Disclaimer: World of Warcraft and all expansions belongs to Blizzard Entertainment, and I own nothing more than the the retail disks of it. This story is a non-profit fanfiction rendition of their story with original characters.
I'd like to open this story with a few words. As the only author notes for it will be this introduction and a single conclusion at the very end, I'd implore a reader to give it at least a glance before continuing.
We'll start with the most relevant. I've taken liberties with the source material. By that I mean I've drawn my characters closer to their source material than Blizzard. The elves are more Arthurian and the vrykuls more like Norse jotuns -(?)-. Nothing outright AU about it, but it certainly won't feel like all the races have been thrown into a blender, where their only difference is looks and the language of their greetings (looking at you, Blizzard).
Secondly, I feel like this story is meant to be read in one sitting. For that reason, I have withheld myself from posting it until it was entirely finished, so that it may all be uploaded at once. You'll see what I mean when you get to chapter divisions. They really don't allow for breaks in between. This is also why I am only allowing author notes here at the beginning and only one more when the whole story is done.
Finally, I'd like to mention that I really did not want to reveal that this story was a human/vrykul romance. It detracts from the "surprise" charm of it, since people are now choosing to read this story for its pairing, if nothing else. However, as a long time reader of fanfiction, I know how it is to want to know what you're getting into before you read. Typically, I chose my stories by their pairings, not plot, summary, or even author's skill.
So, without further adieu, here's the story:
A Proper Romance
"I have not forgotten that she is what I am moving toward. If I seem to be caught in a slow circling of the subject, it is only appropriate, as she and I have always moved toward each other in slow circles." -Kvothe, The Name of the Wind, Chapter Fifty-Three, "Slow Circles"
The night was fae.
Fey, strange, and weird are three words inaccurately used as interchangeable. For most men, they simply were, for each meant the same thing; something supernatural, outside the world of man, was astir. The differences were subtle, but each provided a precise meaning to their situation.
Most general would be strangeness, when something was out of sort. That could be a box stacked wrong, or a sky turned red, or a man without clothes in public. Harmful or harmless were not accounted for in its use, only the flaw in an image for normalcy.
Fey meant doomed. It said much of the fair folk that even the word borne of them meant disastrous, cursed, and death. It was a mix, of course, of the innate distrust men had for magic with the hard truth of dealing with the Fae. Stories were told of men who met with Fae and walked away better for it. Such men were held as legends, because that was not the way of things. A fairytale, because tales of faeries were stories of unhappiness and tragedy.
And weird was the day that he met her. It was a strangeness laid at the feet of fate. She called it urðr. He also called it Wyrd, and she called it Urd, or Urthr, or just Urth when his tongue was especially woolen. Fate twisted her wheel in the times of Wyrd, for greater or lesser, and not even the Fae could match the helplessness of man against powers greater than them.
Men feared the weird like they feared the fey, but one man did not, for he only met her in the interest of Fate. Weird days were welcomed like the first turn of spring, like rain against a parched field, like the aching return of a wayward lover. It had been some time since he had enjoyed a weird day, and this night was merely fey.
The shadows of the forest pooled deeply in every corner they could. They stretched and reached black hands towards him with unformed menace, waiting patiently for a single misstep into their inky traps. Silver streams of moonlight filtered from above, casting light against the lurking black, and the air above triumphantly danced with brilliant motes.
Only a fool thought the victory of moonlight the same as a victory of light. Light was man's, both the sun and fire, but the night was the Fae's, and the moon was their deity. They held the Void at bay, not man, and grinning Fae held that fact overhead. Not that the elves would grin with their faces – only their hearts and their eyes.
The musky stench of crushed leaves and freshly turned soil remained heavy in the air. Had there been wind, the omnipresence of it would leave the scent immune to the changes of direction. Instead, the night was still as death, as loud as the grave, and cool as the caress of a corpse.
Despite the warnings, one man plowed on. His only fine wear remained a tunic of midnight sky, stuffed into thick trousers meant for hard work and carrying scuffs of validation. He carried no rings, gloves, trinket, or weapon in his hands; no woven necklace of silver or gold bounced upon that fine tunic; no bracelets of precious metals or tested leather dangled upon his bare wrists. The damp soil of the forest squished and shifted under his bare feet, and though it left him looking dirty as a beggar, calluses thick as the capital's walls turned aside the efforts of sharp sticks and careless rocks hidden beneath.
