Navarion had heard of establishments springing up overnight before, but the naturally grown docks at New Nendis were something else.
Crouching over the corpse of a stray silithid on the beach, the shadow hunter took a brief rest to gaze out at the way work was done among his mother's people. The docks were similar to those he'd seen at Rut'theran Village at the roots of Teldrassil; completely symmetrical, aesthetic to a degree other races could only dream of yet sturdy, functional and self-repairing. The curved archways and naturally enchanted lamps all along the length of the pier were so beautiful that he even forget about having killed a few more silithids before he'd even reported for duty that night. A handful of Druids sat cross legged on the beach and faced the pier. Humming quietly to themselves, they all appeared to be in some sort of a trance as they were encircled by green swirls he recognized when his brother Zengu, a restoration dried, would shift into travel form. And yet the Druids didn't shift; they continued to sit in some sort of a meditation position, humming in tune - to each other or nature itself, he didn't know - and never opening their eyes. A nearly equal number of priestesses stood, their body language more active. Wisps danced around the outstretched arms of the powerful clergywomen, who bobbed every so often as if they were dancing to a rhythm deep inside the planet. The wisps would float away from their arms and begin to rotate around various support beams, safety railings and storage pens; as they did so, the wooden parts of the docks in question would elongate and grow, fitting into the shapes that the night elves needed for their port.
"This is way more efficient than how the other factions build things," Navarion remarked in admiration as he knelt in the soft sand about a hundred yards away. The dead bugs all around were only a distant memory. "Even the Steamwheedle Cartel. I don't like to admit it since my family is part and parcel of the organization, but I've worked on operations where they built docks before; it definitely takes longer than this."
Thresha and Calil sat next to each other on the beach just a few feat away from him, clasping their hands over their knees as they mimicked each other's posture. Once again, they were far closer to each other than was considered proper in their culture, but in the past month since he'd arrived Navarion had come to understand that they were just very good friends.
Stubborn as ever, Zhenya sat away from all three, her back facing to them in a way that was offensive to both night elves and draenei. She'd been uptight ever since Navarion had forcibly held her hand in front of a group of civilians they'd walked past, and the last thing she'd said to him was that he shouldn't act like 'her man.' Right in front of their two companions. Normally he would have been angry enough to grab her by the shoulders and shake the shit out of her, but she'd uttered the order so fast and so dismissively that he found his mood too deflated to even respond verbally, much less anything, killing the silithids for fun had given him a form of release and entertainment, and watching the docks rise up out of the damp soil of the beach had helped him to come down afterward.
Humming her agreement, Thresha talked in Darnassian for a minute before remembering that Zhenya never made any attempts to learn the language in all her years in northern Kalimdor, and switched back to Common. "When a community lives at peace with nature, the balance will respond to their needs; but it's a two way street."
"We have clear evidence of that, too," Calil chimed in. "It's been almost half a century since it was grown and the development of Teldrassil is still and a standstill. The tolerance for pollution and the outlanders who cause it has robbed it of the blessing of nature."
"Outlanders and even Kaldorei," Navarion opined, and both pureblooded night elves nodded.
"Yes, unfortunately I guess it's happened to a lot of our people in Stonetalon," the male sentinel conceded.
"Well, if anything, that's more proof for the truth of Elune," Thresha opined in Darnassian. That time, her code switching had been intentional. Despite Zhenya's premarital relations with Navarion (she refused to acknowledge them as anything more than friends with benefits), she upheld a strong belief in the Light and even argued with Thresha about religion once during the past month. The female sentinel had learned to avoid such discussions after that, and only switched back to Common when she'd finished her mandatory missionary message. "If we were meant to have Stonetalon back from the Horde, we would have attained it already; that we haven't after so many decades signals that we've gone about it the wrong way."
"Perhaps the success in rebuilding Nendis will inspire the people elsewhere to live more natural lives." As cheesy as it felt to even say out loud, Navarion did mean the comment, and he truly did feel inspired by how quickly the city had progressed.
"One could only hope," Thresha replied longingly while staring intently at the vines being woven into the shape of a ship's hull before hardening into wood under the direction of the priestesses.
Just like Navarion had expected, Thresha and Calil both turned out to be even younger than he was. In terms of personality, they weren't so different from members of the shorter lived races of comparable age. Much of what they knew about the history and culture of their people had been learned only from books; they were far, far less traveled than he, and had yet to see many of the historical landmarks of his mother's people. When they spoke of events such as the War of the Shifting Sands or even campaigns as recent as the Third War, they spoke in the same sense that young human's did about events from just a century ago. It was quaint and amusing to see two grown night elves behaving in such a way, even for someone as young as Navarion himself.
