Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right.

Litha was delighted and relieved to be on the receiving end of Ga'vik's language lessons. He always made sure she was fed, clothed, and safe, but had remained aloof since that first night in the crater. Though he had taught her the song about Raca, he had done it without even making eye contact. As soon as she had learned the song to his satisfaction, he had resumed silent gesturing and occasional grunting as his sole forms of communication.

His impromptu lesson in Zandali was a breakthrough, seemingly brought on by the troll's chagrin at having taught her that filthy song. Litha was elated to have drawn him into a conversation, of sorts, and to be paving the way for more communication. Orcish seemed to be a lost cause – Litha knew little enough, but when the troll spoke it, he cut off or garbled so many syllables that Litha could barely understand the words she did know.

She hoped he wasn't teaching her some sort of pidgin Zandali, as well.

Regardless, she would learn it, and she would make him talk to her. How else could she convince him not to return her to the goblins? So far, he seemed staunchly resistant to her attempts to seduce him, though she did catch him watching her, from time to time. She had more trouble translating his facial expressions than she did the song. His eyes were very expressive, but evasive when Litha tried to meet them. The troll's mouth was generally drawn into a scowl by his tusks, even when she assumed he was actually relaxed, or even amused. When she spoke to him in Common, he would usually reply with a single, slow blink, before resuming whatever he had been doing. Strong, silent, and impenetrable, Litha thought.

She practiced her Zandali at every opportunity.

"Ga'vik and Lujin to hunt," she pronounced, unsure if the word she used meant hunt, or kill, "…the …beast?"

Ga'vik sighed, and lowered his bow. He had been holding it taut with an arrow nocked. Litha knew she was interrupting him, but found that was often the best way to get his attention. He clicked his teeth and rolled his shoulders before turning to her. She feigned an innocent expression, widening her eyes.

His own eyes narrowed. "Yes, I am hunting with Lujin," he enunciated slowly, "We are hunting the tar beast."

Litha waited until he had turned back and started to raise the bow again, before asking, "Tar?" She had guessed the meaning, but was pleased when he used a two-toed foot to indicate a puddle of the black, gooey substance.

"Tar. This is tar. That is a tar beast. I something something tar beast." Litha didn't recognize something something. She carefully repeated the new words back to him.

The troll huffed and rumpled his hair, then held up his bow with one hand and gestured emphatically at it with the other, repeating the phrase.

"Shoot it with an arrow?" Litha guessed, in Common. She lifted her own hands to pantomime drawing a bow string back, and firing.

He grunted in assent, then motioned for her to be silent, and turned back toward his quarry. She watched his shoulders flex to the point of maximum draw before she spoke once more.

"Ga'vik shoot with arrow the tar beast," she assured him loudly, biting her lip as the arrow soared wildly over the tar beast's head. This time, it was harder to hide her smirk when he whirled to face her. She fluttered her eyelashes and cocked her head to one side as he flashed his pointed teeth at her in frustration. She smiled warmly back at him.

"Li… you. Quiet. Please," he ground out. She nodded silently, still smiling. This time, as he slowly turned away, drawing another arrow, he glanced back at her several times, the muscles along his jaw twitching. Just to keep him on his toes, she decided not to interrupt again.

Intellectually, she knew that teasing a troll was probably a bad idea. He was, after all, an imposing seven-foot figure of solid green muscle and tusks, clearly lethal with knife or bow, undoubtedly filled with hatred of the Alliance and cannibalistic urges.

It was a good way to get his attention, though. Besides - despite what Litha had heard about the more primitive Horde races, Ga'vik seemed to have the patience of an elekk. Litha could not resist the urge to test his limits. She was annoyed, too, at his apparent indifference to her flirtation, and would do almost anything to get a rise out of him, though she knew she was acting the child.

After Ga'vik had slain the tar beast, Litha drew him into some Zandali revision, trying to make a game of it.

"Black," she said, and pointed at the tar, "The tar is black. The leaf is green," and picked up a leaf. Then, "Blue," and waited. She repeated the word several times before Ga'vik, with a slow blink, pointed up to the sky.

"Yes," she said. "You now."

He was walking beside Jozala, as usual, and his expression was unreadable to the human. Litha had just begun to suspect that he didn't know what she intended, when he clicked his teeth and glanced toward the raptor.

"Red," he said. Litha immediately leaned forward to pat the beast's neck, eliciting a cheerful squawk.

"Jozala is red," she replied easily. "What is white?"

The troll looked at her sidelong before turning to grin savagely at her. He seemed to have an excess of teeth when he peeled his lips back. His tusks extended down as far as his chin before hooking upward to lethal points. Litha thought they grew from his top jaw, but could not quite see. She was leaning in for a closer look, hand extended to check, when he threw his head back and barked with laughter.

