Patrolling the very top of the defensive wall was always preferable to patrolling the interior or the bottom. It gave an incredible view, and it was easier to interact with other people. No wonder the enlistees would often try to bully the irregulars out of such assignments.
By some stroke of luck, Captain Soraya's unit had been assigned to patrol the top of the western wall that night rather than the interior of the absolutely gigantic walls or, even worse, the bottom perimeter. His presence on the four person team marked her unit as tainted by the lesser respected soldiers of fortune such as Navarion himself, and halfway through his third month on the job he'd begun to realize that his assignment to her unit was possibly a punishment for or even form of disrespect to the captain. Having him in her unit meant that she also stood at the bottom of the list for the better assignments for the patrol units, or that she had even been assigned to lead a patrol unit at all. The increase in silithid sightings and occurrence of a few attacks on trade routes meant that the scout troops were rather active, and outside of actual war time, bagging a few silithid carapaces on the paved highways of northern Azshara were the closest things to badges of honor a soldier could earn. And yet there the patrol units stood, performing a very necessary function but largely unthanked and unnoticed. Regular enlisted soldiers on patrol were to the Sentinel military itself what irregulars like Navarion were to the fighting force as a whole.
No wonder Soraya had resented him so much at first, he surmised. All things considered, she'd been incredibly generous to him if he really was the reason why boons such as this had been denied to her. Ever since his first week when he'd helped to protect the two greenhorns in their unit - he'd since learned that Thresha and Calil were both only thirty years old, practically teenagers by the standards of elves - Soraya had laid off on the insults and open condescension. She wasn't friendly by any means, but she at least dealt with him in a cordial and professional tone. If they were alone, she'd even occasionally flirt with him in the stiff, aggressive way that only a night elf female could, if only due to her own lack of self control when unwatched. She meant nothing by it, but at least is was a sign that she no longer loathed his presence in her unit.
Were he a younger man, he might have responded to her occasional tartish personality flips as well. As jaded and desensitized as he'd grown, especially after having received such attention from women most of his life, he still enjoyed the interaction. If only Zhenya knew how well behaved he was by his thirty fourth year, thirty four years of hard and fast living unusual of even a half breed elf...
...nah, he thought. She wouldn't change even if she knew. She's Zhenya.
He nearly stumbled on a loose stone as he patrolled atop the defensive wall. Worried, he scanned in front of and behind of to make sure nobody had seen him. The last thing the irregulars needed was one of their own slipping up in front of the regular enlisted soldiers; any minor mistakes would turn into scandals used for the egotistical but also insecure sentinels to boost themselves up and denigrate the mercenaries even more. Out on top of the walls, everything was open; other guards on patrol could easily be seen off in the distance as they passed in and out of the battlements, and the few people strolling beyond the forest marking the outer edge of the developed area could just barely see visibly different people like him. It was both an added pressure to pay attention, focus and not slip up during a necessary but monotonous job, and also an incredible gift; everybody on guard duty wanted to patrol the top of the city walls.
Walking along, he could see much of New Nendis almost clear to the opposite wall. Earthen ramparts had been grown from the soil by the priestesses, Druids and wisps, and the stone walls rose up as naturally smoothed, etched and designed rock formations from the bedrock many yards below the surface. Walls so impenetrable were normally associated with Orc strongholds or the very oldest of the troll steppe cities, but as he had once seen during a family trip to Ashenvale, the night elves were capable of growing enormous strongholds out of the planet if they so desired and were willing to put forth the effort. The injection of new blood into the leadership as many his mother's age were passing away complicated things a bit. The younger Kaldorei had more ambition and motivation to make changes and achieve great feats, but they lacked the skill; elves are slower learners than the shorter lived races, and they required more time to hone their skills. As the pre-Sundering generation died off one by one, there was a mad dash to learn from them and push for more information, and the tired and retired found themselves largely in teaching positions whether they desired the attention or not.
His mother...another thought Navarion tried to push out of his mind.
She'd cried the second time he'd left home, and Cecilia Hearthglen never cried; at age twenty, it was slightly less traumatic than the first time he'd left for a bit of adventure yet it hurt her more as the pains of old age caught up with her. Even his father, a short lived jungle troll, remained a little more active than his mother and though nobody in the family talked about it openly, they knew she only had a decade or two left. For someone who had lived as long as her, it felt so very unfair.