The three people bearing elven blood continued to sit and watch, but Zhenya had apparently had enough. Standing and dusting off her tight leather breeches, she stumbled across the sand to face the two sentinels. Hooves has obviously not been designed for volleyball or long walks on the beach and Navarion would have laughed at her in a good natured way were he not a bit bothered by her earlier behavior.
She stood right in front of Calil, blocking his view of anything else. "Calil, we need to report for duty in less than an hour. Mind if I borrow Thresha from you?" she asked in an exaggeratedly tartish way that Navarion knew she was using just to bother him some more.
The younger man appeared not so much nervous as uneasy and unhappy in reaction to Zhenya's behavior. "Ask her," Calil replied in a formal voice that most people other than Zhenya would have understood to be curt.
"Actually I wouldn't mind freshening up a bit before getting back into my armor." Thresha brushed her loose pants off and then stood up, bouncing on her toes as if preparing for a race. When she did, Navarion noticed Calil looking at her a little more closely than he usually did. "You guys can take care of yourselves, I'm sure. I'll see the two of you later," she said to Navarion and Calil both. They were still under Captain Soraya's command there on their patrol route of the western wall, and unlike Zhenya who avoided those she served with like the plague, the three of them enjoyed socializing off duty as well.
The two women shuffled up off of the sand and into the woodlands providing a natural barrier between the sea and the city proper. "See you later," Zhenya told Calil, making it obvious that she was telling only him.
The two men sat there on the beach, one twiddling his thumbs and the other seething at Zhenya's rudeness. All he had done was tried to hold her hand as they walked side by side, and that was after she'd pulled him in to an empty but tiny and secluded clearing in the woods, laid herself out on the grass in front of him and quite literally begged him for it. More and more, her behavior became erratic as he knew - without a shadow of a doubt, he absolutely, positively knew - that she intentionally tried to find ways to upset him. It was beyond uncalled for and entirely undeserved, no matter how much she might be irritated by his attempts to force a bit of romance on her.
Navarion snorted a self deprecating laugh out loud. How the tables had turned, the self styled ladies man thought to himself. Perhaps being with Zhenya was cosmic payback for the women he'd betrayed himself during his younger years.
Calil noticed the snort and turned to look at him. The younger man was a bit shy and lacked confidence. It was difficult to know if it was culture or Calil's personality as an individual; Navarion had interacted with many night elves but had never seen them growing up. Tiondel, Navarion's youngest brother, was adopted and of pure night elf heritage, but was just as much a part of the Hearthglen family as he was. Having been raised by their jungle troll father, Tiondel was every bit as ornery and brash as Navarion, and thus wasn't an example of the generality of the culture's young men.
Tired of the younger man's shyness, Navarion leaned back on the sand and prodded him a bit. "You're wondering about Zhenya?" he asked.
After recovering from his initial shock at his thoughts having been predicted so well, Calil spoke normally. "Yeah...does she know that you have a...I mean, you do have a crush on Zhenya, right?"
Laughing through a closed mouth, Navarion nodded, but not at the question. "You could say that she knows how I feel for the most part, yes. I think that's why she acts the way she does."
Calil pursed his lips for a moment as if her were thinking very hard about the statement and his response. "Women are complicated," was all that came out of his mouth.
Virgin, Navarion chuckled to himself internally. His level of comfort immediately rose as he realized he wouldn't be pulled into a contest to out-alpha each other and just tried to enjoy his last few minutes before donning his armor and going on patrol. "Thresha doesn't seem complicated. I have no idea why you don't try to hit that."
No sooner had the words exited from Navarion's lips than had Calil stiffened up and began letting his eyes dart around this way and that. "Uh...um...uh...well...you see, Thresha is...nice. She's really nice, and a great woman. I mean person!"
Ignoring the continued sputtering, Navarion leaned onto one elbow to face his new friend and attempt to help him stop taking things too seriously. "Relax, guy. There's nothing wrong with crushing on one of your friends. It's almost natural. You get to know each other, you spend time together, you learn each other's habits..." The half elf let his voice trail off while reminiscing over how he'd ended up in quite a few of his less acrimonious relationships after spending copious amounts of time with female comrades on the move during war efforts.
"No, well, maybe. I don't know."
"You're taking it too seriously."
Calil bristled at the comment and shut his eyes. It was unusual for him to be so tense. Normally, he was wide eyed and in awe of the developments they'd seen and experiences they'd had in the city. In fact, he and Thresha were quite similar in that respect, and Navarion wondered why nothing had yet blossomed between the two. Calil's apprehension told him the answer.
"I don't understand, right?" Navarion asked rhetorically, trying to use the most sympathetic tone he could. "And nobody understands and it's just complicated, isn't it?"
At that comment, Calil opened one eye in surprise. "That's exactly it," he replied hesitantly.
"Make me understand, then. I'll bet your situation isn't as weird as you think."