"Teeth are white," he pointed to show what 'teeth' meant, "and you are…" He said a word Litha didn't know. She didn't think it was a colour.

She sat back on Jozala, feeling a little embarrassed that she'd been about to touch the troll's teeth. "What is that?"

The troll turned and began to walk away. Jozala followed obediently. After a moment, Ga'vik seemed to have gathered his thoughts, and stopped to face her.

"Eikahe is… was that," he said. Litha frowned, thinking of all the things Eikahe had been. She doubted that the troll had called her big, or hairy, or strong. Ga'vik had clearly liked Eikahe, so Litha decided the comparison was probably a flattering one.

"I am brave," she guessed in Common, then made a show of flexing her arms and trying to look tough. The troll looked doubtful, but merely grunted at her display. He turned to walk away again.

"Ga'vik is brave," Litha said, hoping to keep the conversation going. The troll grunted again, but shook his head as he did so.

"I am not brave. I am…" another strange Zandali word, "like Lujin." To demonstrate, the troll walked to the panther, and moved to block her path. The big cat tried to manoeuvre around him, growling low in her throat as he stepped to stand in front of her again. When she tried to dash to one side, he crouched to loop an arm around her chest, trying to hold her still. She yowled and leapt backward, swatting at him. When Ga'vik shifted to let her by, she moved just past him, then sat abruptly and regarded him with baleful golden eyes.

Litha couldn't help laughing. "I think you mean stubborn," she said in Common, "but you might mean disobedient."

Ga'vik flashed his teeth again in a quick grin, and reached to scratch Lujin's head. She ducked away from him with a hiss and stalked off, her tail flicking angrily.

Litha laughed again. "You are stubborn," she said, trying the new Zandali word, "to keep Lujin."

Ga'vik didn't grin at her this time, but his blue eyes still looked amused. He mimed the act of giving with cupped hands as he explained, "Lujin was a gift from Eikahe."

Litha snorted. "Eikahe was good…" she searched her new vocabulary, then resorted to the Orcish word for friend.

"Yes," Ga'vik said solemnly. He gave her the Zandali word for friend. As he started walking again, he traced the scarred shape of the bear on his forearm with one finger.

Litha hesitated before pointing to his chest and shoulders, where she knew that other figures were hidden under his leather and mail armour. "Other friends?"

Ga'vik looked wary. "Y-yes," he spoke slowly, "and family, and loas, and somethings."

Litha recognized the first two things at least, and nodded sagely. It seemed to be a sensitive subject, so she let it go.

"You have family?" the troll asked suddenly, surprising her.

"No," she replied immediately, startled into honesty. "Dead."

"Your family is all dead?" Ga'vik's blue eyes went wide.

"Yes."

"Mother and father?" Litha knew those words. This was not a subject that she particularly wanted to discuss, but she tried not to be annoyed. At least he was showing an interest in her.

"Yes."

"Brothers and sisters?"

Litha hadn't heard the word for sisters before, but recognized what he was asking. She confirmed they were all dead as well, though she'd only had one of each, in fact. She tried briefly to remember their faces, but she'd been so young…

He used several more words she didn't know, but which she assumed to be Zandali terms for aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, second cousins, nieces, nephews, and the like. She speculated that trolls must have large extended families.

"Yes, all dead." She didn't look at the troll, but she could feel his gaze burning into her. She patted Jozala to distract herself. The raptor cooed.

"Friends?" he asked after a long silence.

Litha sighed. "Not dead, but… not good friends." She shrugged, and pointed to the slave collar to clarify. When the troll blinked slowly at her and said nothing, she added flippantly, "I have goblin friends."

Ga'vik gave a snort, but when Litha looked over at him, he did not look amused. His dark blue eyes were intense. His response was cut off by a yowl from Lujin up ahead.

They had not been traveling on a marked path, but Litha could see that they had come upon one now. There was a boulder-sized tortoise crouched at the edge of the trail like a lumpy signpost. It was stone grey. Litha thought at first it was an ugly statue until she noticed the rheumy, malevolent eyes following their movements.

Lujin was backing toward Ga'vik with her ears pressed flat. The troll stilled, drew an arrow from his quiver, and held it ready in his bow. He called out a greeting in Orcish. His tone was light, but Litha could see every muscle in his body was taut. Beneath her, Jozala crouched, coiling like a spring.

A figure stepped out of the woods. The green glow of his eyes marked him as a blood elf. He raised a hand in greeting and spoke in a trilling elven tongue. Ga'vik seemed to know a few words of the language, and used them alongside his crude Orcish. They both gesticulated – the way they had come, the way they were going, and toward Litha.

