The days went by far too quickly. As dreary as the location was, the time that Amandil was able to spend with her long lost father was invaluable to her. From the sparring matches where he humored her more rushed strikes to the dexterity training he provided for her even when she was shifted into panther form, the two of them enjoyed every minute they spent together to the fullest. Even her skills seemed to blossom under his tutelage; he wasn't a druid and didn't know what it was like to shapeshift (he never allowed himself to step all the way over to the dark side and metamorphosize into a demonic form). However, he understood biomechanics well, and via his coaching she was able to gain more control over her feline body when shifted than she'd been during weeks of practice on the obstacle course back on the outskirts of Nighthaven.
They'd gotten to know each other a lot better as well. Faraldor had opened up a out Harmony and about his own childhood, and how it was quite different from hers. Harmony was inhabited by four times as many people as Serenity, which was a small village even by night elven standards. His hometown had over a hundred people in it - that was, when he'd still lived there. He had no idea what it was like in the present day, and neither did Lilith since she never traveled. All the same, there were many similarities in addition to differences. The more they talked, the more she realized that she truly was her father's daughter: her personality was partially from her childhood but a great deal of it also seemed to have been inherited from him. She loved her mother dearly, but her outlook on life was fundamentally different; that was, in part, why he hadn't been surprised when Amandil had showed up in his woods looking for him. He'd known that if she truly was a piece of him all grown up, then it would only be a matter of time before she tried to seek out her own past. Until then, she simply hadn't been able to because nobody really traveled without permission during the Long Vigil.
She'd also gotten to know that he lived a very sad, lonely life whether he wanted to admit it or not. For the first day, she'd prepared all his meals for him without being asked, trying to be the filial daughter she couldn't be to her mother, who tried to spoil her into a suspended childlike state. She stopped, however, when she remembered that she'd leave her father again soon, and that giving him too much of a break might cause her departure to be felt too strongly. He never showed it, but she knew that he didn't enjoy his life of solitude; he'd simply accepted it as unavoidable.
By the last day, she'd started to wonder how he'd survived out there so long. Sure, his material needs were taken care of, but his life was so plain. When she'd emptied her backpack to make sure she had enough provisions, he looked at a single page ripped out of a newspaper and the foldout travel map she'd brought with her (not the one that Lilith had marked with mustard) as if it was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. Out of pity, she gave him both items, pledging to visit soon and bring him some reading material to keep himself busy. He'd need it, considering that her classes would resume soon enough, and that she needed to return.
On the final day, she prepared her hearthstone after having gone for one last run through the woods so she'd remember what he said was an easier route to return. The loneliness she'd sensed in him initially was gone, but she still felt sad for leaving him in such a bleak place.
"I'll come back," she said while clutching the stone in her hands. They'd remained in the first floor of his house lest anyone flying overhead noticed the green glow of her teleportation home (more experienced druids could actually cast a spell that returned them to Moonglade, but she didn't know how to cast it). "As soon as I get the time, I'll come and visit."
Hesitation fought joy in his voice, which she'd gotten used to over the past few days. "Just be careful when you do," he replied cautiously. "I want to see you, but please remember...all of this," he said while motioning to his isolated abode, "is so you can live safely."
Pain tugged at her heart again as she realized how much time from his own life he'd missed out on so she could live a normal one. Forcing herself to smile, she felt a sadness at leaving home that she hadn't remembered since the day she and her mother had left Serenity for Moonglade. "I will, dad," she replied, quickly activating the hearthstone before her emotions could overtake her.
Green swirls enveloped her, and the last thing she saw of that remote area was her father's smiling, blindfolded face in an empty house. The green energy didn't pull her through a tunnel the way a Highborne's portal would, but rather it simply caused her essence to materialize in Nighthaven without transition. A deep ringing sound echoed in the air rather than off of nearby objects, and she found herself in a circle of mushrooms that inhabitants of her neighborhood on the outskirts of the Cenarion Circle's city used for their magical returns. Nobody walking by took notice given how frequent the ability was used by locals, and she soon found herself walking home among all the cottages and treehouses.