Forest lied on both sides of the city wall - the wider, regrown forests of Azshara on one side and the pollution barrier and carbon catching forest lining the other side and providing an aesthetic interlude between the city proper and the high stone walls. Cecilia had spent ten thousand years - not one hundred, not one thousand, but ten thousand - guarding cities like this from threats that never came. She'd even visited the Old Nendis, both before the Sundering when their people were ruled by arcane magic and afterward when they were ruled by the balance. Her stories had made their estate - a naturally grown house and stone privacy wall like a miniature version of New Nendis - a place of pilgrimage for night elves, furbolgs and to a lesser extent some Tauren passing through Ratchet. After having retired from work, she found even more demands on her time from younger generations wishing to meet one of the few living beings who had seen the old world in its primordial state. They would gather around and sit on the floor of the estate's meeting room for guests, refusing to sit on the same level of a woman who almost feared they'd worship her. Paper, aqueducts and multi-story buildings had been invented during her lifetime, and she could remember the first time somebody sliced bread. His mother was an indispensable resource for all the peoples and races of the world, much like his even older aunt Unelia's who had more or less been pushed into the position of mayor of Astranaar by popular demand. Theirs was a dying breed, and as Navarion watched the glowing lights of wisps, naturally grown lamps and nature magic sparkle in the city made of hollowed out, inhabitable trees, he couldn't stop the guilt from setting in.
He didn't know what he was looking for now. The first time he'd left home, he was just acting like a spoiled brat; he could freely admit that fifteen years on. The second time, news of an increase in piracy, slavery and highway robbery lured him to form a guild of like minded adventurers in the Eastern Kingdoms intent on making the world a safe place to travel if factional authorities weren't up to the task. Depression set in after that due to the monotony of working at one of the three Ratchet stables, and he grew irate as news of various crises and war efforts reached the port before the inland cities, and he sat watching the years drift by.
Yet there he was, participating in another campaign also watching the years drift by. He didn't know what he wanted in life or what his own goals were, and he felt almost as empty fighting silithids in Azshara as he did catching and taming raptors in the Barrens. All the while his parents were back home, spending the twilight years of their lives with the rest of his loving, tight knit family. He felt only halfway alive being away from them, restless and irritable whenever he was around them and confused and numb when Zhenya tried to give him sincere but almost always bad advice.
Wow, he thought to himself. That was embarrassingly, unnecessarily depressing. Not drinking meant he had to deal with negative emotions head on, and he'd largely forgotten how to do so.
Two familiar bouncing orbs of sterling silver caught his eye far down the city walls. Scanning the area again to make sure they wouldn't be seen, he ambled forward and wondered how she'd gotten there.
For a month and a half since he'd first met her, the shy in public but bubbly in private Astariel had largely been assigned to even less desired guard duty due to her captain being the only regular enlisted soldier in Astariel's unit. She'd spent much of her time patrolling warehouses during the daylight hours as a sort of goodwill mission to the local civilian population, or literally standing guard in front of supply rooms in isolated parts of the city for hours on end. Thus it came as no surprise that, when she finally ended up assigned to patrol the top of the city wall, and on the same night that Navarion had been, that she basically forgot they were supposed to be standing guard and viewed it as an opportunity to chat.
Her light purple hood remained on the top of her head this time, signaling that even she knew the risk of being seen. The periwinkle face stood out as a very light contrast against the fabric of her cloak and cowl, and even her quiver was concealed this time. She leaned on one of the merlons of the battlement, signaling a relaxed mood despite their technical delinquency.
"Fancy meeting you here," she joked innocently. Her aura insinuated that she was completely calm, unconcerned over the possibility of being discovered.
Loosening up a bit to his own surprise, he leaned up against the next merlon over. Socializing was one of the reasons everybody wanted to patrol the tops of the city walls; unless you were a female officer who could literally hang her weapon on a rack and play backgammon inside the watch towers, those fleeting moments where you could escape the prying eyes of said officers and chat for a few minutes were one of the joys of guarding a wide stretch of open air territory.
"It isn't the first time I've been assigned up here," he quipped, trying to relax. "I guess our schedules never matched up before."
"Well, I guess we won the lottery!" She laughed lightly at her own joke and so did he, despite not knowing what exactly she meant.
