Hey guys. This story has been on my mind for some time. I had half the first chapter already written out weeks ago, but I just came across it in my documents. I had planned to update To Exist Together, but when this caught my eye, I remembered just how badly I wanted to write this tale.
I hope you enjoy it. This one truly won't be a long story, and I mean that this time. Let me know what you think :)
Chapter One: On the Edge of the Coral Sea
Ethyst had not seen his face in over a decade, not since a few weeks before the fall of the world tree. Like so many others he had gone, along with her mother, to fight the Legion atop Hyjal, and like so many others he did not return. But he was not dead, no her mother had seen him with her own eyes after the battle, had heard his departing words with her own ears, had argued against his choices with her own mouth. At least, he had not died in the battle for the mountain, though whether he still lived now was unclear. She liked to think, despite her bitterness toward him, that perhaps he still survived.
When her mother had walked through their small home's door without him, Ethyst had assumed he'd died, and had been left with this conclusion for days. Her mother had locked herself in the bedroom, unspeaking, eating and drinking nothing for nearly two nights before reemerging. In the months that followed, as her mother's health slipped into ruin and white hairs replaced previously midnight colored locks, wrinkles rippling across her face and the silver of her eyes dimming, Ethyst was given only pieces of the story. Even after years she knew only vaguely what had become of him. There were still nights when she thought about questioning her mother once more.
But she didn't. Her mother was old, older than many, and the loss of their immortality had hit her hard. She'd been a priestess of Elune even before the time of Tyrande Whisperwind, had served in the War of the Ancients, had patrolled their forests during the Long Vigil. In fact, it was during the terror of the Legion's first invasion that she'd come across the man who would eventually become her lifemate. At the time he'd been her patient, a soldier who'd been nearly crushed to death by rubble, who had survived through the combination of her mother's skilled healing and a miracle. As the resistance was pushed further and further back, lost more and more ground, they had somehow managed to stay together. They were together when the Legion was driven back, when the Well of Eternity collapsed, when half the world was sundered. Afterward they'd found peace in defending their world from what demons remained, they'd wandered from town to town, ruin to ruin. Nine thousand six hundred seventyfive nomadic, skirmish-fighting years and two stillbirths after the first Sundering, Ethyst had come into existence.
She took after her father in both looks and personality. She had his height and rather broad build in comparison to her mother's willowy frame. She had silvery skin and wavy teal hair where her mother was all dark violets and blues. And like him she'd taken to the use of short swords and bows, had a talent in skinning and much prefered thick leathers to the intellect and spirit infused silk robes her mother wove in their home. She was light on her feet in battle, knew how to dual wield, and was well practiced in throwing knives and small hatchets.
In childhood, her mother had tried desperately to get her daughter to sit still and take interest in the teachings of Elune but Ethyst would have little of it. While of course she respected and revered the moon goddess, she hadn't the aptitude or desire to become a healer of any sort. She liked fighting, learning to defend herself, going out of hunts with her father during day or night.
She learned to survive in a different way than her parents, who had grown up in a time of relative peace for their people, only to be thrown into war and then a period of nomadic recovery as they tried to regain their footing. They'd grown up with the value of bloodlines, learning the ropes of societal castes and politics. They both chose the roles that were expected of them by their families. Coming from a line of priestesses in the family, her mother continued the tradition. When Ethyst's grandfather was killed in an accident, her father took over the family business as the eldest child. Then the demons came and their lives were thrown into turmoil. Her mother was, by duty, required to help heal the wounded soldiers that came her way. Her father, to defend their people as all elves capable of doing so did, became a soldier. When that time was over and the world was left in literal pieces, they collected themselves and each other, and then went on to collect what was left of their people too.
Ethyst was born into a world already broken. Bit by bit it had healed in the last almost ten thousand years, but the battles and hardships were far from over. When she was born, they'd settled in the ruined forest named after their corrupt queen, in the ruins of what had once been the center of their world. Though the land was said to be cursed, they'd wanted to raise her in peace, somewhere far from the current conflicts of Felwood and the Troll and Tauren tribes scattered in the forest and to the south. Though Azshara still had pockets of demons and naga in the ruined cities, they had found a fragment of the ruins on a cliff overlooking the Coral Sea. For four hundred years they had lived there, hidden away from the horrors of their wounded world, watching storms batter the cliffs and the sun rise each morning as they fell asleep.
They did well. They had a small garden, for medicinal herbs and spices mostly, and Ethyst and her father handled the hunting and trapping. Her mother cooked whatever they brought and used the hides to make their clothes. They fashioned utensils from the bones, sewing needles and knives, her mother once made a set of windchimes. They would climb down from the cliffs to the shore at lowtide to catch fish and search the tide pools for seaweed and mussels.
Twice a year Ethyst and her father would make the trek to Talrendis Point. Over the summer they'd have fashioned jewelry from bone, shell, and stone to sell alongside the collection of pelts and hides. They'd trade it all for whatever they couldn't make or find on their own. Jars for making jam and storing food, rare spices from the west, fabric for mother to sew and spools of wool and silk thread for her to weave with. Sometimes, if they had done enough, they could indulge themselves with a few pastries and new books, bottles of fermented vegetables and expensive potions. Once there had been a blind man traveling with his tradesman son who had given them a beautiful lyre in exchange for a salve that would ease the pain in his joints.
The trip was long, three weeks of trekking to get from the coast to Talrendis, a month if the weather was poor or if the demons in the north were too near their usual paths or if the trail through the mountains was blocked. There had been years when they'd been unable to go more than once, or even at all, and those years had been the hardest although they'd always survived well and never had she gone hungry for more than a day or two in her life.
More than once they'd encountered the sorrowful spirits of the Highborne haunting empty ruins or forgotten paths, and even more common was running into a lone satyr or two as they went about collecting the agents for their twisted rituals. Ethyst could recall a year when the bottom of their hidden trail down from the clifftop had been blocked by a band of them, more than all three of them combined could handle at once in a fight. It was autumn and the winter would soon be upon them. There were supplies they needed, but were unable to get with the satyr down there, and every day they feared that they would discover the path and venture up to where they would be trapped on the edge of the cliff that had been their refuge for centuries. The few weeks that the satyr had inhabited that camp had been the most terrifying she had experienced in her life. Not even nearly being mauled to death by a starving wolf and poisoned by a chimera had lived up to the fear of being discovered by the creatures that had plagued her nightmares as a little girl. And nothing had compared to the thought of losing her family.
With the loss of her father, Ethyst learned that nothing in the world could ever compare to losing them, and that her thoughts had not even been close to just how terrible it truly felt.
