The smell of ozone was the first sensation that returned to him. So many memories came to Melas from that smell. The air after a bolt of lightning, the grassy soil in between spouts of rain, the braided mane of most incarnations of his timeless mate.

Anjula. Her name is Anjula this time.

The heat of her skin was much more than his; her people in general were like living furnaces. Rather than pleasant reassurance, that image in his head filled him with rage as he remembered what had happened. His guest - Triton, Heralath, whatever he called himself - had doused him with mustard gas and ran off. Truly, he didn't know whether he needed to fear for Anjula or not; she was raised in a savage tribe and their guest turned adversary supposedly only had one of those orbs. Still, there was no telling what else he might have in that bag of his, or what other lies the man had in store.

Melas' heart sank as he realized that whatever happened, it was his fault. He'd chosen to help the man in the first place; he'd showed a stranger a rather valuable medallion and given the benefit of the doubt; he'd insisted on going along, helping the man and even jumping down into a narrow, cramped trench. He bore the responsibility.

But wait...how was he realizing this?

He died; he felt himself die. It wasn't even that painful. The beliefs of the Kaldorei regarding the afterlife weren't as well defined as those of the humans, dwarves and draenei despite being so ancient; most night elves were believed to turn into wisps when they died, serving their survivors by constructing natural buildings, gathering resources or perhaps even growing into an ancient. But wisps didn't have limbs, and Melas could feel the sense of touch returning to his numb arms and legs as he struggled to...to get up. He was lying on solid ground.

Druids were believed to continue living in the Emerald Dream, where they continued their work preserving the balance for those on Azeroth as they lived on in another dimension. But Melas was no true Druid; he'd never completed formal training. He was a guardian Druid who couldn't even shapeshift into a bear. He'd never been to the Dream before, and even if he were to go, it was partially corrupted. How would he-

"What are you doing here in the Emerald Dream, cousin?"

Melas froze. The confused voice was so familiar, yet it seemed impossible. After eight thousand years of separation, could it be?

Rising to his hands and knees, Melas found the world around him dark. His eyes struggled to focus on the excessive amount of leaves, vines and green all around him; it was impossible to even see a good meter away from the beaten path due to the density of the trees. It was so beautiful, so natural that it couldn't be from the world he lived on.

And standing before him was the outline of another Bowleaf he had never expected to see again.

"Sodor?" Melas asked, blinking as the familiar shape of his maternal cousin came into view.

A feral Druid, Sodor was the same height as Melas but leaner, built for dishing it out rather than taking it in combat. Kneeling down to help him up, Sodor still looked the same despite their immortality having ended; that same violet skin that ran in the family, that same blue-black hair color with post-immortality flecks of grey that they both shared.

On his feet, Melas realized that his lungs didn't hurt anymore. His body felt a bit wobbly, but only because he'd just woken up. For all intents and purposes, he was just fine, and very clearly in a dimension he'd never expected to see.

Centuries of arguments and disputes bubbled between them but fizzled out. Sodor wore a look of worry on his face, and obviously knew something was wrong.

"What happened that led to you appearing here?" the leaner cousin asked.

"What happened to your antlers?" the broader cousin asked.

Sodor frowned and briefly felt the once long, proud antlers sprouting from his head. Halfway up they looked fine; the rest of the way, they were thin, soft and of unusually light color. It looked as if they'd been sawed clean off halfway and then regrown.

"Long story, and one I have a feeling there is no time for now," Sodor sighed, brushing the topic aside. "How did you end up here? I would have been informed had you entered any of the barrow dens. Very few of us are entering at this time."

Dread filled Melas' chest as he began to worry about his mate. Time slowed down inside the Emerald Dream; what felt like a moment here could translate into a year outside. Or possibly not. Time was a tricky thing to understand, and it did not always flow in the same direction. Shaking the thoughts and fears from his mind, Melas tried to focus on finding a solution. "I think I died. I tried to help a lost traveler...one of our own people...but he threw some goblin device at me. An orb filled with gas that caused my eyes to water, my skin to sting and my lungs to feel very full. Now I fear he is going to assault...people I care for."

