It was an unseasonably warm day, given the naturally chilled clime of Zul'Drak. He'd just returned from the hunt and, as always he did not return empty-handed. Far from it, in fact. The Loa had seen fit to lend him their might; the catlike grace of Harkoa, the serpentine speed of Quetz'lun that aided him as he navigated the frozen forest, the strength and brute power of Rhunok, and the combined resolve of Akali and Mam'toth… Not to mention their hardiness, for he was easily the scrawniest of his people and was nearly as shocked as they when he returned with the largest kills… Most of them were shocked that he returned at all.

But he was blessed, and the Gods had seen fit to allow this gift to be bestowed upon him by the Loa, who were to the Gods as lowly I'wilo was to they. His place as the most successful hunter alive had earned him a grudging sort of respect from the other Drakkari. It was a respect that came in the form reprieve from being cannibalized or exiled. The Drakkari's strength lay in their fierceness and will to survive, not their compassion.

Where there are males, there is jealousy, particularly when said males are Drakkari trolls. I'wilo couldn't count on his fingers and toes how many times he'd been shoved around, beaten into the ground, or otherwise humiliated by the much studier-built males that vied for the attentions of their female counterparts. Not that he posed much a threat to them. He fairly bristled at the nickname "Little I'wilo", when anyone did bother to call him by a name besides "rabbit" or the dreaded "runt". While I'wilo was just as tall as, and often taller than his fellow tribesmen, he was painfully thin in comparison. No woman would ever want the troll that looked like a stunted tree.

No amount of eating could cure his problem. He gorged himself almost desperately at every hard-earned meal, usually taken as he dragged back the carcass of whatever beast he had managed to down, if he didn't want to subside on leftover bone and gristle. He drank deeply of their blood, but to no avail. He was well muscled, but unnaturally slim and there wasn't a thing he could do about it. Poor 'Wil was just built wrong.

The troll sat against a high stone wall that served a half a barrier for a gigantic stone-carven stair that led into one of many proud temples that he was silently made aware he was not fit to enter. Having recently turned seventeen, which made him an adult though he'd always be a boy or something less in the eyes of his people, I'wilo had gotten used to the fact that he wasn't quite welcome as much as he was a tolerated necessity. He'd been named young, for starters. Males did not usually receive names until they'd earned them as a man. Wil, on the other hand, had been handed a name as soon as it was apparent that he would never become a man; would instead be more of a hunting dog that resembled a very skinny troll, to be fed on scraps and bullied as necessary.

I'wilo was startled from his reverie as a shadow passed before his closed eyelids. He'd been near-dozing, caught between the satisfaction of a fruitful hunt and the nagging irritation at the cruelty of being trapped in such a pathetic excuse for a troll form. Rabbit, indeed.

Shielding his eyes and blinking against the sun, he turned his head just in time to glimpse her as she flowed gracefully up the stairs. Not for the first time, he told himself that if she would only take interest in him, would only say his name once; it would be worth all of the bullshit that had made up his pathetic, lowly existence. Then he told himself it would never happen, but the idea had lifted his spirits, as bitter as the reality may be.

Though he'd seen her only briefly, he'd stolen looks at her many times over the years. Her image was burned into his memory and he need only think of her and her visage was conjured in his mind, flawless, and with little effort. She had skin the same pale green tone as his, though hers held far more interest for the young male. Her face was long and leonine; her red eyes almond-shaped and large. She was as narrow as he at the waist, which was completely normal for a female. Her hips flared out broad and curvy, her breasts high and very, very round. Her arms and legs were long, lean and muscular. She had legs so long, so painfully, sexily long and agile as she flowed about on them with the liquid grace of a panther…

He felt himself stirring at the thought of those legs; the way she moved that drew the eyes of all males, I'wilo helplessly and hopelessly included. I'wilo was younger than her, by a good three years, which wouldn't matter but for the fact that he'd had time to witness her with more than one male. Not that he'd actually watched the act, but the way they would raise their chin and proud tusks over her head, possessively, as he kept his gaze averted with a heavy heart. The way they snarled at any other male they caught looking – I'wilo hadn't been stupid enough to get caught – It was dreadfully obvious that she wasn't stingy with her affections, at least when it came to REAL men.

I'wilo sat against the wall, his leg crossed; hands palm-up in his lap as he stared down at them but saw only her. His manhood had risen beneath the backs of his hands but he felt no compulsion to run off and relieve the urge, and so ignored it.

I'wilo loved her the way only young, obsessed, and hormonal male could, when it came to a pretty girl about whom he knew nothing – with a vicious passion. He would never stand with his tusks lifted possessively over her shining indigo mane. She would never look at him that way.

