"What is your name?"
"Arcanist Aranya Ver'Sarn," replied the blood elf with a courteous bow of her head.
Two of the nightborne snapped their heads to look at each other. One echoed in incredulity, "Ver'Sarn?" Another exclaimed, "Surely not?" All of them looked amazed.
Aranya shrewdly looked from one to the next, her fel-lit eyes narrowed, watching their faces, observing their motions, but saying nothing.
This introduction with Lady Ly'leth Lunastre, the noble insider of the shal'dorei resistance, had been going along well enough. The shal'dorei had already come to know of the fate of the other Highborne - the ones who had not been in Suramar at the time of the Sundering - of their banishment to the east by the other kaldorei, and of how they had changed over the years by life in the sun, and the power of the Sunwell. They knew now of the common heritage that the shal'dorei and recently-arrived sin'dorei people shared.
This reaction to hearing her say who she was, however…
"You know of my family's name," observed Aranya.
One of them stopped sharing unsettled glances with the others and turned his eyes back to her. "We do," he said. "There is one among the people of Suramar with the same name: Lady Astra Ver'Sarn."
Something exploded to life in Aranya.
A feeling that she hadn't felt anything similar to since the day she re-united with her father in Northrend, after a handful of years since the Scourge attacked Quel'thalas, and finally knowing that he was alive and whole.
"I am the heir and descendant of Thiodron Ver'Sarn, last Highborne lord of his name," declared Aranya, composed despite wild flutters in her stomach. Thiodron, first of her family in Quel'thalas, six generations before her. That was as far back as she knew her family's history, nothing had ever been told to her of who came before him. "What is he to her?"
"Thiodron was her son."
They took their sweet time.
The more Aranya asked about Astra Ver'Sarn, the more that she heard the shal'dorei rebels tell her, the more impatient she got. Nothing was said of where she lived or how to find her, or even what her role was in Suramar society. Plenty was said of her taste for music, her gift for magic, and her bitter parting of ways with her son Thiodron in the War of the Ancients, when he chose sacrifice for good over pacifism and blind loyalty.
Astra had been a fence-sitter, thousands of years ago.
It was easier for her to just go along with it and let Azshara do as she pleased, whether Astra believed it was right or not. Nothing had changed, it seemed, because she took the same position now with Elisande.
One task after another the nightborne asked of Aranya, all the while telling her, "Soon. Soon we'll take you to her." It made Aranya feel like she was having to buy her right to see Astra, her own ancestor, her blood, and it made her impatience smolder all the more.
Until at last…
"The new moon," said Ly'leth. "Be ready at my estate. Do not reveal your true self until I tell you it is the right moment."
Aranya wanted to scream.
One look at the nightborne noble lady, and she knew - she knew - this was no trick, no dream, no wild hope. This was her minn'shan.** This woman had the same shape of eyes as she had, as her father had! She had the same lopsided smile that Aranya got - it must have been a trait that skipped one or two generations along the way. She carried herself tall and confidently, but with a certain quietness of spirit that contrasted like the glow of the moon to Aranya's inner sunfire.
It was so hard to contain herself and not stare. To not just rush the noblewoman and embrace her. To say, "I found you."
Introductions, tea, pleasantries, gossip. It was no different than any night Aranya had ever spent in some sitting room with her mother and a pack of aristocrats. Ly'leth was tactfully subtle, very gradually directing the conversation inch by inch towards the politics of recent times. Talking of Elisande's alliance with the Legion, her restriction of arcwine and the resulting exile of the withering, and the new "fashionable" view of fel.
Aranya felt nothing but sheer disgust as Astra simply kept responding to the conversation topics with, "The Grand Magistrix is doing what she believes is best."
"As Queen Azshara did, all those years ago, I'm sure," said the disguised sin'dorei darkly, unable to stand it anymore. "And of course we all know what befell Suramar - and the world - for that."
Astra's silver eyes took on a frosty look, stunned. After a moment, she began to put down her cup and excuse herself for the evening, clearly uncomfortable.
"You lost much in the War of the Ancients, didn't you, Astra?" Ly'leth asked. A rhetorical question, really, but it stopped the other shal'dorei woman in her tracks. "Your son… your family."
The frosty air that seemed to cling to the hereto calm and serene Lady Ver'Sarn intensified. "How dare you speak of him like this, Ly'leth," she hissed.
Lady Lunastre pressed on, "What do you know of the outsiders called the sin'dorei?"
"What?" Astra was confused, bewildered by the sudden seeming change of subject.
"The sin'dorei," said Ly'leth. "You must have heard of them and how they came to this land within the floating city by now. What more have you heard, what do you know of them?"
Astra only struggled to form words out of her derailed thoughts, completely not understanding what Ly'leth was getting at.
