Farstrider Retreat, Eversong Wood
Two years ago
Paelarin took the winding exterior path at an easy lope. The architecture of the Retreat was odd by the standards of many elves; the tall structure had a roof, and even a crystalline chandelier in the main meeting space, but only such walls as were necessary to hold the thing up. Instead of stairs, the upper balconies were linked by curving ramps the swept outward from the building itself. Somehow, their band had become so comfortable in the ancient lodge that when the Blood elves' hold on Eversong had been secured, they had rebuilt and restocked it, and now the Farstrider Retreat had become an important staging point, both for the rangers and others who aided in keeping northern Quel'Thalas secure—a task that was never done, for in the wake of the Scourge's forcible removal, a tribe of Amani trolls had settled themselves in across the river to the southeast.
"Hey, little rat! I know you're up here." Pael alternated between shouting and grumbling to himself as he climbed. Supposedly, he was alone in the lodge. Some of the band were away on assignment, but Zalene and Areyn had finally given in to worry and set out to search for their missing member—whom he had just spotted trying to sneak in. "Taking this 'Farstrider' thing a bit too seriously, aren't we? You can't just wander in and out as the whim strikes you. Four days and not a word! Dragon's teeth, everyone's been worried sick! Hey, I'm talking to—"
His remonstrations came to a halt as he rounded the corner to the inside upper chamber where Shandara had her bunk. She was there, all right, the huge bulk of Sharidan sitting upright on her pillow. The girl's back was to him, giving him a view only of the red-orange hair hanging to her shoulders, and the dark green leather of her ranger's garb. What held his attention, though, was the mess strewn across the bed. Shan was the most fastidious member of the band, normally, but she seemed to have pulled out all her belongings and tossed them across the blanket. More to the point, she was busily stuffing items into a large rucksack; even at a glance, Paelarin's trained eye perceived that she was packing only the essentials for a long trip, as well as her few treasured personal items…everything she would never have to come back for.
"Are you going somewhere?" he said dangerously. "Damn you, little rat, would you like to hear what everyone's been like since you vanished? You made Zalene cry; the Lieutenant is going to scalp you as it is. And now, what is this? You think you're taking a—" She half-turned to face him, and Paelarin stopped cold.
She stood in profile, the one eye he could see burning a sick, fel-green that actually cast a faint glow across the dim chamber. Sweat matted her hair, standing in droplets on her forehead; her skin was waxy, leeched of its color, and stretched far too tight across her skull. Paelarin's irritation evaporated in an instant.
"Shan? What happened? What did you—" His breath caught as the pieces snapped together in his brain. In two strides he crossed the small chamber and seized her by the shoulders, forgetting that Shandara usually didn't like to be touched. This time, she didn't even try to pull away. "What did they do to you?"
"I'm fine," she mumbled. He could feel her body shaking, not the tense hum of tension the quaver of someone exhausted...or starving.
"Yeah, you look it! By all the gods, what happened? There will be blood for this! Nobody lays hands on a Farstrider! I'll—"
"You'll do nothing!" she retorted, some of the strength returning. "Pael, please. This is my own fault anyway; I don't want anyone else hurt because I couldn't keep my mouth shut."
"Aw, gods." Impulsively, he drew her into a hug. It actively frightened him that she leaned into his shoulder instead of pushing him away. "We can't let this be, kim'jael. Don't you understand that? Somebody has to take a stand…"
"I took one, and look what happened," she mumbled into his shirt. Weakly, Shan pushed herself back to fix his green eyes with her own. "The rangers can't fight this, Pael. You know and I know we can't run away, but there's nothing the band can do against… It's the magisters, those warlocks among them, the whole city. This is Quel'Thalas now. You can't fight the combined will of the elves. They'll take you one at a time, and do…" A shudder wracked her slim frame. "Please, don't lay that on my conscience. Somebody has to survive, and prove that there's a better way to live."
"How many times did the Lieutenant tell you?" he growled. "Don't poke the dragon. But you just had to keep nosing around, asking questions and criticizing the magisters…"
She nodded, not bothering to reply, and gently extricated herself. Shandara picked up her rucksack, and Paelarin saw that it was full; she'd finished grabbing what she needed before turning to face him. "I don't think they're done with me, Pael. So I have to go. I'm not going to bring this down on our house and put all of you in danger." She looked earnestly at his face until he nodded grudging agreement. "You'll explain to the Lieutenant for me?"