In the past, Sodor had always seemed emotional for an elf and almost petulant. Years spent tending to nature must have wisened him, as he didn't waste time squabbling a out past disputes and got to the point. "I felt your presence literally a minute ago. I found you here when you weren't here a few seconds before. You started to wake up immediately. From the time you appeared to this sentence I'm speaking now, it couldn't be more than a minute and some seconds." Sodor straightened up and flexed his fingers. "We'll have to reminisce another time; if you're here, and you felt yourself fall...then I fear the worst has happened to you. Resurrection spells can't save the body from ruin - not from spinal damage, brain damage, and not from serious tissue damage if the corpse isn't tended to by a healer first. There also can't be a large amount of time passed between death and the spell itself - the best priestesses can't revive someone beyond an hour or so. And I'm no healer to begin with, so my resurrection spell isn't even that-"

"Will it work?" Melas asked pointedly.

Millennia ago, Sodor might have derailed the entire conversation over that; pride and a bit of arrogance caused him to react poorly when interrupted. This time, however, he controlled his ego rather easily, seeming to be a changed man. "If it's just gas, and the gas has dissipated, you can still be resurrected without fear of dying all over again. But I've never known of somebody who died, had their spirit pass on to the Dream, and then were resurrected on Azeroth by someone here inside the Dream. And if you appeared here without formally being inducted at a den, you're most definitely dead - a large number of our colleagues here are Druids who passed on. It's our way of staying in touch-" Sodor stopped when he saw the increasing anxiety in his cousin's features. "Come back to Moonglade some time. We'll catch up...and you have a lot of training to catch up on."

"Get me through this, and one way or another I'll be there."

Green swirls already began to surround Sodor's body as the feral Druid charged up a restoration spell. "Hold still, and focus whatever healing magic the best you can...I need help on this." A low chant rang out from Sodor's vocal chords as he tried to work the spell the best he could. Despite his pessimism, Melas already began to feel dizzy again. He'd never been resurrected before - of course, he'd never actually died before - but somehow, he knew this is what the reverse of dying felt like.

Slowly, the image of his cousin and the greenery around him faded from view, and Melas felt himself slip into the darkness again.

Waves washed over his body and he experienced difficulty when he tried to discern whether it was liquid or gas. Eventually he felt the flex of his muscles on their own accord, and for a moment he panicked. It didn't feel wrong but it didn't feel right. His limbs were moving, and they wanted to move, but he didn't feel in control. They were very warm; his eyebrows, the bridge of his nose and the tips of his ears felt cold. He was covered. But that didn't make sense; he wasn't covered when he died.

Next to him, a woman spoke; the voice was familiar, but from a very long time ago. His head turned without him willing it to do so and he saw her; the light grey-black of her brows stood out from the thick fur wrappings that she also wore. Snow all around them told him that they were in Winterspring...he'd seen this before.

It was an image of the past, like what his mate experienced. But his mate reincarnated, and those images reminded her of lives past. Melas had been immortal for so long; he never saw those images because he remembered their experiences directly. And yet there he was, reliving a past memory of him and his mate in Winterspring, hiking toward a cave bearing a hot spring. He remembered exactly. This wasn't Anjula; this one was...Zeina. Zeina. It was his mate, the love of his life, his reason for living, but in a different incarnation.

Anjula. He told Anjula about Zeina, one of her former names. Recently. He was remembering something he told her recently.

Her incarnations often complained of the intensity of the images in the beginning after each reincarnation episode; he'd never realized how true that was. Images of him chasing her as she laughed and ran in the shallows of a lake mixed with the images he hated the most, of one of the many times he buried her as one of her incarnations passed away due to her race's short lifespan, leaving him alone to wait for two decades or maybe more until the images led her to him again. Sorrow, loneliness and a sense of urgency fueled him, and he felt his veins pulse in every inch of his body. Pain ripped through his lungs as he breathed, but he didn't know where he was. He wasn't in Winterspring; he wasn't in the shallows of a lake; he wasn't weeping over an elderly body containing and ancient soul. Where was he?

The pain spurred him, and he tried to rise from wherever he found himself. His forearms felt slimy as mud dropped down, but his mind wouldn't quite let him escape the darkness. An image of an earthen hut floated before his mind, and a dark woman milled about in a clearing surrounding it. Five squirrels roasted on a spit over a fire she'd whittled, and she patiently cleaned the skins while occasionally rotating the meat.

