A/N: she is the iron hand of justice!
Sharimara flopped over on one of the cushions in the atrium of the house, pulling a blanket over her as everyone felt the 'itis' - the post meal lethargy once they'd devoured all the chicken and steamed vegetables.
"I feel like a beached whale," she groaned while stretching out on a long, rectangular cushion that seemed perfectly shaped for her.
Corrianna was already standing next to Uniol, the two hosts drowsy from a day of travel and half a night of eating, joking and playing couples games that involved shoe signals. "What a coincidence, because you also look-"
"Eh? Eh? What's that, miss pepper nose!"
Everyone except Selia laughed at the joke, and Corrianna balled up her fists and growled playfully. "Hey, don't make fun of me! That really burned!" she protested, her eyes still a dimmer shade of glowing silver due to the spice induced tears she'd cried for a good deal of time earlier.
"Seriously, I've heard of squirting milk out of your nose when laughing, but how did a chunk of red pepper shoot from your mouth, up through your sinuses and out from your nostrils?"
"Hrrraaa!" Corrianna squealed while stomping her foot in protest. She was the smallest person in the room, so it came off as more comical than anything. This time, even Selia snorted a laugh. "I'm going to bed now, but don't blame me if there are red chilies in your breakfast cereal!"
"I love you too, Corra," Sharimara taunted as Corrianna and Uniol bid everyone good night and walked up the ramp. Issinia and Narrus stood up immediately thereafter. "Seriously, Issa? It's barely even midnight."
Her older sister waved her hand dismissively, and Sharimara knew that the priestess would have none of the amiable bickering their cousin would tolerate. "Not all of us still live at home, Shari. We actually have regular sleeping patterns."
Navarion snickered, and Kirana followed suit in an annoying way that made Sharimara want to punch the woman almost as much as she did Jalfaren. Forcing herself to focus on people she actually liked, she rolled her eyes in the most comically derisive way possible. "Yes, I'm sure it's terribly difficult to wake up in the morning and work four hours days at the temple," she replied, knowing the right buttons to push.
"What! Shari! The temple demands the utmost dedication of its devotees!"
"Far be it from me to question your schedule," she replied nonchalantly, knowing just how to tease her dignified yet easily offended big sister.
What she hadn't been prepared for was a genuinely immature, out of character retort from the priestess of the moon. "You farted in the tub last week! We all heard you because it shook the floorboards!" Issinia blurted out, earning a raucous round of laughter from everyone, even Narrus, as they stared wide eyed at the clergywoman making fart jokes.
"What?! Issa, that doesn't have anything to do with anything!"
"Please control the amount of red chilies you consume!" Issinia shot back again, quickly grabbing Narrus and hurrying up the ramp with him lest she linger for too long and leave herself open for a counterattack.
The rest of the group continued to laugh for a bit, especially when Narrus almost slid down the ramp from laughing so much as well. It was honestly one of the more pleasant moments of the night, and a good way for the surprisingly light hearted dinner conversation to wind down.
Much to Sharimara's surprise, Selia had grumbled an apology to her for intentionally provoking her into the previous scuffle in the kitchen. Tiondel had obviously given the woman some very honest words for the first time, and she felt a sense of smug satisfaction when Selia pouted for the first half of the meal. Normally, Sharimara was angered by the mere sight of the woman sitting on her brother's lap, but knowing that he'd finally put his foot down about Selia's constant antagonism of the family, Sharimara found their closeness much easier to accept.
Kirana, on the other hand, was seriously getting on Sharimara's nerves. Although the inexplicably red headed night elf had been almost disgustingly kind to everyone so far, she was still an outsider in Sharimara's view; her mother's attitude still reigned supreme in certain matters.
Despite her biracial heritage, Sharimara was still very much a night elf when it came to how she (as well as Issinia and even Corrianna) dealt with her brothers. The female led society's ideas influenced her heavily, and thus she always felt a sort of defensive tension when strange women tried to approach Hearthglen men. Her attitude was probably the exact opposite of how many jungle troll families would behave, and undoubtedly Sharimara had inherited many traits from her Darkspear father (her tendency to go berserk when pushed, for one), but on this point she was very matriarchal and never felt the need to apologize to her brothers for behaving as such.
So when Kirana kept touching Navarion's arm when she spoke, the simple act caused Sharimara to grind her molar teeth together every time. Navarion often exhausted her due to his personality being that of a penitent rake; he was handsome and had no shortage of women fawning over him, and his tendency to bask in attention all that attention like a child seeking reassurance and approval irritated her to no end. Of course, Sharimara had been with her share of boyfriends, but that was different. Totally different. Because of reasons.
"Hey," she spoke up in Zandali when Kirana started to lean on him. While the others likely noticed that she'd begun to talk in a language that only she and her two brothers understood, most of them continued on in their conversations. "Come sit by me," she more or less ordered her oldest brother.
Shooting her a skeptical look, Navarion gave her the typical resistance he showed to the youngest, if most hardheaded, member of their family. "So you're giving orders now?"
"Stop responding to her and come sit by me," she repeated, causing Tiondel to roll his eyes.
