It didn't take long for word of the silithid expansion to spread. The shock of just how quickly and easily the news seemed to reach every workshop, grocery store and tea house in town actually surpassed the shock of how quickly the town was grown and how easily night elves from other parts of the region moved right in.

Even though New Nendis was still largely under construction - or growth, to be exact - it was an enormous place regardless. By the beginning of the fifth month of Navarion's tour of duty, the population had already reached that of Astranaar, another one of the few true cities that had existed during the night elves' ten thousand years of servitude to nature. The population surge was no small feat due to their relatively low birth rate and their dislike of change, transition and relocation. Granted, the fact that Old Nendis had been an extant city for roughly fourteen thousand years up until the aftermath of the Third War helped; a large proportion of those who had chosen to return nearly half a century after its destruction were either former inhabitants like Captain Soraya or the children of former inhabitants like Astariel (who was too young to remember what the old city was like).

And yet despite all that growth, Navarion found that news of their small squadron's encounter on the coastal plains west of the city had preceded them. Not only that, but the number of reported sightings was growing.

It was cute in a way, to see the way the news spread. For sure many of the people living in New Nendis had absolutely no historical connection to the city; rather, many of them were either undecorated sentinels looking to prove their mettle or skilled workers who found too much competition from craftspeople already established in other cities and possessing a thousand years of experience ahead of them.

But many still were those who had initially been refugees upon the old city's destruction or were the children of refugees. The children were the funniest to watch. The majority of them were young and representative of the night elf baby boom (three kids per family was considered a true feat, especially if the mother went right back onto the battlefield after her children learned to walk) and had experienced little of their people's history; indeed, many of them were born after the Cataclysm like Navarion had been. They told stories that a high proportion of their elders had lived through as if they were legends nobody had witnessed directly, and bore a pride for being descendants of the people of Nendis that was strange considering how many of them had never actually lived there before. Time would tell if they would be willing to resist any sort of increase in silithid activity.

Already, an increase was upon them. Sitting at restaurants and tea houses among friends, talk could easily be heard about the encounters of other squadrons. Attacks on trading caravans had largely been cleaned up due to the increased presence of sentinel teams patrolling the highways; trade as the lifeblood of any modern city and merchants were often treated better than citizens. Nobody complained due to the fact that the merchants brought much needed revenue and goods to the community, and the extensive highway patrols were largely appreciated. Not many of the people had been prepare for the establishment of the mounds, however.

Once upon a time, the night elves fought a long, hard war against the insectoid races of Silithus far to the south of the continent. They knew well the dangers posed by the bug people in numbers and under supervision, and sealed them away at the conclusion of the War of the Shifting Sands. A second war involving the forces of the Alliance, Horde and Forsaken led to the decimation of the civilization of the qiraji, the intelligent leaders of the bug people (except the nerubians who had strangely rejoined the Forsaken, such were the strange bedfellows created by the politics of Azeroth). To hear of silithids popping up again wasn't entirely surprising, but was odd. News of them actually building mounds caused alarm, however; once they started breeding, they were liable to swarm and dig their heels in.

Try as they might, the military officials at New Nendis couldn't stamp out public talk of the phenomenon gradually transforming into a crisis despite the strict controls of freedom of speech the Sentinels employed. The situation had even developed to the point where irregular and even regular soldiers discussed the situation at work. And on one particular off duty day, when Navarion found himself going for a stroll through the midnight market with Astariel, he found himself drawn in despite his better judgement. They hadn't seen each other in a month as often happened, and he and Zhenya had begun fighting slightly less, thus when she noticed they both had the same day off that month and invited him to take a look at the random, unassorted goods that merchants often unfurled at night time, he gladly accepted without any discomfort.

A number of stalls had been set up in a fenced off area of narrow paved roads specifically designed for an open air market. Of course, all parts of the city were mostly covered by a canopy above from the tree buildings, but there were technically no walls and the bazaar had as much of an open air feel as such a place could. Stalls and small tents where Kaldorei and outlanders alike hawked all sorts of good abounded, crowding the non-paved patches of grass as potential customers crowded the paved roads. Incense, perfume, spices and various unidentified aromas wafted across the area while foreign musical instruments mixed with several dozen conversations. While far, far quieter and more subdued than the markets of any other race on Azeroth, the midnight market of New Nendis proved a veritable scene of chaos by the standards of the locals.

