August 25, year 25

There might not be crockolisks at that altitude, but by the goddess there were a lot of trout.

Tirith dragged the next up out of the river, surprised at the sheer weight of all the fish as she dragged them to shore. The flapping of their tails caused a rather loud sound, and she was surprised at how their population seemed to replenish itself every day, even when Oacaxo ate four times as much as she did and never seemed to grow tired of eating the same things.

In spite of the smell, she slung the fishnet over her shoulder to haul the catch back to the ruins. One of the advantages of cohabitating with a troll was that she didn't need to worry herself about traditional elven aversion to ever smelling bad at all; as all of his people tended to believe, one could always take a bath in the river later, so why panic over a temporary bad smell?

Passing into the ruins of Xlatl through the back passage between the trees, she took care to avoid stepping on any of the numerous graves they'd dug together over the past two months. The initial two graveyards available had filled up fast, and when the two of them realized that they couldn't construct another that was far enough from any potential explorers - Oacaxo's tribe apparently held some sort of taboo about strangers looking at their people's graves - they decided to simply dig plots inside the ruins proper. So thick had the vines and bushes of the jungle grown that from just a few meters beyond the lines where the old ramparts had used to stand, a potential onlooker wouldn't be able to see anything other than tree trunks, elephant ears and gigantic flowers. Unless such an onlooker knew exactly where the ruins of a former Skullsplitter town was, there was simply no way anyone unwanted would ever find the place; it was too remote, too secluded, and situated at too high of an altitude for even loggers to take interest.

Beneath the tree huts that formed their dwellings, an improvised kitchen had been set up. Though Tirith was no longer the domestic type after having served in the sentinel army for ten millennia, a certain muscle memory remained from her life before the War of the Ancients, and she found herself at least able to organize the basic implements they'd need for better preserving their food over the long term. True to his caste background, Oacaxo knew how to do little other than fight, hunt and lift heavy objects. He was brilliant in comparison to the rest of his race that she'd met, and a very fast learner, but there was only so much she could teach him every day given how busy they were.

Busy...that was one word Tirith knew well. As she left the fish to thrash on a clean, dry bed of leaves, she immediately started to follow the sound of Oacaxo digging again, knowing that he was no less keen on losing the pace they'd maintained since her arrival than she was.

From the very first day, they had wasted little time undertaking the sad, grisly task of burying the people who had been his entire world. Much like the episode where she experienced the very beginning of a nervous breakdown upon entering the ruins before he calmed her down, their exchanges were so brief that she was often left wondering how they could interact so...normally. Never did he waste time when it came to searching for the remains of the townspeople, and her willingness to participate seemed to energize him. Because he seemed to repress much of his emotion just like she did, there was little fanfare aside from the two of them praying before moving on to another plot and another set of bones. What she had initially thought would take him almost another year to finish once she'd left ended up being almost finished after only two months. And, she didn't leave, though her abandonment of her post and her counseling in Stormwind was yet another topic that she shoved deep into the back of her mind and ignored.

By the time she'd found him via the faint sounds of his work, he'd apparently excavated a section of the longhouse where the town elders used to hold their meetings; as they'd deduced, the elders must have rushed into the communal building to develop an emergency contingency plan when their warriors had been melted to nothing by the spouts of napalm, only to find themselves burned into nothing as well by the illegal cluster bombs. The wooden planks that formed the floor of the building had fallen through and most of the walls had burned down, but the central pillars that had supported the burned out roof remained, forming a sort of skeleton. Like the rest of the town, the debris had rotted away and been consumed by the forest over the past year and some months, leaving behind mostly dirt and vines where the floor had once been.

Wordlessly, Tirith entered the skeleton of the building and found Oacaxo on his knees, carefully lifting bones out of an excavated hole. The skeletal war paint he applied every morning as a sign of his grieving was cracked, peeled in some spots and splashed with dirt, creating an interesting mix as she approached him. As his body moved, she began to understand his tribe's caste system in light of his physique.

That he was a large man wasn't surprising; most of the jungle trolls outside of the Horde were quite thick, similar to the dark trolls of her homeland. And that he seemed larger than most wasn't surprising since he was a warrior. His calves and forearms were quite bulky, which she had learned long ago to use as a measuring stick for physical power; large biceps were often just a sign of vanity among men. Most interesting, though, was his back. She'd seen men with muscular upper backs before, but he was the only one she'd seen whose upper back muscles were also vascular. Since his people didn't know Druidism, they had to construct their defenses by hand; she'd seen how much difficulty the humans and even the orcs experienced when digging ditches to bury the bottom of ramparts, and surmised that a warrior of Oacaxo's tribe was probably expected to do so manually. His body type would make more sense that way; all members of his race had big, wide feet for bearing loads and shovel like hands, but his upper back was similar to a brown bear's, purpose made for digging up rocks and hardened soil.

