Katarinea Startender never quite was a normal night elf; or, at least, what was normal among that race. For humans, it was quite odd to shape wood while it was still growing, or speak to what appeared to be raging animals, but for the kal'dorei, it was merely another part of the day. But even for a night elf, she was odd. The first sign she was strange came when she was barely fifty years old and convinced her aunt's nightsaber to take her for a ride. Most elves could do similar things, but being able to do it so young was abnormal.
The second indication was something that happened not too long after, and this incident definitely alarmed her parents. Lornaren, her father, traveled far in search of new herbs that they might use to better serve the people, and Sirsaeya, her mother, tended the grounds of their farms, along with many other night elves that worked for them. There was a certain way to do things - much of what they grew required special conditions. So they would treat the soil and its surroundings to take on the characteristics they needed it to - druids came in handy, even for farmers! - and grew whatever was meant to grow there. Then the dirt would lay fallow for a little while (only forty or fifty years), and then they would repeat the cycle. So it wasn't at all amiss when Sirsaeya took young Katarinea to a far field shortly before her 327th birthday and let the small elf watch her tend the land.
Sirsaeya went about her business, testing the land to see if it had lain fallow for too long, or not long enough. It was with a sigh she dropped to her knees, one brow lifting as she pressed her fingertips to the ground and shook her head. A quiet murmur touched the air, and she mumbled to herself about how the land had become hard as she began to stand. Her ascent halted abruptly, however, when her ears flickered back towards where she had left Katarinea, and caught the sound of sobs. She spun around and bounded gracefully back towards her daughter, senses on full alert. Was there some sort of animal? Had she hurt herself?
She arrived back at the outcropping of rock where the tiny elf had been left, and what she saw did nothing so much as confuse her. Katarinea was sprawled across the ground, sobbing and scratching at the earth she kneeled upon, pulling up clumps of dirt and throwing them behind her haphazardly. Sirsaeya blinked, stunned, and then dropped to her knees again beside her distraught child. "Kitten, what is it? Are you hurt?" Her head shook and indicated a no, her digging growing ever wilder.
"Are you ill?" Another, more vehement shake of the head as her scratching reached a fevered pitch.
"Is something wrong?"
The slight youth sat up as if something had struck her, twisting to the side and staring at her mother. "Of course something is wrong, Mother! Don't you feel it? Can't you hear the voice? Something's hurting it!" With that, she went back to digging. The hole she had wallowed out was getting deeper and was well on its way to swallowing the tiny form. Sirsaeya sat, stunned beyond all reason and her thoughts racing.
Voice? What voice? Kitten. . .are you like Shan'do's brother, driven mad by some strange force?But her thoughts were interrupted as the child she loved more than anything else sprang backwards, teeth bared and hissing.
"Look, Mother! That's what's hurting it!" A dirt-covered finger pointed to the hole she had dug, and Sirsaeya looked. What she saw, once again, confused her beyond all reason. There, squirming in the dirt, was a single lostan. Lostan were similar to earthworms in shape and function, although larger, save that they drew far too many nutrients from the soil and returned nothing, leaving the dirt hard. Lostan were notoriously hard to detect, and they could ruin a field for years if nobody knew what was happening.
The sight of the ugly gray thing whipping around in the dirt both disgusted and amazed her, and thoughts went rapid-fire through her mind. Lostan? Here? How did they get here? More importantly, how did she know they were here? These were only a few of the figments that flickered across her brain as she took stock of the situation and acted accordingly.