Peripheral vision filled until he could see the woods around the clearing. Faintly, he could hear humming as she worked. It was some sort of a chant, and he strained to recognize it, if only to hear the sound of her voice.

Her movement was so measured, so different from how she'd been just a few months before. Everything was careful and exact, and she didn't seem to mind taking her time. The only aspect that was awry was her tapping foot. Nervously, her left foot tapped whenever she held still, as if she were worried about waiting for something. The sun was up, and for sure she'd be worried.

Leaves rustled and her ears pricked up. A good distance away, a figure stood in the woods, though just out of her clear view. It bobbed up and down in place for a few moments and then shook violently before it moved again. Colors flashed as the expensive clothes of a town dweller moved between the densely packed tree trunks, and the man who had called himself Heralath stumbled toward the clearing. Panting, sweating, and limping, he put in a professional grade performance; Anjula was so on edge by the man's distraught appearance that she didn't even move forward to intercept him at first, standing mystified instead.

"Anjula! Oh Anjula, I'm so glad I found you, I'm so sorry!" the liar stuttered quickly as he almost hyperventilated.

Keeping her distance and suspicious as always, she tried to wave at him to get his attention. "Calm down, sir; where Melas be? What happened?" she asked in her still developing Darnassian.

"I tried to stop it but I couldn't!" Heralath gasped while bracing his hands on his knees. "Anjula I'm so sorry, I hope you don't hate me!"

"Where Melas be?"

"I was trying to find the target for my gathering quest but he slipped and fell into a trench! There was nothing I could do...he's gone!" Right away, he began to sob into his open palms, standing in the middle of the clearing and creating far more noise than was safe so far away from settled areas.

Doubting the man's story and his ability to assess whether someone had just slipped and hit their head or actually died, Anjula steeled her nerve, told herself it was impossible and just tied to calm the man down to make sense of the situation. "Calm down, ya gotta be quiet!" She patted Heralath on the shoulder in an attempt to help him control himself, and he did slightly while leaning in to her pat like an upset child seeking comfort. "I be sure it ain't washyu think. Come on, we gotta go-"

"Melas is dead! Dead! Deeaad!" Heralath wailed, nearly breaking down in a way that was completely illogical for a grown man. He threw his arms around her shoulders for a hug, violating her personal space and causing the follicles of her mane to bristle on the back of her neck. "It wasn't my fault, I swear."

"Damn it, Triton...just get me ta wherever he be and we can figure dis out," she grumbled while giving him a single awkward pat and then trying to step away from him. When he leaned his head against hers, his instability became so obvious that she not only disbelieved his story totally, but thought he must be insane. "Just tell me where he be and back off, I gonna be handlin dis!"

"I'm so sorry, I don't know what you'll do!"

"Triton, let go."

He hugged her tighter despite being noticeably shorter, clinging like a crazy person. "Anjula, you don't have anything to worry about...I can help you, if you show me that medallion we - ack!" he gagged as she caught him by the throat and unsuccessfully tried to shove him away from her. "Anjula, I can help you!" In reaction, Heralath grabbed a handful of her braids to hang on to as he tried to press up against her in a way she wouldn't even allow a friend to do.

"Get OFF!"

On savage instinct, Anjula leaned forward, hooked one of her tusks beneath Heralath's upper lip and yanked her neck and head backward as hard as she could, tearing the skin of his face in a disgusting display.

Heralath howled as he stumbled backward, falling to the ground and pulling Anjula's mane one last time to send her stumbling into one of the tree stump chairs. As her guest turned adversary writhed around on the ground and sobbed into his hands for real behind her, she stumbled up to her feet, completely convinced that the story had been a lie and Melas was out there somewhere. To her dismay, her wooden spear that she'd left at the edge of the clearing had been moved; Heralath had come from that direction, and she quickly realized that he must have taken it in anticipation of how she'd react.

The whizzing sound reached her long, sensitive ears only a split second before the first throwing knife passed her, nearly shortening one of those ears and causing her to yelp and jump up in the air. Unarmed, she spun around to meet her attacker, shocked by his appearance.

No longer the bumbling townie she'd taken him for in the beginning, Heralath had stood up and now held an entire leather roll of the sharp blades that he'd pulled from his bag; the first knife had embedded itself in a tree and he had over a dozen more at the ready. His upper lip, the inside of his right nostril and the right side of his nose had been split open by her tusk when he'd tried to assault her, leaving much of his gums and other red parts of the meat of his face exposed by the tear in his face, which hung unevenly on his head. Tears streamed down Heralath's cheeks for real, and his lower lip quivered as he cried in anger and pain - but not insanity.