For sure he must have noticed Tirith watching him by then, and she knelt next to him and cleared her throat to announce her presence.

"Who did you find?" she asked him, repeating the most common exchange they seemed to engage in.

Grunting in response at first, he refrained from speaking as he lifted a skull up out of the ground. Due to the race's sexual dimorphism, differentiation between the women and the men was easy, and she could tell that this one was an older female. Probably older, judging by the tusks and teeth on the upper jaw.

He held the skull out in front of him, obviously inspecting the features for familiarity. His memory for faces had proven to be uncanny, but even then, a skull was not a face. "One of elders," he murmured, appearing partially distracted.

So far, he'd coped with the loss of his entire world surprisingly well. At least Tirith had some of the women of Serenity in direct contact with her, even if a number of them cut off from the others after immortality due to the pain associated with an eternity lost. Oacaxo had absolutely nothing and nobody, yet she'd never seen him complain. Likely he'd finished mourning across the year before she met him, but regardless, he did seem to be rather contained in terms of his feelings. But there was something in the way that he paused that seemed different when compared to how she'd seen him react toward exhuming the remains of the fallen so far.

"How many of the elders haven't been buried yet?"

He didn't remove his gaze from the skull in his hands, almost in a trance as he looked at it. "Only one," he mumbled in reply. The soft tone of his voice insinuated that he knew who it was, and upon reflection, Tirith had a feeling that she did too. Images of pure spite in sentient form glaring at her provided a chilling reminder of how she'd once prepared herself to die in this place.

"Ixchel..."

"Yes."

The two of them sat for a moment, completely silent and completely still. A breeze came and went over the canopy above as the two of them sat, examining the remains of a truly vicious person who had been close to him nonetheless. Only the briefest hint of emotion worked its way across his face. Even under the war paint she could see it, and it was the most animated she'd ever seen him become. Despite his pain, and despite her extreme dislike of Ixchel, Tirith still found the rare display of something so raw almost beautiful. That it was only fleeting made it seem like the comets she used to measure by their passing every thousand years or so during her immortality.

"She was...an evil person. Evil from all senses of that word. She not able to felt any pain because she not had any heart. For so much years, we followed her. We made all thing she told us to make. When I was twelve summers old, she made me killed for first time...she said me that I had to be a man, like my father was. I cried when I made killed, and so Ixchel made me slept in the rain. When I was fifteen summers, she made me raped a war captive for first time...she said me same thing - be a man. And I cried, same thing, and she made me slept in the rain, same thing. When I was eighteen summers, she made me burned enemy village for first time...she said me same thing. But that time, I not cried...I already cried too much.

"She made our people killed other tribes, destroyed other villages just like Alliance destroyed ours. She made our people killed our own people, ordering execution for bad reasons. She scared us, controlled us, washed our brains, made us live like beasts. She had no light in her heart, no love for all thing, no remorse for what she did and no good in her at all, ever. She was a horrible and awful person.

"But...she was my mother. And she was the only one I ever have."

For someone possessing such a deep voice, it was probably as soft as he could speak. There was so much resentment behind his words, even in the stiffness of his posture, and Tirith could tell how bitter Oacaxo remained about the tyrant that was his bloodthirsty mother. This was the first time he'd spoken of Ixchel, and however brief his monologue was, it was enough for Tirith to hate the woman even more. But there was something in those brutish features under all the war paint that she could also identify with. A certain sorrow at the loss of a caregiver who, however pure her evil had been, was still the only family Oacaxo had ever known.

Holding the skull closer to him, he brushed the dirt away and kissed it on the forehead, neither recoiling nor reviling it despite the acrimony in his speech.

"Loa forgive you, mother...for you made so much evil in the world," he murmured, his expression hardened and blank as if he were shoving his bitterness down at that very moment but forcing himself to make amends of his own. "But I love you all the same..."

His voice trailed off, and Tirith knelt next to him for minutes as she felt it inopportune to interrupt him when he was still engaged in what appeared to be his way of coping. Eventually he placed the skull among a series of bones he'd laid out in the rough formation of a corpse. Once his body language loosened up and he turned to look at Tirith without the sorrow in his eyes anymore, she nodded toward the direction of the back exit of the town.

