Ignoring the occasional odd glance she received due to her Kaldorei dress, Sharimara kept her eyes focused on the pavement ahead of her as she and Lashka walked. Inconspicuous in all she did, she mostly became unnoticeable despite walking in broad daylight. Perhaps it was the sunglasses she wore to shield her nocturnal eyes from the sun...or perhaps it was because the orc woman wearing a pandaren style dress next to her was simply even more odd to all the people passing by.
Lashka was uncharacteristically polite that late afternoon, smiling and even bumping in to Sharimara a few times while speaking jovially. Though wary of what the conniving orc's angle might have been, the half Kaldorei, half Darkspear remained as polite as was possible for her prickly personality considering the fact that one of the office's two 'loan officers' (a euphemism for a gossip and busybody who approached people down on their luck with offers too good to be true) had offered to help her with a private medical matter.
Once they reached another two story professional complex that was similar to the one they worked at but classier, Lashka slowed down. "Swansong's office is up here. It's a good location, isn't it?" the orc asked rhetorically.
Sharimara checked the symbols next to each private medical practice with doors on the side of the building. "It's certainly appropriate," she replied in disinterest. Conversation with a person who enjoyed talking about nothing felt so laborious, and she fought to prevent her mind from wandering.
Though on more than one occasion, she found Lashka asking her a direct question after she'd been zoning out for a few minutes. When they reached the top of the stairs, she realized that she'd done it again.
"Did you ever try it, Shari?"
Mild panic shook her for a moment. Not the sort of panic of being cornered by an army of murlocs or stuck in the maw of an old god, but the panic associated with social gaffes. The kind that just wanted to make one shrink pretend to not exist for a few hours.
"Um...no. Can't say I have."
Lashka hummed her affirmation, casually opening the door of a medical office on the second floor for Sharimara to enter. "I totally get you. I mean...doesn't it hurt to fit something in there?"
Eyes as wide as saucers for a moment, Sharimara just tried to forget what she'd just heard as she entered the office. "You never know what kids are into these days," she replied, bullshitting her way through a conversation that seemed thoroughly unpleasant.
As the two of them walked in to a small reception area, an older local woman about Mao Mao's age walked past them, greeting them awkwardly as she left. Jars of dried exotic animals and rare plant extracts lined the shelves on the walls, signifying the establishment as one dealing in traditional medicine. Lashka swore that the treatments had cured her of numerous ailments and had insisted that Sharimara seek treatment of her own after a mishap on the job had injured the office's biggest moneymaker - the warden whose job was to chase people down for repayment of debts.
Before either of them had the chance to sit down, the practitioner herself walked out from the door leading to the back. Also a local but much younger than the patient who'd just left, Swansong wore the apron of a healer but thankfully wasn't covered in any sort of gel, paste or other substances that would have creeped Sharimara out. Smiling and looking her new patient up and down in awe, the young pandaren seemed rather eager.
"Good afternoon...miss Hearthglen, I take it?"
When Lashka didn't attempt to introduce them to each other, Sharimara took it upon herself. "Sharimara Hearthglen, yes. That's correct. I take it that you're miss Swansong."
"Indeed. Lashka has told me all about you! I'm thrilled that we'll be able to work together today."
Suspicion roiled within the warden's mind; for Lashka to talk about anybody generally didn't bode well for them. Peering out the corner of her eye, she did find the orc suddenly fidgeting when stranded beneath her gaze, but Swansong was simply to cheery that the green woman was able to beat an easy retreat.
"Yeah, uh...and I told Shari about you too," Lashka nervously laughed to the oblivious pandaren.
"Oh, wonderful. All good things, I hope."
"One could only hope," Sharimara replied ominously, giving Lashka the evil eye while she did so. When she held her gaze, the pandaren cocked her head sideways with a curious sort of innocence.
"Well anyway, I better get going. I mean, the office is at the other side of the market district so..." Lashka began sidestepping toward the door, but looked at Swansong for a lifeline.
