((AN: Another little ditty from World of Warcraft. Galerunner is my 60 hunter on Silver Hand. Copyright Blizzard blah blah blah don't sue me.))

Serendipity - A Coming of Age Story
A World of Warcraft fanfic
By Kristin Renee Taylor

Part 5 -

For a day and most of a night, Galerunner ran.

Straight west, unwavering, pausing only to refill her waterskin at the occasional stream or creek, for in a vast savannah water could be a precious thing. She encountered no one, saw nothing, and for many a league the only thing that accompanied her hoofbeats were the steady cadence of her thoughts.

Chief among them: what /was/ she going to do with her life?

Short answer? She didn't know.

Well then, she reasoned, what would she /like/ to do?

Everything, she argued. That was the problem, remember?

Oh, c'mon. She didn't like /everything./ She hated mushrooms. Fishing was the dullest thing in the entire universe. And the next time Mother had her mending tents all day, she had sworn she was going to go mad.

...all right. Well, that ruled out herbalist, fisherman, and tailor.

She supposed so...

And a druid, as she painfully remembered, was no longer a consideration.

Maybe she could be a shaman, like her brother Stonemaur?

Galerunner came to a stumbling halt, laughing so hard that she had to sit down for a moment. Finally, she wiped the tears from her eyes, pushed herself up, and continued on her way.

All right. Fine. Not a shaman. What, then?

A blacksmith? Like cousin Arnok?

Eh. Then she'd have to spend all day in a hot forge, banging away on metal, with scarcely a chance to see the sun from dawn to dusk. No thanks.

Okay, okay... moving on. Alchemist. She had always been fascinated by the concoctions Aunt Fleethoof had been able to create out of some water, a handful of herbs, and a mortar and pestle. Wouldn't it be fun to learn how to that?

One problem with that, she pointed out. Picking herbs? Herbalism? Herbalism bad?

Oh. Right. Forgot about that.

Uh huh.

She wasn't making a lot of progress, was she?

No... no. Not really.

Galerunner gusted out a sigh and slowed her pace to a walk. Eventually she came to a stop at the edge of a dry riverbed. A rocky ledge protruded out over the bank, and she took a seat, legs dangling over the side. Above her, a star-studded midnight sky whirled on impassively.

She flopped onto her back, staring up at distant stars. "Earthmother, tell me... what am I supposed to do?"

It was at that moment that the creature materialized from the darkness and fell on top of her.

Fin Part 5