And in the middle of it all, Astariel chatted anyway, sharing her thoughts on the potential threat while looking at a wooden rack of ready made shoes. Fortunately for Navarion, there was a rack of men's shoes as well and he wasn't left entirely out in the cold.

"The bug people really don't know how foolish they are to threaten a place like Nendis!" Astariel preached to the choir while feeling a felt pair of slippers. "We've worked too hard to regrow our city; the people here will fight down to the very last woman, even civilians."

"I'll bet," Navarion mumbled absentmindedly while eyeing a pair of leather sandals that just might be large enougn to fit his feet. Although his limbs had been inherited from his mother's side of the family, most elven style shoes simply weren't his size. "They'd be walking in to a hornets' nest if they tried to invade."

Unlike Zhenya, Astariel laughed at the lame jokes he made when he wasn't paying attention to what somebody was saying to him, and it had an infectious, light sound. She probably felt his jokes were corny, he himself didn't really out much thought into them and they were both talking about nothing...and he simply adored the whole interaction. For the longest time, he couldn't remember feeling so relaxed.

"Do you think I can stomp mud holes in silithid bee-hinds with these?" Astariel asked cheekily while showing off a pair of red slippers encrusted with what appeared to be crushed quartz crystals. Like much of the footwear on sale, the pair she held loosely on two fingers were mere slippers and made of felt.

"Just make sure you shoot them down first. Then you could dance all over them while wearing whatever you'd like." His comment didn't quite have the sly humor to it he'd wished, but strangely, he didn't find the desire to take jabs and make sarcastic comments like he usually would. Navarion almost didn't feel like himself.

Also, he had found a pair of his own to examine, partially distracting him. Just like she'd done, he'd found a pair of felt slippers that caught his eye; he normally detested shopping for anything, especially footwear, but his general sense of comfort that night helped him relax into it. They were dark purple, not quite the same color as his indigo hair but close enough. And surprisingly, they looked like they might even fit his feet.

"You have little elf feet!" Astariel giggled at him.

Slowly, he lowered the shoes to find her standing right in front of him, her posture a little defensive but still cheeky nonetheless. She held the slippers she was examining in one hand and folded her arms in front of her, looking up at him to see if he'd react. They were tucked in between the shoe rack and the next tent over of another hawker, out of the way of foot traffic on the road; nobody had heard the comment and he didn't feel angry, but he felt a combination of competitiveness and...something he wasn't familiar with. Something he wasn't used to. Was...was it...self consciousness? Navarion Hearthglen felt self conscious? He wondered what was wrong with himself.

"What do you mean by little?" he asked, a weird mixture of offended curiosity in his voice that even he heard.

"Well, your father is a troll, right? Like Ragnar?" Her posture remained defensive but she could obviously tell that he wasn't angry. If anything, she seemed a little contrite.

"Yeeees...what does my dad have to do with your libelous slander against my feet?" he asked again, surprised at his own cheekiness.

"Well, his hands and feet must be so much huger than yours!" she burst out, simply tickled at the reaction she'd elicited from him. "From far away you kind of have a troll face, and troll hair, but you have elf ears, hands and feet! But your feet are so long because you're taller than everybody else...how do you even buy shoes? Do you just get them all custom made?"

Glancing down at his off-duty leather shoes, Navarion realized that he was a thirty four year old man and had literally never thought about his own feet before. They were pretty narrow...well, compared to his dad. His dad was bigger than him, but so was his middle brother Zengu, yet Zengu had feet that weren't much larger than his own. Their father Khujand didn't even need snow shoes in the snow because his own two-toed feet were so wide. His hands were massive, too; Zengu probably weighed more than their dad and was well-built, but couldn't match Khujand's grip strength. And their dad was only of slightly above average size for a jungle troll.

Astariel's never ending onslaught interrupted his thoughts.

"Are you trying to mentally compare your hands to your dad's?" she predicted with a startling accuracy.

"Wha...what?"

"You were, weren't you? I figured you out!" she cheered quietly, literally throwing her hands up in the air as if she'd actually won something. "It's okay, your hands and feet are normal here. At least they aren't puffy like mine."