Atop a short rise, the man stopped with his hand against the bark of a tree, feeling the smoothness of its cool face broken by natural carvings. Beneath his fingertips, it buzzed with hidden excitement. Only especially clever men could recognize the latter, and only the most obscurely educated could understand its meaning. By chance, he stood on the side bright with moonlight, opposite that of the pitch pool. A deep breath was taken, seeking to intoxicate him with the heavy musk of the woods.
It was only a few feet further that he reached a wide stone centered in the rare clearing. The entire breadth of the moon shone down on him as he stepped across it, directly over head and full as the prized cow before the harvest feast. But the hungering look was not from him for it – quite the contrary.
By the worn look of the man, it would be easy to think he had traveled far through these woods. Some would even be right, by their own standards. The truth of it though was that this was a man well used to walking, and this walk was no further than another, no stranger than a trip to the well and back.
Apart from the soft footfalls, the turning of rocks beneath his feet, and the snap of the occasional twig, the first sound came from overhead. It was a loud call, startling and painful after the wide silence, and he saw the silhouette of an owl against the bright moon. Its heading was northward, quickly revealed to be a pale snow owl as it overtook him and vanished into the dark trees beyond.
If he needed a reminder of the fae night, that would have served him doubly so. There were no signs as distinct as a beast of the Fae. A white tiger could not have been so clear.
A short time later, gentle splashing told him he had reached his destination, and it told him he would not be alone. On a weird night, he would have felt nothing but joy at the notion, but on one that was clearly fae, he only fought the urge to frown as he began to touch the buttons of his tunic.
He saw her upon passing the threshold of the final tree – a willow with long, weeping branches too distant to touch the waters of the pool in this time of year. Only in the early spring did the waters touch its leaves, uniting the two like lovers lost, only for the briefest time – a week, at longest – before the water receded to its natural place for the rest of the year, and the willow was left for another year of helpless yearning.
The man knew the story of the sad willow well, because it reflected his own. He wondered only how much more painful it was for the willow to behold its love for the entirety of the absence, seeing but unable to touch, and then he would surprise himself by the fierce jealousy he had for the willow. To even just see its love, even at their most distant.
Today, his attention was not on the sad willow. With the waters receded in the latter ends of August, the broad stone at the center of the pool barely crested the surface, provided a pleasant place to rest for one who bathed or swam its clear waters. The pool itself was a pleasant oval, with a diameter of fifteen yards at its thinnest end and twice that at its longest. The deepest it went at this time was to only the chest, while in early spring one could stand completely submerged but only barely.
He saw her there on that stone, sitting straight with her hands in her dark hair. She faced away from him, peering at the white birch on the opposite end of the pool, and he could see the white owl of before nestled in the nook where the trunk split in two. The moonlight colored the woman, and it gave depth to the broad length of her back in ways that would leave a man's mouth dry. Her hair shined in it, and the dark of her skin seemed the most natural thing in the world under that light.
Long, back-reaching ears were the next most noticeable thing to her. She was Fae, an elf – kal'dorei to be punctual. Despite the nature of her bath, she was not entirely naked. Halting the show of skin at the hips was a bright shawl of silvery light. Though the fabric appeared as fragile, thin, and transparent as a spider's web, the natural glow of it obscured sight beyond, and he realized it was woven moonlight. He did not know how that could be, but he knew that it was.
At the edge of the waterline, he stared at her mutely. Though he had made no sound, the Fae spoke without looking, "Had I been a lesser woman, I might have a stomach full of butterflies right now."
Her voice was sweet as they came, her accent rich and flowing in such a way that it may have been a lyric. The words passed through him like a breeze and he shuddered, but he didn't yet look away from her. His own voice returned her, putting a stopper to any song, "Had I been a lesser man, I might say the same." At his best, his voice rang clear and strong, like a brass trumpet, but he was far from his best. It rolled out like a boulder on a rocky slope, loud and hard and rough, and compared to hers, it grated enough to make a man cringe.
