Snow was falling over Dun Morogh as the sun set, driving the temperature of the already chilly region down to an almost unbearable low.
The dwarves and visitors in Kharanos were making their ways to the Inns and buildings of the cozy town, smoke already starting to drift up from the cheery fires burning within, warming the cold people for the evening as the sound of merry song followed the smoke out into the dimming sky.
Other spirals of smoke joined the first, far, far away from the town, deep within the sparse forest of the snowy region. These fires were just as cozy, yet uncontained by any stone or metal hearth.
The Frostmane trolls who grudgingly shared the land with the dwarves were going about their twilit business as well, stoking cooking fires back to life and settling down for the night.
One female clothed in fur-trimmed deerskin stood on the edge of the ridge, by one of the steep cliff faces, watching out over the snowy stretch of land and black trees below.
Her long white hair was sprawled over her shoulders in a mess of dreadlocks, and her brow was creased with worry.
A young troll boy, seeming perhaps the age of twelve with small, still-growing tusks and long silvery-blue hair stepped up beside her. He held a strong resemblance to the older Frostmane.
"Have you seen your sister, Rajo?" The woman asked him.
Her son shook his head. "When she and Abolji left this afternoon was the last anyone's seen her. I asked," he gestured half-heartedly at the huts behind them, sounding slightly less-worried than his mother.
"They'll be back. It's only just started getting dark," Rajo added, smiling reassuringly.
"They're so young though," the woman said with a tired-sounding sigh. "I'm worried about them."
---
"I'm scared," the small, white-haired troll boy whined, holding his little stone hatchet close to his chest. He was too young to have grown into his tusks yet, looking about seven or eight years old.
Ahead of him, knee-deep in snow and shivering violently was a female child with pale grey hair and reddish eyes, looking up at the trees that surrounded them. Snowflakes filtered down through the branches and powered their heads and shoulders with white dust. Wolves howled off in the distance, along with a whuffing, snuffling snort of a boar from somewhere behind a tree not far away.
The girl nodded, "Me too."
"I want to go home."
"Me too."
The two Frostmane children were normally used to the cold and snow, but the over-exposure coming from being lost in the forest for so long was beginning to take its toll. Their lips were bluing, their hands and feet numb and pale-skinned. The girl's lips had cracked form the cold and were bleeding slightly.
The girl sighed, the arm holding a crude spear dropping to hang limply at her side.
They had been going off into the Dun Morogh forest alone as soon as they were allowed to leave the ridge without a chaperone and knew the area around Shimmer Ridge extremely well, but an enticingly fat snowshoe rabbit had drawn the two young cousins farther away from the village than they had intended. The trees all looked alike in the deepening shadows and snow had covered up their tracks. The cousins had quickly become lost after fleeing from a hunting bear that obviously wanted the same rabbit as they did and was willing to compensate with the two troll children who scared it away, running in a direction that only lead them further away from the village.
"What if a dwarf comes?" The boy asked, looking around fearfully as if the mere mention would bring one leaping out of the shadows at them, axe in hand. The dwarves of Ironforge, to the northeast, were the most hated enemies of the Frostmane, and no single individual of either side hesitated to kill the other on sight.
"We'll kill it!" The girl bared her teeth, showing off two tiny tusks hidden just below her lower lip and brandishing her wooden spear menacingly at the darkness between the trees.
"But, Yah'j...." Her cousin whimpered, "Aunt Ajalo told us not to go near them because we were too young."
"You're just a coward, Abolji," Yah'jinabi spat, obviously not caring about what he mother had said, her high voice sounding overly loud as the snow deadened all the other sounds of the forest.
Her cousin shrank back, looking hurt.
The boar that had been snuffing around in the background had moved surprisingly quiet and appeared around a tree in front of them, suddenly enough to make both children jump and yell.
The sound startled the boar as well, and it turned on them, snorting loudly.
"Go away!" Yah'jinabi threw her hands up at the boar, hoping to scare it off, but the beast only shook its head and stood its ground.
"It's gonna charge!" Abolji wailed, backing up until his back hit the tree they were standing beneath.
