When I woke up, it was to the sound of raucous laughter from a little ways away. There was a large warm form against my back and it was vibrating with an almost violent purr. My eyes flickered open. Then I sat up quickly, cursing violently when my head hit the low hanging ceiling. I was sitting on a bed in a small bunker. Like the resting quarters in a boat, with two beds and 2 hammocks. A doorway lead into a hallway and the walls were rounded as if I was up against the curved hull of a massive ship. Behind me was a huge spotted snow leopard who was still sleeping peacefully and purring loudly.
"What the hell…?" I asked, one hand still rubbing the bump on my head. The cat's head snapped up and it looked at me with bright green, intelligent eyes. "Uh… hi." The cat continued to purr.
Slowly, I inched out of the bed, the cat stood up to follow. "Stay." The cat sat. "Good kitty…" slowly I inched back further. Once I was a relatively safe distance away (relative being the key word), I swallowed and looked around again. "Where am I?" As if the cat was going to answer. But even as I asked I noticed a scroll at my feet. A scroll I could have sworn wasn't there 5 seconds ago. Still keeping an eye on the large cat, I slowly knelt down and picked up the scroll, opening it. Inside was a… map. A very large map of a piece of land that looked suspiciously like Italy… except it seemed to be covered with jungle. I frowned. "Stranglethorn Vale…? But that would be…" The map shimmered then reappeared as a much larger view of an entire continent – more specifically the Eastern Continent. "… in Azeroth. Oh, damn. I'm dreaming."
After almost a minute of staring at the large cat, waiting for it – not it, her – to go away, I finally decided it was time to brace myself for the dream and… well, maybe not enjoy it, but go with the flow. "You… must be Whisper," I told the cat. She tilted her head, still staring at me. "Which makes me… Keli." Tentatively, a little fearfully, I reached up. And even though I already knew what I would find, the long pointed ears had me yelping and jumping back. "Oh my God, I'm an elf!" Whisper just stared back at me with those unblinking green eyes.
Taking a deep breath and forcing myself to think about anything but the enormous additions to my head, I checked the backpack lying at the foot of the bed. Opening it, I began to pull out items… a slew of potions, a single round silver stone about the size of my fist, some scrolls – magical ones? – and various pieces of junk – claws, fangs and some ruined pelts. How did one fit this much stuff into one backpack? Next I went through the rest of my bags. One held more food than would fit in my refrigerator, all meat. Another held various pieces of armor and weapons. All of the bags clearly had familiar relationships to Merlin's bag of tricks or a D&D bag of holding, because the physical space inside fairly exceeded the size of the bags themselves.
The armor I was wearing was various pieces of leather, most of which seemed to be of decent quality. And it would have been spare enough to get me sent home from work for indecent exposure if it wasn't for the guild tabard that I wore over it – a dark blue tunic with a white rose on the front. "The sisters." I murmured to myself, awed. "This is the most realistic dream I have /ever/had/." I half laughed to myself. Reaching back, I pulled free a massive long sword whose sharp steel blade was glowing dull red. The long bow on the bed beside me was accompanied with a simple leather quiver – simple until I realized that it, like the bags, was not restrained by the laws of physics and easily held more than 2500 arrows inside it.
I was shaking my head as the sounds of laughter caught my ears again and I stood up, grabbing my possessions. "Well. Let's go see what's so funny." I stepped through the doorway into the hall, then stopped. I glanced back. Whisper was still sitting on the bed, staring at me. "Uhm… follow?" The large cat immediately hopped off the bed and came to my side. "Right… okay. Let's go, then."
In the hallway, I took the stairs down into a tavern where a goblin was serving drinks and two women – one elf, one human – were dancing nearly naked on the top of the bar. Feeling my cheeks flush with embarrassment at the sight, I didn't let myself tarry in the bar but hurried out into the city.
If one could call Booty Bay a city. It was a harbor, built on multiple layers of docks in the back of a cove at the southern tip of Stranglethorn Vale. As I stepped out of the inn, two tauren – giant cow-like creatures – hurried by, barely taking time to snarl mockingly at me as they passed. Horde. Disgusting. But I was quickly distracted from the disrespectful bovines by the sight that met me as I turned the corner. There, out through the cove entrance towards the open sea, was quite possibly the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. The orange globe was brilliant as it set into the horizon waters, sending rays of red, gold and purple across the sea and high into the sky. It silhouetted the giant goblin statue on the island in the distance with a blazing red fire.
I swallows breathless, unheeding of all the strange looks I no doubt was getting. "Now this," I told Whisper, "is the life."