"What if I told you that you could have back what you lost? A family?" Ly'leth asked. "What if I told you that the shared Highborne heritage of the shal'dorei and sin'dorei was-"
Astra interrupted her, "If this is some twisted argument to get me to side with the resistance and the outsiders, to oppose Elisande and stick my neck over her chopping block-"
"It's not, Astra," Ly'leth cut her off. "I swear by the moon and stars, what I have brought you here for tonight is only for you." A tense silence filled the room for a minute, after which Lady Lunastre nodded to Aranya. "I'll leave you two alone for a bit," she said, and took her leave.
Aranya waited until Astra's eyes were pinned on her, expectant, wanting an explanation. The Thalassian sorceress stood up from her seat, and as she did so, the disguise that masked her as one of the nightborne fell away to reveal her true appearance. She remained silent as the shal'dorei woman took it all in: Aranya's upright-pointed ears, her light, sun-touched skin and midnight dark hair, directly in contrast with Astra's own dusky features and moon-white tresses. The younger elf couldn't quite think of what to say, and so smiled nervously, hoping that Astra's alarm would not be lasting.
The piercing frostiness of the nightborne lady's silver gaze did not thaw. "Who are you, then?" Astra demanded. "Why are you here?"
So many things that Aranya wanted to say all at once.
The dark-haired elf took off her signet ring; a blood-drop-shaped garnet on a golden band, flanked by wings and crowned with a star. She held it out in her open palm towards Astra. "Recognize anything about this?"
The nightborne scoffed, "This crest has no significance to me."
"No, but it did to him," said Aranya. "He made it, he enchanted it. Just take it. You'll see."
Dusky fingertips whispered briefly along the skin of the outstretched white-gold palm, taking the ring that was offered. A frown of concentration came over Astra's face, and the ring began to glow in her hand.
She was probing it, examining it by magic. Finding out for herself whose hand had wrought the ring, whose magic was woven into it. Sorrow began to painted itself on her beautiful, night-touched features, her silver eyes misting, as she recognized the energy signature of the one most dear to her heart.
This was Thiodron's ring. This had been made by her son.
"How did you come by this?" Astra whispered. "My son is-"
"Dead, yes," said Aranya. "But before he died, he lived a long, good, and worthwhile life. He helped to found and defend a kingdom. He was part of the beginning of our ships and trade. He had sons, and grandsons, generations to succeed him." The sin'dorei swallowed, trying to keep her voice clear and level around her emotions. "Including the one you see now."
Astra could only stare in silence for too many long seconds that stretched into eternal minutes, it seemed to Aranya. Her silvery head began to shake ever-so-slightly. She was in denial. How could any of it be true?
Aranya stretched out her hand to the other woman again. "See for yourself," she implored. "See the truth, in my blood." When their hands touched again, the sin'dorei felt the thrum of magic creeping into her veins, reaching into her, seeking something. She watched Astra's face as whatever that something was was found, and she saw the amazement, the denial, and the hope that all warred within the noblewoman's soul.
The rumors were true. The sin'dorei were the descendants of the Highborne, and their coming to these broken ancestral lands had brought distant blood together again. "You… You're…" Astra was losing a battle with the tears that formed in her eyes.
"Minn'shan," whispered Aranya, tentatively, and Astra broke. Her dusky hands came up gently to either side of the younger elf's head, running down her black hair to her slender phoenix-armored shoulders. She gazed searchingly at every little detail about the sun-kissed woman before her, looking at the familiar shape of her eyes, the slant of her whiskery eyebrows, her lopsided smile, even her nose, chin, and jaw. Intently seeking out every sign of her bloodline, every resemblance manifested in this exotic elf from the outside world.
Minn'shan. How many millennia had gone by that she felt robbed of the chance to ever be called that?
"Listen," urged Aranya in a whisper. "It has been many weeks since I was told of you. For a long time, I've assisted the resistance and thwarted the Burning Legion, and while I would do this with or without you, I have my suspicions about why they took so long in letting me see you."
Astra frowned.
"Ly'leth may try to dangle me before you, try to use me to get you to make a decision about which side you're really on, but I won't have it," said Aranya. "You're my blood, and if you'll allow me, I want to know you, to be the family that you lost returned to you." Astra's hands slowly came away. "Make no mistake, I am an outsider, and you will have to make that decision one day, but not like this."
Astra regarded her newfound kin in silence, and then contemplated the signet ring crafted by her son in her hand. "What does it all mean, the design of this crest?" She asked.
"Blood, wings, and a star," replied Aranya. "It has always signified how no freedom, no glory, nothing worth having, is without cost."
Astra seemed to consider the words awhile.
"May we see each other again after this?" Aranya asked, tentatively. "Not so soon, it wouldn't be safe, but sometime? I can come in disguise. No one will know."
Silver eyes flicked up from the glimmering ring to catch the gaze of smoldering fel green. "Yes," answered Astra. "My home is along the Promenade."
Originally posted to tumblr in two parts.
Bloodlines: It Begins
Bloodlines: Face to Face
**"Minn'da" means "mother," but since "shan" means "honored" in the old kaldorei language, I figured "minn'shan" could mean "grandmother" and any generation preceding it, like how Astra is Aranya's great-great-great-great-grandmother. Strictly a linguistic headcanon of mine, not official.