A great sign emanated from the younger man's throat, and he appeared to be gearing up for some huge confession. It was as if the revelation of the millennium were about to be released, and Calil was every bit as tense as one would expect.
"I like Thresha," he admitted after great effort just to pronounce the words out loud.
"Congratulations, you've fallen in like with somebody," Navarion chuckled. "So when are you going to ask her out?"
"What? Ask her out? No way!" Calil blurted out, as adamant as he was unintentionally hilarious.
"Dude, just do it."
"I can't! You don't understand!" Calil almost appeared upset; merely discussing the issue out loud bothered him quite a bit. "She made me feel..." Right away, Calil's eyes grew wide at his own comment and the spirits told Navarion of the guilt suddenly infesting the male sentinel. "Oh, that's unfair. She didn't do anything wrong."
"What exactly happened?" Navarion's interest was mainly as a friend and counselor, though he had to admit the suggestion that the two quaint elves could possibly have real drama intrigued him. "There must have been something that led to this."
"There...well...yeah, I guess so," Calil said in frustration - seemingly at himself. He clenched his fists as he clasped hand over hand across his knees, gripping so tightly that the leather of his gloves creaked. A single vein throbbed in the younger man's temple not in anger, but in whatever other negative emotion swirled around inside of him. Whatever he wanted to say was causing him great difficulty in just saying it.
"Thresha changed her clothes in front of me."
Raising an eyebrow, Navarion tried to peer into his companion to see how on Azeroth that could be a bad thing. For whatever reason, Calil was clearly distraught about the incident. Searching for a way to comfort the guy, Navarion tried to push a little further without being patronizing.
"So you feel like she doesn't acknowledge you?" the half elf asked.
"More than that," the full elf replied, a little more sure of himself. "We were at her apartment one day and her roommates were out...we were on leave and she'd invited me to stay at Forest Song, where she's from. So we were in her room and she suggested we go meet another group of her friends at a tea house and she..." Calil paused for a moment, visibly shaken by the memory. "She just took everything off and out on a fresh set of clothing. Like I wasn't even there. And I had to act normal when she told me 'alright, let's go' as if nothing had happened."
Navarion fingered the ending of one of his short tusks while listening, trying to wrap his head around Calil's complex. "And it was only this incident?"
"No. No, this lead to something. It was worse." Calil sighed deeply again but almost appeared to relax this time. It was as if he had resigned himself to accepting the situation as it stood.
"Well, in theory I could think of worse things than a woman you're attracted to stripping her clothes off in front of you. What the hell happened?"
Defeated by a mere memory, Calil spoke in a more controlled tone and no longer seemed to be holding anything back. "About three months ago, we were off duty midway on the inner coast of this region. We had been sent to protect a team growing a wall to demarcate the border between Sentinel and Horde territory. And there were a few Druids, male and female both. They were also off duty and were cooking on the beach, minding their own business. Thresha and I were with a few female friends, and she and I let the water touch our feet and she told me to jump in. I said she has to go first, just strip. And she gets this..." He grimaced, probably trying to mime her reaction and almost certainly exaggerating due to his own pain from the exchange. "...this look on her face, and she's like, 'I can't do that, there are men here,' and she pointed toward the male Druids."
It didn't take long for Calil's problem to dawn on Navarion. "You felt like she viewed you as inadequate?"
"That isn't a strong enough term. I mean...am I not even a man? Then what am I? Am I nothing? Because that's how I felt." More animated all of a sudden, Calil actually turned to face him. "And that's how it is for all of us, you know? We say our society tried to be more balanced in gender relations after immortality; the older generations dying off and our population decreasing and all. But the reality is that a man is still expected to be a Druid or else he's deficient. Nobody says that out loud and a lot of women might deny it, but this is the truth. A night elf female is respected no matter what she does. If she's a warrior, she keeps law and order. If she's a cleric, she writes the laws. If she's a druidess, she's forging a new path for our people. And if she can't fight, at least she can learn a trade, go hunting on the weekends and call herself an archer. But a man? If I'm not a Druid, then I'm someone who couldn't make it as a Druid. That's how our society divides us up."
Calil's mini-rant reminded Navarion so much of the complaints of the human and dwarven women he'd spoken to in the Eastern Kingdoms. The matriarchy of the night elves bore more similarities to the patriarchy of the jungle trolls than he'd previously thought. His friend didn't need a sociology lesson, though; he needed someone to empathize.
"Tell her that her face shimmers with the light of Elune whenever there's a full moon and that you want to go to a tea house and hang out alone together."
"No way!"
"Then languish in your current situation and spend the next few months wondering," Navarion quipped. Calil had been struck hard by the tough love at first and proved unable to respond, focusing on the sand of the beach. "I'm being serious. Look, you're hurt, I get it. Anybody would get it. But seriously, you have no reason not to at least try."