One of the many local beetles, big, harmless bugs that glowed at night and drank nectar, buzzed by their heads just as they were beginning to get into the meat of some local gossip she'd heard. They both jumped at the insectoid hum, and her hands reached her bow half a second before his hand reached his gun, giving him a second form of surprise that she didn't pick up on. They both looked at each other as the harmless but crawled around and flew away again and shared another laugh.
"I thought that was one of them!" Astariel chuckled.
"I know, patrolling the top of the wall is supposed to be one of the cushy assignments."
"Oh, did you hear about the hives?" she asked, not giving him enough context to know what she was talking about.
Finding the merlon a little two hard to become comfortable while leaning against, Navarion shifted forward to rest his elbow on the crenel in between. His intention was only to bend over and rest for a bit while being able to hear her better, but she seemed to take it as something else. Startled at first, she slowly leaned a little closer to her original posture, keeping distance in between them according the normal elven rules of propriety she had appeared to flout at times. At the root of it, she was still a shy, forty-something years old youngling and carried herself with a measure of self possession he felt respect for.
"You're talking about actual silithid hives? Here in Azshara?" he asked in earnest, trying to show her he was interested in the topic rather than offending her modesty.
She looked him up and down for a moment. Positive attention from women was quite familiar to him, and he'd sensed vaguely that Astariel liked him the first night they'd spoken, but only in the sense that two attractive people in seclusion might fancy each other as conversational partners and something nice to look at. Her reaction signaled that she either liked him a little more than that, or was much shier than her talkitive nature insinuated at first. Or both.
"Yes...entire hives of them have been discovers, supposedly," she confirmed cautiously, though the mischevious glint returned to her eye as she reached into her hood and ostensibly twirled her thistle colored ponytail between her fingers. If she knew he couldn't see then it was just a nervous habit; if she'd forgotten that her hand and hair were concealed due to awkwardness from her end and thought he could see her limp wristed twirls, then she was being quite a tart by the standards of her culture, he surmised, as amused as he was confused. "It's on the hush-hush for the time being, what with all the civilians among our people and all. A lot of the officers are used to a time when everybody was either an active duty soldier or a minutewoman on call in case the Burning Legion returned, so given all the civilians, they sort of overreact and assume pandemonium will break out at the news."
"Well, it might not be overreacting," he countered, easing in to the discussion in a way that caused her to visibly relax a bit as well. "A lot of the people here were born as a part of the baby boom like you and I were. They've never fought and might lack martial training; they're as much civilians as people of any other race."
"That's so weird, though! I don't know about you, but I grew up with stories about the warriors of the night and now every woman was a one person squadron, and the men only woke up to join in the fight, and everybody was both combatant and laborer at the same time." Her eyes twinkled and her nose wiggled as she reminisced, and he could tell she was the type who enjoyed chatting about their history.
Craning his neck around, Navarion saw nobody else approaching but could sense someone approaching nearby. Someone else. As friendly and pleasant as Astariel was, she didn't seem very concerned about being caught socializing while on duty for what was easily the most disciplined fighting force on Azeroth.
"Well, I suppose that was a different time," he sighed, almost a bit sad to find himself trying to cut off the conversation. "But take a look down there." He swept his hand over the edge of the crenel and motioned toward the town below.
"Oh it's beautiful, isn't it!" She appeared to either be getting off track, or...he couldn't quite read her reaction. "See, there's that bathhouse!"
'That' bathhouse? the paranoid influence of his father asked deep inside. He shoved it away and tried to continue. "Yes, many facilities for the civvies are popping up now. It's great to see, but an overall signal that the Kaldorei have changed. Judging by what I've observed during the path few months while off duty in town, I'd venture a guess that the majority of the people here have no martial training whatsoever."
"Where do you go when you're off duty?" she asked politely but bluntly.
What would he say? He knew why she was asking, and as attractive as he found her, he didn't consider himself single. Perhaps Zhenya enjoyed the ambiguity, but he'd worked hard for a long time to better control his behavior and try to be faithful to someone with a checkered relationship history just like him. Were he single, he'd have no misgivings. And were he ten years younger, he'd be liable to play them both against each-
Navarion cringed visibly at his own thoughts. He was not that person, that lout, anymore. Astariel was a good girl; he could already tell. Maybe she found him dangerous or exotic, but girls like her shouldn't be dancing with boys like him, he thought. He and Zhenya were made for each other, both fallen, both guilty, both a little bit dysfunctional. But if he completely blew Astariel off, he'd lose who did seem like a wonderful friend and a lovely person to be around (if only they weren't on duty). Pressure piled on as he sought a way to dodge the question without hurting her feelings.