Yah'jinabi raised her tiny spear over her head in the event it did charge, watching the boar closely, still shouting and kicking snow at it. Abolji looked back and forth between his cousin and the boar and timidly held his hatchet up in what would have been a threatening pose if he had been perhaps three feet taller, twenty years older and held a more dangerous weapon.
The boar lowered its head and shook its two gleaming, curved tusks at them, undeterred by the pair's show of defense. When it turned suddenly, deciding the children weren't worth its time and making to leave, Yah'jinabi's coiled nerves launched the spear at the boar. The weapon sailed through the air and landed with a satisfying thunk in the animal's hind leg.
If not for the beast's abrupt rushing at her, the grating squeal of pain and outrage it bellowed out and the sight of her own spear, its tip stuck just under the creature's hide would have made her swell with pride.
Instead, she and Abolji let out simultaneous shrieks and darted around the tree, the boy dropping his hatchet in his panic.
"You made it mad!" He screamed, matching his cousin's stride as they leapt through the snow, twisting around trees. The rapidly approaching night was making seeing the trees difficult, yet the white snow's stark contrast to the black trees made things a bit easier. The boar's enraged huffing was just behind them.
Yah'jinabi didn't answer. Instead, she grabbed Abolji's hand and pulled him sharply over a boulder as the boar rushed past, it having been such a close call that he felt its bristly hide brush past him. The two slid down a bank of packed snow and rushed into a thicket around the base of another, smaller tree.
"Up the tree!" Yah'j ordered her cousin, pointing at the low branches above them. The boar was not dumb, however, and came huffing down the bank after them, still dragging the young troll's spear from its leg. Spots of blood trailed behind it in the snow, staining it red that quickly faded to pink as it soaked in.
They had been told to climb the trees if a wolf or bear ever came after them, they didn't see any reason for boars to be any exception; they could be just as dangerous.
Yah'jinabi laced her fingers together and gave Abolji a foothold, lifting him up against the tree trunk until his numb hands found the lowest branch. He heaved himself up onto it, then, holding onto the branch above the one he perched on, reached down to help his cousin up.
The boar crashed through the brush just as Yah'j was struggling up pull herself onto the limb, Abolji pulling on the back of her doeskin vest and her bare feet scrambling against the trunk in an attempt to help push herself up faster. The boar's tusk caught her lower leg, opening up a long but shallow slice from her calf to her ankle.
Both Abolji and Yah'j shrieked, the boy yanking hard on her shirt until Yah'j lay on her stomach over the branch, her legs hanging over one side- but held up- and her upper body over the other. She looked down, terrified, at the boar as it raged and squealed at the base of the tree, angry at being cheated of its victims. Their struggles had shaken the branch as to let down the powdery snow that had been collecting on its fans of needles, dusting the dark animal in white.
Yah'j righted herself on the branch and put a hand to her injured leg. Her fingers came away wet and dark with blood, and the two cousins held each other, both shaking and crying.
"I want to go home," Abolji whined for the second time that night.
A deep, loud voice shattered the otherwise silent forest if not for the angry boar's grunts and barks. It was not the voice of a troll, though, and the two cousins both started in fright at the sound, squeezing closer to one another.
"It's a dwarf," Yah'j whispered, rust-red eyes wide and terrified. Now faced with meeting a real dwarf, all her previous bravery was washed away.
The voice came again, sounding like it was calling something. Though they could not understand what the dwarf said, it sounded like a name being called, as the same word came up multiple times in the strange language.
"Orri! Girl, Orri! Where'd ye go?"
"Is it yelling at us? Does it know where we are?" Abolji asked fearfully, his teeth rattling as they both shook with the cold and fright.
Yah'j shook her head, her voice sounding very tiny. "I dunno."
There came the sound of snow crunching beneath heavy booted feet from up the bank they had come down, and the boar turned towards the sound and let out a loud squeal.
"Orri! S'that ye? C'mere!"
The boar rushed out of the thicket, and the dwarf's voice took on a relieved note.
"Orri! There ye are. Ah was 'fraid ye'd gotten yese'f eaten by th' wol- Orri! No! C'm back 'ere!"