Another shadow crossed the bright sunlight that assailed his eyes as it bounced off of his open hands; this time moving in the opposite direction before it stopped directly before him.

I'wilo looked up.

The one he sought desperately with his heart and loins, though he never dared approach her physically, stood before him. She was glorious, her green skin and dark blue hair backlit by the sun, glowingly outlined. She stood closer to him than she ever had, outside of his own feverishly lustful dreams. She was looking at him!

Her full lips parted as she placed a hand on one dangerously curvaceous hip and bowed forward at the waist to meet the younger male's startled gaze. Her tone was self-assured and brutally feminine as she simply stated, "Hello I'wilo."

I'wilo tried to smile, but he was sure that in his nervous and disbelieving state, it looked more like a grimace. She admonished him playfully, "Aren't ya gonna say hello?" I'wilo swallowed, nodded dumbly and finally opened his mouth, which felt quite dry, "Hello –"

He had forgotten her name. He had forgotten the name that was never far from his mind. It was the one he had mouthed on many a lonely night when he had only his hand for company, but her image to warm him. Understanding and soul-wrenching dismay crossed I'wilo's features.

"Ah've fahgottan ya nehm," he stared down at his hands, his uselessly inept hands and numbness set in, "It's onleh da dream ahgain, see? Ah don't remembah ya nehm, lahvleh guhl dat nevah looked aht me." And to lend more weight to the fact, he spoke orcish, a language he'd never heard when he was still in Zul'Drak. The language he now preferred, for more than one good reason. "Oh," he mused. "Ah'm still ahfraid." His voice was soft and had a childlike quality, despite its depth.

Dreading what he knew he confront, knowing he would be shocked and frightened, but helpless to change the past or the dream, I'wilo slowly raised his eyes to meet hers again. His face was blank, full lips parted just enough to make a whistling noise as he breathed in and out, a plume of freezing vapor escaping with each shallow exhale. She was as he remembered her, but not as he wanted to. His heart clenched painfully at the knowledge that over time this was the state in which he most often imagined her, though he fought it with all of his being.

When he looked up, he was no longer at the temple stairs and it was no longer warm. It was freezing and he was calf-deep in snow. The sun had abandoned the horrid scene and left it to the moon's full glow, which rendered the snow blue and lent a ghostly quality to the nightmare he beheld. The dream began to edge closer to the reality that had stoked it and kept it alive over the months since the actual event.

The buildings that loomed in the background had been razed. Many of them appeared as dead insect husks, eroded by the breeze. Others were crushed as if a giant foot had stomped them. There were spots where the ground itself was partially decimated and covered in barely recognizable rubble. The majestic temples appeared as crumbs in the distance. A sense of wrongness pervaded the land. These were structures built for and strengthened by the gods, their gods. They were indestructible. They were eternal. And yet here was proof that even the massive stone shrines and the faith they represented were not only susceptible to time, but to the instant whim of something too large to be contemplated.

His hands opened and closed at his sides. His breath came in quick gasps, with long pauses in between. He would breath, stop… Breathe, stop… His heart was breaking, should literally have withered in his chest, but it beat on, loudly. It was like the drums that used to signify life, survival, and a proud race. But now it beat alone. He was so alone.

Her eyes were too pale, too wide. They were blank. Her once pretty face was stretched in a soundless cry that showed most of her teeth, the dainty brow furrowed in a final look of indignation. She looked ready to fight. He hoped she had given them a fight. Her facial expression was different each time he dreamt.

Where her long, perfect neck should have begun, a wooden pike was in its stead, four feet of splintered wood plunged through the snow and deep into the earth. Her hair was matted down with blood, the ends dangling limp behind the ragged stump of her neck. There was a line of them. I'wilo let his eyes wander to the left, returning to her horrid expression and pausing before he looked to the right. She was part of a row of heads, stretching far in either direction. Some were frozen in expressions of shock, but most of them looked vicious, angry. They had fought to the last, he knew. His people (for all that they did not accept him, they were still his people) were not meek. They were proud, strong fighters. He felt something akin to pride as he let his gaze wander slowly back to the head before him… To the female whose name he had forgotten in that moment, both in dreams and in memory, though in reality it had come back to him and he would never dare utter it. In the waking world he had cultivated a superstitious belief that saying it would teleport him back to this dread moment forever.

His eyes followed her as her head rose higher in his vision, for he had sunk slowly to his knees. He looked at the other heads again as he opened his mouth to beg quietly, his voice weak and pleading, "Please don't." He didn't know who he asked, his Loa, his gods, himself or his people, but his plea went unanswered. His hands had ripped open his ragged leather shirt at some point, and now they tore at the flesh of his chest, raking the skin open so that his blood fell and in the dark it joined their blood, turning the snow brown, though he knew it was really red that he saw. Red on their faces, on the snow beneath their mangled heads, red-stained pikes set in red snow.