"It's okay to take breaks sometimes. I heard you working even before I woke up around noon. Come on," she said while standing and waiting for him to follow her. "I smell like fish and you're covered in dirt. It's better not to eat like this."

Over and done with the discovery of his deceased, despotic mother, Oacaxo readily followed, grunting in response as he often did when he wasn't in the mood for talking. The two of them walked slowly, and Tirith couldn't help but marvel at how similar her days at the ruins were to her life before the Third War. Ever since she'd become mortal again, she spent her days and nights worrying about death, wondering what it would be like to finally leave a world she thought would be hers forever. A large percent of her people were younger, and to them the opening of the world meant a few more centuries of life and a range of new experiences they could fill them with; Tirith's discontent was restricted to those of the truly ancient generations such as herself.

Yet at the ruins, time stood still again. She no longer found herself rushing to finish whatever duties she had in order to savor her free time before sleeping. There was a rough schedule, but it was flexible and open to adjustment, allowing her to wake up, sleep, eat and work whenever she felt comfortable doing so. While her fear of death hasn't disappeared entirely, she no longer had to repress anything in order for it to move to the back of her mind.

Although Oacaxo couldn't read minds, he had impeccable timing, and when he touched on the same subject as they surveyed stacks of lumber they'd salvaged and piled up near the ziggurat, she couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"Tirith...you said me in the start, you want to stay only some weeks."

"Yes, yes I did," she chuckled, causing him a bit of confusion. "And that's what I had originally planned."

"You said me before that you gotten some...problems, in the big human village. That the people who burned Xlatl want make you stay there, not kill you but be you quiet."

"That's true. And by now, I'm sure they're searching for me all over. I didn't plan on remaining here this long, and if I return, then I'll probably find myself in very serious trouble with the law."

When she used the word 'if,' he snorted, though his true reaction would continue to be unreadable as long as he kept the war paint on his face. "What you want to make, then?" His voice was laced with concern rather than any sort of displeasure at her presence, and she found it odd that of all people, he would feel worried about her. Khadijah or Silviel perhaps, but not Oacaxo. "You said me you have no family, no home. And you said me starchildren use gold now, like other Alliance; not can you make a house on any land." The two of them walked carefully for a moment as they climbed around low hanging branches and the underbrush to exit the back of the ruins, and even over the sound of the river she could tell he hadn't finished his thought. "Where you go, after we finish burial for all Xlatl people?" he asked as they strolled toward the shallow creek they used as a wash basin.

For the entirety of the two months she'd spent there, she hadn't answered the question herself. Indeed, while she knew that she'd probably be sent to jail up in her return to Stormwind, she'd done her best not to think about it. Soraya didn't know where she was. Jaqulina didn't know where she was. Even Silviel's family didn't know where she was. And most dangerously of all, Finklesnap didn't know where she was. What Tirith had done was irresponsible, unplanned, and irreversible now that she'd already violated the conditions of her court ordered anger management counseling.

And it felt absolutely freeing.

"I don't know, Oacaxo. I didn't plan that far ahead and I don't want to." Standing about ten yards away from the sandy riverbank, she looked up at the late afternoon sky; the White Lady was just barely visible, but most of the sky was still bright. "You once told me, what was it...that we must always try to find the stars, no matter what?" she asked rhetorically, inwardly musing at how she could be quoting Ixchel, of all people.

Immediately, he understood and chucked inside of his throat. "Life is the purpose of life...to wake up and be free every day," he mused, quoting from the conversation they'd shared when they'd first met a year and a half ago. Goddess, had it really been that long?

"I lost track of that when I stayed in Stormwind, even with Soraya; I stopped looking for my stars," she said quietly as they walked across the sand. After so much time spent experiencing anxiety every time she even thought about the topic of her future, she was shocked at how easy talking about it out loud now felt. "I followed those stars, and they led me here to mourn the fallen. When we're making amends to the dead, then I'll follow wherever they take me next...and damn the laws of the Alliance and even my own people if they try to put control on me from the outside."

"Your memory is very strong," he mused, though he still didn't quite laugh with his mouth open; he never did that. She imagined that it would be a day to remember whenever he finally did.

