All was quiet in the Hearthglen household that morning. Nestled behind high, naturally grown privacy walls of moonstone on the bluffs overlooking Ratchet, the palatial estate was part of the diverse flavor of the neutral port city. The walls looked like those of night elven strongholds built in hostile territory save the Darkspear style decorative shields on either side of the gate. The very top of the three story house was just barely visible above the wall, its Kaldorei style arches visible to all throughout the north side of the burgeoning, lightly industrialized city. The garden of Stranglethorn ferns, Ashenvale pines and rare herbs could only be noticed up close, and it all served to provide the tight knit interracial family a measure of privacy.
The man of the house having long ago adapted to the nocturnal lifestyle of his wife, the head of the household, morning was a time of quiet. Even the sprite darters they raised out back in the garden were mostly inactive at that time, and the two parents, single godparent and four of the siblings all lied in their respective sleeping quarters. The fifth was away at work, honing her craft as a priestess of the moon in Winterspring.
Only the sixth sibling stood awake that day, restless at a time when his nightstalking eyes wanted rest. Bright silver illuminated the darkness of the back porch that sat partially covered by the canopy of their garden, scanning over his travel bags. Two long bags were already full of every supply and article of clothing one would need when traveling through the wilderness. His armor had been donned and his weapons sheathed; Empress II, the frostsabre he planned on gifting to his sister in Winterspring, had been bathed, groomed, fed and prepared at one of the several stables on the outskirts of the main city. By all marks and measures, he should have been ready to leave.
And yet there he sat, examining the flyer written in Darnassian for the third time like he'd never seen it before.
His family hadn't always lived such an upscale lifestyle. His mother and father, a night elf and a jungle troll, had to fight battles both ideological and physical just to be together; the period of time in which they met was vastly different than the Azeroth they now lived in. Racism and factionalism abounded, and outside of the goblin cities they both ran the risk of being hamstrung by angry mobs just for exercising the free choice to be together. They'd spent years saving money for the duplex they'd bought along with his godmother Irien and then worked odd shifts in order to purchase the empty plot of land overlooking the city back before most of the development took place. Cecilia and Khujand had worked hard for the life they provided their children; far harder than those children would ever have to work. And therein lied the problem, Navarion thought to himself as he read over the flyer one more time.
'The Sentinels need YOU' read the caption below an illustration of former High Priestess Tyrande Whisperwind, Goddess light her path. A picture of a crushed silithid carapaces at under one of her besandled feet and the skull of a demonic infernal under the other. Flipping to the other side, details of the outreach program that the Sentinels targeted toward night elves, dryads, Tauren and even draenei living outside of northern Kalimdor detailed the threat to all the reclamation project planned for the growing and mostly civilian population. Gone was the era where every night elf woman could toss a glaive and ride a sabre and ever night elf man could heal some damage or deal some in animal form. The entire system of government had changed, and the theocracy backed up by a military dictatorship had found that simply clamping down on internal dissent did nothing to ward off external enemies. They needed more soldiers and fast.
Navarion's parents had been adventurers at one time. Even his father, as short lived as Darkspear tended to be, had earned his mettle as a gifted shadow hunter much earlier than most showed true skill with voodoo and blades. Khujand had taught Navarion and the oldest sister Anathil everything he knew, and the youngest sister Sharimara part of what he knew. Even Tiondel, the youngest brother who had no aptitude for any sort of magic whatsoever, could at least commune with spirits if he needed to.
Navarion's mother was a whole different ball game, though - both from his father and every single other living being on Azeroth. Cecilia was already ancient, several millennia old even, when immortality had just begun. By the time it had ended, she had become part of the most skilled, experienced, elite fighting force their part of the universe had ever known. There simply wasn't anything she hadn't seen before, or that didn't resemble something she'd seen before strongly. Nothing scared her...save the thought of being separated from her family. After twelve thousand years, the loss of her immortality affected her personality to a great extent; her biological clock rang like mad and she just barely gave birth to the sixth sibling before menopause set in. One by one, she then watched other night elves of her generation die off from old age, and every day she was reminded that her children would continue to live on for centuries after she and her husband were long gone. The stoic, cold, weathered, even grizzled veteran of every single major conflict of the planet's history became emotional and clingy in her old age, endlessly doting on and henpecking not only her husband but their six children and even the children's godmother as well, herself a night elf with a few more centuries ahead of her.