"Very good, my child. You. . .I will talk to you on the way back to the grounds. We need to tell Parasin that there are lostan here." Katarinea began to protest, but her mother held up a stiff hand and the protest subsided quickly. It took Sirsaeya only a moment to find the materials she had dropped and lead the way to the path home. On the way home, she questioned her daughter and puzzled out something of what happened. Kat said that she had been sitting there for a few minutes, and then she began to feel sick in the pit of her stomach. Standing on the ground made it worse and better at the same time, and then she heard a low voice moaning in pain. She had gone in the direction of the voice, and the closer she got, the more her stomach hurt until it was a sharp shooting pain that had her falling to the ground and sobbing. Then she heard the voice again, and realized it came from beneath her, and so she started digging. The whole event had startled and worried her parents. They had never heard of children hearing voices coming from what seemed to be the earth itself, so they told nobody of what happened and fabricated a story to explain how they found the lostan.
Life proceeded from there without any problems for a while, until a third indication of her oddness appeared. Katarinea had just turned two thousand and exited her adolescence when she was sent on an errand to the Irontree Hills north of Ashenvale. She took three other night elves with her, all laborers just as qualified to assess the herbs and fruit that grew there as she was. It was five days' travel on foot to the northern fields, and it was on the fourth day that fate struck like an errant lightning bolt.
Though the land was safe and patrolled by the Sentinels, hidden dangers still lurked in the shadows and corners of the Irontree Hills, and one still had to show caution. Katarinea had always been careful of her surroundings and alert at all times. But this time was different, for various reasons. . .
They had traveled long that day, and decided to make camp early, as they were ahead of schedule. Katarinea took the chance to wander from the clearing and the tents to explore the land, something she had not done often. Wonder and joy and something indecipherable flickered across her face and swirled in the light gold of her eyes as she rambled among towering trees and blooming flowers that curled across the land. Light poured through the leafy canopy over her head and dotted her slight form with spots and streams of pale gold. A serene smile of happiness split her features as she wandered, spotty sunlight flickering across her face.
But she quickly caught the scent of something. . . odd. It smelled like another kal'dorei, but there was a strange twist in the scent, almost as if someone had been turned inside-out. The rusty scent of blood was absent, though. She twisted her head to the side and took another cautious sniff of the air. The odor stung her nose and she wrinkled it in response, all the while wondering what this odd scent was. Her feet padded across the ground, grass crinkling under her toes, as Kat went in the direction that the wind led her to believe the source was.
As she walked, her senses focused on the oddity and drew her forward, leaving her blind to the changes in her surroundings. The trees began to darken and twist closer to the ground, with long scratches marring their bark. The grass stopped whispering under her feet and began to. . .almost crunch, and something darkened the green blades and left marks on the leather soles of her silken boots, with even flowers drooping their heads in misery. The air around her began to whisper with a hint of malice laced in the faint breeze, a taste of anger and betrayal and hate tainting it. But Kat noticed nothing. All her senses were fully focused on following the faint, peculiar scent that had arrested her. She ignored what the trees and plants whispered in her air and gave no heed to the absence of the animals she loved so much.
Finally, the scent became strong, and she stopped to look at where she was. It was with horror that she saw the trees that had twisted as if they were screaming and the grass that drooped with a crusty brown color. It was with even greater disgust and terror that she looked upon the ruins of some night elven house temple that was dripping in bright red, the same crusty brown that tainted the grass. She inhaled sharply, and gagged on the breath that she took, for it was tinged with the rust that meant blood and the same stinging scent overwhelmed her. She whipped around to leave and ran into something behind her, something that sent her stumbling back several steps, coughing violently.
After her coughing subsided, she looked up, dreading what she was to see. . .and quite rightfully so. Before her stood an animal, no, a monster - it towered over her, and was covered in fur. It walked on cleft hooves stained dark brown and the fur it wore was splattered liberally with dry animal blood. Huge, malicious white eyes leered at her from under wicked horns set atop a face that was almost night elven. . . . Katarinea was young and inexperienced, but she was no fool. "S-satyr." She hissed, backing up almost to the shrine, shivering and holding her breath as best she could.
"Yes, satyr. And now, little one, I have pretty blue blood on my altar!" The satyr spoke in broken Kal'dorei and then let loose a mad cackle, a sound that chilled her bones and made her heart jump high into her throat. He grinned with teeth that were far too white in his dark red face, and lunged forward, long claws reaching for her throat.