Paelarin nodded again. "And the others. We may have to sit on Arathel until she promises not to start assassinating magisters, though. Hey!" He snapped his fingers, a sudden thought striking. "Before you go, there's…wait here. Ill be right back."
He dashed across two sweeping ramps to his own chamber, arriving in seconds. The small space was cluttered so that his bed was barely accessible, stacked with barrels of drying staves, bundles of arrows, the walls lined with finished bows hanging on pegs. Pael threw open a cupboard and withdrew a long, linen-wrapped package, and darted back out.
He didn't bother to return to Shan's room, knowing well that she wouldn't pick now of all times to start doing as she was told. Sure enough, he intercepted her at the southern entrance to the lodge, heading out into the forest with Sharidan in tow.
"Here," Pael said, holding out the bundle with both hands. "You'll be needing this."
Shandara raised an eyebrow at him, but took the item and carefully removed its linen covering. The cloth slipped easily away and fell to lie puddled on the ground between them, and Shan's eyes widened at what she found in her hands.
"Prince Kael'Thas's order!" she gasped. "Have you gone mad? What will you tell him about—"
"Regrettably," Paelarin said in his driest tone, "a hidden flaw in the wood caused the bow to shatter in the final stages of finishing, forcing me to begin fresh. I apologize to His Majesty for the delay, but in all crafts, these things sometimes happen. It is finished, though, and after what his pet warlocks did to you Kael can go bugger himself with a razorhead shaft. The Prince doesn't need a masterwork longbow any more than you need a scepter to hang on your wall and parade with in front of courtiers, for that's all he'd do with it. And a Farstrider needs a good weapon."
The bow was stunning in its beauty as anyone could see, but to the touch of an experienced ranger, it was also a thing of lethal perfection. Slightly recurved, exquisitely balanced and three quarters of Shan's height in length, it would propel an arrow with precision over an astonishing distance. The wood had been stained a dark, blood red, its grip wrapped with lynxskin dyed the same color, and had been carved into the shape of spreading wings, the wooden feathers inset with flecks of red sandstone that adorned it like gems but would not catch the light, giving away a ranger's position. All along both arms of the bow marched elvish runes of the old style, in a dialect that few bothered to learn anymore, invoking a prayer of blessing to the spirits of nature. It was a grandmaster's weapon; not for nothing was Paelarin the most sought-after bowyer in Quel'Thalas.
"Pael," she whispered…
"Shh. Enough. Have you decided where you're going to go? Or do you need to keep it to yourself…?"
Shandara shook her head no. "They just want me gone. Once I leave Quel'Thalas, I doubt anyone will bother chasing me. I'm going to Thunder Bluff. The Tauren live very close to nature, and few elves bother to visit Mulgore. I should do quite well there."
He nodded, sighed, and repressed a sudden urge to hug her again. Shan had obviously recovered enough spirit to feel more like herself, and she really didn't like people touching her. "Take care of yourself, little rat."
Turning to go, Shandara gave him a cold half-smile. "I'm a ranger. That's what I do."
Then she and the great cat were off at a lope, fleeing her homeland for the second time in her short life.
Darnassus
Two years ago
It had been called the most beautiful city in the world, and to the night elves at least, that was unarguably true. The air was always pleasantly cool in Darnassus, high atop the great tree Teldrassil; between the altitude and the tree's northerly position, it should have been far colder, but the magic of life that imbued the World Tree kept the city and its environs comfortably temperate. Night elves did use some stone in their architecture, and indeed had used it more heavily in the construction of Darnassus than they did elsewhere as a rule, but here as in general they favored wood. Some wood was harvested, but as this was done with the permission of the trees from which it came, it was a slow and not very fruitful process. And anyway, the kaldorei preferred to grow new, young trees into shapes around which could be built their domiciles. It was comforting to them to dwell in the embrace of living trees, anyway. Darnassus itself was built on a series of islands over a lake, trees rising throughout, so that water, architecture and forest melded together in a way that had never been attempted elsewhere. Though the dense foliage overhead shielded the city from much of the starlight, it was always well-lit, even to the degree that visiting humans and dwarves, with their much weaker eyes, could navigate easily at night. Lamps hung from branches, perched atop pillars and drifted in their own tiny boats across the lake's surface, carrying both natural flames and the blue wisp-lights that night elves favored. Wisps themselves, the formless nature spirits which aided and dwelt alongside the kaldorei, drifted everywhere, adding their own luminosity. Upon their first arrival in Darnassus, nearly all visitors stopped right where they stood and stared in awe.