Navarion had been raised in a loving,marring household providing a high quality of life and support for whatever educational and career choices he and his siblings wanted. He was spoiled...and he absolutely could not stand it.
He had been eighteen years old the first time he ran away from home. Signing up for a contract providing security for Steamwheedle Cartel cargo ships, he tasted blood for the first time when raiding and then scuttling a real live pirate ship. Months of taking out slavers, smugglers and all sorts of international criminals led him to abscond and seek further adventure as a mercenary for hire, blazing a trail of broken contracts, broken promises and broken hearts all up and down Kalimdor. When Irien finally tracked him down after a year and dragged him home by the ears, his parents promptly locked him in his bedroom while thanking their creator above that he'd been returned to them and assumed he'd worked the wanderlust out of his system.
He had been twenty the second time he ran way; his father might be a short lived troll, but for his elven mother twenty was more or less still considered a child. The warrior of the night with ten thousand years of experience under her belt actually cried upon his departure as he found out three years later, when the years of friendships forged and shattered had begun to wear on him. Coming home to an angry but nevertheless relieved family, they all had assumed that Navarion had worked out of his system whatever had possessed him to run off and form a guild with a bunch of strangers on another continent in the first place.
They did not understand him. He did not want to be a spoiled, fortunate child; he idolized his parents so much that he wanted to prove his worth without their help, just as they'd gotten to where they were without help. He tried many times to tell them that running off on his own was the only way to prove he wasn't just a pampered, privileged bourgeoise pretty boy; the only way to show that he could be like them. Since the family leaned more toward his mother's culture, the girls never stayed at home much, being the brave, assertive Kaldorei women they were. Anathil traveled much of the time to maintain the family's business contacts and keep orders coming for their rare herbs, trained anti-magic sprite darter pets and whatever Irien had dragged in from the auction house. Issinia remained engrossed in her studies, working hard to fulfill her dream of being the first woman in the extended family to become a successful battle priestess. Sharimara, just as rebellious as Navarion, managed to contain her wanderlust for the sake of staying beside their parents for however much time the couple had left; once they passed on, nobody expected her to remain at the house.
His two brothers also weren't around much. Zengu was the only Druid among the siblings; having married one of Issinia's colleagues as the temple, he spent much of his time between Moonglade and Teldrassil. Tiondel was an alchemist, having also been trained by their father and perfectly content to sit back and hone his craft. The pressure was on Navarion, in that case, to eventually lead the household. His biggest, most nerve wracking fear was to not live up to the Hearthglen family name. And sadly, not a soul on Azeroth seemed to understand that.
Folding the flyer carefully on the off chance that he forgot the directions on where to enlist, he stood and prepared to leave for the third time. It had been years since he'd returned home, and the interim had been spent working various odd jobs he'd gained through his family, compounding his feelings of inadequacy. He'd tried capturing and taming raptors for Thunderhorn, his father's old wartime buddy and one of Ratchet's stablemasters, but he'd already had enough of shoveling shit and cleaning out eye infections with the family's sprite darters. Their parents had taught him and the other children the basics of combat save the pacifist Zengu, and he'd tried his hand at local bounty quests in the Barrens but that didn't provide stable work. Because the family had a bit of a reputation to maintain in the city, manual labor and service positions were out of the question. And as much as Irien tried to train him, he just didn't have the skills for the auction house that Anathil, Sharimara and Tiondel did.
Navarion knew two things well: herbalism and fighting. And his parents already had the first one handled. Only so many years of feeling useless could he bear before the itch to prove himself once again called out to be scratched.
Breathing deeply, he turned to take up his travel bags.
He swept to the side to face behind him.
He looked in to the back door of the family's villa.
And Cecilia was already standing there, a bathrobe worn over the top of her long pajamas.
She looked sleepy, she looked downcast, she looked resigned, but most of all she looked disappointed. Nobody piles on the guilt like a night elf mother. And before either of them even had the time to blink, his heart sank so heavily that he felt like his pain at once again having to cause her pain would overwhelm him to the point of not even allowing him to speak.