Since she'd only been gone for a few days, none of her neighbors really took notice of her. Everybody was busy anyway; authorities in Moonglade didn't simply allow just anybody to move in, otherwise they'd be flooded with refugees. No, every person there was either a student, a teacher, a sleeping druid, or a person there with a specific job to do that the Circle's council itself had to approve. Loitering was never an issue at Nighthaven.
Walking almost anonymously throughout the dirt roads, Amandil finally came up to the treehouse where she and her mother lived. Taking a deep breath, she started to walk up the ramp winding around the treehouse's trunk toward their second story apartment. She could already hear her mother weeping from outside the door...had she been crying like that the whole time?
"Mom?" she asked while unlocking the door. Before she'd even closed it behind her, Vindra was running toward her with streaks of dried tears on her cheeks, shutting it for her and collapsing in a heap in her arms in one of the stranger role reversals of the prodigal daughter's life.
"WHY!?" Vindra sobbed while she ineffectively tried to drag Amandil over toward the kitchen. The druidess relented, not wishing the woman to embarrass herself.
Amandil let her backpack and staff fall against the wall as she pretended that her mother was actually strong enough to drag her. "Mom, I can explain-"
"My own daughter - what did I do to deserve this?" Vindra continued to sob, not too coherently, as she forcibly washed Amandil's hands. Leave it to her to think that, after having disappeared for a few days, the biggest problem Amandil would have faced was having dirtied hands. "Am I that horrible to you that you HAD TO RUN AWAY?"
"Mom, I'm..." Amandil stopped herself just before she'd wanted to mention that she wasn't a child anymore. Her mother was obviously upset, and defending her own actions would only give the impression that she actuallywas running away from home. "Mom, I'm very sorry, but I have great news."
Vindra didn't even bother drying Amandil's hands off before she started to run her thumbs over her daughter's face, attempting to wash it as if Amandil was a toddler playing in mud puddles again. "I've done everything for you and you do this to me?! I THOUGHT YOU'D BEEN ABDUCTED, HOW DARE YOU!" Vindra then grabbed a bath towel and forcibly dried Amandil's face with it, at which point the druidess had finally reached her tolerance limit.
"Mom, listen to me!" she replied while slapping the towel away, which only caused her mother to cry even more. "Come on, sit down."
Taking her mother by the wrist, she easily dragged her over to the sitting area and forced her down. Given Vindra's emotional state, she wasn't sure how much information the woman could take, but she didn't know how much blubbering she could listen to.
"Oh my goddess, oh no, no! Vindra, you joined a gang!"
"I...what?! Mom, stop talking for a minute!
"I should have seen the signs when you started setting off fireworks too close to tents!"
"That was only a week ago! What...mom, what on Azeroth do fireworks have to do with gang activity!" Amandil retorted, perhaps a little more harshly than she'd intended as Vindra just buried her face in a pillow and continued to weep. "I'm sorry, okay? Mom, I love you and I know you worried-"
"What did I do!"
"Stahp," Amandil replied firmly. "Mom, this is really, really important so I need you to calm down and focus, okay?" When her mother calmed down into a steady panting into the pillow, Amandil steeled her own nerve in preparation for the drama. "I met my dad." She grimaced prematurely, expecting the fury to be unleashed in a storm of tears and shouts, but her mother just panted into the pillow lightly. After a few seconds, she started to get worried. "Mom?"
Pulling Vindra over on the cushion they'd sat down on, she saw her mother's rolled back eyes. She'd literally just passed out from the news.
"Crap," Amandil muttered while moving her mother to a safe enough position where she wouldn't roll off of the bed before walking over to the sink. Once she'd wet her hands, she walked back over and started to flick water on her mother's face. "Come on, mom, let's chill out and talk."
For a few seconds she felt a bit of anxiety herself as she worried that her mother had experienced some sort of heart attack; Vindra was over ten thousand years old, and ever since immortality had ended she and other pre Sundering night elves had started to age. Fortunately the blackout appeared to be drama induced rather than health related, and Vindra started to stir.
"What...oh...where am I?" she asked in a voice so melodramatic that Amandil almost considered writing a book about what it was like to live in her household, just so people would actually believe her. "Oh! Mandy, you're here! I...was worried...you were only gone for a day, right?" she asked hopefully. Knowing her mother, she already probably knew the truth and was trying to foist her self delusion upon her daughter.
