Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right.
The next few days passed in a pleasant haze, like a holiday after the punishing trek across Tanaris. Litha did not know where the troll intended to take her next, but after debating the merits of trying to descend further in Un'Goro Crater on her own, nude but for her slave collar and his cloak, she decided to wait it out.
She quickly learned that trolls do sleep. The troll slept enough during the first two days to more than make up for the time he had lost during their flight across the desert.
The day after their climb down, she was surprised to wake around noon to Ga'vik's eerily still body stretched out on one of the hyena skins nearby. Initially, Litha took advantage of the time alone to go lie in the stream again, revelling in the feeling of the icy, sparkling water cleansing her skin and her soul.
After a few hours, she was chilled to the bone and her toes were wrinkled like prunes so she crept back to the campsite. She pulled the freshly rinsed and dried cloak around herself and crouched over the sleeping troll. As she hovered over him, chewing her lip and considering where to poke, one densely-lashed lid lifted slightly to pin her with a blue glare.
Ga'vik said nothing but groaned and rolled onto his side away from her. After a moment he added a wave of dismissal over his shoulder. Litha moved away from him and huddled by the embers of last night's fire, feeling oddly lonely. She stirred the coals with a stick until the smell of last night's charred dinner hit her nose, and her stomach rumbled loudly.
The troll sat up as if she had shouted. When he yawned, Litha was treated to a wide array of sharp, white teeth. She thought soberly to herself that she should find him frightening. Instead, she was relieved to see him up. Oblivious to her riveted gaze, Ga'vik stumbled away and relieved himself against a tree. He stopped by the stream to splash his face and have a drink before retrieving some of the dried hyena from within his chain mail shirt and wordlessly handing her a piece.
They chewed in silence. Afterward, the troll stood and stretched majestically before trudging about the site again, picking up more bits of dead wood and laying them in a stack by the fire pit. He thrust a few pieces of wood in with a handful of moss, bringing new life to the ashes, before lying down again on his hyena skin with a sigh.
Turning to her, he repeated a word several times in Orcish that she didn't understand. When she shook her head, he huffed and made a sort of 'tamping down' gesture with his hand.
"Quiet?" she asked uncertainly. This earned a non-committal grunt in reply. The troll went back to sleep.
She spent most of that day and the next wandering about the site as noiselessly as she could, feeding meagre portions of wood to the small fire, staring up at the sky, and speaking softly to the raptor and the panther. She fed some of the dried hyena to the raptor, who snatched it greedily. The panther disappeared for long stretches, but otherwise seemed content to sleep beside the troll.
The third morning she woke to find Ga'vik sitting by the fire, the skinning knife pressed against his forearm. She leapt up, startled and frightened, but he made no move to acknowledge her as she came to see what he was doing.
He would deliberately push the tip of the knife into his flesh until a bead of blood appeared, then quickly shift his grip to press a grain of sand or dirt into the wound, holding it firmly for several seconds. Litha had heard that trolls healed quickly, but she was amazed to see the small wounds would seal themselves after a minute of light pressure, leaving only a smudge of blood and a tiny bump.
Ga'vik was adding to the scar pattern that covered his chest, shoulders, and upper back. He was slowly marking out the outline of a bear.
She dropped to sit beside him, and watched in silence for a time. His face was calm and focused, frowning only slightly when some of the dots healed too well, and he was forced to go back and remake them. As Eikahe's bear form slowly took shape, Litha was impressed with how recognizable it was, though the troll had not seemed to use any sort of sketch or guiding outline.
"You're very artistic," she said at last, unable to think of any Orcish words that might apply. The troll flicked his eyes briefly at her, but continued with his task without pause.
"You talk too much, though," she added. "If you weren't talking all the time, you might be able to get some things done around here." She laughed at herself, and her sad little joke. It had been a long time since she'd been able to have a conversation, she realized. It had been a long time since she'd tried.
"Are all of your pictures… friends who have died? Or are they just people you have cared for? Or animals, I suppose. They mostly look like animals, actually. What about the cat?" When the troll made no response again, Litha lifted a finger to point at the panther on his chest. "Is it Lujin?"
The troll stopped what he was doing and tucked his chin down to look where she was pointing. He grunted and shook his head no, repeating Lujin's name again with a negative gesture.