"But what if she says no?! I'll feel to embarrassed!" Calil protested.
"You've already been embarrassed and humiliated by her comments, so you technically have nothing to lose. And if she stops talking to you, then you have confirmation that it never would have been possible and you can move on."
After a few attempts at formulating a retort, Calil gave up and let his head hang low for a minute. Logic dictated that the full elf should just relax and think it over at another time and for once, logic won. "Maybe...I hope," Calil mumbled and started to twiddle his thumbs again.
The moon sat fully above the horizon after a few minutes more, and what little sunlight remained was rapidly disappearing. "We need to gear up," Navarion said and stood up, kicking a silithid husk aside and taking a few steps forward so his companion would follow.
"Yes, of course," Calil replied, and quickly followed into the woodlands marking the far northern edge of the city.
One of many positive habits of elves was their preference for walking in silence, and Calil's preoccupation with the advice earned Navarion a good deal of mental peace and quiet of his own as they made their way back to the military quarter. The evening crowds had begun to come out, and very soon the streets were full of foot traffic as they were every night. Interestingly enough, there were very few nightsabres inside the city limits, and even the internal guards - police, as the rest of the world called them - walked about on foot as they made their rounds. In spite of the diverse array of mercenaries and foreign merchants, New Nendis was still overwhelmingly night elf and, per recent developments, overwhelmingly civilian. The concept of night elven civilians was something that his mother and godmother found amusing, both of them having grown up at a time when the men were almost all asleep and the women were all warriors of the night even if they also had day jobs. To see Kaldorei who moved without the rigidity of people who possessed military training almost had Navarion giddy with delight.
Once inside the military quarter, the two of them parted ways. Because he was a regular enlistee, Calil had managed to nab a bunk in the first ancient of war in the left just inside the natural tree walls of the quarter. The irregulars were all toward the back, away from the amenities and the public eye despite the fact that the Sentinel Army, if not the Air Force, relied on the numbers they added to the ranks. There had been plenty of time to get used to the unsurprising and perhaps even justifiable favoritism toward regular troops, however, and Navarion felt no resentment as he walked to the back end of the quarter in order to ascend the ramp into the ancient of war and get dressed.
Just as he reached the ramp for the men's barracks inside the ancient, he saw Zhenya fully suited up and ready to go in the opposite direction.
Navarion moved to block her, standing in her way and covering up even her view of the area behind him. She only tried to walk around him twice more before giving up, her ego likely screaming to her that the futile attempts were undignified for someone of her...well, he didn't know quite what exactly she felt she had that positioned her above everyone else around her, but whatever it was, he'd offended it. The paladin just paused in front of him, peering out through the eyeholes of her helmet-mask.
"I'm not sorry," she huffed while attempting to sound nonchalant, failing majorly as the defiance in her tone broke through.
It stung him more than he wished it had, but Navarion held his ground and refused to react. "I just came to wish you a good night on patrol."
"No you didn't. That's not your personality."
"It's in my personality to make amends. You know, whenever I get angry at you over the normal fights couples have-"
"We aren't a couple. We just do things in private."
"-I imagine how I would feel if you died. I force myself to think of how I would react knowing that you were there and then one day, you weren't. You were just gone from this world when I didn't expect it. And that makes everything else that bothers me seem so insignificant that I just want to value what time we have on this world."
Her mask prevented him from seeing if his line had hit her as hard as he had intended. Experience had taught him which words affected women of different personalities the hardest and which ones fell flat, and one thing he'd learned about them all is that the most effective way was telling the truth about how he felt. Irony taunted him as the one he'd become the most attached to in years was one nearly immune to his charm. Zhenya only looked at him, whatever way she reacted to his words contained beneath that suit of armor and ricocheting inside.
"That's kind," she quipped, her tone a bit less controlled but unreadable nonetheless.
The two of them lingered for a few more seconds before she clopped forward and pushed past him. He turned to watch her leave until she reached the main road and disappeared into the crowd, never looking back to see him.
Telling himself that she probably had been affected but was too haughty to show it or even admit it to herself, he wandered over to the men's barracks inside the other ancient of war to get his armor on and prepare for the same nightly patrol duty he'd been doing since he arrived.
Navarion peered out through the balistraria, surveying the killing fields between the walls of New Nendis and the lush, regrown forests of the northern peninsula of Azshara beyond. Most civilizations would have used a second wall to enclose the killing fields, but for night elves the forests were like a wall. The trees in northern Kalimdor were just a tad bit sturdier than elsewhere, the bark just a little bit more resistant to fire than normal. Entire woodlands could shift position to confuse potential invaders, and nature itself would attack exceptionally hostile enemies.