The snow crunched again, and the boar was back under the tree, snorting and stamping its feet.
"Dûmar! Did'ye fin' 'er?" A second voice, more feminine yet still deep, called from further back in the trees than the first, male voice did.
"Aye, bu' she done an' ran off ag'in!"
The nearer boots tromped closer to the thicket, and the creak of leather and whisper of fur came with it. The two Frostmane children held as still as if they had been frozen to the tree, which they probably would do anyways if they were still stuck in it once night completely took over.
The brittle brush around the base of the tree snapped and parted and a stout dwarven man pushed his way through, his breath making plumes of steam in the frigid air. His green, fur-trimmed cloak dragged in the snow behind him, and, as with all dwarven men, a long, braided red bead hung from his chin. The rest of his face, however, was hidden by a green hood pulled up to ward off the cold.
"Orri, ye bad pig," he grumbled, not yet noticing the twin pair of terrified yet fascinated eyes watching him from the dark branches above.
"C'mere," he grunted, reaching down to guide the boar out of the thicket.
The boar- Orri- snorted loudly and turned, obviously not wanting to move and it was then the dwarven man saw the small spear sticking out of her leg.
"Orri, wha' th' 'ell ye gotten yese'f into this time?" He sighed, holding his hand out, palm up, to calm the beast. With his other hand, he deftly reached around and slid the spearhead out from under the animal's skin while it had been distracted with smelling his upturned palm, thinking she was being presented a treat. Orri jerked and made a deep, angry sound, and Dûmar backed away with a nervous look on his face.
"Eh... Murrie, ye better come and git yer pig... I don' like th' look she's givin' me," he called over his shoulder, examining the spear with one eye and keeping watch on Orri with the other. He had never really liked his hunting companion's boar in the first place, and it seemed the feelings were mutual.
"Where ye a'?" Came the woman's voice, from a bit closer than the last time she had spoken.
"In th' thicket, by th' big tree-" Dûmar began, looking up into the tree as he mentioned it. He swore and jumped back at the sight of the two trolls in the tree, but steadied himself when he realized they were only children. Shivering, terrified, bloody children, he noted, seeing the gash in one troll child's leg.
"I see blood, is Orri alrigh'?" Called the woman, sounding from about the distance of the top of the bank. A flicker of orange light from the torch she carried chased away the shadows around her.
Realization spread over Dûmar's face at the mention of blood, looking from the tiny, crude spear in his hand to the blood in the snow, the wound in Orri's rump, the smear of blood on the boar's tusk and the slice in the troll child's leg.
The dwarf looked up again into the trees at the two trollish children, neither of them moving. The three stared at each other, and as they did so, the injured child's eyes flicked towards the spear in Dûmar's hand.
The aged dwarf laughed quietly. "So's ye two been leadin' Orri 'round out 'ere, eh?" He said softly, too low for the female dwarf tromping through the snow outside the thicket to hear.
"What's he saying?" Murmured Abolji, meeting the dwarf's kind, almost laughing eyes with his own wild, frightened ones.
"He's smiling," Yah'jinabi noted, not understanding what the dwarf had said either. "Maybe he won't hurt us."
"I's alrigh'," Dûmar nodded after the children's short, shaky exchange with each other in their own tongue. "I won' be tellin' Murrie." He put his finger to his lips in a shushing gesture, winked and tossed the spear into the thicket, opposite of the direction the female dwarf, "Murrie", was coming through.
"I said is Orri alrigh'? Wha's with th' blood out 'ere?" Murrie demanded gruffly, shoving her way through the brush.
Dûmar turned to face the dwarf woman. Her hair was tied in twin brown doorknockers, laced with grey, that fell to her wide shoulders, and a rifle was readied and in her hands. She wore stitched tan leather with fur trimming.
"I'm guessing tha' Orri got inna bit o' scuffle with somethin' after she ran off an' hid in 'ere," Dûmar gestured at the thicket, stepping closer to Murrie and placing himself between her and the troll children's' hiding spot.
"We kin go an' find it," Murrie suggested, hefting her gun.