Navarion looked at Kirana and then back to his sister. "If I just get up and sit next to you for no reason, then she'll feel left out and will think you don't want her here, and everybody else is going to feel uncomfortable. There's no reason to create drama."
"You don't even know who she is."
At that, he laughed deeply and openly, irritating her even more. "When has that ever stopped me before, Shari?" he chuckled.
"I'm being serious."
"No, I'm being serious. Del negotiated an apology from his girlfriend for instigating a fight with you; if you instigate something with this lady now, you're going to just create drama and look bad in front of Corra and everybody."
"Come sit by me."
Jalfaren had purposely seated himself at an angle where he could constantly steal glances at Sharimara's feet, which was part of why she'd covered herself in a blanket. "Nobody can understand what you guys are saying," the highborne mumbled.
Tiondel inserted himself into the conversation, speaking Zandali even more fluently than them both. "Shari, I know the lady somewhat; she's from the same village as this one," he said, indicating Selia without saying her name so as to keep the discussion private. "She's a bit naïve and sort of unexposed to the seedier elements of society, but I don't think she's trying to steal our brother away from us."
"Why use euphemisms?" Navarion asked rhetorically, and Sharimara already knew he was about to piss her off without even realizing it. "Shari, I'm an adult and a lot older than you. I date women. I might or might not want to date this one, but I'm not doing anything by finding out."
She narrowed her eyes, finding his refusal to conform to the standards she, their sisters and cousin felt was better for him to be irritating. "She's a stranger," Sharimara muttered, finding her resentment of Kirana growing even when the woman did nothing other than smile and stare at Navarion's goatee as he spoke.
As if he were wearing a set of conjured armor, her barbs bounced off of him ineffectively. "Everybody is a stranger until you get to know them," he replied so nonchalantly that he didn't even seem defiant. That casual attitude only bothered her even more.
"Nobody can understand what you guys are-"
"Shut the hell up, Jalf," Sharimara snapped quickly in Darnassian before switching to Zandali again. "You don't even like this woman. You kept trying to find ways to escape the conversation with her when we were trying to unpack; I know that look in your eyes."
"I wonder what you guys are saying," Selia asked Tiondel in Darnassian. She hugged a little closer to him, though Sharimara had already gotten over that unlikeable potential sister in law years ago. The current object of her ire, however, was brand new.
"So come sit by me."
"Shari, we're not teenagers any more. It isn't socially appropriate for you to antagonize all the women I'm with."
Oh no you didn't, she thought to herself. The mention of the sheer number of women her oldest brother had been with pushed her from irritation to anger. "I'm going to get some fresh air," she huffed while throwing the blanket to the floor.
Kirana stopped staring at Navarion momentarily and glanced between him and his posed off youngest sister. "What's wrong? Shari, do you want me to go with you-"
"Hey, hey, things are fine right here," Navarion interjected in Darnassian, narrowly saving the unsuspecting woman from a terrible thrashing. "She'll be fine on her own...but hey, Shari, the snow is starting to come down heavy out there."
Rushing to put her winter coat and boots on by the door, she didn't even bother looking back. "Somebody needs to check if your wards caught anything. I won't be long." Too upset to even look at him, she promptly walked out the front door and closed it behind her just as Kirana was about to ask another pointless question.
The lodge was wider than it was long, blocking her view of the cliffside behind. In all honesty, she didn't feel like walking out into the cold to check the wards, but her oldest brother had annoyed her without even trying, which frustrated her even more. Marching through the thick snow on the ground and the increasingly heavy mist of flakes in the air, Sharimara walked out into the mass of trees on the top of the mountain. The area was much larger than it had looked from down in the city; even with her long, batlike ears, it was impossible to hear everything that echoed between the trees. Visibility was already low due to the density of the numerous pines, and the white snowfall lowered that visibility even more.
Cursing under her breath, she marched to the spot where Issinia and Navarion had told the others they both read blessings of Elune and set up her brother's voodoo wards. It was an odd combination of night elf and jungle troll traditions, but then again so was their family. Their perfect, close knit little family.
Why wouldn't Navarion just...act right? Her two other brothers lacked the lascivious behavior of the oldest. Even if Tiondel had ended up with someone like Selia, they were at least in a stable relationship. As annoying as Selia was, she was still technically a village girl from a very traditional grove in the Stonetalon Mountains; aside from being antagonistic, there wasn't anything technically wrong with her. And Zengu, the middle brother, was a virgin who recently got married to another virgin had held a third grader's view on relationships and the world, which was exactly what Sharimara liked to pretend all her family members thought like.
But Navarion...he'd been with dozens of women. Possible a few hundred. The thought disgusted her, especially when she realized that there were likely even more that the family didn't know about. What made it worse was the fact that the women he hung around were often rogues or other dark horses, almost like Sharimara herself. And while she had zero regrets about her own path in life, it wasn't what she wanted for Navarion; she wanted a good girl, some naïve thing who would change him and convince him to cut his hair short and wear sweater vests. Which Kirana sort of seemed liked...but that wasn't the point!