The silithids were different, however. Since the insectoids were neither undead nor demonic, the treants would not attack them unless directly ordered to do so by observers, and shifting the positions of trees wouldn't throw them off since they tracked by smell and heat. The open fields in clear view of the arrow slits in bartizans such as the one Navarion found himself standing in, however, would ensure that the insectoids never sneak close enough to invade the beach or anywhere else in the vicinity again.
At least, that's what Captain Soraya claimed as she talked Navarion's ears off about fort growing amongst the Kaldorei.
"Our women are the finest archers on all of Kalimdor," the nationalist captain claimed, refusing to use the name Azeroth since it was from the Common language and not Darnassian. "There is simply no way this city can be invaded; our arrows will stop invaders from the safety of the bartizans before they even get in range for our priestesses and Druids to cast spells at them. Even inferior tools such as your gun can be of use from the vantage point you're peering out through there."
Her speech was mind numbing, but she always insisted on treating him and any other mercenaries under her care as if they were incompetent, explaining every last detail to them. Given that many of the irregulars were even more experienced than the regular soldiers, Soraya's pontification was largely unneeded but also unyielding.
Navarion wasn't as tall as his father but still taller than most full blooded night elves, and had trouble backing out of the bartizan. The hallways within the city's defensive walls were narrow as well and just barely high enough for him to avoid having to duck. Soraya's stiff posture didn't help him to feel comfortable as he backed out and found himself bumping into the wall.
"We completed the growing of the walls first, even before the services and amenities in the city due to the new silithid threat; we take defense that seriously. You're very fortunate to have earned a position in this fighting force at a time such as this, yes."
Yes what, he thought to himself. She had thrust yet another lesson in fortification components he already knew about upon him the moment he'd clocked in at the tower registrar below. He hadn't asked a single question.
"Thank you for the answers, Captain," he said congenially, wanting to find a way out of the agonizing conversation but not wanting to put himself at risk of disciplinary action.
"As you were, irregular," she replied politely in spite of the slightly negative term. "You'll prove your worth just yet." Her voice carried a tone of the utmost respect and politeness, but her words were patronizing either way.
Navarion watched Soraya walk back toward the stairwell around the corner and down to the bottom floor of the watchtower built in to the defensive wall. Most of the captain's nights were spent joking or playing chess with some of the other officers, content to leave the members of her unit largely unsupervised. Irrespective of the monotony of patrolling alone, Navarion still preferred to be by himself rather than to listen to Soraya prattle on. The lesser of two evils, he had convinced himself.
Once he was sure that he was alone, he was able to leave his post at the bartizan. Soraya never actually checked on him and in the event that she did and found the post empty, he could always claim that he had to use the bathroom or something along those lines. In a way, the monotony could prove to be a boon on some nights. Sober and alone, it gave the shadow hunter the time he needed to temporarily clear his mind of current worries, ponder his direction in life and even listen to the spirits occasionally.
At the age of thirty four, he was incredibly young for a half elf, but had lived hard and fast like the half troll he also was. His clingy, tight knit family were all quite different from him, by that point in time at least. His five siblings all lived at home for at least part of the year; the two middle children - twins - lived away for periods. Zengu was a restoration Druid living half the year in Moonglade for training and Issinia was a priestess of the moon spending half the year in Darnassus training with Zengu's wife Thandra, also a priestess. Anathil, Tiondel and Sharimara all lived year around at the family's three story home on a large estate on the bluffs overlooking the port of Ratchet. They'd done a measure of traveling, but nothing like he had. He ran away from home twice, at ages eighteen and twenty; for elves such as his mother, such an age wasn't considered fully grown or mature and it scandalized the family.
He'd certainly lived hard though, getting himself into all kinds of trouble with shallow but dependable friends, going on adventurers and doing good deeds here and there. And drinking. A bit too much.
What of his current situation, though? Navarion's father Khujand was a jungle troll, and in his sixties; he'd already outlived the average person of his race and the extra years were likely a result of the powerful elder shadow hunter's voodoo, but for how long would it last? His mother Cecilia wasn't in any better condition: being from the generation of night elves who were already ancient by the time the race's now lost immortality had begun, she was of a rare breed that had nearly come extinct. Extremely few Kaldorei were older than ten thousand years at that point in time; maybe just a few dozen. She probably wouldn't even live as long as his father, even...
...Navarion squeezed his eyes shut at the thought. As much as he loved them, he often became depressed if he spent more than a few months at home, sleeping in the bed he'd grown up in and working odd jobs around Ratchet. His wanderlust had to be sated in order to preserve his sanity, but that didn't meant that leaving his clingy, doting parents didn't cut him with a pain far worse than what even Zhenya could visit upon him.