Ga'vik had dropped the arrow back into his quiver and slung his bow over his shoulder. His slouching posture seemed a little more hunched than usual, and he neither clicked his teeth nor rubbed his spiky hair. He was still on high alert, Litha realized, even as the blood elf laughed haughtily and waved at the human on the raptor.

It happened very quickly. Ga'vik seemed to be gesturing at the trail again, but was crooking his finger a little oddly, and then Lujin was on top of the elf, scrabbling at his armour with her back claws even as her jaws clamped over his face. Jozala gave a scream and lunged at the tortoise, which moved surprisingly quickly to intercede on behalf of its master. Litha was thrown off as the raptor plunged forward, but raised her head in time to see the tortoise skid to a shuddering halt with two arrows in its head and neck.

Lujin still had the blood elf locked in a bloody embrace, but Ga'vik strode quickly over to them and barked a command. Lujin released her grip immediately and stepped back. The blood elf had just enough time to raise one bloody, shaking hand, before the troll fired an arrow into his face at point-blank range.

Ga'vik braced the elf's head with his two-toed foot and pulled the arrow free again before the death throes had even subsided. He wiped it clean with the elf's cloak, and moved to the tortoise to retrieve those arrows, as well. One of them was broken, and he tossed it aside. The troll seemed to hesitate for a moment, then returned to the elf and riffled through his bags, retrieving a jingling pouch and a few smaller items. He straightened and surveyed the scene.

When he spotted Litha sprawled on the ground, her mouth agape, he moved toward her with his hand outstretched. She scrambled quickly to her feet, evading him. Suddenly, she did not want him to touch her.

Her mind was reeling. She had been getting complacent, again. She had nearly forgotten who she was traveling with. He was a member of the Horde, and a troll. They were all killers, rapists and cannibals. They had no honour or chivalry. Clearly, Ga'vik had no loyalty, either, as he had just killed a member of his own faction in cold blood.

Litha had seen death many times, but this was betrayal – the worst kind. She thought of Darrick. Her stomach churned, and she took deep breaths to fight the sudden nausea. Ga'vik was still watching her. He tried once more to move toward her, but stopped when she waved him off, shuddering.

No, no, no. She had let herself trust him. She had let herself believe she was safe with him. How many times did she have to be reminded? She was safe with no-one but herself. She could trust no-one but herself.

The troll let her be, shifting his feet and scowling inscrutably in his usual way. After a few minutes, he gave a short whistle to the animals. Lujin had been carefully grooming the blood off of her whiskers, as Jozala nosed at the dead elf's pack, looking for anything edible. They both moved toward the troll dutifully as he turned and started down the trail. He made no attempt to hide the bodies of the blood elf and the tortoise.

Litha stood frozen, staring at the grisly ruin of the blood elf's handsome face. Ga'vik had killed him as swiftly and effortlessly as the tar beast, but an elf was not a tar beast – in fact, since Litha had personally known several night elves, she had always considered the blood elves to be somewhat more people than the troll, orc, and tauren members of the Horde.

I still need him, she reminded herself, and I'm no threat to him. The last thought was only reassuring until she tried to think of what threat the blood elf had posed. None. He had seemed friendly toward the troll. Litha swallowed hard as the bile rose in her throat again.

The troll stopped walking as he reached a curve in the trail, and turned to look back at her.

"Come," he said, simply.

Litha tried to move, but her legs didn't respond at first. I still need him, she told herself again, and, I don't have to trust him to make use of him.

"Come, Lid…ta." He stumbled over her name. She wasn't sure she'd ever heard him use it before. She wasn't sure what that meant. His face was blurry – everything was blurry. Was she crying? Litha blinked rapidly to dissipate the tears.

I don't need him, she decided, and I don't trust him, but he hasn't hurt me yet. Litha knew it would still be very dangerous to travel on her own, with no weapons or magic. Besides, if she did not follow him, he would probably just pick her up and put her on Jozala, or even carry her. There was no point in resisting him.

Finally, Litha managed to blink back the tears, and looked past the troll, trying to judge where they were headed. If they were leaving the crater, they must be going to Silithus. It was another bug-infested desert, but not one in which the goblins had a strong presence. She'd never been there, but she thought the neutral druid group – the Cenarion Circle – had a settlement there.

As soon as I see night elves, I'll get away from him, she resolved. I'll tell them he's the one that captured me, and put this collar on me. There won't be any goblins to say otherwise.

It was not a great plan, but Litha felt better. She just needed to stay alive, and on the troll's good side, until help was within reach. She resolved to do whatever it took.

Still shaking physically but mentally composed, she started after the troll, picking her way around the gruesome corpses. She thanked the Light that the harsh reminder had been through the elf's death, and not her own.