"It's hard to get a regular schedule of hanging out, you know...I've been having sleeping trouble. I used to go to this tea house at the military quarter, but I've been finding myself just sightseeing a lot lately." He noticed that she began to lean forward as he spoke, showing a little too much interest as he ostensibly shared his personal thoughts and feelings with her. This didn't turn out exactly like he'd wanted. "The city is huge, isn't it?" he asked, trying to flip the conversation back to her.
"Yes, it's wonderful, isn't it! I'm so glad that my ancestral hometown is being rebuilt, I've been learning where everything is." Her eyes widened in mid sentence, and she appeared much younger, irreverent in her happiness even, as some idea struck her. "Oh! If you like authentic style Kalimdor green tea, I know the perfect place! They have this porch overlooking a moonwell where the dryads like to play. Me and my friends go there sometimes, you should come!"
There it was; she'd thrown the invitation his way. He felt obligated to agree, though the mention of her friends made it seem a little less uncomfortable. "Well, that does sound interesting...my friend Zhenya and I do enjoy tea houses at times, you should let us know if you all are going on a day off." Hopefully, he thought, throwing out the presence of his and her companions would make things seem a little less intimate.
"Oh, is Zhenya another one of the irregulars?"
Caught between a rock and a hard place, he paused. He hadn't thought this out well enough. He couldn't claim he and Zhenya were a couple because the draenei would deny all intimacy with him in public, and probably whisper insincere apologies in private afterward when she needed help relaxing before sleep. As much as he considered himself off the market, and as much as Zhenya had stuck only to jabbing at his ego with her wandering eyes but remaining faithful in the technical sense, the reality was that he couldn't openly claim to be in a relationship. Even if he was.
"Yeah...she and I arrived here together, actually," he answered cautiously, both tense yet strangely, oddly tickled by the verbal chess match.
Astariel must have had a master poker face, or she really was undaunted. "I'm off again soon, so once I am, I'll come find you," she said, not specifying if she meant it in the singular or plural sense.
"Alright then," he forced himself to say and not sigh. "Maybe we'd actually be able to see each other at a time when we aren't being watched."
Not taking the hint, she appeared encouraged. "It will be fun! They have these mint leaves they can put in the tea with-" Astariel paused, eyeing his wrist. "Hey, what's that?"
Almost having forgotten about it, Navarion looked down and remembered that he'd been wearing a beaded bracelet he'd bought from some impoverished furbolg child during the cleansing of one of their villages from fel corruption a year ago. It wasn't even authentic furbolg handiwork; the child had bought it from a merchant from Everlook and resold it to raise money for his family. Having bought it out of pity more than anything, Navarion often wore it without even realizing.
"Oh...just some old bracelet from Winterspring, I guess."
For a second, she actually became a little reserved. Pursing her lips and straightening up her back, she looked from the bracelet back to him as if she were heavily considering something.
"Can I have it?"
Once again, he found himself caught off guard. It was just some cheap, goblin-made piece of crap, and the fact that she'd asked so directly - again, improper for her culture - did put him on the spot. "Sure, just take good care of it," he said while wiggling his hand to let it slide off of his wrist.
To his surprise, she actually didn't reach out to slip if off; based on her behavior up until then, he almost expected her to do something like that. But she watched instead, waiting for him to remove it himself and simply held her cupped palm out to accept it. She took it from him gingerly, setting her bow against the merlon as she slipped it on.
During the past few months, he'd only really seen her in passing. They'd chatted a few times since meeting and he'd seen her around in groups of friends, but circumstance always prevented them from speaking more than a few minutes. But he had seen her enough to remember that she tended to cover more than other night elves. Exposed skin wasn't taboo in their society but neither was covering up; as rigid as they were, they were surprisingly one of the most open races on Azeroth when it came to choosing one's style of clothing. There were certainly set styles and archetypes, but unlike humans who always covered or trolls who disliked covering anything, the night elves largely left that choice to the individual. Astariel was one of the more conservative individuals. Her clothing was neither loose nor tight but she tended to remain covered and indeed, he had only actually seen her neck and full head of hair once or twice.