His sulking didn't last for long. He'd been ambling up and down the narrow halls of the second floor of the defensive walls. Outdoor patrols roved about in the open air above, and unfocused sentinels joked in the rooms on the ground floor below. The space in between was almost always empty, but when Navarion entered a long, very straight stretch of the city's western wall, he could vaguely make out two silver orbs all the way down on the other end. They had to be more than a hundred yards away, bobbing up and down slightly as their glowing light left a trail in the air that was almost hypnotic. He stopped for a moment to look; it couldn't possibly be an enemy in such a fortified place, but caution never hurt and he wasn't sure who else would be patrolling such a lonely stretch of empty halls that time of night.
Footsteps against the naturally grown stone floor echoed against the walls and entered his sensitive ears, informing him that the person was approaching slowly on shoes made from suede. Light feet maintained an even pace, as if the person had spent extra time practicing the way they walked even when not stealthed and sneaking up on an enemy, giving off a sense of refinement. The mixture of colors grabbed his attention firmly, drawing his eyes away from the fact that the person's approach was steady and unhesitating. Slow, steady but approaching him all the same.
The light purple cloak and cowl associated with archers of all varieties of elves stood so vibrantly against the cold stone walls that it distracted attention from the person's face, if not their eyes. As the person continued to approach, Navarion walked forward again, not wanting to seem rude or disturbed. When he took his first few steps, the person did slow down for a bit only to pick up speed again. The silver glow of her eyes - like ninety percent of the warriors, the person was female - became less overwhelming as the gap between them closed. The hood lay loose along the back of her shoulders, just barely revealing hair the color of fresh thistles tied back on a long ponytail. Lavender blue skin matching the color of periwinkles exactly combined with the color palette to generate an overall purple outlook that was simply gorgeous, even from afar. And as the two of them closed the gap even further, she confused him.
From maybe thirty yards away, she began to wave at him. The halls were so narrow that she couldn't see anybody else to wave to even if they hadn't been alone. It was confusing as he knew for sure that he hadn't met the person previously. She waved at him a second time, not frantic but simply trying to get his attention. There was no awkwardness from his end, but he waved back anyway, not wanting the person to feel stupid. Though were there witnesses, he wouldn't have waved back.
Her movements insinuated that she was also young like him - elves could always tell - and her bow wasn't that of the Sentinel Army or Air Force but that of a trainee. Not only another mercenary like him, but probably also someone born after the Third War when immortality ended and the night elven men woke up, Navarion surmised.
At twenty paces he stopped, following the rules of propriety for unrelated people of opposite genders in the culture of the Kaldorei. The extra respect between the sexes was new for him considering the pub crawls and midnight trysts he'd engaged in during his younger years of adventuring in the Eastern Kingdoms, and it took a bit of effort to keep all the rules of etiquette in mind. So when she continued to walk and stopped much closer to him than that, he found her youth and impropriety amusing.
"Hi!" the young pureblooded night elf practically chirped to him while standing with her hands clutching her bow.
Her body language was unassuming and casual, and his voodoo sensed not a hint of nervousness on her. Her ponytail was braided and much more intricate than the Spartan, utilitarian styles of many of the more weathered warrior women in northern Kalimdor. Her quiver was strapped loosely to her baldric, poking out from under her cape as if it were a fashion accessory rather than a carrier for death in flying form. Her cloak hung open, revealing that she lacked armor but her pants and shirt - neither loose nor tight - were adequate for a hunt but not close combat. The material didn't quite cling, but it revealed her figure. Most night elf women were lithe, muscular but feminine and on the thin side when compared to the women of many other races.
The woman before him was curvy to the point of being plump. It was the first time he'd ever seen it in his entire life: a plump night elf. And she was the most fucking beautiful creature he'd every laid eyes upon.
"Um...hi?" Navarion asked curiously, wondering why exactly she was standing there in front of him, beauty or no.
Her relaxed posture when holding on to her bow seemed strange, like she'd be comfortable to continue having the two of them just look each other over, him suspiciously and her...he couldn't quite put her finger on it. Already he could tell she was the furthest person he'd met at New Nendis from hiding herself and her personality, and yet he couldn't read her. It was confusing in a fascinating sort of way.
Full lips broke into an innocent smile, and full cheeks that were pretty despite the woman's complete and total lack of makeup or even foundation formed the shape of two strawberries before she spoke.
"You're Navarion, right?" she asked, not s hint of pretense in her tone. It was as if she didn't find the question to a stranger nosy at all.
Scenarios floated through his head of how this person had learned who he was until a flashback flashed back in his mind. It was quick and fleeing, but enough to make him remember. His pulse temporarily increased as the image of Zhenya taunting him with her lack of respect for his fidelity (she knew he'd worked long and hard to learn the meaning of loyalty after having behaved like a dog in his younger years) with her wandering eyes. A lone sympathetic face gazed at him when she thought he hadn't been looking; the same cute, round face looked at him now and a measure or embarrassment returned.