Her scream, long and loud and piercing, split the air. It carried back to the camp where the other three laborers prepared dinner, and they froze in place to turn towards the sound. They knew the voice that split the air, had known it since it began to babble tiny sounds that made them smile. So they streaked from the camp. And then, the scream was not cut off, but muffled. A cracking and groaning filled the air. They fairly flew over the ground towards the sound that shrilled through their ears and put fear in their hearts. Then quiet filled the air. There were no screams, no cracks, no groans; only a terrifying silence. But the sound had lasted long enough for them to pinpoint her location, and they raced through the trees.
And so they burst into the sinister clearing where Kat had found herself trapped by the only thing that most night elves feared, one of the only reasons that the Sentinels fought. A quick glance scoured the clearing, and found everything there, and found her, her tiny body folded up and limbs tucked tight as she lay in a huddle between the blood-temple and the ground. But despite being the reason for their desperate flight, she was not what caught their attention. What caught their attention was the pillar of wood standing in front of her, leaning forward as if to grab the young kal'dorei. But it was not merely a pillar of wood. It was a satyr, and what made him appear as if he were a pillar. . .
Roots curled around his limbs, around his torso, and they seemed to have clutched him tight and squeezed the life from him. His mouth hung upon and his eyes bulged with what had to be fear and wonder. The ground around him was opened, gaping holes surrounding him that the roots had burst from before they wrapped him tight and crushed the corrupted life from his body. And then, they noticed the grass around Kat. All the grass within a large radius was green and living, flowers budding as if someone had grown them with magic, and even the base of the blood-temple was the clean white-green of the marble that elves made shrines from instead of the stained red color it had been.
They quickly bundled her up and went back to the camp. They didn't let her out of their sight once that night, or the next day. They only relinquished her when their journey was completed, and they told the overseer of the northern lands what had happened. He reacted just as they, and quickly took her to the best house there and pampered her with every luxury they had while he sent for a hippogryph. It took a day to get there, and she was summarily loaded on and sent back to her parents with one of the other laborers and a letter that explained what had happened. Sirsaeya and Lornaren actually panicked when the situation was explained, and turned such a pale purple they resembled la'vindre. It didn't take long for them to decide that she was gifted with some kind of nature magicks. So the worried parents took her to the Sentinels, to the second-in-command herself, Shandris Feathermoon. Shandris listened to an abridged version of their worries, and told them that the Sentinels would gladly take her in. It only took a hundred years for Kat to be initiated, and then she spent a very long time in training.
She was no good with a bow - the first time she tried one, she nearly shot out her instructor's eye. After the thirteenth year in a row with more injuries than there had been in centuries, the leaders shook their heads and transferred her to the huntress division. There, she had marginally more success. She was much better with a glaive than she was with a bow, and her skill in weaving the nature magic that they used to enhance their weapons was unparallelled.
When the thousand-year mark that ended the training of most huntresses came, she was a lean, wary young elf that had the closest bond with her hunting saber that most of the leaders had ever seen. She asked to patrol the Irontree Hills, and she roamed the green swells for nigh on a thousand years and mercilessly hunted the satyr that haunted the corners of the lush land. When she was finally reassigned, she was assigned to the shattered, sundered wastes of Azshara after a reprieve of a hundred and fifty years. It only took two hundred years for her to grow tired of the place and ask to go somewhere else. So she went to the Stonetalon Mountains, where wild animals roamed the rocky crags and dryads lived in the mountaintops.