Typically, the two of them bathed at the same time but out of view of each other, yet they swam in the same spot. Although he insisted there were no dangerous animals at such a high altitude, the two of them had the habit of remaining within earshot of each other as a precaution. That caused certain awkward difficulties, such as using the dugout latrines he'd built before her arrival, or when she'd had to sew and fashion a pad that past month and figure out what sort of lie to tell him when he asked her what she was making. Bathing was in interesting conundrum - it wasn't that different from swimming since her ragged clothes would become wet anyway, and yet the upheld the contradiction: bathing had to be out of view of one another, around the bend of the creek and behind some bushes, yet the experienced no shyness when swimming next to each other and watching the clouds.

Feeling particularly comfortable, Tirith just knelt and sat on the soft sand, resting her worn feet and hands after having hauled a few hundred pounds of trout (Oacaxo would probably eat half the catch on that night alone). Typical of his people, he displayed no shyness wading into the water in her presence, though she'd learned after two months that he understood boundaries very well despite the unsavory acts his mother had forced him to commit; he would never even think of removing his loincloth in her presence, even when submerged, and not once had he even spoken to her while either of them were bathing.

As she watched the dirt and the war paint drip off his body into the river, she actually considered how preferable a cohabitation partner was for the very first time. So comfortable had they grown around each other that she'd honestly never realized it before, but she was very lucky that his behavior was so subdued. To say that Tirith wasn't used to being around men was an understatement; for ten millennia, most of the night elf males were asleep in the dream, waking only a handful of times therein and even when they did, their society had ascribed to strict rules of gender segregation back then. Even after the men had returned in droves after the Third War, they generally lived in separate quarters and were very reserved in their dealings. So when their society opened a few years ago, she and the older generations found themselves unable to adapt the way the younger night elves could. She was shocked by how many of the younger generations quickly took to free mixing of the genders socially, in addition to other behaviors she wasn't used to. The outlanders were even worse; while the dwarves were mostly reserved, the humans and other races were incorrigible, and she frequently found herself restraining her fists when speaking to human males and dealing with their tendency to look at her chest while she was trying to tell them something important. To even think of living and sleeping in close quarters with them was a deeply discomforting thought.

And yet there was Oacaxo, from a race known for rather lascivious behavior, sleeping just three yards away from her every night. Her perception was still sharp; had he ever peeked into her hut or spied on her while she bathed, she would have noticed immediately. Not once did he ever touch her without reason, even to illustrate a point in conversation, nor did he stare anywhere other than her eyes, or face her directly if they sat close to each other, or pry into her personal matters. Of course, he as still a man; once or twice, she'd caught him checking her out if but for a few seconds if she bent over while working, but he'd always look away, and technically, she was guilty of doing the same thing to him as well. All things considered, he was very benign despite his ability to not be benign, and she began to wonder about his mentality.

On a whim, she simply asked the first thing on her mind.

"Oacaxo...did you ever sire children?"

At first, she worried that she was the one prying. Though he continued wading around about waist deep, he'd splashed enough water on his face for a far off look to become apparent, and she realized that given his people's ways, it might be a sensitive subject for him.

Regardless, he answered. "I'm sure, but I not know them. Not kids in Xlatl, but I was given as loan to other villages to bred with women of my caste."

Perhaps she was digging herself in even deeper, but her curiosity poked at her in a way she hadn't felt in a long time. "To breed?"

"Yes...breed. I was warrior caste, before I made canceled from the tribe. Not have friends, or life choices. Caste is from birth. My father was warrior, and my mother could choose all man she liked, so I was warrior. So any villages wanted more warriors, they called another village. I went...and I stayed with warrior women, like the womens who caught you last year."

"That's...very different. You don't know for sure if you have children, though?"

"No. Never. If I knew, maybe I would had feelings; feelings not allowed for warriors. So always, I went with women from other villages, so I would felt nothing for them and they would felt nothing for me. Only a trade between two Skullsplitter villages." There was a sadness in his tone again, and she felt guilty for having brought up the topic. Still, he continued to talk, and was much more chatty than his usual concise nature; she got the feeling that, after a year of separation from his people, he'd begun to cope with the primitive lifestyle he'd been born into. "I went to make the sex with women of my caste, maybe twenty times. Jungle troll women make pregnant easy; I'm sure that in some place, out there, there are kids of me. But I can never know who are they."

Tirith blushed despite his somber tone. The openness with which all of his people tended to discuss the S-word made her feel a little shy, but she knew him well enough to know that he didn't intend anything suggestive by it. And the fact that one of the few people she did care for in the world was opening up about a topic that made him sad caused her to listen, if a bit sheepishly.