"How do you know my name?" he asked. Tilting his head at her, he tried to remember if he'd ever seen that thistle ponytail during his rounds on the city wall.
A periwinkle nose wrinkled at him in amusement from her side this time. He did find her behavior weird after a mere four lines of dialogue, but her entire demeanor almost made him feel as relaxed as she was. "Oh, I'm not sure...most of our names are mentioned on the role calls. I probably heard it counted off at some point." This time, the little white lie broke through in her attempt to fight off a smile, and the spirits told him that she at least wasn't a conniving person seeing as how she was unable to hide her true feelings. Before he could say something to figure out what exactly she wanted, the woman extended her hand. "I'm Astariel."
Taking her hand just to break the feeling he didn't have a label for - not tension, not awkwardness, but something else - he shook and felt how limp she let her wrist lay. She didn't resemble the weathered, rough elven sentinels he'd grown used to with their overly formal bows or the troll valkyries he'd encountered with their aggressive handshakes and suggestive, alluring smirks. He found her nature as refreshing as he did perplexing.
"Nice to meet you, then," he said while retracting his hand.
"Same here." She neither exclaimed nor droned, and appeared completely at ease talking to him. It made him wonder how jaded he had become, that her seemingly normal behavior appeared to abnormal to him. She took no notice of his confounded attempts to figure her out, and continued talking as if they were friends and weren't supposed to be patrolling the city's defensive wall. "Where are you from?"
The two of them stood a little longer, him looking down at her and nearly laughing at himself due to his own unjustifiable confusion and her just looking up at him like a person who carried no preconceptions about people she didn't know. To greet him as a comrade was polite, even if walking a hundred yards away from her patrol route to do it seemed a bit quaint and perhaps even irresponsible. Waving him down while approaching was a bit weird. Her personal questions a minute after meeting him were just over the top.
Finding no reason not to tell her, he chuckled at himself internally and tried not to be burned out and questioning of the motives of the other relative youngblood. "I'm from the Barrens...why do you ask?"
"Oh, the Barrens? That's interesting! It's nearby our sacred forests but so different geographically and culturally!"
Her sentence was so quaint that he bit his tongue not to laugh at her. In any other circumstance, he really would have laughed at somebody behaving in such a manner. This time, however, it felt rude to even consider doing so. This Astariel person just came off as too nice and unassuming; a breath of fresh air, he had to admit. That he had to make himself admit it felt sad. There had to have been a time when he wasn't so cynical.
"I'm from Nendis!" Astariel beamed without even having been asked.
Though he hadn't realized it, Navarion soon found himself drawn into the conversation, so at ease did a person not trying to impress or challenge put him. "You mean...you're from a destroyed city?" he asked in confusion.
"Yes!" she chirped in response, which only made him more confused. "I was born here just after the Third War."
History lessons were par the course for someone with a mother as ancient as Navarion's, and he easily put two and two together. "Oh...you were born just before the loss of Old Nendis?"
"Yes!" She almost looked giddy with excitement as he uncovered a detail as mundane as where she was born.
One eyebrow, bearing hair unlike a troll's but short unlike an elf's, raised in suspicion. This woman behaved as if she were a mere teenager but according to her claim, she was more than a decade older than Navarion. The old city had been burned to the ground by the king of all scumbags, Illidan Stormrage, just after Astariel had been born. That would mean she spent the first few years of her life as a refugee; very few people survived the attack but those who did were scattered among the Kaldorei cities already in shock at having lost immortality just a year before that. This woman was by no means sheltered, yet she lacked the taciturn world weariness he and many others did. Was it that pure blooded elves really did mature that slowly?
"Well, good for you for contributing to the rebuilding of the city," he remarked, almost feeling a physical strain as he tried to shove down his pessimistic cynicism. He'd managed to become pretty good friends with Dmitri without suspecting or expecting anything; women should be the same. "You know, my mother once told me that the original city dates back to pre-Sundering times-"
"Oh! Is your mother from the old world?" she blurted out in reference to the ancient world where Kalimdor had been a single, global continent.
"Y-yes, I guess she was." Navarion immediately felt confused by his own behavior. It wasn't the habit of elves or even trolls to offer such personal information when meeting somebody new. He'd dealt with enough shady characters back in his early twenties when part of a guild that mostly busted thieves' dens and pirate coves to know better than to give up aspects of his personal life. A second battle began inside of him to prevent his mouth from telling her too much more. "Anyway, I've heard that this is truly a historic city. Good for you for doing your part-"
"My parents were from the old world too!" Astariel shared without even being asked.
"Oh...that's nice-"
"My mom was from Hajiri and my dad was from Zin-Azshari!" Suddenly, her boisterous nature became a little bit subdued in a matter of seconds, and he could have sworn the woman looked like an energetic teenager despite the honesty in her claims of having been born just after the Third War. "Goddess light their paths," she added somberly, letting her eyes fall toward the ground.