He winced in perplexion. "Puffy? Your feet look perfectly fine, what's wrong with you?"

"Seriously? Are you making fun of me?" she laughed, not a hint of self consciousness about her as she did. "My feet are like pufferfish puffy, look." She flipped one of her casual shoes off and wiggled her toes in the grass, not realizing she sent another weird testosterone spike running through Navarion's system, pushing him to block out a whisper in the back of his mind he didn't want to listen to. "See? They're totally puffy."

Her feet were amazing. Thick but not too thick. Meaty was the wrong word; so was fleshy. Full? But nobody used the term full-footed. Unlike the lithe night elves and half night elves like all the women in his family, Astariel didn't have veiny, vascular feet, nor were her tendons visible. She...by Elune and the Loa both...did she have cankles? A night elf with cankles? The voice told him inappropriate thoughts and he fought to continue to behave respectfully.

"Look, show me yours - I bet they aren't puffy at all!" She tapped his shoe with her bare foot as she said it, completely innocent and not intending to tease him but tempting him nonetheless. All she'd done was show him a foot, and he didn't even have a foot fetish, but Astariel remained so covered all the time that seeing any part of her skin sent his mind racing. "They're so much longer than mine, too!"

"You want to...see my feet?"

"Yes silly, I need to confirm. I bet yours are like, normal. Like they don't have depth to them the way troll feet do; they're probably shallow just like they're narrow. You're so elven no matter what you do." Her words didn't make sense and she wasn't being the least bit pushy. In fact, her nonchalance was part of what made him feel a bit self conscious, which didn't make sense even to him.

"Uh...alright," he mumbled while holding the heel of his shoe down with his opposite toe to slip his foot out. His sock snagged on the high rim and he ended up pulling his foot out bare like hers was. "Like this?"

The grass felt so soft under his feet. His shoes were comfortable for sure, but it had been a long time since he'd felt what walking barefoot was like. Having grown up in an international city, the norm was wearing footwear all the time and since he'd been mostly on the move as a mercenary for the past few years, wearing thick leather or fur boots had been mandatory. But now that he could feel what soft, natural, health grass felt like on the soles of his feet again, he couldn't help but wiggle his toes, too.

When she put her foot next to his, right up next to his, he felt the darkness that he thought he'd left behind return to him. Her skin felt so soft even when it was only the blade of her foot against his, her demeanor so relaxed, it was intoxicating. And it was wrong. Even if Zhenya didn't consider them a couple per se, he was committed to her and she seemed to be begrudgingly committed to him. Astariel was a good woman and he should be treating her as such, giving both her and Zhenya the proper amount of two different types of respect.

God...all she did was put her foot against his. He was too old for his mind to race in such a way.

"Your feet are so long!" she laughed in sincere amusement. Indeed, the difference in length was formidable despite the fact that Astariel wasn't excessively short.

"My feet aren't that longer in terms of proportion to yours," he fired back, accepting the friendly challenge. "You just have tiny toes."

"What?!"

"Your toes are like chicken nuggets. Like, if you go to a goblin restaurant and order chicken nuggets, they're basically Astra toes." He grinned, feeling a little more comfortable once they began talking again. "In fact, that's what I'm calling chicken nuggets from now on. Astra toes."

Mercifully, she pulled her foot off of his and turned to face him, creating some necessary space. "You're saying I have nugget toes!" she cried in mock indignance.

"You're the one who challenged me to a foot measurement competition," he joked while straining to put his sock back on. The space between the rack and the next tent was cramped, and he had to back out and balance on another rack so they'd both have enough space to re-sock their feet. "Which I think I technically won, by the way. My feet are way longer than yours."

"Harrumph!" she tried to grunt defiantly, though she ended up just laughing again.

Just as Navarion was about to laugh along with her, his eye caught gold colored armor along with gold colored eyes shining through a gold colored helmet. One cracked half of a horn alerted him to the approaching company, and he stood up straight to get a better look at her.