His voice was heavy and thick, and it told more about him than he was comfortable with.
The kal'dorei turned her head then, still with her hands in her long hair, and he could see the shine of her smile and the silver of her eyes in the narrow gap her arm made. "Had you been a lesser man, I would have nothing to fear at all." The position betrayed a teasing peak of the side of her left breast, but never enough to satisfy. He knew that no matter how long their conversation might run, he'd never catch more of a sight of her than this.
And he was glad for it.
Elf women were reputed as exceptionally beautiful, and this one was no exception. The soft curve of her hip to her waist begged for a hand, and the strong back on the slender Fae summoned forth the idea of touching- No, not summoned. It grabbed a man by the ear and tugged him until his fingertips were running down that back, exploring its ridges of her shoulder-blades and the trench of her spine. From her shoulders and down her sides, the slender waist and to those hips!
But while the enticement of the Fae was irresistibly strong, a wise man knew better than to get ensnared by it. It had been long – too long – since he found himself in the embrace of a woman, since he'd been roused to the passion meant behind closed doors. He was painfully overdo, yet it was still a time away from early spring, and the willow did not forsake the pool and turn its branches upwards just because the sky could rain. He did not desire water for the sake of water.
He slew kings and damned nations for her water, and this whip of an elf was a pale, pale comparison.
Thick arms crossed before his partially unbuttoned tunic. "What must I do to have you leave?" It was no secret that she waited here for him. She wouldn't be the first to ambush him in the safety of night, seeking to claim the King's Ransom or to kill "the father of the monster."
She finished tying her braid then, coiled it into a snake-like bun, and her hands finally lowered to the shawl of moonlight around her hips. She slipped off the rock back into the water, holding the shawl above the edge. Then, with it now before her chest, she turned to face him in full, a brilliant smile on her lips.
He knew what she'd see in that look. Just a man who looked older than he was, dressed in clothes that appeared more worn than they were. A man that didn't care to keep himself regularly shaven but neither did he allow himself to reach something resembling a beard. Jet black hair and eyes of strong bronze, often confused as golden when light struck them. She wouldn't see the jaw square enough to measure corners, though she may notice his features were bolder and stronger than most men. Such things offset pretty little elves. Other women found that face perfect to bash heads with.
"I might be satisfied with a story, Fellion," she said, her voice rising and falling lyrically.
The man froze with abrupt surprise, holding even his breath against her words. His bare toes curled against the damp soil, and the feel of it prompted him to uncoil, forcing away the tightness in his spine and chest. His muscles began to relax away their anxiety. His voice came even thicker and heavier with something new lurking in it: "Who are you?"
Smiling, the elf moved back to the rock and draped her stomach over it, sliding away the moonlight once covered. She returned the shawl to her hips but not enough to hide the beginning tease of her derriere. Her elbows were planted before her as she set her chin on her hands.
"Did you think I would come knowing you as Ottar?" she teased. "Or perhaps Mr. Daret, as the townsfolk know you? No, you are the father of the Half-a-Half-Giant – Fellion – and your story is well known in circles of the Fae. I am merely she who wishes it from the mouth of one who lived it."
"That is not all you wish for." Tired of shifting his weight between feet, he found a seat on the grass beside the willow.
Her smile lost no luster at the accusation, though her eyes seemed to grow wider with hunger. "Had I a man of half your devotion, my celebrations would turn Elune green with jealousy. The achievements that would be made possible for me... Alas, desire you though I do, I know better than to think you malleable as a sapling, and I will be content with the true story."
The man hesitated. His palms, moist from the grass, wiped on his thick pants, only to go behind him to the soft carpet again as he leaned back. "What is your name? You don't strike me as Tyrande's."
"Clever of you. You may call me Lady Sylvian. I am a castaway, an exile. Fae as we were, not as the fool druids would have us be."
"Highborne," he breathed, but his attention set upon her with new light. Yes, he could better see it now. Her skin was dark as her kin, but she struck him closer to the high elves, a mix of the two. A woman of ambition and erotica, vanity and deep-rooted fascination for the unknown.
His evening plans of bathing were suspended. He asked her wearily, "What would you have me tell you? I have no tales of heroism."