His mouth hung open now, his frosted breath coming in harsh gasps as he threw his arms wide, his head back and his mouth stretched hideously. The fragile gossamer-thin cocoon of shocked numbness shattered as a scream exploded from his throat. The cry was so long and so anguish-filled that it made him feel as though he were deflating as he let it pour upward and out; it seemingly stealing his energy but leaving behind all of the terror, the pain and the loneliness.

After the wind was gone from him, his mouth remained agape; his head back for several seconds, eyes staring at the moon that revealed everything with detached apathy. He wanted to be like the moon, the stars. He wanted to not care. He breathed deeply, in preparation for another wailing cry, because there was nothing else he could do, but he was stopped by a sound that turned his fear to a more immediate danger.

Drums; the drums that his heart sought to emulate as it crashed against his chest were beating in the distance. He recognized the voices of the still-living Drakkari people, his people, accompanying the drums' booming pulse. But they were no longer his people. While they were too far off for his long, sensitive ears to perceive distinct syllables, meaning, his gut clutched at itself in icy disquiet. Something in their tone ignited a response in I'wilo that was pure instinct, spurned any part of him that might have given an answering cry to the voices that approached, or sought out the other Drakkari. He was as certain as the heads before him were dead. If he did not flee, he would die, or worse.

Hands, slick with his own cooling blood, pressed into the snow as he used them to push himself to his feet. His legs shook from a combination of weakness and trepidation. His mutilated chest left brown spots in the blue snow, coating his pale green skin with runnels and trickles of his own precious life. The ones before him were dead, gone forever from this land and hopefully forgiven by the gods that those still-living Drakkari now sought to exploit. He was alive, and though he didn't have a single reason other than blind panic at the vague notion of what might be in store if he lingered, he chose to stay that way if he could.

I'wilo fled. As miles of snow and then earth and stone, dry grass, sandy shore and crushed shells, earth again, fell beneath and behind his feet, he stopped for nothing. He managed to outrun all rational thought, but never fear. Fear is what drove him to run for hours and then days and when he finally stopped he had been slowing for several hours. He didn't halt his legs, rather they ran down like a clockwork toy as one by one the muscles seized and refused to go any further. His progress had become slow, his breath a wheezing gasp deep in his chest. He fell to his knees, and his hands dropped to his sides, palms back and facing up as they bent at the wrist and their fronts came to rest against the ground. The soft fuzz that covered most of him prickled with sweat, the thin crest of longer fur that ran down half of his spine rising and falling several times in alarm. His mind cried out for him to continue his flight.

With a low groan, he pitched forward. The ridge of fur on his spine lifted once more and then flattened against the sweaty, dirty skin…

And then he was back at the place he'd run from, confronted once again with a row of severed heads that stretched in either direction. It was the way of dreams, the mind worrying at the most sore spot, turning it over and over, trying to find a chink, pry it apart and rearrange the wrongness of it, solve the unsolvable puzzle of cruelly unfair fact. He dropped to his knees, tore at his shirt and then his chest and threw his head back…

Don't scream. He thought it before he said it, quietly. "Don't scream" But why?

Because she'll hear you, he thought.

I'wilo lowered his tusks that pointed at the sky and looked at her severed head before him. She didn't look like she cared. Still, the continuity of the memory-nightmare had been interrupted. He didn't scream. His breath still came in gasps, his chest still bled onto the ground and his entire body trembled. I'wilo did not scream.

I'wilo felt a near-crushing weight on his chest. He closed his eyes.

The first thing he became aware of was the sun on his face. He kept his eyes closed and studied the reddish light behind his eyelids as he tried to get his bearings. Gradually, his body followed him from that awful place. The snow that enveloped his feet faded and was replaced with what felt like grass, soft beneath and between his toes. He was warm, the heat just at the limit of what he considered comfortable, but not enough to make him break out in a sweat.

Nagging at his mind, but being drawn away, pushed by the warmth and the light, the soft grass, the dream withdrew itself or rather I'wilo found himself able to withdraw from the dream. The weight was still there, on the right side of his chest, and his belly, but it had ceased to be unbearably heavy.

What- ? He remained quite still, his ears straining toward the birds' song he only just registered, though it was quite prominent and came from all directions. Suddenly it came to him, the lusty feeling that had brought him to Silvermoon city, the wine and conversation with the blood elf girl… The weight on top of him suddenly felt heavy again, at the thought of the blood elf. I'wilo sniffed and cleared his throat quietly.