"It was nice seeing you, Lashy. We'll catch up." The pandaren practitioner then waved goodbye, sparing the orc poverty profiteer any further discomfort and reaching forward toward Sharimara. The warden tensed up at first, but relaxed when she realized that Swansong merely intended to hold a furry paw in the air next to her in a motion for her to enter. "Please, come inside and take a seat. I'll need to ask about your medical history."
"Of course, I understand. And thank you for accepting the appointment; from what Lashka told me, you usually go on break around this time."
"Officially, I don't accept appointments after four o'clock. But for Lashy, I can make an exception; she was very insistent that you see somebody about your elbow but mentioned that you aren't comfortable in modern hospitals."
Even when she compliantly walked in to the examination room and sat down on the bench, Sharimara felt her shoulders tense up. "I did not request that Lashka discuss my personal details," she droned, keeping her tone as easy as possible.
Optimism was not a trait that Sharimara considered to be a particularly safe or intelligent one, though Swansong pulled it off just subtly enough to endear the woman to her slightly. "Oh, I don't think she meant anything by it; she has her own, indirect way of showing people how she cares or apologizing for past wrongs. Now, if we could," the pandaren said while pulling a clipboard out of a drawer, "let's gather some info about your health in general. Alright?"
Sharimara folded her hands in her lap patiently. "Let's start."
"Good. First of all, is there a history of any illnesses that run in your family? Diabetes? Cancer? Thyroid?"
"None whatsoever."
Swansong began writing down information on a sheet of paper, mostly focused on her work as they talked. "Okay. Have your been put under a sleep spell for the purposes of a medical procedure during the past three months?"
"I'm immune to those."
"That's good to know, actually..." Swansong took a bit of extra time writing down a separate note. "And I'm assuming charm or mind control spells as well?"
"Yeah."
"Have you ever undergone a surgical procedure at all?"
Searching in the depths of her nearly three hundred year old mind, Sharimara tried to find the most relevant bits of information. "On...six separate occasions I've received emergency treatment in the field of battle. Two removals of shrapnel, three instances of stitches and one time where I was on the donating end of an emergency blood transfusion," she replied, counting each instance on her fingers as she tallied all the incidents.
"And how long ago was the most recent instance?"
"Umm...about thirty four years ago."
Swansong's eyes grew humorously wide, and even Sharimara found herself able to lighten up and laugh politely. "Alrighty then, so not in the last three months!" she chuckled in an infectiously melodious voice. "Now here's one that I sort of do need to know, and I need you to answer honestly. Are you sexually active?"
When faced with discomfort, Sharimara typically fought or fled. In the office of a medical practitioner attempting to help her, however, she could only find the willpower to smile awkwardly. "No...no," she said, immediately wincing at the sound of disappointment in her own voice.
Swansong, thankfully, either didn't notice or pretended not to. "When was the last time you had intimate relations with another person?" she asked. Her face displayed no emotion other than residual amusement at the answers about injuries, though the lack of judgment didn't help relax the warden as much as it should have.
Digging through her long memory, Sharimara's ears drooped as she began counting the years. Was it...the night when she and the leader of that thieves' guild she joined and later betrayed to authorities in Tanaris were forced to share a tent due to a freak sandstorm? That was about a decade and a half after she'd fled Elwyn Forest...doing the math...
Even her usual stoicness couldn't erase the frown on her face. "Fern serv a yers..." she mumbled incoherently.
Swansong looked up from her sheet, immediately causing Sharimara to cringe as if she'd been put beneath a spotlight. "Im...sorry, miss Hearthglen?" the pandaren asked almost shyly.
Sharimara just trained her vision on the floor. "Forty seven years," she sighed.
"Oh! Very good, then," Swansong replied politely, though the way her eyes widened so much made Sharimara feel like she was only three inches tall. "And for this one, we also need to look rather far back. Can you list the serious bodily injuries you've sustained in the last half a century?"