Narsalyn truly hated the city, and not just because every time she came here she ended up standing at attention and getting chewed out by somebody.
The largest structure in the city, and the only one built entirely of stone, the Temple of the Moon had become the first formal center of Elune's worship since the destruction of Suramar ten thousand years ago. For all that time, the Sisters of Elune had practiced their arts throughout the realm of the kaldorei, going where they were needed and teaching their apprentices wherever they found themselves, as was the way of nature. But much had changed for the elves in recent times. Darnassus, in fact, was the first city as such that they had built in many centuries. There were few enough night elves left, and both the demands of organizing the remnant of their civilization and their increasing ties with the Alliance had demanded a more central leadership. Evidently, the Sisters of Elune had decided the same. Most of the temple's space consisted of its vast indoor garden, built around a moonwell and ringed by balconies, but it did possess sleeping quarters for the priestesses, as well as several other chambers for various purposes, including this open one on the upper levels of the temple, in which Narsalyn now found herself with the High Priestess.
Tyrande Whisperwind stood at the balcony rail with her back to Narsalyn, gazing out over the lights of the city. Her appearance from this angle was deceptively plain, a tall kaldorei woman in a sleeveless white robe, her cobalt hair tied back in a simple tail. But in moments, Nars knew, she would turn around and the harangue would begin. This business were she stood in silence, apparently ignoring her guest, was all a tactic to intimidate the young woman. In ten thousand years as the leader of their entire race, Tyrande had picked up quite a few such tricks. But Narsalyn had spent the last two years more than earning her place, and knew a few tricks of her own. She was in the right here; she was not going to be bullied or pushed around. So she told herself, even as she felt her innards sinking slowly into her boots.
Soft footfalls on the stone floor approached, and a massive white feline appeared from behind Narsalyn, leaning comfortingly against her hip. Diana, the great frostsaber, had been her steady companion since a misadventure in Winterspring over a year ago, growing to become the closest friend the night elf had ever had. Now, she could sense her partner's inner distress, though Nars managed a mask of serenity that she had developed for situations such as these. The two of them were far more comfortable among the honest, kill-or-be-killed hazards of the wilderness than trying to navigate the political waters of Darnassus. Narsalyn felt a surge of affection and gratitude for the support, though she had to very quickly adjust to avoid being knocked over. Diana was simply the largest cat she'd ever seen; they'd met when she was only half-grown, but she had matured to be nearly the size of the huge sabers that night elves bred as mounts.
Minutes stretched on around the three of them, the only sounds being the trill of night birds and the assorted murmurs, muffled by distance, of the city below going about its business. Narsalyn began breathing slowly and deeply from the abdomen, counting each inhalation, and felt a sense of peace steal over her limbs. The simple meditation soothed her anxiety somewhat, though she still steeled her mind. She wasn't wrong. The High Priestess would surely understand—she had to! Narsalyn was calm, in control, and at ease…
Tyrande finally turned to face her, and Nars managed—barely—not to physically twitch.
"So," the Priestess said, "you have had a busy night." Narsalyn remained silent. "It is not so often that I hear of a physical altercation in the Cenarion Enclave involving Arch Druid Staghelm himself."
"The Arch Druid didn't actually get involved, once it went beyond shouting," Nars corrected her.
"Which frankly surprises me, given the man's known temper and the fact that you, a young nobody, called him 'squirrelly' to his face."
"It wasn't face-to-face," she said earnestly. "I didn't even know he was there, or I'd never have said—"
"I wonder, did you trouble to see who might be there?"
Nars blinked at her, uncertain what the point of the question was. An instinctive glance down at Diana yielded no answers. The High Priestess shook her head, with a soft sigh.
"Well, then. I'm to understand this whole thing began with your very loud assertion that Teldrassil should be chopped down and the wood given to orcs."
