Coming to Stormwind (part three)
Were you to ask me why I went to this length to find her, the answer would be complicated.
Why would I risk my life to save my sister?
The easy answer would be, because she is my kin. She is a Hollowind, and a Druid of the Talon. She is one of us. It is the noble thing to do.
But that is not the entire answer.
When we were younger, my sister and I would venture. We hunted and fished together.
Like the other Druids of the Talons, we were hunters and gatherers. We were a team, assuring the success of the days takings. In many ways, it was a more professional relationship. We were not friends-- per say-- however the relationship we had was something beyond friendship. It was an unspoken bond. I trusted her with my life. I knew that she was looking out for me, and I for her.
The Hollowinds are a relatively small group. Young and old, we lived together for centuries in Feralas, knowing the land as we knew ourselves. We moved as the wild game moved, as the winds moved, never in one area for more then a week. And so we lived for many years this way. We took our sleep in the Emerald Dream as all Kaldorei do, honoring Ysera and Cenarius, then returning to the physical realm to live.
We were going to begin the evening with a feast to celebrate the changing of the seasons-- and to wish for bountiful game that year. We were going to dance, and paint our bodies with intricate traditional Kaldorei designs. The women were going to tattoo one another's faces, and touch up the tattoos all ready done on older women. There was going to be dancing, singing, and honoring the goddess Elune at a blessed moonwell.
My sister and I were sent to hunt a wild buck to bring to the feast. We were tracking a monstrous buck, and out excitement was filtering into the community. The buck was a 30 point beast, huge and white.
Deep within me, something felt wrong about killing a deer so magnificent. It felt like we were tracking something much larger and more important then ourselves. Like a god in physical form. My sister had felt the same, however our family had now been expecting us to bring that beast back, and nothing less would have been acceptable.
I had climbed up a jutting rock, the bramble and undergrowth covering me. Below, I saw the animal. When I saw him, he was even larger then I expected. He was taller then two men stacked. His eyes were liquid black orbs, wise and old on either side of his long face. He was so white against the green of Feralas he almost seemed moon touched and glowed.
We were in awe of him.
My sister then elbowed me. She wanted me to take the advantage of surprise and leap down, tackle him, and break his neck. She would take her bow and shoot him from afar. We knew it would take a lot of force to bring him down and not damage him too badly as to have as much useable meat as possible. Looking down below, his antlers disturbed me. As I looked down at the 30 black points… they suddenly seemed to me a tangle of black thorn knives.
But I leapt down with my arms wide to wrap around his great neck.
The beast looked up and began to move it's hulking white body away. It was too slow. It was too large and I was falling too fast for it to successfully escape. It was happening in slow motion. However my sight snapped. Something even larger shot at me and shoved me mid air. My torso was suddenly on a collision course into the bush of black antlers on the buck.
A second great beast was now on top of me, all gray fur and teeth. My body landed into the buck's antlers. I was pinned between them.
I could hear my sister's female cries between the snarling of the bear sized wolf's growl. I was in too much shock and surprise too feel a lot of pain at the time, however aware I was that I should have been feeling pain.
It was a poetic moment to me. A mix of blood, bone, and fear. A tumble and tangle of teeth and fur. Things were fading, and it was happening too slowly. Between the flashes of flesh, I saw my sister looking down at me from the cliff. She was calling the Ancients to heal me. In green blurs of magic, the wounds were closing as quickly as they were being ripped open. I almost cursed her for healing me. I wished to pass out and have it end, one way or another, but her spells kept me awake and conscious.
Eventually after the three of us, the two beats and I, had become a massive knot brawling across the forest floor, it ended. We painted the nearby trees in red.
I had passed out. My sister was weak and could no longer call the gods for aid.
By that time, the rest of the tribe had called for help. Other hunters had heard out cries and ran back to the village. They fought the animals back with fire.
They said that they were not game animals. I had heard that the massive white buck and the wolf were spirit beasts forever in a war with each other. By my sister and I disrupting their fight, we had angered them. My life was payment and my blood a sacrifice to the Will of Nature.
My tribe built the funeral pyre that night. They continued the feast and celebration they originally planned, only this time much bigger and wilder as it had also become a funeral.
I do not know what happened between now and then, only that my body was wrapped in a green shroud and covered in spices and herbs and sweet smelling oils-- as is the tradition for Hollowinds.
Nearby Druids of the Talon families were called to join. The dancing and singing rung all through the forest of Feralas.
My sister had told me she had taken my body after most of the druids were drunk on berry and honey wine, several hours into the night. She said she had taken me to the shores of Feralas, and had stolen a reed canoe. There she said she paddled all night, through the mists and using the stars as her guide.
She said she tore apart the canoe and fashioned a gurney with which to drag me to the dryads.
My sister accounted that she spent hours wandering the wilderness to find the dryad encampment. But it was eventually they whom found her.
A dryad huntress had spotted us. She had smiles coyly, dropped her spear, and dashed off to the others. Her faun hooves not making a sound against the bramble as she sprung one step to the next.
When we had reached the dryad shaman, wise an old woman as large and as great as an oak tree--she had said in her syrup voice that in order to revive me to the state I was before the accident, that my sister would have to give a portion of her years of life to me. My sister did not understand this.
"It is the will of the elements. They are harsh yet just. One can not give life without taking it. It is Balance, it is Nature. It is the Elements. The Water Spirit has said this to me." The shaman healer said.
My sister agreed. The dryads assisted my sister in gathering earth-roots, and pieces of earth, fire, water, and wind. With these things they had cast a spell, taking my sister's life she had not yet lived, and used them to give me my life.
By reviving me, my sister had doomed herself a much shorter life.
With that spell I had lived. The shaman mystic had let forth a cheer. All the dryads leaped around like brown deer-like spirits in jubilation. "It is the will of the gods that he live!"
So it is for this reason, my sister giving her life for mine, that I could not bare her lost.
My search for her lead me across the world.