"Bless your parents' hearts," Navarion murmured in imitation of a prayer he'd heard humans saying. Her eyes lit up and he could tell that his attempt to brush the personal discussion aside had only served to encourage her. "So anyway, I mostly patrol the area back there-"
"We should patrol together! That way we can cover more ground!"
He actually tilted his head at her. No person with combat experience would think that such an idea would even remotely make sense from a tactical standpoint. It wasn't like the Sentinels to accept someone lacking experience even as a mercenary, however, and be correctly guessed that the was trying to find excuses to talk to him.
On the one hand, his defensive wall came up. Navarion was mostly well adjusted considering how many years he'd spent fighting in wars and dealing with figurative and literal backstabbere from Pandaria to Northrend and beyond. He didn't have any sort of aversion to casual contact; he'd just learned that mostly people, especially elves, didn't open up that much upon the first meeting with a new acquaintance. Yet on the other hand, Astariel's near total lack of pretense and assumption felt like he had breathed fresh air after spending years in a dwarven mine shaft. Her bright, silver eyes sparkled when her adorably chubby cheeks pulled into a smile. She had a tendency to wiggle her nose when inspiration to interrupt him came into her mind. All of it clashed with the obviously weathered short sword sheathed at her belt in a slightly battered scabbard; she'd obviously fought and possibly even killed before, yet she lacked the certain level of seriousness that always seemed to settle in to the demeanor of people of all races after the first instance of ending the life of another being, neutral or hostile.
Rather than embarrass or upset the friendly yet pushy archer, he allowed her to walk next to and slightly in front of him in the narrow hallway that felt cramped to him but comfortable to her. In a way, he hoped they would bump in to another patrol unit and be forced to break away due to a lack of space. He didn't know why he wished that. Maybe it was because she seemed so nice that he felt uncomfortable in his own skin. To see a person talking to him at such ease and with no wariness or caution at all caused him to question just how stern he'd let himself become after a decade and a half of wading knee deep through the bodies of bad guys and enemy soldiers everywhere. Navarion almost felt like walking next to and chatting with this open, not quite innocent but certainly not guilty irregular known as Astariel was completely out of place, more because of him than her. People like the reformed satyr guy whose name he kept forgetting or Ragnar whose name sounded more dwarven than trollish were where he belonged. Or with the regularly enlisted sentinels, who were as crass and vulgar as any male soldiers when their officers weren't looking. Or with Zhenya.
"Keep it down up there!"
The angry sentinel from the ground floor of the defensive walls below banged some sort of wooden pole against the ceiling, obviously angry that whatever passtime she and her friends were engaging in below had been interrupted. It was only then that Navarion began to wonder for just how long he and Astariel had ambled down the long, empty halls together, her engaging in idle banter and him constantly wondering if her comments and questions were serious or not.
The footsteps saved him from the exchange he wanted to end without knowing why.
"Captain Soraya is coming," he hushed out to her urgently.
He stepped away from her and at first, his odd new acquaintance looked a little disappointed. She furrowed her brow as if considering whether or not the captain was coming their way, but the footsteps from the stairwell they'd just stopped nearby at a junction in the city wall echoed through. Just then, something changed in the already animated elf. A mischevious grin broke out across the formerly shy archer's face and she pulled her cloak around her full body just a little more securely.
"Now you see me!" Astariel hushed right back in a similarly urgent tone laced with humor.
She shadowmelded, an ability of pureblooded night elves due to the blessings of nature; he lacked it himself, as did most of his siblings. Her outline was vaguely apparent to him as she hurried around the bend silently, disappearing just as Soraya reached the top of the stairwell and peeked her head into the interior hallway of the wall at him.
She eyed him up and down, more in suspicion than in attraction (though he smelled a little bit of that as well). After staring him down sternly for a few seconds, she decided he must be alone. "Hearthglen, have you been drinking again?"
"Never on the job, ma'am," he answered honestly. She must have thought he'd been talking to himself all that time.
Soraya looked just a little bit longer as if she wanted to say something else, but raucous laughter from the other women warriors downstairs that was far, far louder than Astariel's voice had been broke out and grabbed her attention.
"As you were, then."
Alone once more after the captain had left, Navarion felt the odd sensation of being watched. The spirits told him it was nothing, and they could neither be fooled nor did they have a tendency to lie. He peeked around the bend and saw Astariel's outline far away, hurrying down another stairwell off in the distance; his long ears picked up the sound of laughter of a different group of sentinels from that direction.
There was no reason for the exchange to feel odd, he told himself. The woman had behaved politely and came off as friendly and open. If that caused him to become uneasy, then perhaps he really had been traveling the world and fighting for far too long.