Mother and son stood and looked blankly at each other, both of them working hard to keep their emotions contained. Cecilia's eyes no longer glowed like those of other elves; health problems coupled with a poor lifestyle in the first decade after immortality had ended had worked together to dull the shine and make her eyes look much like a human's, if more delicate and crystalline. Unlike with his siblings and even his voodoo-empowered father, Navarion didn't need to search closely to see her pupils and know where she was looking; as was plain to see, Cecilia just looked down at the naturally grown floorboards of the back porch. Though his personality wasn't one given to self-hatred, he could feel a rare wave coming on as he fought to explain to her that he still loved them, he was still coming back, their home was still his home...but he had to go. This was something he had to do for himself.
"You're leaving me again."
His mother didn't even bother to look up when she spoke. Like most women of their kind, her voice sounded like wind chimes but with an added husky sound. To their father, it was alluring; to Navarion and his siblings, it always stood as a reminder of her past health problems and the living hell she'd gone through to become stable enough to raise a family.
On the first few tries, no sound came out of his mouth when he tried to speak, so much was the mental stress of having been caught. She wasn't supposed to have found him there; nobody was. The plan was for him to sneak off in the day - the time when they all slept - and to write back to them of his adventures, doing his best to make them all proud. Eventually, he uttered a few words by sheer power of will.
"I'm coming back, mom."
Breaths as light as wisps floating in the air sounded off from her nose, not outwardly indicating that there was anything wrong. Tense from the lack of tension, wished for her to say something, anything, to break the silence. The moment she spoke again would be devastating to them both, yet he hoped for it all the same just to get the pain of separation over with.
"You came back last time," his mother sighed heavily. "But it still hurt."
At the age of thirty two, he felt too old to cry; it would be ridiculous. But for the first time in many years, he felt the pressure behind his eyes as he fought to control the muscles in his face. Blame that had been instilled in him by a culture based on honor and dignity fought for control whenever he was in the presence of his mother, and his sense of individuality narrowly won out against the communalism of the children of the stars.
"It's going to be alright, mom; you'll see," he lied to both her and himself. He reached forward to take her by the shoulders, and she neither leaned in to him nor pulled away; neutrality was her being at that moment. Despite her obvious displeasure, he tried to hug her the best he could. "It's a brief campaign, and then I'll be right back." A light bulb went off in his head. "You know, I never said it would be the last time when I went out before."
There was no resentment in her soul; Cecilia was never spiteful or passive aggressive. She didn't make any witty comebacks or smart remarks. She only nodded into his arms, seeming to revel in the warmth of her oldest son as she watched him walk away once again.
"Well, I'm telling you this time, mom. I swear to you in front of the Goddess and all that is holy right here and now, this is it. When this is all said and done, I'll hang up my riding gloves for good. No more questing beyond the northern Barrens." He pushed away and tried to look her in the eye, hoping, pleading that she would allow some glint of happiness to shine through. "I promise this is the last time."
At first, she didn't react. Cecilia merely leaned into her son, her second oldest, and he could tell that as much as it hurt, she wouldn't try to stop him. He didn't know why she wouldn't; he just knew that she wouldn't. Perhaps she felt it unfair to deny him the experiences that had built her into such a strong individual. Perhaps she felt that one last excursion would exorcise the wanderlust from his system. Or perhaps she just felt the determination in him in spite of the pain that he also felt from his actions.
Slowly, she sighed once more, leaning back but not pushing him away. Her expression was one of sad resignation, and when she spoke from her heart, he knew that she truly didn't mean for it to sting as much as it did.
"I hope that your father and I are still around when you come back," Cecilia murmured to her son, not yet ready to look at him.
At that, a few tears did prick at the corners of his eyes. This was supposed to be his final morning before going off to war; softness had no place, there. Regret tore at his heart as he tried to scream inside to block it out, not wanting to condemn himself to sitting at home any longer while wondering where life could have taken him. Wiping the droplets away as fast as he could so he could pretend they weren't real, he tried to recover from the inadvertent blow from his mother.
"Don't talk like that mom, come on. You're both healthy and you eat right. Plus, I won't even be gone that long." This time, he didn't have to lie; her ancient nature caused her a measure of paranoia about ageing. "I'll be back before you and dad know it. Alright?"
He nudged her in the shoulder to get a reaction, any kind of reaction from her. Demure in a way that he wasn't used to seeing his strict, controlling night elf mother, Cecilia nodded without looking up at first. There was no fear of her crying as well this time; at least one burden had been lifted off of his shoulders. But he needed a little more approval than that; just a slightly stronger sign that he wasn't hurting his family in a way that was truly too cruel.