Carefully making her way through the crowd and waiting for laborers and runners to carry their loads, Zhenya clopped down the road toward them. Despite the fact that he wasn't doing anything wrong, Navarion felt a measure of the self consciousness return to him, once again beyond his own explanation. Tammie and Thresha were both his friends, and to have Zhenya see him and them together never caused him any unease. But try as he might, he couldn't shake the slight negativity nagging at him as Astariel turned to find who he was looking at only to see Zhenya just ten yards away from them across the crowd of shoppers. Nobody took notice, as the city was well policed and armed, on duty guards tended to patrol both the isolated areas as well as the crowded ones, ever watchful for potential incidents of pick pocketing or other illicit activities.

As always, her helmet left only her one and a half horns and the glow of her two golden eyes visible, and her mood was impossible to gauge. Crossing the street and moving around the last few patrons who were absentmindedly fiddling through their coin purses, Zhenya stopped in front of the two of them, her hands akimbo at her sides as they often tended to be. She didn't even bother looking at Astariel and missed the night elf's open mouthed attempt at a greeting.

"Sergeant Fyndir told me to tell you that he needs you to work an extra shift tomorrow," the draenei paladin informed Navarion. Her tone was curt but professional, which was the best he could have hoped for. "He didn't mention the details and told me to tell you that he'll tell you when you go so see him."

Astariel folded her arms but didn't go so far as to pout. Her discontent registered at least with Navarion; if Zhenya sensed it, she didn't react, and continued to stare up at the half elf she'd been sent to deliver news to.

Relieved that his kind of sort of romantic partner hadn't reacted negatively to his presence with a female friend, Navarion sighed audibly before responding. "He didn't mention anything in terms of what time slot I could expect? Or the details of what I'll be doing extra?"

"I just told you he didn't," she replied, not huffing but remaining curt.

"Alright. I'll try to get to him soon - thanks for the info."

Nodding and turning, Zhenya neither told him he was welcome for the information nor did she so much as acknowledge Astariel's presence. In and out of the crowd she clopped away, continuing on what had been her regular duty for the past few nights. So enthralled were all the patrons in the offerings of the merchant stalls at the midnight market that nobody paid Zhenya or any other guards any mind, oblivious to the fact that they were being observed.

No sooner had the draenei dropped out of earshot than had the night elf begun to complain.

"How rude!" Astariel did actually huff. "She didn't even bother saying hello. Can you believe that?" she asked non-rhetorically, looking up at him for an answer. Or agreement.

"Uh...maybe she's a bit tired from whatever duty they have her on," he mumbled, trying his best to make an excuse for the woman he slept with in front of a woman who - when reducing the relationship down to an equation - he did not sleep with. "She's really quite pleasant when she's well rested."

"She's always so blunt!" Astariel protested, not shouting but speaking in a very serious, self assured tone. "And she never thinks about the feelings of other people!"

For a second, Navarion almost let it slide and had resigned himself to just fall into the pattern of half hearted defenses while tuning out much of what was said when two people close to him bickered with each other. Only a second. But then, a connection was made within his head. A subtlety he may not have noticed had they not been standing off on their own, away from the hustle and bustle of the market street.

"So wait...since when have you and Zhenya known each other?" he asked sincerely, thinking perhaps that they'd had run ins before when he wasn't around.

Visibly caught off guard, Astariel opened her mouth to say something but then closed it. She looked at a group of people inspecting discount towels at a stall across from them, but he knew she wasn't paying attention to any of that. The only image he had in his mind was of the sympathetic look Astariel had given him almost half a year ago when Zhenya had publicly insulted him by checking out other men in a very obvious way. He hadn't known her at the time and the look increased his embarrassment at the time, but it was the only time he'd known them to have seen each other.

"What? Know her...no, I mean, I've never actually met her," Astariel corrected him. The spirits told him that she was telling the truth and now she appeared to be the one ill at ease. "I've seen her around." She regained her composure after the last comment and overcompensated by a tad. "And she's rude to people! Isn't she rude? She didn't even introduce herself to me!"

For some reason, the fact that he had been put between a rock and a hard place made Navarion smile. He cared about Zhenya despite their incessant arguments and on some level, he felt she cared for him as well. But her denial of any sort of intimacy with him could sting if he tried to mention anything openly; she'd tersely done so at a location they'd served at in Felwood over a year ago and he'd learned his lesson. So plainly telling Astariel to please not talk about Zhenya that way because the paladin was his more-than-a-friend with benefits was out of the question. Likewise, he couldn't agree; he had no doubt in his mind that, were positions reversed, Zhenya might poke fun at him behind his back. And ten years ago, he might have done the same. But he was a different man now, or at least he was trying to be. And as much as he liked Astariel, there was a part of him deep down inside that didn't like her talking about Zhenya negatively.