Steeling himself, he slowly opened his eyes. He lifted his left hand - for his right arm was beneath and around someone that he did not wish to wake - to shield them from the sunlight as bent his neck forward, tucking his chin and causing his throat to wrinkle up.

Kaylanna slept still, her breath slow in slumber, the exhales marked by dainty little squeaks that must have been snores. Her small, pretty face was turned up toward his and he felt an irrational fear that she was only pretending and that her eyes would snap open to lock with his. He stared at her closed eyelids for several minutes before letting his gaze take in the rest. She lay on his right arm, which encircled her protectively. Her own right arm was draped across his chest. The weight he had felt on his stomach was her right knee, which she had bent up and thrown across him at some point.

He'd left a bloody, horrific dream for a more subtle, very real and immediate problem. This was not good. I'wilo rolled his eyes and let the back of his skull sink into the grass again.

Suppressing the urge to let out a great sigh, perhaps pursing his full lips to make a wet farting noise – He'd heard that called a raspberry but it sounded like a fart to him, a gross one – I'wilo closed his eyes and tried to will himself to fall asleep, maybe die so that she'd wake up, be shocked and then go the hell home. When that didn't work, he opened his eyes again and looked down at her. She lay still and dreaming; by the looks of it her dreams much kinder than his. He was glad for her, for the apparently gentle dreams, NOT for her presence.

Carefully, mouth pressed into a thin line between his tusks, brow furrowed in concentration, he reached out with his left hand and gently lifted her arm, giving it back to her so that it lay along her side. After the initial heart-stopping alarm, he could have cried with relief when she shifted and drew in her right leg to rest atop her left. The "meep… meep" sound of her cute snores stopped and she sighed quietly. I'wilo froze.

One pink elekk, two pink elekk, three pink elekk… I'wilo got to two hundred before he felt safe enough to move again. He lifted his right hand from her tiny waist and let the back of his long arm rest against the grass, pausing again before he began to draw said arm from beneath her.

Kaylanna's right hand; tiny enough to fit in his mouth and have room for a half dozen more, came up to rest across her eyes. She yawned and flexed the hand, squeezing at her closed lids several times before letting it fall atop his chest. This was not good.

Glowing green eyes opened and regarded his quietly. This was not good.

Her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed together in an uncertain frown, her pointy little ears twitching. I'wilo quickly realized what she was frowning at; he'd been disarming a massive bomb, after all. And he knew jack shit about bombs.

He was frowning at her. Was he upset to find her still there? Was he angry she'd gotten drunk and passed out? The look quickly passed, the hairless brow which had been knitted in concentration lifting as the mouth between the tusks quickly morphed into the friendly smile that it so easily wore. "Moahnin'," the deep voice that made his chest vibrate beneath her fingers. He was smiling. That was good. She smiled back, beginning to feel very shy again.

She was smiling back at him. This was… acceptable. The rest of the situation… not good. She responded with a grin that might have stoked his loins, under different circumstances. "Morning," she replied, her voice husky from sleep.

I'wilo's smile began to feel less forced as he saw it register that she was laying atop a complete stranger, and that the stranger was a big green troll. She withdrew her hand and sat up, quickly fixing her hair as women are wont to do when they see a man looking at them. His smile broadened. Her cloaks, which I'wilo had thoughtfully draped over her passed-out form the previous night, lie pooled on the ground. She busied herself by picking it up and shaking it out, a bit more than necessary, giving him nervous glances every so often.

I'wilo felt in control again. He lifted himself on his elbows and tilted his head as he grinned up at the lovely little elf. His tongue ran along the inside of his cheek and he scratched his jaw lightly with one finger as he watched her.

Life sometimes handed you shit situations. You just had to make it good.

End of chapter. Hope you enjoyed it. PLEASE leave your comments! I'd love to know what people think so far. I had a bit of a struggle with the dream sequence. I felt it was too long, but I didn't know what parts to cut out. In the end, I ended up cutting out little bits here and there but I think it's still long and I hope you didn't find it too tedious.

I don't own WoW or sleep with Blizzard, yadda yadda yadda. My characters are important to me, so please don't make them your own! Oh, and the Kaylanna character is just someone I yanked out of my ass as I was writing this. "Kay" sounds easygoing to me and I've always thought names like "Yvanna" are the secks. Given the volume of the Moon Guard server, I'd not be shocked to find out that there is a character by that name, and several others with different spellings. And I figure if there is one or twenty Kaylannas, there's a good chance that they might be belfs, given that everyone except me has twenty of those. So, sorry Kaylanna and uh… I like your name! n_n

Chapter three will be forthcoming when I get to it. I'm also working on a few other stories and I have no clue what order they'll be done in because I tend to bounce back and forth from one story to another every half-hour. Keep gaming!

~I'wilo