It was there she met someone who she became fast friends with. Natasya Skywolf was a young Sentinel, not long out of training, and viciously talented with both moonglaive and bow. She was a prodigy, only spending seven hundred and fifty of the normal thousand years in training before she was considered ready to become a real Sentinel. And even if she hadn't been a prodigy, she would have been a rarity. . .for she was a twin. Twins were in short supply, with only twelve sets being born in the last ten millenia. It was incredibly hard on the mother of the children, and the mother usually ended up dying as they gave birth, or simply fading away because the babes had sapped their strength. But Natasya did not let the lack of a mother bother her - she was a beautiful elf, in every way imaginable. Her spirit was kind and robust, and her smile always present and joyful, her air serene and her blade always ready. Her face was lovely, slashed through with markings like war glaives, wide white eyes set above full purple lips and haloed by a short bob of snowy hair.
Katarinea considered herself slightly pretty, but nothing like the obvious beauty that Natasya had been blessed. The odd Sentinel often stared at herself in the mirror, looking for the prettiness that escaped her sight. Natasya insisted that Kat was pretty, too, but she found nothing in herself. Dark blue hair that had trouble in the high winds of the mountains was always pulled back in a tie, and the twin 'blades' that cut through the pale purple of her face was nothing like the beauty of Natasya's hair, or her markings. Neither was her mouth dark and well formed - it was wide and curved, yes, but the color matched her skin, and they had no swell to them like those of the other elf. The one thing she did take pride in was her nose. She thought she had a very nice nose, thin and long with a little tilt at the end. Yes, she was quite proud of that nose. But it didn't matter that she saw very little in herself. Elune had her reasons for not making her pretty. . .
Natasya and Kat became friends quickly, and they were nigh inseparable. The only time they were apart was when they were assigned a stretch with someone else, or when they had one of their 'disagreements'. These disagreements became somewhat infamous among the other Sentinels that haunted Stonetalon, because they were often utterly idiotic. One of them would disagree with the other on some small point, and then one of them (usually Kat) would have a temper flare-up and yell at the other. They would walk away and not talk to each other for some amount of time - the longest to date was three months, because Natasya had insulted Kat's favorite drink. The two stayed in Stonetalon for four hundred and fifty years, and then they took a small hundred-year break to spend time with their families. Natasya still had her father, and her twin, Dimitria. Dimitria was in training to be a Sentinel as well, but she had started later than Natasya, and she was having a harder time learning the various instruments that Sentinels used.
Kat went back to her parents, who were elated with how she had turned out. They were disappointed, as well, because she had not been able to work with them in the family business, but they were happy that she was a well-adjusted Sentinel (who didn't have random outbursts of magic, her mind whispered). Once their break was over, the two young elves asked to be assigned to Mount Hyjal, for the satyrs were always gathering small armies and charging the bases scattered around the bottom of the mountain in their thirst for magic. There they stayed happily for four hundred and twenty-three happy years, slaughtering satyrs mercilessly and laughing with each other and the other Sentinels.
And then the Legion came. There was a commotion in Ashenvale, and then Tyrande came to the Barrow Dens in Moonglade to awaken Malfurion and the other druids. All Sentinels were put on high alert, and it didn't take long for waves of demons to begin attacking the various bases set around the mount. They fought them off, and then suddenly, there was a scrambling of forces, a reassignment for most of them. Nat and Kat found themselves in the camp at the foot of the World Tree. The magic that flowed from the tree and the Well of Eternity nearly overwhelmed Kat, who lay in bed with a mild fever for a few days, tossing and mumbling things that made no sense. But she got better quickly, and then she was up and about, something burning in the faint yellow of her eyes. Then the Legion attacked, and they brought with them something that made every night elf there sick.
Corpses shambled towards the gate of their camp, rotting and putrid and polluting the ground they stepped on. Kat began to vomit regularly, but she would not leave her post for anything. She stayed there as the gates shuddered and fell, and she stayed there as the abominations rushed into the camp. Her moonglaive glowed with magic as she fought, coating the blade in a thin sheen of green. Every time she sliced into a demon or one of the walking dead, they howled in pain and their body began to corrode where she had cut them. The more overwhelmed the camp became, the harder she fought. She did not stop when Tyrande called a retreat. She retreated, but she stayed at the front of the retreat and warred savagely with their pursuers. Even when one of the demons finally slipped a cursed blade past her nearly impeccable guard, she still struggled, pale blue blood running down her side like water. Finally, she blacked out.