Goddess...was she actually arguing with her own thoughts in her head? She must have looked like a crazy person marching around the woods-
"Help! I hear somebody coming...please help!" the voice of a male goblin shouted in Common through the snow.
Sharimara froze; Everlook was a long ways away. There were a few goblins down in New Kel'Theril...but they had no reason to be up there. Crouching low to the ground, she found the sky dark enough for her to shadowmeld despite all the white snow shimmering beneath the starlight; there was no telling if this was an ambush or a lost traveler in legitimate need of help.
"She disappeared...I just saw a huge woman walking around, and she disappeared!"
Another person, a male human from the sound, answered him. "Maybe it was a sentinel, just keep...oh Light, there's a fox! There's a fox! I can't move!"
Although foxes were nothing to be frightened of, a lost traveler might be afraid if they couldn't move. But Sharimara knew her brother's stasis trap wards well: they only trapped people whose intentions were negative. If these people were trapped, then they weren't there for good reasons.
Creeping closer to the sound, she was able to see what had happened. One of Navarion's wards, a bundle of glowing sticks with a cursed turtle shell hanging from it, emitted pulses of voodoo magic through the ground. Four people - two goblin men, a goblin woman and a male human - were all pinned to the ground, unable to escape the clutches of the stasis trap. They wore the simple fur coats of travelers, but the swords they'd dropped ostensibly when the trap sprung spoke differently. More footsteps from behind her set her on edge, until she heard the familiar annoying voice of a certain highborne creep.
"Yaaa! Go away, fox!" Jalfaren cried nervously while chasing the harmless animal away with a stick. He was wearing his winter coat, and looked as if he'd been running. The group of intruders all looked relieve.
"Oh thank god! That fox was going to eat us alive! Could you please free us, kind sir?" the lead goblin asked while straining his neck to look up.
All five of them screamed when Sharimara broke her shadowmeld, which from their perspective must have looked like she materialized out of thin air (which she as actually capable of doing anyway). "Not so fast," she cautioned Jalfaren just as he was about to tamper with the ward. "First of all, what the fel are you doing out here?" she asked the highborne stalker pointedly.
Undaunted, Jalfaren suddenly tried to puff up his skinny bird chest as if proud of himself. "Well, I know how dangerous these woods can be, after...ahem...I braved the ruffians out here myself-"
"Right, after they kicked your ass and my sister had to heal you."
"-so Navarion and Del thought it would be a great idea if I accompanied you out here. Navarion especially, he said he was worried you'd get lonely."
"He! What! Arrggh hhhrrrmmmffffff..." She stopped herself before she turned into a growling mess in full view of the four intruders, and wiped her face in her hands before turning back to them. "All of you are armed, so you're obviously not here to ask to borrow a cup of sugar. Tell me what you came for or I'm leaving you out here."
While the lead goblin's companions all buried their faces in the snow to avoid answering, he fessed up easily. "Alright, look, bear with me here. We knew there were guests and so we wanted to try and steal your mounts. But we had to take a longer route around old man Montanha's cabin, and we were followed. This is very very important - we were trying to steal from you, but you need to know that something else is up here. And we're all at risk now."
Sharimara tensed up, her anger at the would be burglars waning rather quickly. "First of all, we don't have mounts here with us. Second of all, that the four of you would try to rob all of us is laughable. Third of all...what kind of something else? Tell me honestly and I might just let you go without reporting you to the sentinels."
A merchant's eyes lit up at her, and she knew that bargaining with him was the right choice. "We didn't see it, but it's kind of skinny. Skinny and white, and very very loud. It chased us for a good bit of distance, but when this magical trap sprang, it backed off. This was literally three minutes ago or less; I'm surprised you didn't hear all of the commotion." He wiggled for a bit, and the ward sent out another pulse of voodoo. "Let us up and we'll help you drive this thing away. Our lives are your bargaining chip, which is a pretty sure thing."
"Your loyalty is coerced, and thus isn't in doubt as long as we're under threat. But I can't pull you out of that; your arm would be ripped right out of the socket if I tried. If it's any consolation, then whatever chased you here will also be trapped before it can even hurt you, so you're safer where you are now than anywhere else. Let me go get my brother. He established the ward, and he can deactivate it. I'll be fast." Bending over, she took up the rifle of one of the goblins and the broadsword of the human, which felt like a short sword in her hands. "Jalf, take this rifle. If the thing that chased them comes back, kill it. Don't abandon them; they're robbers, but we're not executioners."
For a few seconds, Jalfaren was still mesmerized by the view of her butt he'd been given when she'd bent over, and she was about to bitch slap him before he finally snapped to his senses. "What? Me?" he asked, pointing to himself like the dumb character in a comic strip.
Not giving him the chance to negotiate, she already began to run back toward the lodge. "You're some sort of awesome highborne dude, right? Prove your mettle," she shouted back to him as she ran.
She was already a good distance away from the lodge; the vastness of the mountaintop was uncanny, and she was forced to slow down by the lowered visibility. She wasn't even halfway back by the time she heard the sound of an exhausted person screaming.