"Ga," he said.
"Ga," Litha repeated. When he didn't elaborate, she went on. "Ga… is that… does it mean cat? Or is it a name? Was it another pet of yours? Your name is Ga'vik. Does it have something to do with your name?" She traced the outline of the animal lightly, admiring the stippled texture of the scars. Ga'vik stopped what he was doing to watch her, then shifted his chest slowly back, away from her fingers.
"Ga," he said again, and pointed with his knife to Lujin, sleeping in the shade. He turned the knife to point it at himself. "Ga… vik." His cobalt eyes regarded her steadily. Litha found his expression unreadable, but she enjoyed being the centre of his attention. Again, she thought to herself, something I never thought I'd want from a troll!
"Oh, so it does have something to do with your name." She smiled brightly at him. "Is it your totem animal, or something like that, or does it just mean you're Lujin's bitch?" She giggled, feeling giddy, and hoping her jokes sounded funnier to someone who didn't speak Common.
The troll only blinked slowly, watching her giggle, until she felt herself blush and had to look away. When she looked back, he had returned to Eikahe's shape.
She let him finish in silence, feeling awkward, but wanting to see the end result. When he had completed the outline of the bear, he carefully wrapped his forearm in a snug layer of hyena skin, then sat back to look at her.
"Yours are prettier than mine," she said, unable to stop herself. She looked down at her leg and ran a hand over the ridges and whorls. "Do you think I should have gone for a different pattern? Maybe a cat, like yours. What do you think my totem animal is?"
The troll looked down at her leg, then bent closer to examine the area that had healed most recently. It was still scabbed, but dry, and did not bleed or ooze anymore. He reached out a finger to trace it lightly as she had done to him. It made her shiver.
He said something in Orcish, but she couldn't follow it. Finally he just said, a little tentatively, "Good?" Litha only shrugged. No, it wasn't really good. She did not have the words to describe how not good it was… in any language.
"I guess it's healed okay. I don't think I'll be wearing a short skirt anytime soon, though," she said at last. "Actually, maybe I should consider wearing some kind of clothes." She waved her hand at him, trying to indicate his own garb.
She did not think he understood what she'd said, though he watched her speak with that intense, blue gaze. Later, when she came back from another dip in the stream, wrapped again in the thin cloak, she was surprised to find him cutting one of the hyena skins into shapes that looked remarkably like small-human-sized trousers.
"Come," he grunted, and waved her over with the knife. When she came to stand near him, he reached up to place both hand around her waist, then her hips, tutting and clicking his teeth thoughtfully. He bent back to the shapes he was making, measured along the waist with outstretched hands, then trimmed them a little.
She fed a few sticks into the fire and sat to watch him work again.
"It's been a while since I've worn anything with legs," she said. The sack-like dress had been her uniform with the goblins, and as a novice Priest she had worn a loose, chaste robe. At the orphanage, the girls mostly wore well-patched hand-me-down dresses. It was difficult to tell them from the boys, otherwise, with their hair cut short from the lice.
"Are you going to make me some sort of top, as well? May I make a request?" Litha felt increasingly bold around the troll. Getting to her feet, she twirled suddenly, clutching the cloak tightly at her throat but letting it swirl around her legs. It was relatively painless to move now, but the freshly scarred tissue of her left leg still felt oddly sensitive. "I'd like something in mageweave. Green, if possible. It goes with my eyes, you know." She twirled slowly around the campsite until she felt dizzy. More softly, she said, "I'd like to wear something pretty, for a change. I'm sure you know how it is."
When she glanced back at the troll, he had stopped what he was doing and was watching her. Caught out, he clicked his teeth, ruffled his hair, and turned back to the leather.
"You're allowed to look. Everyone else does. At least, I'm sure they would if they were travelling with a naked woman. Besides, what have I got to hide?" She let the cloak fall open.
He troll bent closer to his work, concentrating all of his focus on drawing the knife through the leather. Litha sighed. She sensed an attraction there, but she wasn't sure if it was his, or just her own. She hadn't had someone take care of her for… well, not like this, ever. She liked the feeling, which was dangerous. She must not become complacent.
For all she knew, he was a genuinely nice… troll. Nice, and resisting his attraction to her because he felt guilty about turning her back over to the goblins. Or eating her. One of which was definitely going to happen.