When she woke, it was to a very different world. She was in one of Elune's many temples, and she felt. . . an odd sort of hollow, as if her mind bent from its shape and her body withered. She laid in her bed, tears sliding down her face for no reason for quite some time. When one of the busy priestesses came to see how she was doing, Kat found out what had happened. The World Tree was dead, along with thousands of wisps, to stop Archimonde. The casualties among the night elves were severe, and it was a wonder that she had survived, they said. She had lost so much blood when she finally collapsed that it was a quite iffy proposition to say she would survive. Once she was finally healed enough to leave, she went first to the leader of her division and asked where Natasya was. The answer chilled her bones. "Presumed dead. No body found, but no trace of her anywhere."
She went home to her parents, heart heavy and body fatigued, completely alone - her beloved saber had given his life for his master at the last. And then - she reached home, and she found the beautiful stone house that she had grown up in devastated, laying in ruins. She went wild and raced to Raynewood Retreat to ask what had happened, and found her mother. Her mother sobbed as she told the story. Demons had overwhelmed part of Ashenvale, they had come to their house on their way to Hyjal, and Lornaren had given his life so that Sirsaeya could escape. He had worked the little magic he had learned from the druids that he worked with, and that had been enough to give the Legion-spawn a moment's pause to kill him. Kat was devastated and disillusioned. Where had the world that she worked so hard to save from the foul satyr gone? Her home and family was in ruins, and the only person that had tried to understand her was gone with the dead wind that had swept over Hyjal and befouled it.
Lethargic and lost, she blindly helped her mother pack and leave. They rambled through the Irontree Hills - or what had once been the Irontree Hills. This, too, had been horribly befouled. Green ooze dripped from every branch, leaf, and flower. The water was not fit to drink because of the demon essence that polluted it. It was no longer the lush land she had roamed for a thousand years, but a fel wood that exuded malice and hate just like the demons that caused it. They traveled north to the Moonglade, and had trouble they had never had before. Some of the furbolgs had been driven mad, and it was only Kat's long years of experience as a Sentinel that hardened her enough to kill the creatures that had previously been so loving and welcoming.
They passed through the tunnels that held the Timbermaw, for these furbolg were not yet mad, but said bear-men warned them that it was only by virtue of their long aquaintance that they were allowed to pass. Finally they made it to Moonglade, and Sirsaeya drew on her vast assets to purchase a small house near the town of Nighthaven. And a haven it was to the broken Startenders. Kat stayed there, rambling across the green lands that held no taint of corruption, that gave her hope for the future, for a full year. Her mind had been ravaged by what had happened, and she was hard pressed to reconcile the two lives that she lived - life before Hyjal, and life after.
And then, one day, things changed again. Kat went into town to hire a hippogryph for her mother to travel to Astranaar so that she could continue to maintain her business. She was absent-minded and her thoughts often wandered, but she was well enough in mind to do small errands. There was a hubbub in the quiet town that she had never seen before, and she asked one of the wardens what was going on. The answer took her breath away. "Shan'do is sleeping again, and Archdruid Staghelm has just announced several things. He has begun to grow another Tree, and women will now be allowed to train as druids!" Stunned beyond belief, she thanked him and went about her business in a daze even greater than usual. Women as druids? Shan'do had, for whatever reason, never allowed women to train in the druidic arts. She did not know why, and had never questioned it. Kat wandered back home and curtly informed her mother that "your stupid bird is waiting".