"I was mostly kidding, at the time," Narsalyn answered. "Though I don't think it's a bad idea, either." Tyrande raised one long eyebrow, but said nothing. Taking her silence as encouragement, the younger woman pressed on. "This tree isn't doing us any good; you know that as well as I. You've said it often enough. It's not blessed by the dragonflights the way Nordrassil was; we didn't regain our immortality by planting it, and the tree itself is growing corrupted, which will hurt us in the long run if we stay up here. The druids say they can fix it, but I say, what's the point? It will never do what it was intended to do without the dragons' help. If we moved back into Ashenvale in force, we'd have the power to push the orcs out and preserve our forest from them. And if we offered them a huge supply of wood, they'd have no reason to chop down our trees anyway. Who knows, maybe the corruption in Teldrassil would cause them to suffer some. What is the downside to this plan?"
"The downside," Tyrande said evenly, "is that you had too much ale and loudly laid out the idea in front of several of the very druids who created Teldrassil in the first place."
"Stubborn old—"
"Be silent." Too late, Nars realized that she hadn't been speaking to a receptive audience. "I have seldom seen such a display of pure infantile stupidity. You deliberately insulted several of the most powerful members of the Cenarion Circle in their own enclave, belittled what they consider their greatest achievement, and generally spoke to people many times your own age as if you knew their business better than they. Had the Sentinels not intervened routinely, I don't believe I would have ordered them to. A thrashing at the hands of the druids might have proved very educational for you."
Narsalyn was staring at her, mouth agape. "But… But, they're wrong!"
Tyrande's eyes widened slightly, as though she were bemused by this idea. "And?"
The huntress felt as though she'd been struck sharply between the eyes. She opened and closed her mouth twice in quick succession, groping for words to state a thought so glaringly obvious that it should have needed none. "I can't…I don't…they… I was right!" she shouted finally in frustration. The Priestess only sighed, but this time Narsalyn barreled on. "I was right and you've said the same things in public many times! This damned tree is hurting our people and—and—and, I was agreeing with you and why are you yelling at me?!"
"Which of us is yelling?" This time, there was a note of dry humor in Tyrande's voice, and Narsalyn felt her blood beginning to boil. "Child, I'm willing to believe you were trying to help. The consensus among everyone who has attempted to train you is that your heart has always been in the right place, though you've never taken well to discipline of any kind. I had hoped you would have acquired some wisdom during the last few years, but I see that was in vain."
Nars gritted her teeth, battling against stinging eyes and a painful lump forming in her throat. She wasn't a child, and was not going to burst into tears when she didn't get her way. But this was just unfair beyond all comprehension. For years she had held this woman as a hero, developed most of her own views about the current situation of the night elves from the Priestess's publicly stated opinions, and now, the first time she tried to weigh into the debate and support her cause, Tyrande herself slapped her down. The injustice of it was just too much to bear.
"You don't even realize why I'm correcting you, do you?"
"Is my support just not good enough for you?" Narsalyn spat. It only angered her further when the High Priestess's expression changed to one of sad disappointment.
"Narsalyn Flickerwing, you are a brave, clever, stubborn imbecile. I can only hope you grow out of it. Yes, I have spoken out against Teldrassil, starting before it was planted, and have never wavered in my opinion that this entire venture has been a mistake. But I have also moved myself and my sisters to Darnassus, to better minister to our people when they came here in droves. This is because I realize there is so much more at stake than my victory in the argument, no matter how important the stakes. Because I would rather accept what I cannot change—for now—than cause division among our people. We are still healing from the Burning Legion's invasion. I should not have to tell you of all people how the kaldorei have suffered. This is a time for renewal, for placing aside our differences and personal agendas to work together for our greater good. This means embracing even those whose ideas offend us most. You, if you had your way, would drive a wedge into our entire civilization."
"I would not," Narsalyn protested. "You talk like I'm trying to instigate a civil war! All I wanted was to make the druids understand that we need to move on!"
Tyrande rolled her eyes heavenward. "Child, if someone walked up to you and loudly stated that you were completely wrong in the pursuit of your life's work, what would you do? Yes, the druids are wrong. But shouting that into their faces is never going to accomplish anything. They will discover and accept it in their own time. Then we will move forward together, to whatever needs to be done next. Now that you've created a public scandal, which you can be sure will be heard of in every corner of our domain by this time tomorrow night, they will have no choice to be defensive, and redouble their efforts toward perfecting this World Tree. I wonder how many years you have set us back with your carrying on?"