Litha strongly suspected the first one, but had not completely ruled out the second. She had not ruled out the idea of seducing him, either. Maybe, if she made herself irresistible, he would just keep her. That would not be so bad, other than his cooking. Maybe she would do the cooking.
If she could only stay out of goblin hands long enough, eventually she might make her way to an Alliance base…
"Will you hum for me, again? That was nice. You seemed… so relaxed and happy. I think you like the forest." To encourage him, Litha tried humming a short stretch of the tune he had produced when they first arrived. It was difficult, as it had seemed to change with each verse, but Litha was quite good at remembering and repeating musical phrases. It helped her to learn new spells. It was all in the timing and intonation.
Ga'vik stopped again to look up at her, eyes wide. He spoke in Zandali and then, to Litha's surprise, sang a short stretch of the tune. It had lyrics, evidently, and he seemed to be asking if Litha knew the whole song.
"I've never heard it before," she told him. "Just when you hummed it. Will you sing it all?"
He stared at her silently and blinked slowly, an expression that Litha decided to translate as bewilderment.
Taking a deep breath, Litha launched into her own rendition of the tune, trying to imitate the Zandali phonetically. The emphasis on vowels and the cadence reminded her of the Night Elf's language.
She was rewarded with a bark of laughter from the troll. He shook his head, grinning at her, tried to speak, and broke into laughter again.
"Well, you haven't really been trying to learn my language," she retorted, feeling herself blush, again. "If you hadn't had that little eulogy for Eikahe, I might think you only knew a dozen words altogether." The troll fell into silence again once his laughter subsided. He turned back to the leather. He wanted her covered up, apparently, as soon as possible.
Dejected, Litha moved away, hugging the cloak around herself. She crouched in front of the fire and remembered songs she used to sing as a child. One of them, she recalled, prominently featured a blood-thirsty, child-eating troll. The truth is worse, she decided, feeling sullen, though she could not entirely admit to herself why she was so upset.
When the troll began to sing again, softly, she felt an up-welling of warmth. She held very still until he had finished the line, afraid that he would stop. Instead, he paused at the end, then repeated the same line over again. He did it a third time before Litha understood.
She repeated it after him. He sang it again, and they echoed it back and forth until he seemed satisfied with her rendition, and abruptly began the next line.
Time passed swiftly during the game, and Litha became so involved in the imitation of his lilting rhythm that she jumped when he tapped her on the shoulder as she was working her way through the second verse.
He handed her the leather trousers, smiling, and gestured for her to put them on. Feeling suddenly shy, Litha turned away from him to dress behind the cover of the cloak. The trousers were fitted with leather laces up both legs, and she was surprised to find that they gaped a little along the outside of each hip and thigh, revealing a stretch of smooth skin crisscrossed with laces on the right, and hideously scarred flesh on the left. It took her a few minutes of fiddling with the ties to realize that the waistline fit perfectly, and that the skin-baring seemed intentional.
Turning back to Ga'vik, she pointed to her scarred leg with an expression of distaste.
"You didn't have to be so stingy with the material," she said. She got the slow blink in response. "It's not exactly my best feature." She pointed again to the ugly scars, then flattened her hand over the gap to mime covering them.
Without speaking, the troll leaned forward, took her hand gently, and moved it away. He pointed to the gap and spoke in Zandali. The phrase had a measured rhythm to it, and he said it with such intensity that Litha repeated it. Ga'vik nodded solemnly.
"You're an odd one, alright," she said at last, but did not try to cover the scars again.
He made a sort of top for her, as well, though it was little more than a short vest with laces up the front that left little to the imagination. When he made a small patchwork satchel with the scraps of leather and a bit of reptile hide, Litha decided he was being stingy, but couldn't really complain. The nights were much cooler here than in Tanaris, and she appreciated that he hadn't used all of the hyena skins. It was nice to have a bedroll.
Ga'vik also spent some time equipping himself with a small supply of arrows, made roughly from straight branches, tips hardened in the fire. Litha woke one morning to the soft zip, thuck of his practice shots. When she rose to join him, he spoke briefly and pointed gravely toward the crater.
Litha understood. The holiday was over; they were moving on.