Full of self pity and staring at the floor, Sharimara surprisingly found giving prompt and honest answers much easier, her ego thoroughly bruised and thus her defenses weakened. "There are a lot of them," she started, trying to think of how she could best summarize it all. "Severe lacerations while slaying an adult dragon, broken rib during the capture of a centaur warlord in Desolace, fractured femur during a shipwreck near the Maelstrom...I also got stranded there, because apparently there are a few stone spires near the Maelstrom and I cannibalized the first mate for sustenance while waiting to be found..."
"Okay, okay, just let me get all of this down-"
"...which caused me to have a weird nervous tick for a few months but that was thirty years ago, I broke my foot while chasing an arcanite who conjured an invisible floor over a pit in the Searing Gorge because the floor dissipated when I kicked him in the face, torn hip flexor sustained during the collapse of a castle that was also a drug lab, dislocated finger from ripping a cell open when I was paid to bust out of prison a mafioso that someone else had paid me to put in to prison in the first place-"
"Hey, I just found my take home form!" Swansong beamed while pulling out an extra sheet for medical history and scribbling 'take home form' at the top of it. "For people with more...adventurous lives, it might be better to fill these out on the weekend so you're sure that nothing was left out."
The civilian's reaction to merely her recent history of mishaps actually brightened Sharimara's mood in a way that only a person who had spent centuries living on the move for the sake of glory in battle could understand. "I'll have it back to you in a few days," she chortled while accepting the sheet only to place it on the small table next to her.
"Good. Since it's your first session, we won't be performing any actual acupuncture or cupping today; I mainly need to check if there's any residual damage from all the injuries you've sustained. Your elbow especially, according to what Lashy says." She set her clipboard down on the counter where she kept medical supplies and stood up. "I'll need to take a look at you while standing."
The tilt of Swansong's chin implied what she meant, and Sharimara readily stood up and started to remove her kimono. "Yes, of course," she said while hanging the garment on a coat hanger, "as long as I can keep the bottom layer on."
"I...trust me, that's a requirement here," Swansong chortled awkwardly.
Once she was wearing only her underwear and sandals, Sharimara felt the creeping discomfort again. In a medical setting she really shouldn't have felt that way at all, but she couldn't help it. After the embarrassing round of questions, she suddenly became very aware of the fact that a short (in her eyes) pandaren physician was the first person to see her disrobe in over twenty years. The fact that the last few times before that were also other women who were merely present at the same hot spring, bathhouse or motel room brought on that sense of self pity again.
Swansong was, however, a consummate professional, and knowledge of that helped Sharimara to relax just enough that the furry woman didn't notice the tension. "You're obviously half night elf...but these are a troll's hips, aren't they?" the pandaren said, making casual conversation while she lifted up Sharimara's wrists and rotated her shoulders.
"Jungle troll to be exact, yes."
"Gosh, I'm always so jealous of the body type for both. I didn't believe Lashy when she first told me that you're almost five hundred years old and I still don't believe her now."
Sharimara's brows furrowed in irritation, though not at the physician in front of her. "Almost three hundred, not five hundred," she huffed. "And you shouldn't feel jealous; men from all over the world show up at Pandarian ports looking for wives."
"That's because they think we're all docile and want a village girl who doesn't have opinions," Swansong huffed as well.
"Touché."
The pandaren then began to feel the back of Sharimara's elbow, pressing her furry fingers lightly into the nerve and joint but not applying pressure. "So what happened here?" she asked.
Wincing at the tiny amount of pressure pressed above the tendon at the bottom of her tricep, Sharimara tried to downplay the issue. "I've jarred it a few times over the centuries. Bad luck when it comes to my left side, you could say. Last week I went to collect an installment from an upholstery dealer and he thought he'd get fresh with me by hiring two enforcers of his own. I taught him and them a lesson but I irritated by elbow again during the scuffle. It didn't hurt until the next morning but for the past five days it hurts whenever I lift anything."