Narsalyn stood in the middle of the chamber, dumbfounded, not even feeling Diana's comforting weight against her leg. In an instant, she saw what the Priestess meant, couldn't believe that she had manage not to see it before all this had started… And she suddenly felt very, very small.
Tyrande began to pace back and forth. "And now I must set about cleaning up your mess. It's a very fine line you've forced me to walk; I cannot retreat from my position regarding Teldrassil, and yet I must find some way to appease Staghelm and his coterie, or he will stonewall me into a stalemate that will make it impossible for either of us to accomplish anything. Yes, I fully believe that man would paralyze our entire government just to make a point. He's a lot like you, except lacking the excuse of youth. So what do you think, young Narsalyn, since you are so full of ideas? How shall I resolve this?"
Nars couldn't meet her gaze. Staring at the floor, beginning to lose her fight against the tears, she whispered, "I was only trying to help."
The Priestess came to a stop in her pacing, directly in front of the young woman. "I know," she said softly, and then in a slightly grimmer tone, "and so you shall. I can't endorse the Arch Druid's ambitions, but I can make it clear that your deplorable behavior was none of my doing, and that I will not tolerate such nonsense. To that end, I think it's best if you just leave."
Slowly, Narsalyn raised her head, eyes wide with pure disbelief. She met the Priestess's gaze, finding not one trace of pity. "You're exiling me?!"
"That is not the word I would choose. We do not impose a sentence of exile except for the most severe crimes, of which youthful foolishness is not one. No, Narsalyn, consider this an opportunity for you to learn some discretion. Darnassus is not closed to you. If nothing else, it would be cruel to your sister to be cut off from you entirely. But from now on, at the very least until this fracas dies down and you have learned to control your own behavior, I think it's best you make your visits here infrequent, and brief. Have I made myself clear?"
Nars tried to respond, found her tongue inoperative, and manage only a fierce grimace. Her fists clenched of their own volition, and a soft warning growl sounded from Diana, picking up on her partner's fury. Tyrande stared at her, unmoved, but no longer unsympathetic.
"As laughable as you will surely find it now, I promise a night will come when you will thank me for this. Not everyone's mistakes can be handled so gently. Narsalyn, I have been observing your career for some time, and I see such vast promise in you. It will be a great night when you are able to take your place with us; I think you'll have much to offer the kaldorei, when you decide to grow up. But until then, I have no choice but to deal with you as with any uncooperative young sister of my order." She paused, studying the girl's face, and then sighed faintly. "And I do think of you, just as I think of all our people, as my family, sister."
Rage brought the words flying out before it even occurred to her to think. "Oh, that's just grand, we're sisters now. I feel so included, never mind being thrown out of the city. Am I invited over for dinner? Can I call you Randy?"
For the second time very recently, Narsalyn suddenly wished she had held her tongue until her brain caught up with it. Tyrande pivoted abruptly to face the balcony, hiding her face, but Nars could see the sudden fierce tension in every line of her body, to say nothing of the clenching of her hands. Tyrande Whisperwind was the chief priestess of Elune, a goddess of peace, and a great believer in that principle. But she had also led the night elves through more than one war, and was an implacable foe. When she truly lost her temper, people had been known to die.
"Leave."
Narsalyn backed up two steps, then turned and broke into a run, flinging the oaken door to the chamber wide and not quite having the nerve to slam it behind her. Outside in the hall, she slowed to a rapit trot, Diana pacing silently alongside.
Thankfully, no one was there to see her finally lose the battle she had begun in the Priestess's audience chamber. Tears began to splash down her cheeks; she choked on a sob, but managed one hoarse whisper.
"I was just trying to help."
Scryer's Tier, Shattrath City
One year ago
The banquet hall of the Scryers was something of a surprise to Shandara. Officially, they called it a mess hall, but she couldn't make the label stick in her mind; a mess was a rough place with stone walls, coarse wooden furniture and rowdy soldiers eating the meanest food sloppily from dented tin plates, mostly with their fingers.