"I tried to extend a helping hand, Anjula! I would have been good to you, but now look at me!" Blood splattered from Heralath's sliced lip as he spoke, and the entire right side of his face, neck and coat collar were soaked a deep red color. The pain should have been unbearable, yet it seemed to fuel the man's insistent shouting as he wielded another throwing knife. "I would have-"

"Ya don't even know meh ya psycho!"

"Just tell me where the medallion is!"

There was no way a knave like that would have been able to take on her mate in a fight; something was wrong. More so than fear, her inner self was ablaze with anger and defiance as she measured the sudden steadiness of Heralath's throwing arm and the desperate determination in his left eye. She was unarmed and he was still dangerous despite his injury, but his determination didn't match her stubbornness.

"It be here in ma purse!" she snarled back while patting the pouch on her belt. In a flash, she'd turned tail, dashed away, dodged a second knife and bolted out of the clearing.

Any sort of fatigue Heralath had feigned before was gone as he kept up a remarkable pace. She was a tribeswoman who grew up running around in the woods and he was an injured townie, but he was still an elf and she still a troll; his people were built for speed and no matter how many trees she dodged around, she couldn't quite lose him in the forest. Narrower feet pattered against the ground behind her, jumping every hurtle she tossed in his way. Returning to how her people were raised, she didn't bother looking back and focused only on navigating her way through the dense underbrush in front of her, zigzagging the entire way.

"Melas!" Anjula cried out to the forest, no longer worrying about what else might hear her as she tried to find where she assumed he last would have been.

More knives whizzed by, and it may only have been the daylight breaking through the canopy and interfering with his ultravision that prevented him from scoring a hit. Air cut as blades flew by her neck and shoulders, and it was clear that he was aiming to kill. After wasting what must have been half his blades, he stopped throwing and the pattering of his feet grew closer.

In the back of her mind, she doubted she'd be able to overpower him in a fight; by the standards of dark trolls, she was very short - a runt, even. The fact that he also had knives ensured that she wouldn't try, though she doubted she'd be able to outrun him, either. What spurred her on, however, was not those fears but her anger at having been told her mate was dead. It was possible even during the Long Vigil - even immortals could be killed by violence or accidents - but it felt so much more real now that Melas was mortal again. Mild panic mixed with her defiance, and she just tried to run in the direction she'd seen the two of them walk before dawn.

It didn't continue long before pain struck the inside of her lower right calf.

"Ack!" Anjula gasped as she felt one of the knives scrape the sensitive inside of her leg, just above the ankle.

It didn't hit a vein but it stung her leg more than had she been struck higher up, and she twisted to the side as he leg buckled to avoid a sprain. Without needing to look behind her, she twisted around all the way and let her fist fly, connecting with the top of Heralath's shoulder just as he leapt and tried to stab her in the back.

"Argh!"

The blow wasn't significant, but it certainly knocked him off balance. The sound of the bottom of her fist hitting him in the shoulder joint like a hammer sounded like a hollow log being struck, and he missed with his stabbing motion, dropped the knife somewhere to the side and hit a rock jutting out of the ground when he failed to stop running after she did. At the last moment he caught himself on a tree, and she scrambled to stand up on her uninjured leg and look for the knife he'd dropped.

Everything happened in slow motion, and she had time to notice that Heralath had stopped pursuing her and was staring at something. She could see his uninjured left side, and there was a look of fear on his face that brought joy to her heart.

Silently, another figure noticeably bulkier than Heralath and nearly as tall as Anjula broke out from the tall bushes and ferns that populated that part of northern Kalimdor. Violet skin had broken out into a few blisters, but many of them were rapidly disappearing as the green energy of a rejuvenation spell swirled around him. There were unnatural bags under his eyes and his kilt and boots were soaked with mud, but he was very much alive. And very angry.