But he was still a man; he had his ways of checking women out. He knew her body type from the single time he saw a flash of ankle, from the few times he'd seen her wrists, from the instances when her cloak was open and he noticed her waist size. She was incredible, unique and stunning in a way unconventional for elves, and part of that was accentuated by the fact that she never showed much of anything.
When she slipped what was once a furbolg child's bracelet and then his over her own hand, her sleeve that was a darker shade of purple than her cloak slid down. For a split second, he saw a bit of her smooth forearm, thick as he had expected it to be given that she was the sort of full bodied woman he preferred, much like Zhenya who was considered heavy for a draenei female. A spike of testosterone jumped in his system and he fought to quickly suppress it; he might be young by the standards of a half elf, but he felt too old to be ogling exposed skin of a woman minding her own business. Well, she was talking to him, but she wasn't trying to show off. Perhaps it was his half troll genes, acting up in their usual lascivious manner.
Aware that she'd let her skin become exposed but not that he'd seen, she blushed regardless. Chubby, periwinkle cheeks broke out into faint, violet tints and she tried to play it off by pretending to pick at a non existent hangnail. Even by the standards of conservative elves, she was a bit shy about being seen which came off as too cute.
She must have worked hard to fight down her nervousness, as her voice sounded normal when she ended up being the one to break off the conversation. "Now you don't!" she burst out of nowhere.
After a second of not getting the joke at all, he tilted his head at her in confusion. "What?" he asked just as she shadowmelded and slunk away, apparently having been making a joke about her stealth abilities.
Like most elves, she knew nothing of voodoo and wasn't aware that he could sense her giggling to herself as she went the opposite direction on the defensive wall. He waited for a bit out of politeness to make sure she wasn't going to turn around for another joke before walking away as well, smirking at the innocent exchange but hoping that perhaps she just wanted to include him in her group of friends.
"You again?" asked the reformed satyr whose name Navarion just couldn't ever remember. The goat man stood before him in a surly manner as if talking to the half elf sitting on a bench outside the barracks was the last place he wanted to be.
The moon hadn't risen yet and it was unusual for Navarion to be up that early. The highborne Mage who never talked to either him or Dmitri had fallen out of his bunk and after the loud thud, Navarion found it difficult to fall asleep. And so he'd decided to take some extra time to ask the staff sergeant of the men's barracks regarding the rumors of actual silithid hives being discovered...if only the cursed former night elf in front of him would cooperate.
"This is technically the first time I've ever approached you," he tried to reason with the irate satyr shadowsworn or whatever the mutated man's class was called. "We've only encountered each other in group settings until now."
"Mreeeeeh," the satyr hellcaller or whatever the hell he was called groaned as if the conversation was simply agonizing. "Fine. What do you want?"
"I'm looking for the staff sergeant. You know, the guy who sounds kind of like an Orc."
The satyr's furry, animalistic face picked as if he'd sucked on a lemon covered in salt, which Navarion had heard they actually like to eat. It was difficult for him to imagine that those people had been night elves once. "He's over in that hovel between the food dispensary and the cartographer's tent. You can't miss it."
Navarion moved to pass by the satyr to his destination. "Thanks a lot, Barnaby, or Beelzebub, or-"
"Don't touch me!"
Angered, Navarion looked down at the defiant, unafraid goat man bearing a nasty attitude. There were at least two feet of space between them as he tried to pass by, and it was a complete overreaction.
Rather than tell the goat man off and risk receiving lip, getting mad and possibly decking the ornery fel mutant, Navarion just let is slide and walked away, having received the information he wanted. It was literally only a two minute walk to the hovel he had wanted to go to, and since the sun was still out the only people awake in the night elf town were Alliance, Horde and Steamwheedle merchants, sentinels actively on duty and a handful of draenei irregulars. Even the furbolgs were largely nocturnal and New Nendis was mostly silent and full of shops not yet open for business.
From the outside, Navarion could tell that the hovel comprised work rather than living quarters. Truth be told, he didn't even know where the military officers lived. Because genders were strictly separated outside of combat, there were separate staff members for women and men, and while Soraya was his caption during active duty and Lamia was the overall commander of the Sentinel military forces at the city, the male staff sergeant was who he answered to for day to day matters off the battlefield. Ironically, the man didn't tell anybody his name unless they needed to know. He didn't come off as arrogant; just very blunt, direct and not fond of wasting time.