This room, buried in the rock beneath the Scryer's Tier, was not lavish, but beautiful enough that it would not have been out of place in a magister's palace in Silvermoon. Part of one wall was open, leading to a narrow balcony that overlooked Shattrath City, and allowing the moist breeze of Terokkar Forest to air out the room. It was painted off-white, with subtle patterns of red and gold adorning the columns and baseboard, and the tables, chairs, and exotic potted plants spaced around the walls all hovered gracefully above the floor. Shandara was impressed; most of her people's hovering scenery (a silly and ubiquitous trademark of Blood elven architecture) had a certain amount of buoyancy, but the furniture in this room remained as steady as if attached to legs firmly on the floor. Every surface was artfully draped with mageweave cloths in crimson and gold.
Most interesting were the serving constructs, much smaller versions of the huge arcane patrollers that guarded the Scryer's Tier and Silvermoon itself. The not-quite-intelligent artificial beings emitted a soft magical hum as they carried delicate pottery to and from the tables; Shan could feel their aura of magic, like caressing fingers over her skin, whispering to the hunger within herself. The food they bore might not have graced table in a Silvermoon palace, but it was better than she had become used to eating.
Shandara felt very out of place.
She did own fine clothes that would suit an environment such as this, but they were safely tucked away in her bank vault down on the Terrace of Light. It had never occurred to her that she should wear anything different than her light mail armor to grab some dinner in what she had been told was a mess hall. At least her traveling kit was clean, and presently well-mended. This would have been downright embarrassing had she walked in fresh from a fight or long journey, splattered with mud and her scalemail jerkin riddled with dents and tears. Even Sharidan, who crouched at her feet, was clean. Luckily, he took care of that himself.
Shandara was comforted by the fact that no one present was any better dressed than she—at least one Blood elf was in rumpled linens that he had obviously just slept in—and her fellow diners did not seem embarrassed by their attire, though a certain tension pervaded the room. That was from another source entirely, though. The nine of them, all new inductees to the Scryers'order, did not come close to filling the space, and there was a solid row of tables dividing them into two groups. Shan and the other four members of the Horde were scattered around their side of the room, while the four soldiers of the Alliance, two night elves and a pair of humans, clustered closer…perhaps because they felt themselves outnumbered.
Shandara sat apart from the rest, close to the undeclared no-man's-land, preferring her own company as always. Sensing his mistress's discomfort, Sharidan leaned his warm bulk against her leg and began to purr very softly, a vibration that resonated through the floor. Swallowing a bite of fruit, she saw that the two night elf men had their heads leaned together, and were stealing glances at her as they talked in low voices. She frowned. The human women at the next table were either not close enough to hear or were ignoring them.
Turned away from the door as she was, Shandara was taken by surprise when she was joined at her table. Sharidan's purring had cut off abruptly, but he gave no sign of alarm, so she had expected no intrusion. There was a rustling thump of someone flopping into the seat across from her and a throaty, low-pitched feminine voice said in oddly accented Orcish, "Hello!"
She looked up, and got easily the surprise of her week.
The silver eyes of a night elf woman gazed back at her, turned up in a smile. This newcomer, whose presence brought the Alliance and Horde to equal numbers in the hall, nonetheless had seated herself on what was clearly the Horde's territory, and appeared perfectly at her ease, though everyone in the room without exception was staring at her in shock. No one appeared hostile…yet.
A second, heavier thump sounded, and a huge white cat, at least half again the size of Sharidan, appeared on the bench next to the night elf. A Winterspring frostsaber, unless Shandara missed her guess. So, she was a fellow ranger then, or whatever the kaldorei equivalent would be. The woman was also dressed in mail armor, albeit of a very different style, and a quiver and recurve longbow stuck up over her left shoulder, and had (Shan noticed with some irritation) a pair of dragonhawk plumes stuck in her hair behind one long ear. She leaned her elbows on the table, watching Shandara with a friendly smile, and continued speaking in careful but correct Orcish.
"Hi, I'm Narsalyn. Say, I wonder if you could help me out with something?"
She wasn't troubling to moderate her voice; everyone was unabashedly listening, though the four at the Alliance tables might have been too far away to hear. It was her expression that most threw Shandara's equilibrium. She had met night elves, and they, more even than any other race of the Alliance, had seemed to glare at her with loathing, as though her very existence was a blemish on the face of the world. Every Blood elf knew the shared history of their people, and understood the ancient antagonism between them; she was used to it. Never had Shandara expected a pair of those silver eyes to be looking at her with such an open, amiable expression.