"I would hear a romance. A proper one. Sing to me a tale of love and hardship, how one man forsook the lines of war to make a lover of his most hated enemy. I want to cry, Fellion, as I hear the agony of longing in your voice as you wait for her return. I want to smile and laugh with your joy at reunion. Make me blush shades achievable only by our youngest flowers as you share your passion for her with me. Let me feel the confusion, the wonder, as she brought you your daughter, and let my eyes shine with your rage as she tried to leave with the wind once again."
A blade of grass twirled between the fingers of his right hand, held above his back-tilted head. Without even a glance for the excited elf, he told her, "We may be better if you recite this story of wonder. It appears you already know all that can be said and possess a tongue fine enough to say it with color."
"It is a story of greys then?"
"Yes... No, I cannot say that it is only grey. There was silver too."
"Oh?" Her smile was sly. "Something by the moonlight, then. Was there pink too? Maybe bright burning red?"
"There were reds," he acknowledged reluctantly. "Ones that smoldered vengefully and ones that blazed brighter than great bonfires. Reds that curdled blood and reds that shivered skin. If there was to be a color, it would be grey, but if there was to be another color, it would be red." He paused, then was nodding without realizing it. "Yes, grey and red. Those are the colors of that story."
His words trailed off into the night, then were carried away by the wind. Silence was left behind, and the elf frowned as it lingered. "Don't keep a lady waiting now."
Her reply sent a shaking laughter through him. Tossing the blade of grass aside, he looked to her with his first grin of the evening. "Of all the men on this planet, I have the right to do exactly that. And why should I tell you that story? What right do you have to it?"
The elf lifted her chin from her palms and folded her arms before her, blocking sight of the dark valley below her throat. Her frown persisted. "A wise man would know better than to deny a Fae, to make one desperate."
He laughed again, shorter this time. "And what makes you think I am a wise man? That this is the tale of a wise man? Mine is a story of a fool. Why else do I sit at the furthest corner of the world, hidden under names that are not my own, desperately clinging to the hope that the mother of my child might drop in one day to just say hello?"
"Is it foolish to protect your family?" the elf asked archly. "To protect a daughter not suited to either world? Is it foolish to throw legions of hunters off your trail? Is it foolish to wait on love? Was the wait not worth her return? Tell me, Fellion, would a clever you have done things any differently for her?"
His jaw set, finding no words to return her accusations. They both knew his answers anyways. He let it go with another sigh. "You are cleverer than I suspected, Lady... was it Sylvian?" A curt nod. "Well. I cannot promise that you will find any of what you're looking for, but if it truly suits your fancy, and it will make you leave, then I suppose I could tell you parts of the story. Anything to kill time."
"Your daughter does not wait upon your return?"
He gave a half-shrug. "After her mother, that one takes. She took it upon herself to find a beastly animal, tame it, and train it to hunt with her. She set out to find one this morning and isn't expected to return for a week."
Full lips, dark as cherries, smiled knowingly. "Aren't you worried?"
"At five years old, I stumbled across her wrestling a great bear, and before I could even intervene, she sent it scampering off into the woods like a mange. No, I know better than to worry for her safety in the wild. It is the efforts of men that give me concern. Their name for her would send her to tears for years, until her mother swept in one day and spoke with her in the way only mothers could. Now she carries it with pride: Half-a-Half-Giant."
There was a flitting, birdlike nod. "On another night, I might wish to hear of Fellion the father, but my heart is still set upon the lover. Seduce me with the words you used upon her."
He smiled again, though again there was a trace of insincerity to it. "You will find only more disappointment there. We were not much for talking in the beginning." He chewed his tongue thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded. "I suppose that is a start as good as any. It was our first night and a time a little after...
"I was younger then, of course, and still new to the world. New to a lot of things, certainly, but youth has energy in great ways, and I was first to rise from the bed when all was finished. I remember I grabbed my pants from the forest floor and had to brush out the dirt and twigs. I hate that, mind you; I'm always careful to not just throw my few bits of clothing to the dirty floor when days away from civilization. It's a damned waste and uncomfortable, and cleaning it is more effort than its worth. But she had been passionate and so had I, and cleanliness had been far, far from both our minds.
