three chapters)
1. Prologue (what we're reading right now!)
2. Two Letters (K, C)
3. Let's Go! (I, C)
His Arc (eleven chapters)
4. Welcome to Durotar (C)
5. Into the Trolls' Den (C)
6. Razor Hill Recouperation (C)
7. Mama, Let My Heart Go (K, C)
8. Target Practice (K, C)
9. Assistance Withheld (C)
10. Ambush! (C, K)
11. Hello, My Dear Friend (K)
12. Assistance Granted (C)
13. Drug Bust (K, C)
14. Identity Crisis (K, C)
First Intermission (three chapters)
15. Two Hearts Restored (K, C)
16. Home Invasion (I)
17. Highway Robbery (K, C)
Her Arc (fifteen chapters)
18. Welcome to Ashenvale (K)
19. Losing My Religion (C)
20. Gimme Shelter (C)
21. Showdown with Sodor (C)
22. Sojourn to Serenity (K, C, K)
23. Meeting with Maya (C, K)
24. The House of Edune (C, K)
25. Reunion (C)
26. Don't Make a Scene (K)
27. Good Homecoming (C)
28. Forgive to Understand (C)
29. Party Like It's -1999 (C, K, C)
30. Are We Old? (C)
31. Release Me (C)
32. You Have a Home (C)
Second Intermission (three chapters)
33. Mended Again (C)
34. Soon (?)
35. Tally Ho (I)
Their Arc (seven chapters)
36. One Last Retreat (C)
37. You Aren't Alone (K)
38. What Has Been Written (C)
39. All Is Lost (C)
40. Vengeance (C)
41. Super Smash Sisters (C)
42. It Starts With One Step (C, K)
Conclusion (three chapters)
43. Let's Go Again! (C, K)
44. The Invitation (K, C)
45. Epilogue (what we'll read when we're finished)
"I like people to know what they're in for before they commit to reading," I add as I tap both the table of contents and your index finger with my own. "It goes without saying, of course, that the craft of war - Warcraft, as some call it - is the property of a certain consortium called 'Blizzard' with which I have no connection. I can only lay claim to the characters and plots within, minus the night elf notables Cecilia grew up with in Suramar - as well as the ancient highborn city itself – as well as the jungle troll notables Khujand grew up with."
Off in the distance, we can still see two trained sprite darters - another source of income for the household, though not just any stranger off the street is granted the right to buy - frolicking in the yard. They're specially trained to ward off magic users, and aside from the two of us, they're the only other beings present for now. We'll have quite a bit of time here, you and me.
"The story arcs don't necessarily correspond to the perspective, by the way," I make sure to mention. "I switch it around a bit - the next chapter is from his perspective, the third is from hers. Then within his arc about half the narrative is from her perspective, then back in her arc a good number of scenes are from his perspective. Don't worry - the perspective will be clear either way, but I like to switch it up."
I shoot you a sly grin as I lean a wee bit closer. "I even throw in a few chapters from my own perspective. Hey, I'm the author - it's my right, isn't it?"
You grin right back as you finish up your glass, winning the lemonade race for the third time in the past few days.
"I promise you, the Hearthglens and all the other readers out there that one day, more stories will be told. Stories of the Well of Eternity, the misery of the Sundering, the harsh transition to a female-led society with no support, the monotony of the Vigil. Stories about Stranglethorn Vale, Darkspear Isle and Sen'jin Village, at least what little I was able to squeeze out from Khujand – there's a slight bit of age disparity between wife and husband, and thus a disparity in the number of stories they both yield. And I will tell you the stories of all the important characters who crossed paths with my super best friends, their family members, and even more that I can't remember now. I will write until Cecilia, Khujand and their family finally run out of stories - hey, don't laugh! Come on, support me here!
"I will write until their entire long, amazing, inspiring journey through life is published for all fans of fiction to read."
I take another sip of lemonade as I feel I have rambled enough. It's time to let the written words speak for themselves.
"For now, though, my first longer story will have to suffice - how a night elf sentinel settled down with the jungle troll shadow hunter she loved, and how they turned their backs on all the conflict to lead a normal life. I sincerely hope you enjoy, and that you comment along the way."