"Yes?" she replied cautiously. It was all she could think of. Sharidan placed his paws on the table and growled at the frostsaber, which gave him one considering look, and then set about washing her face.
"I was hoping you could teach me some Thalassian," Narsalyn chattered on pleasantly. Shandara noted that two nearby Blood elves suddenly scowled, and one of the humans leaned back in her chair reflexively. "See, it's always bothered me a little. It sounds so much like Darnassian, I feel like I should understand it, but the words are all different and not put together right. Grates on my nerves, y'know?"
Not put together right? Shandara felt a rush of defensive annoyance. Her language was a younger—in her mind, evolved and matured—form of the night elves' ancestral tongue. Maybe it was Darnassian that was not quite right!
Switching from Orcish to Thalassian, she muttered, "Damn you anyway, kal'dorei snob."
Not missing a beat, Narsalyn replied in Thalassian with an unconnected string of the dozen or so foulest words Shan had ever heard, including two that she did not recognize.
Shandara's jaw dropped open, her mind too shocked to be offended. Someone in the room choked loudly on his drink; someone else dropped a plate with a crash. Nearly hysterical giggling sounded from a third party.
Narsalyn was still smiling pleasantly, as though discussing her day with friends over tea in Darnassus. "See, I always make sure I can swear a little in every language. Even Ursine and Nazja—especially Nazja. Insulting someone just ain't as satisfying if they don't know what you mean, know what I mean?" Her grin widened a little. "I caught about one word in three, there, 'damn,' and…what was that? Jerk? Punk?"
"'Snob,'" Shandara said weakly. More than one person was laughing now; the four Allies were watching wide-eyed, clearly not following. She cleared her throat, trying to regain some control of the situation. "So…you want me to teach you my language so you can swear?"
"No, no, so I can talk. I've got the swearing down, right? But that's so…bleh. I think there'd be a lot less trouble going around if we could all talk with each other. That's why I learned Orcish, and believe me, it was a shaldoro finding someone to teach me." Shahnameh didn't recognize the Darnassian word, but the implication was obvious. "So I figured, here we are, all Scryers together, putting aside old rivalries and all, so I'll find some nice sin'dorei who isn't busy to teach me a bit. And then I come in and see you sitting alone, obviously not doing anything…" She smiled again, hopefully.
Shandara raised one long eyebrow. "Did you think that maybe I want to sit alone and not do anything?"
"And miss this great opportunity?"
"What opportunity? What's in it for me, exactly? If I wanted to be a language tutor, I'd be in Silvermoon, not the Outlands."
"Well, of course I'll teach you some Darnassian," Narsalyn replied as if this was the most obvious thing ever. "It's only fair."
"Why in the Nether would I want to know any Darnassian?" Quite suddenly, and most unsettlingly of all, Shandara found herself almost liking this night elf. The ridiculous woman, with her cheerful attitude and silly demands, was causing a smile to threaten her normally reserved expression.
"Oh, this and that, y'know. No one'll expect it, so you can trip up kaldorei who think they're being sneaky."
Now Shan was actually smiling, and it frankly annoyed her. "Again, I don't see how that'll be any use to me. You're the first night elf I've met face-to-face who wasn't trying to kill me on sight."
"Yeah, I'm a funny bunny all around. I just thought, for example, you might want to know what those two were saying they'd like to do about you a minute ago." She jerked a thumb at the two night elf men across the room, who suddenly became very busy eating.
"Bah. Threats are a universal language, I hardly need to translate."
Narsalyn shrugged. "I don't figure they were threatening…anyway, the druid was telling the warrior that you'd prob'ly break if he tried it, delicate little thing you are, and he didn't say it like it was a good thing, so…"
Amusement vanished in a white flash of anger. The eavesdroppers jumped in tandem as Shandara slammed her cup down on the table.
"What."
Shrugging again, Narsalyn began to rise, "Eh, never mind, I can see we don't have an arrangement anyhow, so I'll be…"
Shandara lunged across the table, grabbed her by the shoulders, and pushed her back down on the bench, ignoring the warning snarl from the frostsaber.
"Okay, first of all, we need to teach you some adverbs and adjectives. That phrase you're so proud of was rude enough, but it was also gibberish. To begin with, the indefinite article in Thalassian…"
The two elvish women, one grinning in self-satisfaction, the other glowering intently, leaned their heads together, as the rest of the room stared in consternation.