"Well, I can tell you the first part of your treatment right now: don't lift anything for a while."
"Yeah..." Sharimara chuckled.
"Really, I'm being serious. Rest can often work more effectively than any cure given. I'm going to write to your boss and ask that unless it's imperative that someone be shaken down, you stay at home for at least a week."
"No objections to that!"
"I have a cream I want you to apply after waking up and again at midday. What I'm feeling here is residual buildup of stress in the joint itself, which is from age. Trolls can regenerate, but they tend to lose that ability as they get older, which is part of why they die natural deaths. You're only half troll so it makes sense that in regard to your lifespan, your regeneration will fade away a lot earlier."
Similar to a certain incident a quarter of the year before, Sharimara was caught completely off guard. Her abdominal muscles tightened and she bit down in her tongue, pleading that the doctor didn't notice her racing pulse. Afraid of hearing a truth she'd ignored herself, she reeled and fought to build up the walls around herself that she'd so foolishly let down.
"I will use the cream," Sharimara replied in a dry, flat voice.
"I wouldn't mind seeing you regularly, either. Full blooded elves can live over half a millenium, sometimes a hundred or so years more beyond that; you're a half elf, so you're looking at half a millenium if you're lucky, or possibly only four centuries due to your lifestyle. You're at a point in your life where you need to think about taking it easy."
That's why I left adventuring around the world to simply harass shopkeepers on this worthless island about extortion money, Sharimara thought to herself. She bit back that thought, reminding herself that Swansong had been a kind person and was only trying her best to help. "I'll try to tone it down a bit," she forced herself to say congenially.
The remainder of the medical exam was a blur in Sharimara's mind. Were it not for the fact that Swansong had given her a slip of paper stating their regular appointment schedule, the warden might have forgotten about the next session entirely. Trying to forget that the conversation about mortality and ageing had taken place, she hurried home, stopping by Lashka's apartment to slip her medical excuse note from work underneath the orc's door first and then simply flopping on the bed in her own apartment to sulk for a few days.
A few days turned into a handful and then a bunch, and before Sharimara knew it she'd spent a full five days inside of her apartment without exiting a single time. By the end of it, she'd eaten all her food and drinken all of her cider and fresh water, exhausting her resources due to her self imposed isolation. The time flew by so quickly that by the time she finally took a shower and got dressed, she hadn't realized what day it was and received a shock when viewing the calendar at the grocery store around the corner from her little alleyway. Worried that she might look bad in front of her colleagues, she dropped her new supplies of food and water at her cramped apartment and then hurried over to the office.
Per the norm, Hardinger was hanging out in the hallway instead of his actual workstation inside the office proper, almost always seeming to find ways to busy himself other than actually keeping track of accounts payable and staying in contact with his clients. For some odd reason, he actually looked at Sharimara and spoke to her for what had to be the first time in a few years; usually he and Lashka didn't notice that anybody else around them existed.
"Hey Shari," he said rather jovially. "You got another letter from your boyfriend!"
She froze. Though there hadn't been a hint of mockery in his voice, he quickly shrank when she growled deep in her throat.
"I'll...just go outside and take a break," he mumbled while running around the corner to a different hallway.
Watching him until he disappeared, she tried to collect her angry, frazzled nerves before walking into her place of employment. A mental map formed...Dilly must have told Lashka, who told Hardinger and possibly Swansong and every other person who came into contact with the green woman...Sharimara's blood boiled as she walked in to the office and it must have showed. Although Dilly's eyes lit up at the sight of the warden, Lashka looked like a child caught stealing the cookies and sank into her chair behind her desk.
"Uh...hi," the orc mumbled.
The goblin, however, leapt up onto her desk. "Shari! Cent wrote back, we received his letter two days ago! Here, let me get it out for you."
While Dilly began rummaging through the office inbox again, Lashka quickly excused herself. "I think the boss is calling me!" the orc squeaked while practically diving into Mao Mao's office, prompting a furious tongue lashing for the woman's insolence that everybody could hear.