In the end, he had to respond and the only thing he could think of was changing the subject.

"Not as rude as this." Reaching forward toward her, Navarion garnered a yelp from Astariel as he reached into her satchel, pulled out some blueberries he'd seen her carrying and ate them before she had a chance to protest. It had all happened so fast that she didn't have time to protest until he finished eating the berries.

"Hey! I had to hunt and gather for a long time to find those!"

"How long?" he asked while chewing on a mouthful of berry.

She glared at him defiantly, but the smirk she just couldn't fight off warned him of the impending humor. "Almost five minutes!"

"Well, follow me," he chuckled while leading her back onto the little street among the rest of the midnight shoppers. "I spotted some imported mangoes earlier that you might like. And maybe I'll even share some once I buy out their entire stock."

Smiling to herself as if she'd won another competition, Astariel kept Navarion's pace as they went back to the fruit sellers' stalls. There was one sticky situation avoided, if not entirely diffused.

"Come on inside," Fyndir called in his familiar, oddly deep voice from within his office hovel.

The sun had almost risen by the time Navarion had returned to the military quarter to see the sergeant in charge of the men at the barracks. After eating far too many mangoes, he and Astariel had bumped in to his parents' old friend Zorena, who apparently was herself friends with Pontus, the restoration Druid from the silithid mound skirmish, and a few other healers. More fruit was ingested and more laughs were had until the wee hours of the morning approached; for those on nocturnal work schedules such as their group, the approach of dawn signaled that it was time to sleep. Then when they had returned to the military quarter of the city, they'd milled about in groups of other irregulars until everyone began tending to the normal pre-sleep errands.

Considering how late he had come, Fyndir was awfully understanding. As always, the mess of papers on his desk had him and another random officer from the female side preoccupied.

Navarion stood at attention for a minute, not knowing whether he was to wait until spoken to or just speak freely.

"I have been told that I'll be working an extra shift tomorrow, sir," the half elf said to the full elf.

"Just two and a half hours extra. Just a fluke since somebody twisted their ankle and the healers advised her to let it heal naturally," Fyndir replied while scribbling in the back of an already signed document.

The two officers continued to scribble and the mercenary continued to just stand there, unsure of what to do. He was tired, so we're they most likely, and just standing there began to feel like a frustrating waste of time. Until he was officially dismissed, however, he had little recourse.

Fortunately, they didn't keep him waiting. "Oh, by the way, there's a full scale campaign against the silithids being planned. The public announcement will be tomorrow, but we wanted a few people to float the information unofficially among the barracks first. Strategic purposes."

Inside his heart, a less wise and more foolhardy part of Navarion jumped for joy. This sounded like the sort of conflict he'd been longing for, the sort of fight he needed to work the wanderlust out of his system. Dangerous, risky and possibly hasty, it was bound to put a stop to the expansion of the bug people while also leading to the loss of a few good soldiers. But it would mean wading into the thick of battle, where a part of him felt he belonged and what another part of him just wanted to let go of.

"Sergeant Fyndir," Navarion started, a nervous excitement overtaking him. "Do we know how many hives or when-"

"Everything will be answered at the first public announcement here in the quarter tomorrow," Fyndir answered brusquely.

In spite of the news and the sense of honor at having been asked to help spread news, Navarion couldn't deny the brief spark of irritation. The sergeant had called for him all the way from across town...just to ask him to spread a rumor? What was wrong with letting just a little more information slip?

Remembering his place, Navarion let it slide. "Thank you, sir. I'll make sure to surreptitiously spread the word."

A nod and a grunt later, and Fyndir and his colleague had returned to the messy stack of papers. Taking that as an acknowledgement of a meeting adjourned, Navarion turned to leave.

"Oh, by the way," Fyndir remarked at the last minute as if it were a minor detail. "Your unit will be toward the front of the eventual strike force. Seems like you'll get a front row seat to the action."