Rising at a rate befitting a being as old as her, his mother tilted her head up to meet him face to face. Her hair, originally a deep indigo color the same as his own, had long since turned grey with age. She highlighted it with azure streaks a shade darker than his father's hide, but otherwise had accepted the outward symbol of her ageing as a sign of her wisdom. It was rare for elves to go grey, and given how few of the pre-immortality generation still lived, her appearance garnered her immediate respect from every Kaldorei she met. The one time she'd been entertained by the current high priestess in Darnassus, Cecilia actually had the honor of the leader of her people bowing lower than she did in full view of all the current night elf notables, the single greatest form of respect that could be bestowed upon someone in their society. Eyes even more advanced in age than the entire combined history of humans and dwarves as races looked up at him clearly. During the daylight hours she had to resort to glasses, but under the dark shade of the back porch he knew she could see him just fine. Traveled, learned eyes providing windows to knowledge as vast as the ocean examined the prodigal son all packed and ready to leave the family again, missing however many years she and her husband had left in their dwindling lives.
"Alright," she whispered reluctantly. He knew her well enough to know from the tone of her voice that she wouldn't be alright for a while, but that she wouldn't stop him from doing what he had to do either.
When he hugged again she hugged back. Back during his childhood, her grip had felt so strong, so irresistible, sometimes scaring the children into obeying her instructions around the house. Having grown up, his mother's grip felt more comforting and less authoritarian; whether it was due to his height or her age he didn't know, and he forced himself to believe the latter was impossible. Knowing that they wouldn't see each other again for a good while, he continued to hold on for an amount of time he would have found embarrassing as a rebellious teenager; as a grown man, he found it touching to the point where he almost had second thoughts about leaving.
After standing apart, Cecilia looked slightly better, her eyes downcast once more but the sadness in her features having decreased. She even patted him on the shoulder in a sort of nudge toward the door back into the house where everybody else was sleeping. "I'll walk you to the gate."
Guilt gripped him and he felt as though he was taking advantage of his mother's tolerance for his selfishness. But it was that selfishness that reminded him of why he had to leave in the first place, of the primal need for adventure he had to work out of his system and finally be done with for good.
For once, he managed to walk through the central hallway of the bottom floor without causing the floorboards to creak at all the worst possible times. His travel bags didn't knock against the door frames and the sprite darters didn't decide to wake up and follow them into the house. By the time they reached the front porch, Navarion could already feel time speeding up as his last moments at home before what he hoped to be his last excursion slipped away. He wished that the balance would cause their front yard to stretch out and elongate just to prolong his last walk across it for a very long time. The front gate of the Hearthglen family estate met him far too soon and he had to literally force his feet over the property line when his mother opened it for him.
Cecilia leaned against the outer entryway in the front of the wall, tucking one of her hands into the pocket of her bathrobe. The sun bothered her eyes and she squinted at him, probably only being able to make out his rough figure but not any details. Cupping her free hand over her eyes to create some shade, she almost gave him an accepting half smile as he looked back into the yard.
"We are proud of you no matter what you do. No matter what happens, you can come back any time. We want you to come back." Her words bore a sense of longing but she wasn't pressuring him the way he knew she could had she wanted to.
"I will come back mom, and sooner than I did last time," he reassured them both. A light breeze rustled his mane, almost pushing him down the road and in the direction of the street leading out of town. Tossing any embarrassment over closeness to his family aside, he mumbled the words before he had time to reconsider. "I love you, mom."
Although night elf culture preferred affection not to be shown so openly even between parents and children, she smiled warmly despite her obvious lingering pain. "I love you too, son," she replied, just standing and waiting for him to leave.
This had been his choice, he reminded himself. He would have to be the one to break things off. Holding back a sigh, he nodded to her and forced himself down the road, swallowing bile as he repressed the thought of what would happen if one of his parents really did pass away from natural causes before he came back. Adrenaline and testosterone, the two most hated chemicals in his body, actually fueled him as he forced himself to jog quickly all the way to the stables lest he have a change of heart. To stay behind and risk the urge to wander the world striking him again and again at later dates was unthinkable.
Once he could reach the plains beyond the limits of Steamwheedle Cartel territory he'd be sure there was no turning back. Until then, he could only speed up as he made his way to the edge of town, trying the whole way to blot out thoughts of what he was leaving behind and lamenting at his desire to explore and conquer threats that weren't even his own until some sort of internal desire could be sated and finally laid to rest.