Kat sat outside for days, barely moving a muscle to eat. When she finally stirred, her mind was clear of most of the haze that had fogged it ever since she woke up in the temple, and focused on a single purpose. She was going to leave the Sentinels, much though she hated it, and she was going to train as a druid. When her mother returned, she was informed, and then Kat left her protesting mother behind. She went to the leader of Nighthaven, Rabine Saturna, and asked him where to go to become a druid-in-training. Darkshore, he said, and she went, and was troubled when she arrived. Thousands of young women huddled in shoddy tents around the edges of the clearing, and she was left wondering if these elves had ever killed, had ever ripped out a satyr's throat or been painted in the blood of animals driven mad - and then she shook her head. She was not a Sentinel any longer. She was to be a druid!
Over the long days that followed, the numbers dwindled. The shoddy tents disappeared. When it came her turn to talk to the people initiating new druids into the Cenarion Circle, she found out why. There was a series of tests to determine her aptitude with nature magics, and most of the women had failed them horribly. The testing panel gave her a look that said she would be no different, a look that made her wonder if they thought she was a vagabond.
The first test was to speak with a young bird that one of the druids had tamed as a pet. Not only did she talk to the bird, the bird flew onto her shoulder and snuggled into the ratty tail of hair that hung from her head, shocking its owner incredibly, for the bird was not friendly.
The second test - what most of the women had failed - was just as easy. She had to make a closed bud bloom. One look at the bud told her that the bud was dead, and then she asked them for water. Eyebrows raised, they gave it to her, and she watered the soil that the tiny flower was in. Then she curled her fingers around the limp stem and the bud came to life, flowering beautifully and showing off its bloom proudly. Her testers could do nothing but stare at the once-dead plant. When she asked them why they had given her a dead plant, the man in charge told her that anyone with druidic magic would be able to tell that the bud was dead and say so right out. Many of the women had simpered and tried vainly to cause it to bloom. There were more tests, but they were all as ridiculously easy as the first two. It didn't take long before they gave her a badge with her name and the Cenarion Circle insignia inscribed on the leafy green cloth.
The night she recieved her badge, she went back to the room that she had rented in Auberdine from a kind retired priestess and locked the door. She went to the body-length looking glass and stripped the clothes from her body viciously. And then she stood and stared at herself for a very long time, carefully appraising everything. Her face was not as joyful and round as it had once been, and her eyes glowed a darker yellow. Her hair was tied back in what was almost one big knot, and she suddenly understood why the testing panel had looked at her so. The hair that had once been a silky, flowing sapphire waterfall over her shoulders was now a tangled nest of dry, grimy hair. So she ripped the dirty leather tie from her hair and let it attempt to cascade over her shoulders as it once did. When it utterly failed and clouded around her head in tangles, she sighed and closed her eyes for a moment before opening them and inspecting her body. Kat had never been particularly large, but her years with the Sentinels had replaced much of the loose weight with tight bands of muscle, and the strenuous exercise had made her taller somehow.
But since the - since Hyjal, she had neglected her training, along with eating and washing, and what she saw made her wonder what she had been thinking.
Dust coated almost every inch of her body, save for the scar from the undead blade. She had been careful to keep it clean and rub it with medication every day, for if she did not, then she would not be able to fight because the scar tissue would knot up and hinder her swing. Her ribs were visible, pressing against her skin in a way that pulled the purple flesh tight over her stomach and made the scar all the more visible. It was a very large scar, traveling from the top of her left arm, across her right breast and just beneath her left one to just a few inches high to the left of her bellybutton. The flesh was swollen and shiny, as most scars are, and combined with the dirt that begrimed her ribs and skin, she looked a fright. If someone had seen her, they would have seen her as all bones, skin, and sadness.
Staring into the mirror, her mind whirled around the recent events, and then she turned from the looking-glass. Long fingers removed the last bits of cloth on her body (the wrappings that no good female fighter went without) and dropped them out the window. Kat took the washrag that lay beside the bowl of clean water in the corner and wet it, carefully wiping away the worst of the dirt before she put on the clean blue washrobe that her hostess had lent her. Then she swept out of the house and went to the hot water springhouse that kept the villagers clean. It was deserted, and it was with some measure of happiness that she dropped the robe, letting it slide off her shoulders and into the floor as she walked towards the water.
