One does not advance the swimming abilities of ducks by throwing the eggs in the water. -Multatuli (pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker), novelist (1820-1887)
Beleta was sitting up in bed. Her long thin arms wrapped around her knees, tucked under her chin. She was rocking slowly side to side, listening to the wind rustling the purple leaves of the tall trees around her. The scent of the warm forest floor was lifted into the open room. Two young night elves were sitting on the foot of her bed, their noctilucent eyes unable to hide the concern they had for their friend.
One whispered, "Was it the same dream?" She nodded.
They were all dressed in the same long white night shirts, the thin elf with her hair in a long braid and the others' silvery and emerald locks falling loosely to their shoulders, accentuating the long elegant ears standing up from their young heads. The beds were arranged in a row on the open platform and a gibbous moon peaked at them from behind the puffy clouds gliding across the cool night sky. Books and bows littered the tables and floor.
They were the only girls in the dormitory tonight, and on most nights. The night elves had sacrificed their immortality to defect Archimonde at Mount Hyjal and few after had produced children, cautious about condemning them to an uncertain mortal lifespan. It was in the settlements outside of Darnassus where most families were started and they sent their children back to Darnassus for training.
"Please don't tell the matron" Bel started. "I don't want my aunt and uncle to worry."
Beleta Windsong squeezed her oval eyes tightly closed. The dream came less and less often since she started her training, but it was still as vivid and horrifying. Ilyenna and Wintersbite, sisters, were her two best friends. Their family raised the large Nightsaber mounts used by the Sentinel sisters guarding the lands of the Kaldorei. Silver haired Ilyenna was the oldest and most bold of the three. Wintersbite graceful and pretty, even by the standards of the Kaldorei, was a few months younger than Bel.
Ilyenna stood and holding her finger to her lips said quietly, "I am going to get Gremmels. You always sleep better with him."
Bel started to protest, but Winter's giggles brought a smile to her face. Winter called after her sister's vanishing form, "Be careful. If you wake all the cats, we will be reciting runes for weeks!"
Winter reached out and placed her hand on Bel's forearm. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. Bel sighed, squeezing back the tears, and placed her own hand over Winter's. "Thank you, Winter. It is silly, really. I am of age, starting my class training, and I still have nightmares like a little child." She smiled at Winter, grateful to have her near.
At a tiny growl, they both looked back down the stairway to see Yenna tip toeing in, carrying a squirming, long legged young cat. He was chewing on her fingers that were trying to cling to his wiggling body. Bel held out her hands to the gangly night saber and he pushed from Yenna's grasp landing in Bel's lap on all four huge furry paws. He bumped his head against her open hand and licked first her fingers, then her chin. All three girls giggled quietly at his antics as he turned his attention to the bed covers, pouncing on the folds before stretching out as long as he could, looking around and panting happily. Bel hugged him and both Yenna and Winter scratched the top of his broad head.
Yenna spoke in a whisper, "Dazalar, the beast trainer, said I am ready to start taming my own." "That is wonderful Yen." Bel whispered back. "I hope I will be ready soon, too."
They all knew that Gremmels had been rescued with Bel, when her father perished. He had been showing her how a hunter might tame a wild beast as a companion. Gremmels was a small kitten at the time when he had wandered farther away from his littermates and mother than he should have. Bel and her father had captured the little saber, planning to release him back to his mother after a few days. With the attack on the Moonglade village, the days had turned into weeks and then the young saber had refused to return to the wild, sticking close to Bel, snarling and spitting when anyone attempted to send him back into the forests around Moonglade. Bel for her part, had clung to the little saber for those many days, until her aunt and uncle had been located and informed of the child in need of their care.
Now that she was old enough to enter the schools, she had been trying to keep Gremmels stabled with the other hunter animals. He needed to be properly trained and bonded. She wasn't ready yet to learn this hunter skill.
Yenna and Winter had crawled back into their own beds. "I'll help you Bel, as soon as I start my taming lessons. We will make him a real hunting companion."
Bel burrowed deeper in the covers, her arm around the neck of the little saber. "Yes, that will be wonderful." She whispered back to Yenna. Looking into the glowing yellow eyes of the saber she added softly, "You will be the best ever hunting companion when we fully bond." She closed her eyes and fell asleep almost immediately. The nightmare with its single long trumpeted alarm call, sounding over the mists of time and memory and answered too late, vanished from her sleeping thoughts.
The first rays from the morning sun caught the three girls sneaking the little saber back into the stables. Once they had him confined, they sped away for their lessons.
The mornings were for book learning. The lessons revolved around their history, about the lore of the Highborne and the rise of the night elves. Presented in the common language used by the humans, Dwarves, and Gnomes of the Alliance, occasionally some of the oldest teachers would lapse back into the lyric, Darnassian language. Bel thought the old stories sounded the best in their own words and not the course utterances of the common language. By afternoon, the girls' energy burst forth and they were sent out to learn the lessons of the lands, from the broad limbed trees to the animals and the mystic moon wells.
For the afternoon sessions, they were given quests or other tasks to complete and left to determine how best to accomplish these. The three girls excelled at these lessons, quickly learning many new skills and bonding with their natural world. However, the three were young and mischievous, frequently playing games on their ever-patience elders. Capturing a kobol or skittery spider and kiting them back to the dwellings and even the moon wells, to watch the adults scramble to remove the pests, provided them endless hours of entertainment.