"So sitting at the edge of our makeshift bed for lovemaking, struggling to get my pants back on, I knew I wanted to say something – something that captured my wonder and excitement over what we had just shared, but words failed me as they always did around her, and though I felt boorish in my silence, I knew I'd feel only as an annoyance if I tried speaking. Yet she spoke to me, in that deep, pleasant way of hers, saying-"
"No! No, and three times no!" the elf cried out finally. He thought he'd noticed a strange twist to her expression, but his attention had been focused inward, struggling to recall the early days of love. "For the love of the gods and the Goddess, what atrocity is this!"
He raised an eyebrow, only slightly miffed at the interruption and reaction to the story told in his words. "So does that mean we're done here?"
"We are not!" she declared, and her long brows pinched inward with blatant displeasure. Her back arched as she lifted herself higher upon the isolated rock, arms tightly wrapped before her chest. "You will start in the beginning, as is only proper! And you must describe her, and certainly you must describe your first night with her! That is as important as everything that comes after. Where is the detail of her bronze hair and chocolate eyes?"
The man sat up with a frown. He wished to deny her, but he knew that she was right. That was not a proper story, and certainly not how he'd tell the one of her. "You have it wrong," he admitted finally. "Her skin is bronze, and her eyes are two fat sapphires. In fact, her eyes change with her mood. They may be the blue of a summer sky when she is delighted, but when her fury is strong, they cool to polished silver. Those eyes penetrate like swords, deep inside. Light, I spent a day staring into them, falling in love again and again as I did."
"Silver eyes?" the Fae questioned, seeming surprised.
He nodded. "Your eyes are like liquid moonlight, shifting and changing with bright colors. Her's were bright too, but not unnaturally, and they were true silver, or sometimes like stormy clouds. But I loved the bright blue the most, like two shards of ice, or ocean sapphires, or a summer sky. But let me start again, before I met her, and how I stumbled onto the path where we first crossed. You heard the tale of the great white stag?"
Her head shook slightly. Rather than fall disappointed, he only smiled fondly. "Of course you haven't. I was never famous for my exploits, though I tried. The quest was more of a sham than anything, whispering promises of gods and glory eternal. But such promises are what lured her out. It was one of our few mutual interests, you could say."
He took a breath and peered around his amphitheater. Nothing but a ring of trees and dark forest soil. The pool of water made it flat, a stage, and the audience was one. The snow owl hooted, and he amended himself with a smile. His audience was two. And with the witness of the great, full moon above, perhaps his audience was three.
He nodded. That was enough. "You need to understand though that this is no fairytale. We did not cross eyes and become suddenly struck with the arrow of love. It did not take a dramatic episode of fear and near death to confess my eons of longing. Nor were there whimsical bouts of passion or sparks leading to great consuming fires. I did not cross countries and great oceans to find her – albeit, mostly because she could not be found. And yes, I have tried.
"This is a tale of longing, not love. It was Fate's plan that we would meet only in chance encounters, and we would depart as quickly. Only fleeting brushes, like breaths against an ember, and one day the flame caught, and with each breath it grew."
"It is a proper romance," she explained, excitement high in the notes of her voice.
He turned his head as the expression tumbled around like dice. Finally, he nodded. "Entirely unconventional, but yes, it is a proper romance."
His hands clapped and rubbed together, like he might at a campfire when a story was to be told. If this was to be her story, then he would be sure to do this right.
"However, for it to be told as just a romance would leave it tedious and dull, for our encounters were so distantly apart, and to list them without the juicy meat between would leave it nothing more than a pretty collection of bones. So ours is also a story of the mighty Kvaldir and the fall of empires, for without knowing them, you may never learn – as I did – just how great was her meaning to me. And this must be told properly.
"So the beginning. The tale of the great white stag. As I'm sure you already know, this story begins in Northrend, far to the east where the forests are deep and trees are thick as mountains and about as high. I set out from Amberpine, on the word of a word that may have come from the unstable furbolgs. A hunt for the great white stag, to claim a trophy of the gods.
"Yes, it is there that this story begins. It was a weird day, and the overcast made the world grey..."