Kat entered the water quietly, the long years of bathing in hostile territory showing by the way she slithered into the hot liquid. She spent several minutes with her head underwater, swimming around the pool and letting the water take away the bulk of the filth that she was covered in. Then she surfaced and swam to one corner of the room, where tall vases and squat pots stood, and she bathed herself properly. Lustfruit oil coated her hair and arunel soap cleansed her body. When she stood from the warm water, she was a different elf than the one that entered. Smooth, wet hair lay across her shoulders, dripping water down clean purple skin. She left and went back to her room, where she borrowed a proper hairbrush (she didn't own one any longer, the last one was in the ruins of the Hyjal base camp) and returned the washrobe. And then she sat in the moonlight, brushing her hair and letting the luminescent light pearl across her bare skin for hours.
When she traveled (ironically enough) back to Moonglade for her basic training, she found that it would not take nearly as long as it had in the past. Archdruid Staghelm had sped up the training cycles - if one had ability, they were rushed through and taught the basic spells and techniques they needed to master druidic magic and then sent to some area to prove themselves and grow stronger. So she learned, and she excelled. After the first time she dueled another one of the trainees and sent them to the healers, she was prohibited from fighting anyone but one of the trainers. When she learned how to channel magic in a healing spell, the trainer she was practicing it on staggered around for the rest of the day in a state of euphoria. The spell had been so strong that it had overloaded his senses and put him in a state of health he hadn't been in for three thousand years.
The longer she spent training, the higher her teachers' eyebrows rose. She excelled at everything she was taught, and she learned quickly, even picking up not just the rudiments of the Common language that the new alliance of races used, but nearly mastering it. It only took her three years (instead of the prescribed five) to learn all of the basics of what they had to teach her, and then her trainers had a meeting. After the meeting, Mathrengyl Bearwalker flew in from the new World Tree and sought her out. He found her tucked into a tiny ball, curled up between two trees and a cascade of flowers. Her eyes were distant, and he had to clear his throat several times before she noticed him, and then she sprang up and bowed low. "Mathrengyl. How fares the new World Tree? I have heard that odd shadows lurk among the leaves and roots."
He raised an eyebrow. Very few outside of the top tier of the Cenarion Circle knew of the corruption that tainted the leafy boughs of Teldrassil, and for the most part it was only the druids who lived there that knew. "Katarinea. Teldrassil fares well, but. . .that is for another time. I was informed that you have learned all that you are permitted to learn at this time, and the other druids summoned me. You shall be returning to Teldrassil with me. " Her eyes rounded and he found himself hard pressed not to smile at the shock her yellow eyes showed. "The Circle needs someone to cull some of the. . .more physical dangers that have beset the citizens of the Tree, and you are the only one who is ready. Many of the older druids are swamped with dangers of a political sort, and the rest slumber in the Dream. The Sentinels are stretched thin defending elsewhere. Are you willing?" Her mouth dropped open, and the older elf snickered under his breath. Then she answered, her voice breathy and her hands flying in the air.
"I - you - of course I am willing! I have been -" she paused, glanced around, and coughed delicately. "Training is rather boring after two thousand years of war. I am ready." Another bow, and then a smile that had Mathrengyl nearly sputtering, for it stretched across her face and turned the serious, plain face into something beautiful. "I will pack immediately so that you may return to your business with all haste." And then she bounded away, rangy legs giving her long strides that barely touched the ground, sapphire hair flowing behind her. The druid she left behind smiled at the waving grass that indicated where she had been, and let the thoughts in his brain have free range. So it would seem that at least some of the people that survived Hyjal have healed. She may be scarred, but she is whole. It is well. Then he, too, turned, and made his way back to Nighthaven to wait for the tiny speck of hope that had fluttered in on blue wings