"Melas, you're alive! I can't, I can't, believe it!" Heralath stuttered as he tried to regain his balance, completely forgetting about Anjula. Not a word was said as Melas continued to march toward him, breathing uneasily but not missing a beat as he clenched his fists. "I'm so glad things turned out, and they turned out, of course! I don't know what you might about thinking right - "

A coward to the bitter end, Heralath threw another knife at Melas in mid sentence, trying to trick his opponent into paying attention to his words and not his hands. In a flash, Melas reached out and grabbed the throwing knife in midair. By the blade. With his bare hands. And didn't suffer a single cut to his fingertips while doing so. Anjula gasped before she realized what her mate had done, and when he dismissively tossed the knife to the side, Heralath held his hands up in surrender.

"Melas, you see, I didn't really mean to throw that! I was nervous, and the sabre got out of the cage - you know what I mean ACK!"

A loud thud echoed in the woods as Melas punched Heralath right beneath his floating rib. The liar gasped and choked on saliva as Melas appeared to hold his fist against the liar's body rather than letting it bounce off from the recoil. It was only when he pulled back his knuckles and the three sharp blades overtop them that Anjula figured out he'd extended the claws of his gauntlets at the end of the punch.

Coughing up even more blood, Heralath fell into a pathetic heap before them, the right side of his face only loosely hanging on to the meat over his skull. He didn't even have time to say anything more before the vines and roots crawling out of the soil wrapped around him like an octopus and began pulling him into the ground.

"You will not even have the dignity of saying any last words," Melas growled as not a spell of his but nature itself swallowed the liar into the planet's surface. Even the dirt shifted and the process was nearly complete surprisingly fast.

"Tha medallion was in our hut back at tha camp anyway, stupid!" Anjula shouted one last time before Heralath was engulfed completely. Only a few blood stains on the grass remained; there wasn't even a lump of soil where he'd previously been.

There was no hesitation as Melas took her into his arms and found her already clinging to him tightly. There were no tears or lamentations as the two of them held each other close for a while. She could feel that his breathing was still uneven, and up close she could see that his eyes were irritated, but there would be time for finding out about that later. At that moment, she just wanted to hold on to him until she was absolutely sure it had all been a lie and he was right there with her.

Very little had been said after they'd returned to their campsite. On the slow walk back Melas had detailed the gas attack by their former guest and his visitation from his cousin in the Emerald Dream; Anjula had detailed the guest's behavior and obsession with the Cenarion Circle initiate medallion. Everything had happened in such a short span of time that there wasn't much else to tell, and they slept in each other's arms quickly due to the late hour in the morning for them - both his "tribe" and hers were nocturnal. He'd grown the vines and roots extra thick over the opening of their hut, just as a precaution should any other travelers cross through.

At one point, Anjula finally stirred, rolling over in their bedcovers to find the spot next to her empty. It had to have been night by that time, but they were in no rush and had intended to sleep as much as possible. Yet Melas sat right next to her in the hut, on the other side of the bedroll as he sifted through one of their intricately woven spiderweb bags. He didn't look groggy and must have already been awake for a few minutes.

"We can sleep again soon...but I wanted to give you something," he whispered in the darkness of the hut.

They'd grown so used to each other across the lifetimes spent together that they often forewent using segues in conversation, and both had a tendency to jump right to the point. Others might not find it romantic, but to her it simply meant that they knew each other very well.

"Hmm...what?" Her voice was faint and she wavered between trying to wake herself up a little more to see clearly what he was doing and simply trying to fall asleep again as soon as possible. "What is it?"

Like most of his kind, Melas was not particularly sentimental, and preferred to demonstrate affection through actions rather than words, gestures or expressions. But when he turned to face her, his brows were knit in a sense of apprehension so strong that she fought the drowsiness enough to sit up next to him.

When she looked into his eyes, she saw a sense of haste that was the polar opposite of the man she'd spent so many lifetimes with. That plodding, comfortable sense of ease still rested in there somewhere, but it wasn't in control at that moment. It was the most emotional she'd ever seen him.

"I...have done a fair bit of thinking...and not quite enough sleeping," he began quietly, leaving her hanging on his every word as he worked his way to the point. "Anjula...our relationship has changed. Forever. And we, too, must change if we wish to survive."

Confusion swelled inside her as she tried to understand what he was talking about, but it was all in futility. He had always been her rock; there was no way for her to predict what he was thinking at all in such a state. "What's wrong, dear?" she asked.