"I found it!" Dilly chirped while offering the unopened envelope to the warden. Her countenance didn't decrease in joy even when Sharimarw refused to accept it at first. "Come on Shari, it's been three months like we expected. You gotta open it!"
The shouting from the pandaren inside increased in volume, though the half elf, half troll didn't seem to notice. "Dilly...you revealed my private information to the entire office?"
The door to Mao Mao's office swung open, and Lashka hurried back out before sitting down again, looking even more afraid than she'd been of Sharimara. The mini boss of the operation walked out, her silk robes flowing behind her as she stared Lashka down for a moment before turning to Sharimara.
"Only Hardinger was told outside the four of us, and if anybody spreads it, they will never work in this city again," the usually stoic pandaren said. She held Sharimara by the arm, giving the giantess what was probably the closest thing to a contrite espresso on capable of her. "Hearthglen, I'm very sorry that your information was revealed, but I promise you that it will never leave this office. And...on a personal level...I'm thrilled that you've shown that you at least have some semblance of a personal life. What Lashka did was wrong, and what Dilly did was careless, but it's because they're both happy for you. I'm happy for you."
Both respect for the woman who signed her checks and a sincere sense of flattery from a person who was normally even pricklier than her gave Sharimara pause. Restraining her rage wasn't quite as difficult when Mao Mao actually smiled at her for once. "Thank you...but please keep an eye on the others so they keep this matter private."
"You have my word."
Dilly clapped her hands. "Soooo...now that everything is out in the open, you have to let us know what he says!"
Pressure mounted on Sharimara, but not in an oppressive way. The sheepishness of Lashka, the cheeriness of Dilly, the sudden warmth from old, cold Mao Mao...she didn't feel like her walls were being breached so much as she was being invited to step outside for a while. Her heart thumped anxiously, but the thought of how Dilly and Mao Mao would react if she rejected their elation at the fact that she communicated with a person other than them grounded her.
"Alright...just give it here."
"I can't wait!" Dilly beamed as Sharimara opened up the envelope.
Shari,
You have no idea how happy I am that you remember. For a few days, I honestly couldn't open your reply...that it arrived at all felt like a miracle. I suppose there's no point in allowing one's fears to gain control, though, and when I finally did read your letter, it truly did make my day. It would seem that we both went to great lengths to find each other again once the time came...what a particularly odd twist of fate that you actually searched on Outland for me while I scoured all the genealogical libraries here on Azeroth. It's taken a while, but we've finally found each other.
Work is going fine. Since I last wrote to you, I was called out to the mainland again to remove a chimaera that nested a little too closely to a village, but other than that I've been at home. In my spare time I bother my daughter and her husband to make me a grandfather, but I think they're taking their time. That grants me more free time of my own, I suppose. The city government built a colosseum here for non fatal combat, but currently they only allow women to compete. A group of fellows I occasionally see at a tea house want to push for a men's league to be opened though I'm sure that they (my daughter and son in law) will throw a fit. Time will tell.
I'm glad to hear that you keep yourself occupied as well; I'd love to see a novel written by you one day. As they say: if you want to write, you must also read a lot. I'd be interested in what you have to say; you seemed a little quiet, but when you did speak I was always taken aback by the depth you could express in only a few words. I have no idea if you were already planning to do that or not, but it's certainly something to think about.
Also...regarding the main purpose here. I've been patient while writing this letter so far, but there's one detail I can't withhold any longer.
I'll be coming to Chi-Ji at the end of July. Believe it or not, an old contact has found a two week job for me relating to the menagerie at the Fortress of Hope, which I believe is about three hours travel inland from your location. Since Balrissa is the main port on the island, I'll be arriving there and won't need to rush off immediately since the job technically runs for the first two weeks of August.