"Oh...that's very unfortunate," she said while searching for the right words at such a moment.

"Yes...not good. If no feelings, then the sex is not good. Just a body function; same as blowing the nose or going the toilet. No passion, just a function that lasts a short time and then finishes. Pointless. Useless." Nonchalant and entirely unperturbed by the topic, he turned to her and flipped the conversation in the other direction. "Why you ask? You have kids?"

She hesitated; for the first time since she'd ever known him, it was the most direct personal question he'd ever asked her. Almost like she imagined the sound of him laughing out loud would be, it felt like a sort of milestone for him. In spite of her residual shyness over the topic he'd literally just been discussing, she found the revisitng of the old wound easier than she'd expected.

"I had a son once...a very long time ago. And a husband, too. Well, I mean, I was married twice, and my son was born to the first, but then I got divorced and married again...um...I had a son once."

For a second, the sad look returned to the big man's face, and she felt bad despite knowing that she shouldn't. "He was died?" Oacaxo asked innocently.

"Yes...a very long time ago. My husband did, too. In a war."

Even with the sharp nose, big jaw and hook like tusks, Oacaxo looked innocent all of a sudden; it lightened her mood almost enough for her to chuckle a bit. Without all the war paint, she noticed that he had no facial hair; not from shaving, but genetics. There were just one or two very short hairs on his chin, so small that she hadn't noticed them until then. It made him almost look like a large teenager, though from what he'd told her he was in his thirties - almost middle aged for his people.

"May your stars remind you of good times from them," he said in what she figured to be a short prayer.

The conversation eventually tapered off, and she swam near him for a bit as the evening drew closer. Mostly silence filled the air as it usually did when they swam to relax at the end of the day - she'd become used to being mostly awake during the daylight and only part of the night by then. A number of thoughts swirled around inside of her head, and she used the quiet time to sort them all out.

After their months spent together, Tirith didn't quite know how to label what they had with each other. Oacaxo was not her mate and engaged in no intimacy with her; that was very clear. He never pushed or hinted, and after the revelation of his views on feelings and relationships, she ventured a guess that he was the type to feel disinterested in casual relations. If she continued to cohabitate with him even after they finished all the burials, he'd never reject her, nor was he particularly likely to pursue a more intimate relationship.

But if she pursued it...the thought was odd to Tirith. After the loss of her second husband - after what had been a rather loveless second marriage anyway - she'd never planned on being with a man again. By the night, she'd never planned on dying, either, but now she was looking at a mere decade or two of life left. Fertility had returned to her race after the loss of immortality - mostly to the young, but also to a few older individuals, and she was no exception. She did occasionally feel certain urges when she could see or smell suitable men, or hear the sound of a deep voice, but propriety dictated that she suppress those urges. Suppression...just like how she dealt with so much else.

As Oacaxo started to wade upstream toward the secluded spot where he'd bathe in private, she watched those heavy shoulders sway. If she tried to follow him back there, he likely wouldn't feel comfortable; after two months, the two of them hadn't spent enough time as...whatever it is two people like them were called. Not friends; not exactly. Maybe before, but when she finally considered the notion, that label would no longer fit.

"Bah," Tirith chuckled out loud. Bah to labels and rules.

Wading upstream but toward an opposite secluded area, she let the warm water pour over her head as she silently thanked the goddess for the situation she'd found herself in. She was far away from the control of her psychiatrist, and no longer needed the brave new world and its vices of material wealth and zoning laws. Her lifestyle granted her more freedom than she'd ever had, and for the first time, she realized that she truly was beyond anybody else's control. If she chose, she could continue living out there for the rest of her days; nobody could stop her and force her to wither away in those death traps the humans called retirement homes, or in a prison cell or cramped apartment somewhere.

And she wasn't alone; she'd found someone who also didn't feel the need to label things, or rush things, or push for more than the good they already had. If feelings grew between her and Oacaxo, then she was sure she could pursue more with him; if feelings remained the same, then she was sure they could continue living together the way they already were, and they'd take care of one another into old age all the same. And if Tirith died in the rainforest in a mountain in Stranglethorn Vale, miles away from civilization, then it wasn't worse than dying back in Ashenvale but as a burden on Silviel's family, where she would always be a guest in Caledith's home.

Eventually, the stars shone in the sky a little early that night, and Tirith felt her mind clear for the first time in thousands of years. And perhaps, for the first time, she truly began to feel happy.