On one such afternoon, Winterbite stopped dead on the path back to Dolonar. Bel and Yenna had been inspecting a new bow given to Yenna for her birthday and the two almost stumbled into the slender young elf.
Bel looked around quickly and whispered, "What is it? What are you looking at?" Yenna had already pulled two arrows and was at the ready with her bow.
Winter stepped soundlessly back to the edge of the path, Beleta and Ilyenna matching her steps. "Look" said Winter pointing into the shadow of a large tree off the path. They peered in that direction and could see a horned, two legged creature. He was heavily furred, with long gleaming claws on his fingers and his feet sported hooves. "A satyr!" she whispered.
'Should we kill it?' asked Yenna excitedly putting tension on her bow string. Now they all caught the foul odor wafting from the creature.
"Oh, how awful." Bel exclaimed, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "Maybe we should just run and tell Shan'do Syral or Vahlen."
Winter had been silent for a moment and then brushing back a strand of hair escaping from her ponytail, she announced. "I am going to speak with it!"
Both Yenna and Bel gasped.
"No, Winter." Bel stared at her.
Yenna pulled one arrow. "I'll give it one warning shot and then kill it. Something that foul doesn't deserve any more." She added grimly.
Winter reached out to pull Yenna's bow down. "Stop it!" Winter said stubbornly. "It's a human satyr, not one of the demonic ones. It is only right that we see if it means us harm or not, first."
Yenna growled at her sister. "Fine, Bel and I will circle around behind that tree and meld. If it makes any move toward you, we will shot it." Bel could see the lines around Yenna's eyes harden and she knew Yenna would kill the satyr if she had to.
Winter strode calmly up to the creature. It startled, as it apparently hadn't noticed the girls standing in the path, but then he spoke to her.
"Ah, a young priestess. I am Zenn Fouhoof, the magnificent." He announced grandly and turned slightly, running a clawed finger down his broad, heavily furred chest.
Bel and Yenna caught each other's eyes. Why would he address Winter as a priestess? Of the three, she hadn't committed to a life pathway. Both Yenna and Bel found they were drawn to the life of a hunter, but Winter had been delaying making a decision.
He pointed one long claw at Winter. "You look like you are eager for some work. I can make you a very happy Kaldorei and provide you with things you have never even dreamed of having." Bel heard Yenna snort under her breath. He continued. "I have some business in this forest and I require certain reagents. Fetch these for me and I will reward you handsomely for your time."
Bel could hear his list of reagents, as he called them, and she felt a pang of uneasiness as well as nausea from his odor. Winter asked why he needed these items and he replied. "There is a market. Some of the druids need them." And he waved his hand back down the path. "I have collected some of their reagents and I find I could use some help in locating these." At this Winter agreed to help to the astonishment of both Bel and Yenna.
Winter turned back to the pathway towards Dolonar. Bel and Yenna had to run to catch her.
Breathlessly Yenna asked her sister. "Are you going to get those things?"
"Why of course." She answered. Her eyes glinted at the two and she added. "I assume you will both help me. We can share in the reward." Yenna agreed, but Bel felt unsure. She hesitated, nervously and unconsciously pulling on her long braid, but finally nodded as she looked from one sister to the other. The reagents didn't seem so bad when Winter repeated them and they could easily collect them after their lessons.
It took the girls three solar cycles to collect all the reagents. Late one afternoon, they placed them in their bags and quietly left to find the satyr.
He was again under the shadow of the tree and seemed very pleased to see Winter approaching. This time, all three walked up to him. Bel fought down the urge to cover her nose.
His eyes narrowed in excitement. "Do you have the materials I asked for?" Winter nodded and the three of them opened their bags. "Ah, excellent! Young night elves are usually the best at collecting these reagents." He carefully inspected the fangs, feathers, and spider silk swatches. "Good quality, too."
He handed Winter a severed voodoo claw. "I only promised this one a reward." He said as he glared at Yenna and Bel, as if challenging them to raise a complaint.
Winter's eyes glittered at the claw and took it eagerly. The satyr quickly gathered his reagents into a bag, grinned evilly, and said. "Good doing business with you, daughters." And vanished.
Bel looked around. "Did you know satyrs could do that?"
The three walked back to Dolonar, inspecting the claw. "I wonder what it does, exactly." Winter mused.
"We can't ask any of the teachers." Bel warned. "I think they might not approve."
"Yes" Yenna agreed. "Well, maybe Vahlen, if we can't figure it out. He knows a lot about stuff like this."
Vahlen, the tall, powerfully built warrior was a favorite of their teachers. He was their Shan'do. He would tell them stories of the battles he fought, the brave leaders of the night elves, and about the strange creatures and races of peoples, they had yet to meet. He was also a grim and unyielding fighting instructor. They would repeat and repeat a move or routine, until he thought they could do it perfectly. After his sessions, the three would frequently fall into their beds, exhausted. Unlike the other instructors, he had traveled widely in the world. It was even rumored he was a member of the Whispers of Solace Guild, a powerful Guild working at the highest levels of the ruling classes throughout Azeroth. No one really knew all the members. More than one late night was spent wondering why he was simply a teacher now and giggling as they reminded each other of his long canines.