"Naw, pro'lly jes' another boar. I saw more hoof tracks out in th' snow ther'," Dûmar felt no regret for lying to Murrie... he didn't like her much either. She was too merciless and cruel, especially to the Frostmane trolls. He was never sure, as the huntress didn't tell him and he never asked, why she hated trolls in general so much. She easily gunned down wandering trolls from distances with her rifle and enjoyed it, much to her hunting companion's disgust. He disliked her dishonorable way of fighting, as the warrior in him preferred fair fights to blowing the enemy's brains out from behind thirty yards away. He wasn't quite sure what the huntress would do to the two troll children, and didn't want to find out.
Murrie looked down at Orri disapprovingly, setting the butt of the rifle down in the snow.
"Ye bad girl Orri, runnin' off like tha'." The boar circled the tree, raising her short neck to peer up into the branches with her black, piggish eyes and snorted loudly. Dûmar, momentarily fearing Murrie would finally take notice of the children, quickly sidestepped between the boar and the tree and plucked a pinecone from one of the needle fans closest to the ground. He hoped Murrie didn't hear the quiet intake of frightened breath from in the deep shadow in the branches cast by the torchlight she held as he did so.
"'Ere ye go, Orri, bu' I don' know why ye'd be wantin' one'a these," he said amusedly and with a chuckle, holding the pinecone out to the boar. Orri only huffed disgustedly and paced around the tree again.
"Wha's eatin' you, Orri?" Murrie asked, laying a hand on the boar's back as it walked up to it's master.
"She pro'lly wan's t' be headin' home," Dûmar suggested, holding his hand out for the torch. Murrie handed it to him, watching Orri pace restlessly at the base of the tree as the green-hooded dwarf pushed his way past her and through the brush.
As the torchlight was blotted out by the brush, Murrie glanced up into the tree momentarily, but the previous light had ruined her night vision. She frowned and grunted a command at Orri, ordering her pet to follow and headed off after Dûmar. Although Orri made another appalled sound, she lowered her black, bristly head and trotted away behind her master.
Abolji and Yah'j huddled in the branches until the last flicker of torchlight through the trees was gone and the crunch of heavy boots and hooves in fresh snow could no longer be heard.
Abolji sighed. "I think they're gone."
His cousin nodded and glanced down at the trampled snow beneath the tree. Her leg was no longer bleeding, though the wound was still open. Her natural regenerative abilities would seal the gash in a few hours.
"It's too dark," Abolji said meekly as Yah'j swung her legs over the side of the branch and made to jump down, anxious to retrieve her spear. "There're more wolves."
With a sigh to match her cousin's earlier one, Yah'j nodded, not wanting to run into any more aggressive animals.
"That dwarf saw us," Abolji added, looking down to where the dwarven man had stood when he noticed the cousins, "but he didn't do anything. He smiled."
Yah'j only nodded again. "We should stay here tonight."
"Aunt Ajalo's gonna be angry though if we're not home."
"Mother's always angry at us," she grumbled, which was true in a sense. Ajalo was constantly lecturing her daughter and nephew to cease their daring antics during the days, as the two frequently returned from a day of "exploring" or "hunting" to tell tales of throwing rocks at a bear or trogg or gnome or scaring the horses or rams pulling the merchant carts on the roads.
"We'll just go home in the morning," Abolji decided, blindly feeling for the shadowed branches above him to climb to a spot where they could rest at. Their current perch was sturdy and strong, but was too bare to support anyone's sleep. Smaller branches with more extrusions were easier to lie on.
Grumbling, Yah'j followed Abolji up into a cold branches, huddling next to her cousin on a thick, sturdy limb.
"We're gonna be in a lot of trouble tomorrow," Abolji remarked guiltily, leaning his cheek on the tree trunk. His cousin only nodded from where she rested her own cheek against his shoulder and fell silent for the night.
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Hey! Sorry it ended so roughly and suddenly. I've written like, five different endings to this and none seemed right! So I hacked it off here. Hope you liked it despite the ending TT_TT
There's a very high chance I'll add a second, shorter, sadder chapter.