Even as I write this, I find my heart rate accelerating a bit. I know it's been a very long time, but for people who live as long as we do, the memories don't fade too quickly. If it's at all possible, I would really like to see you again. I don't know what your schedule is like, but I'm willing to wait a while if you're busy at first. My ticket has me set to arrive at eight o'clock in the morning on July 25 at dock E; the ship will be a local one called Theralion. As always, you're under no obligation to clear your schedule if you don't want to...but if you do, then it would really mean a lot to me.
Yours,
Centrius
FMS, March 27, year 327
This time, Sharimara's hands trembled for a very different reason as opposed to the first. Lashka had thankfully gone back to work and Mao Mao merely sat on a chair opposite Dilly's desk and waited for the warden to finish reading.
Dilly, however, had been reading over Sharimara's shoulder. "Oh my god, he's coming here for a temp job! This is so perfect!"
Mao Mao waited patiently with her eyes closed, but smiled ever so slightly. "It would be a great shame if you don't go to meet him," the pandaren said softly, though without backing down from judgment as always.
Brushing her hair back and attempting to look casual, Sharimara tried to force down the creeping, foolish optimism she felt welling up inside of her. "I don't know...he's too open for just his second letter," she mumbled while staring at her sandals and allowing Dilly to snatch the letter from her. "It seems too easy, especially after such a long time...men are more complicated than that."
"You don't know anything about men Shari, you've spent every single weekend alone at your apartment for the past twelve years," Dilly blurted out without shame as she began writing the address on a reply letter.
"What! Dilly, you can't talk about me like that!" Sharimara huffed angrily, her pulse already increased from the voice in the back of her head screaming for her to meet him at the docks and tackle him with kisses right there. "Hey, I didn't agree to even write him back yet!"
At that recalcitrant comment, even Lashka spoke up. "Stop pretending Shari, even if you'd hesitate you'd still write him back whether we were here or not. We're just speeding up the process."
Dilly mumbled some of the words outside as she continued writing a reply in Sharimara's name without her permission. "...absolutely be there when you arrive; there's nowhere else on Azeroth and Outland I'd rather be," the goblin mouthed as she wrote.
Exposure caused Sharimara to tense up. "What? No, don't write that, it makes me seem-"
"-desperate, which you are, so we're not going to leave any doubt in his mind that you're single and interested," Dilly said.
Mao Mao finally opened her eyes. "Warden Hearthglen, if I may...you've been out of the dating game for a very long time. All of us only have your best interest in mind; my suggestion is that you allow Dilly and Lashka to complete the letter together and simply sign it. They will not do you any wrong."
Lashka's eyes lit up at the approval from the boss (though not the woman in whose name the letter was actually being written) and she scurried from her desk to Dilly's. "Shari, this is going to be so much fun! Come on, let us help!" the orc pleaded a little less nervously.
At Mao Mao's prompting, Sharimara simply took the seat next to the furry woman, resigning herself to watch Dilly and Lashka argue over the wording. As apprehensive as she felt, Sharimara also knew that she wasn't the most eloquent speaker or writer regardless of what Centrius might have thought of her; thus she really did see allowing her friends to write on her behalf as the best option.
Internal conflict roiled inside of her as she watched them write. Feelings long since buried threatened to boil over, and it was only Mao Mao's unusually firm grip on Sharimara's wrist that helped the woman to calm down. The way Centrius wrote so naturally, even when nervous...the way he was so open about how he felt, just like he'd been so long ago...the way he was so forward in telling her exactly when he'd arrive, putting himself out there and risking embarrassment if she rejected him...
...she wanted to much to believe it was happening. Fate had never been kind to her; that wasn't simply whining, but a fact even he would testify to. But as she so easily acquiesced to her coworkers and allowed them to write a letter in her name that was far sappier than anything she would have written on her own, a small part of her wanted to believe. So much, it wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, he was really going to show up like he had before. And maybe, just maybe, he'd want to give what they felt an honest try again since they'd been prevented before.
Maybe...just maybe...she wanted to try, too.