Running his hand in front of the Kaldorei wind chimes to signal his presence, Navarion waited for the grunt signaling that he could enter. Inside, a few steps led down into the hollowed out tree; it was a short, low, wide greenwood too small to be termed an ancient. Most of the area was below ground level, naturally hollowed out as a room lined with a few shelves of books on military strategy and silithid history. The male officer sat behind a desk covered in scattered lists and documents, some of which were being collected by another two officers, both female, on their way out. All three people appeared focused on wrapping up their work as the mercenary stood to the side of the entrance, stooping under the relatively low ceiling. The staff sergeant for all the males wore the same armor he had the day Navarion had been assigned to Soraya's unit. Unlike everyone else he'd met since then, the male sergeant actually didn't appear to remember the tall, biracial shadow hunter bearing both glowing elf eyes and sharp troll tusks.
"Name, soldier?" the male officer asked formally while looking up only briefly.
"Navarion Hearthglen, sir."
"Alright. You're obviously here because you need something."
One of the females stood and leaned closer toward her male counterpart. A common bad habit of elves of all varieties seemed to be misunderstanding how well people that weren't pureblooded elves could hear, something Navarion's human uncle Johan often reported when people made comments about him and Unelia's in Astranaar. Elves could speak in unbelievably quiet voices, but they often believed that unless somebody was pureblooded elf, they somehow couldn't hear speech in a low voice. It made for numerous awkward situations, but in this case it did yield useful information.
"I'll see you at the briefing in a few hours, Sergeant Fyndir," the female officer whispered to the male as she took a handful of papers and excused herself form the hovel.
The man nodded or her and continued scribbling notes as she left, and she patted her fellow female officer on the shoulder but said nothing more as she left. The officer apparently known as Fyndir looked up at the shadow hunter expectantly.
"Sir, I have an inquiry I wanted to make. It's in regard to the rumor mill and talk of the silithid threat."
Fyndir didn't even bother looking up, but his unusually deep voice still didn't carry a pny sort of condescension. "You planning on spinning that mill?" he asked in regard to the rumor metaphor.
"No sir. I only wish to confirm or deny for myself what exactly is going on, so I know what to expect."
The female officer held perfectly still reading a long page of notes written in fresh ink. There was no way of knowing whether she was truly reading or listening in to the conversation, maybe even judging him based on his question.
Fyndir shifted, and a beard as long as Navarion's goatee brushed against the man's chest plate. Eyes closed for a moment, it was as if he were judging whether or not Navarion was worth telling the truth to, or trustworthy enough to hold on to it. For whatever reason, he decided to give at least part of the truth. "Our scouts found a few hives while patrolling the wilderness. We're currently looking at the possibility of sending out exploratory forces next week." The male officer furrowed his long brows as the female shot him a glance, communicating silently. "Whose your commanding officer on the battlefield, soldier?"
"Captain Soraya, sir."
"Four person unit. Two greenhorns," the female officer remarked. She and Fyndir looked at each other a few moments as if they knew something Navarion didn't.
A quick nod later and Fyndir looked up again. "You're our runner. Tell your captain that we'd like her to sit in on a briefing we have at the behest of Commander Lamia tonight."
Just then, three more officers entered the hovel, one of them rather heavily decorated. Fyndir and his companion rose to meet the scarred, stern looking woman and Navarion saluted instinctively. When the female officer who had been sitting there stared at him, he took the message and walked out, leaving the five officers to what looked like an important impromptu meeting. Even if Commander Lamia showed a surprising amount of respect to irregular soldiers like him, such meetings still weren't the domain of a mercenary.
Out on the main, road, Navarion could vaguely see the moon rising overhead and the irritating sunlight gradually fading beneath the edge of the high city walls. The streets were mostly still empty and even the vine bridges above had little to no traffic. The clopping of hooves from behind him caught his attention before he could decide what to do until it was time for duty, and the light touch informed him it was Tammie before the spirits even did.
"You're up quite early!" the single draenei female beamed as she caught up to him.
"I could say the same for you," he said while strolling along, not really knowing where they were going.
"I actually just got off duty. I might not look it, but I'm tired as heck and ready to sleep."
Grinning widely, he remembered he owed her a little jab for an incident at a restaurant a few nights before where, in the middle of all their friends, she'd thrown a crumpled napkin at him and it went in his mouth as he opened it to argue with her about politics. "Actually, you do look tired as heck. And who the hell still says heck?"
