The picture lay resting amid files, papers, and other similar pictures with their own files to go with them, laid out in the 7th Legion lieutenant's tent where Arcanist "Starwing" had come to discuss movement of medical supplies and other amenities which she had secured for the Alliance with her resources in trade. The particular picture she stared at was of a muscled sin'dorei warrior she recognized only too well, bare-chested and in his more casual leathers, his strong leg propped up on a crate marked with a Horde insignia, clearly in the midst of strategic discussion, with someone that the gnomish camera had not captured on film.

Aranya chewed on her lip, staring fixedly at it, her posture tense, near-frozen. Her glamoured, star-blue eyes darted left and right. Her long, upright-pointed ears twitched, listening for anyone's approach nearby. When she was certain that no one would be near, she stepped around the makeshift table of supply crates, and peered down at the files' information.

Dossiers, collected by SI:7 on Horde subjects of rank or other interest. No name was given for Halenvar, as yet, it seemed thus far unknown. His rank was listed as "captain, confirmed" and "possible lieutenant-commander," which was a good enough guess, given his role on the warfront.

Casting another furtive sweep of her senses, Aranya snatched up the file and incinerated it with a whispered, "Felos." The picture she stuffed into the front of her sumptuous night-sky-colored dress. She would return to Dazar'alor tonight, if only for one night, to apprise her husband of this.

The Thalassian woman left the tent with measured strides, so as not to appear in haste to get away, and asked that one of the guards inform the lieutenant she'd intended to see that she would be back again, later.

Aranya rarely ever put pen to paper by her own hand. Her hand wasn't a steady one, not for writing nor drawing. She usually had an enchanted quill do those things for her, take the dictation of her words and thoughts, sketch down the images and diagrams of what she saw with her eyes, or otherwise perceived with her subtler senses. It was routine, habit, matter of course.

But on those rare times when the phoenix-mage held pen in hand, it was for something personal. Something so important that she just needed to shape the words out herself.

The windows to Aranya's study, in her half of the upper rooms atop the Empyrean Star Trades shoppe, were all open on this lovely summer day in Stormwind. The breezy harbor air brought the scent of the sea, always a balm to to her soul. The sunlight was somewhat shaded at this hour by the spires of the cathedral. The courtyard fountain down below outside babbled cheerfully.

The arcanist sat, her sumptuous blue and violet silk city garb shimmering to match her glamoured midnight-colored hair. There were clouds brimming in her celestial, blue-appearing eyes, which no power of illusion could honestly hide. A contrast to the perfection and light of the day around her. She took up parchment and pen at her desk, and began to write.

My heart… she began, glancing at the stars on her wedding ring, and then taking a deep breath, she continued.

My heart

If only you understood how all my thoughts are always of you. If only you knew how I lose sleep, craving your voice, your touch. If only you knew how full of doubt I feel from day to day. My decisions, my choices, burden me, and I think too long sometimes on the ways they may have burdened you. I wonder sometimes how you could still want me, accept me, because in the silence, I find in my mind that I struggle to accept myself sometimes.

I am told so often of my value and my worth to the Alliance, to my friends, to my allies and partners. So why do I feel like it's so cheap? Is it because I am so alone in the worst of ways without you? No light, no god, nothing replaces you, or the peace you've always made me feel, my love.

I've been seen searching for you among the captured, before. I scan the faces on the battlefield, praying I'll never have to see you dead. I don't think that even if you got on your knees, took my sword's blade in your fist and aimed it at your own heart, telling me "do it," that I could kill you.

You know you are my anchor, and here I am adrift. Lost, tossed and disoriented in the washing swells of the world, but I'm terrified. Even with the the thought of you right in front of me, I'm so terrified. I can't move, I can't reach, I-

Aranya crumpled up the parchment between her fists, silent tears spilling from her eyes down her pale blue cheeks. She couldn't finish. She simply sat awhile, her feelings pouring in their whisper-quiet fall from her lashes, and she took one deep breath after another, pausing everything in world around her but the moment in which her being was now truly present, giving herself the mental space to try to still her mind and aching heartbeat.

It was a strange thing, this thing she'd just sat down to do. She saw her husband regularly, but also was away from him as much. She could never say on a given day for certain where she had to be. Now, here were these words that she had no reason to say when she was with him, and that she couldn't say when she was away.

Adrift indeed, she was, for every single word was painfully true.

The Thalassian woman unfolded the parchment, her eyes looking over it without really seeing it. She snuffed a little scoff at herself and at her situation through her nose, and then crumpled it up again, tossing it into the corner. No doubt the SI:7 shadow that was watching her right now from the cathedral roof and thinking she was unaware of it would slip into her room later to have a look at it. Probably add it to the dossier that Stormwind's finest under Shaw's command had filed on "Arcanist Varazsla Starwing."

It mattered not. There was nothing damning to herself or to Halenvar in what she had written. If anything, it would only prop up the image that the Alliance citizens and leadership had come to have of her: a woman who was determined enough, had conviction enough, to go forward with whatever she thought was right, even if her heart ached to the breaking point against it.

And therein lay the cruelest irony of Aranya's life and identity as Varazsla Starwing.

The sorceress knew, had learned a long time ago, that the best illusions were the lies that were veiled in truths. What made this one different was the fact that it was the opposite, it was nothing but truth, and she clothed it in lies to make it acceptable to people who would otherwise kill her.