There was something in his hand; a small object he kneaded in his palm as he rotated it rhythmically. His eyes were trained on the wall of their hut, though he wasn't in any sort of a trance as she sometimes fell into.

"I don't know how...we function. From the very first time you came back to me, I never understood how it worked. All I know is that every time, you come back, and it's always you; the name and face changes, but it's a single mind and soul. As long as I lived due to my people's eternity, you were always there. But that time is over now. My people have changed; I have changed.

"I don't know how much time the Goddess has granted me, but I know that I'm ageing. I feel it. Eventually, I will grow old, and I will die. And because we don't know how reincarnation works-"

"This is too much," she burst out in a low voice. "I never wanted to think about this."

"We have to, Anjula! We have to! Yesterday...I died. It wasn't incapacitation; I died. I was resurrected, but that won't work when it comes from old age or natural death. And so I've been given a reminder...not a vision, but a reminder. My time draws near; maybe I, too, might be born again; maybe not. And...maybe, after I pass on-"

"No..."

"-you might still come back. And I...I won't be here. I won't be waiting for you."

Tears already began to well at the corners of her eyes. "I don't want to think about this."

"We don't have a choice. Whether we like it or not, this has been thrust upon us. I've seen what it's like. I went into the Emerald Dream...my cousin told me how it's true, what they say. Those who practice the Druidic arts can live on in the dream."

Before she could even protest, he had slipped something into her hand. His hands were gentle despite their strength, and it felt so touching despite the fact that he wouldn't have allowed her to resist. First, she only looked at him, confused as to what could possibly matter when they were discussing something so dreadful. But he stared at her so intently, with such a raw power that wasn't like him at all, that she felt the need to trust him even if his behavior didn't make sense.

Inside of her hand, she found something gleaming in the light from his amber eyes, and an object of the same color shone back. When she moved her fingers, she could feel the links of a chain attached to the object, and hear them clinking against each other. The emblem of the Cenarion Circle was imprinted in the top, as she could feel it when she ran her thumb over it.

Her confused look earned her no answer, and didn't shed any light on what he was trying to imply. "Melas...I don't understand-"

"We have to go. And we have to go soon. We've worked hard to keep this lifestyle out here, and I hope that one day we can shake off the trappings of civilization and return here...but not now. I saw today what may happen to me one day...and I say a means by which we can still be together."

It should have clicked earlier, but she felt so anxious that her ancient mind had difficulty connecting the dots. "You...you think I can be...like you?"

"I don't know; I never successfully trained as a Druid. I can't tell you what makes a good one or what the signs of aptitude are. But we have to try; whoever holds this is guaranteed a spot among the initiates, even without a sponsor or recommendation from someone else; that's why they made so few of these."

He lifted her hand up between them, and she let it lie in his as it moves up. The medallion was ancient and a bit weathered by time, and the emblem had become a bit worn. To think that some people lost personal items all the time, and yet he had held on to this token for thousands of years seemed almost impossible; yet she could vaguely remember it from before, ever present even if buried at the bottom of whatever bag he had at the time.

Sniffing and gulping, she nodded, knowing that they might not have any options anymore. "I'll do my best...for us. I don't know what will happen...in training, or in life. But no matter what, I will make this my focus."

The two of them looked at the medallion a little longer, the previous day's events having left an imprint on them both. The future was no longer entirely clear to them, and they couldn't wait forever. At one time, they thought they could, but that time was over.

Sleep crept up again and pulled them both back into the bedroll. There would be scant little time to rest before they would be on the move yet again; this time, they wouldn't be roaming for another isolated spot in the woods.

A/N: thanks for reading! I know the way the third chapter ended may have been unexpected, but I had to go where inspiration took me. And yes, Melas did literally die; he also literally got resurrected. Obviously, that experience is significant to the development if their bond.

Which means, of course, that this won't be the last we see of them. In addition to cameos in other stories, I'm planning at least one more full length tale for them set after the Cataclysm, shortly after their only child is born. I'm mentioning that here since Tan'jin will already be almost a year old by then, so it isn't really a spoiler since he's a part of the cast from the start of the story.

For now, that's still in the planning phase. I post the occasional drabble abd development piece over on DeviantArt (same user name), where you can also find the pic that Mischiart drew of Anjula and, hopefully soon, one she'll do of Melas. Until their next story...I wish you all the best!