In this case, there simply wasn't any time. "I've been gone for a week, mom. I left because I needed to know about dad-"
"Your dad is dead!" Vindra cried, though from her tone of voice Amandil knew that the words were forced and fake.
"I'm not a kid anymore, mom! Those stories don't work like they did half a millennium ago! Come on, don't be naïve; you must have known what my motivation was when I started asking you about where you'd been posted in rotation. We haven't discussed that in three centuries, why would I bring it up now!"
"Because you're my curious little girl who asks questions!" Vindra's voice was weaker, though not in the sense that she was breaking down; the older elf's mind was obviously clear and lucid, and she was simply backed into a corner rather than delusional by that point. "You're such a diligent student, here, where you're supposed to be!"
"I met him, mom. It doesn't matter. It already happened and that can't be changed. I followed the clues to the Cypress Pallisades...I met Lilith. She toldme the whole story, and helped me find dad. He's still out there, in the same place, but it's okay; he toldme why he couldn't see me. I understand that you both did what you had to-"
"I-I-I wanted to be past this!" Vindra whined while clutching the pillow, yet another juxtaposition of roles as she looked like a counselor's patient on the couch. "I tried to move on with my life...I just wanted to pretend it was all a fantasy I made up!"
"Delusion won't serve us any longer, mom. Look, times are different now...we're no longer beholden to a specific grove where our movements are monitored. I'm a student and you're retired, and I'm grown up now; nobody has the right to monitor us, or to talk about us."
"He's a wanted man," Vindra replied, resisting but also seeming to calm down. "You'll be an accessory if you're seen with him."
"By who? We can sneak in there; he's hid out for this long-"
"We?"
Amandil paused, giving her mother's trembling fingers a hard look. "Mom...it's been so long that you've both been alone. You're not even going to try?"
A measure of self consciousness wove itself into her features. "I...Mandy...what are you asking?"
"I'm asking for us to be a family, finally-"
"Are you even listening to what you're saying?"
"Listen, mom! I thought about it a lot. Dad never brought it up, but I've been thinking. There's a way where we can still see each other. We can't go that often, but if we rent a single hippogriff, then we can ride to his location unseen in the daytime. At least once every few years...we're children of the stars. We're used to waiting very long periods of time in between family visits."
Clutching the pillow to her chest even more tightly, Vindra tried to hide her face. Her silver eyes, however, betrayed her hesitation; Amandil knew that her mother wanted to go.
"We...we split our own family for you," Vindra sighed painfully. "We stabbed ourselves in the heart for you. Everything...the lies, the separation...we did it all for you. I can't accept...I can't believe that it would just be over so easily."
"Will you continue living alone here while I'm out studying, whittling your last years away knowing that he's safe and alive?"
It was a low blow and Amandil knew it, but it was a desperate move as well. Vindra winced as if she'd been slapped, her heart strings tugged firmly and her resolve easily ground into nothing. Exhaling deeply into the pillow, her mother almost seemed to crumple back into the couch.
"If we...theoretically speaking, because I'm not saying that I'll go," Vindra said in a mousy voice. "In theory, if we go...we can avoid landing at any known flight points?"
"An exceptional hippogriff could fly there in a single night, given a few stops for water along the way."
"And...and...and...nobody would know that we're there?"
"Lilith visits him once a decade, and she even lives at a known location. She hasn't been caught since even longer than you've known dad."
Slowly pulling the pillow away from her face, Vindra opened up her mouth as if she wished to speak. Amandil's hopes raised tenfold.
"I don't know," Vindra quicky spat out before hiding behind the pillow again.
Stifling a laugh, Amandil felt a victorious jump in her heart rate when she saw the twinkle in her mother's eye. "I have another break in six weeks. It's only a long weekend - four days. But it's enough, because we can just use the hearthstone on ourselves to get back; the hippogriff will fly on its own."
Vindra continued to huddle like a child on the couch, not even looking up at her own actual child. "I don't know," she repeated.
That time, Amandil finally did laugh a bit. "Think about it; we have some time," she replied.
The two of them spent most of the night in silence.