"Oh, ha ha shove it," she chuckled while adjusting her messy dark brown hair. She seemed to be leading them toward the barracks she shared with Zhenya, and she honestly did look rather beat.
"Are you alright, actually? I thought you were just keeping watch over the merchant highway out west."
Weary and focused on the ancient of war where she slept, she nodded in affirmation that she was alright but he could already tell there was more. "The bugs just don't give up," she admitted. "They aren't coordinated or skilled, but they just never stop. We killed two swarms this afternoon and three four days ago. Eventually, it's going to start to damage this city's business prospects."
Out of the corner of his eye, a gaggle of relatively young night elf females sat beyond another exit from the military quarter near the women's barracks, chatting on a series of benches. He didn't actually look over, but the color of thistle grabbed his attention momentarily.
"Hmm...yeah. Oh, right. And given all this talk about actual hives, I wouldn't be surprised if things do get a little bit worse."
Reaching the ramp for the women's barracks, he stopped and watched Tammie flop up. "Here's to hoping...yargh...here's to hoping those are just rumors," she yawned while waving to him. He waved back and was then left with at least half an hour to spend before he'd actually need to start preparing and changing for the night's duty.
Two bobbing silver orbs drew his attention once more. Astariel was sitting in a group of five of her friends, all of them from the post immortality generation like her based on their body language and a few of them even civilians.
When he realized she was waving him over instead of saying hello from afar, he exited the military quarter and joined them beneath a short oak tree. At least he'd have something to do plus he didn't want to seem rude.
"Navarion, come sit," she ordered politely while scooting over for him. There was no other place for him to sit, and her hips combined with his shoulders mad it a tight fit on the long sitting log growing up out of the soil.
Her five friends looked at him but didn't giggle, instead acting completely natural. None of them introduced themselves nor asked his name, and they continued their conversation about silithids as if he had been there the whole time.
Everyone in the city, it seemed, had silithids on the brain. Where were they coming from, how were they reproducing so fast, were they planning an even bigger attack. It didn't take much willpower to conceal the information he held about the hives because neither Astariel nor her friends involved him in their discussion. Not until she began resting her elbow on the backrest of the bench behind him did he notice that she was wearing the cheap goblin bead bracelet he'd given to her a number of days ago.
Minutes passed by as he felt almost like she was showing him off to her friends. Uneasy and bored to death, Navarion started to search for ways to escape the little hang out session. There wasn't anybody passing by he could pretend that he needed to talk to, nor could he think of a valid reason to-
Inspiration. "Astra," he said quickly without even realizing he'd invented s diminutive name for her. "I just realized my unit captain hasn't shown her face at the barracks yet. I'm supposed to inform her about an officers' briefing later on." It wasn't a lie, so he didn't feel bad.
Astariel actually didn't seem bothered and her friends didn't make a big deal out of it. "I hope they're discussing this hive problem!" she huffed, unusually serious in front of her friends.
"It's hush-hush," he replied, unconsciously mimicking a phrase she'd used in front of him the last time they'd met. "But I'm sure we'll get word of what they talk about eventually."
Politely bidding them farewell and making a rather easy escape, Navarion hurried back over to the military quarter. If he were to both find his captain and get ready, he'd actually have too little time, not too much. By the time he'd made it over to the men's barracks, he hadn't even noticed Zhenya stalking up behind him and sticking her hoof out.
"Yeouch! Wrong move!" he yelped while she unsuccessfully tried to trip him.
Unconcerned by the impropriety, she briefly tried to wrestle with him in the space between the ramps for his barracks and hers. It was just about the most affection she'd shown him in a long time, and he almost forgot about his duty while pinning her arms behind her back.
"You cheated!"
"We're wrestling, there's no way for me to cheat," he countered, letting her go and almost causing her to fall over.
She continued to walk away after regaining her balance, going up the ramp to get dressed without saying goodbye or even acknowledging him. He walked halway up the ramp to the women's ancient of war to see if she'd look back only to see her disappear out the back and ascend the winding path up and around the tree trunk.
Lingering for only a moment, he went up the men's ramp to get dressed. As he made his way up to his bunk to don his armor, he almost found himself missing Soraya's stiff, hard nature. The woman in his life he had the least amount of attachment to was probably the only one he felt he truly understood.