~ * Author's Notes *~

Blizzard has given a lot of love to the Horde in Cata and Pandaland. You guys all know who is and is'nt bad in this game so I'm skipping a lot of what was suppose to be surprising character development of key lore figures. As for the Org chapters I won't be skipping them, but I will be speeding through them.

Sorry for the epic end notes; some of you need reminders.

~*~ Chapter 78 ~*~

Kayas froze. She fraught back the instinct to lacerate the hand on her tale. Anything to avoid being yanked off her feet, spun like a toy, and slammed into the cobblestones again. The scars on her neck and shoulders zinged with adrenaline.

The hand stayed where it was. It neither pulling nor squeezing. Just enough pressure so she couldn't go anywhere.

Slowly the druid's head swung around, as if guilt and suspicion slowed it's progress. Long ears swept back for defense as hackles rose. The oversized steak weighed a third as much as her skin and bones and almost touched the ground.

Scars on the cooks face did not surprise her, nor the course texture of his jagged dark blue hair. The eyes got her. Again the same vivid life filled them as the green of the other cooks. The Cauldron's skies had been orange; Duskwood black-blue and starless; Tirisfal gray with perpetual dripping rain; but the ocean and Orgrimar had blue and cloudless skies. This orc had equally cloudless eyes.

Right now they were focused narrowly to see through her stealth.

"I was OK with you watching," the deep voice was deliberately soothing, not accusing, "But I do not tolerate thieving." He spoke as one who did not expect her to understand his language, and yet the wash of tone was nonetheless polite.

Natural embarrassment took her then. He saw her the whole time, judged her not a threat, and ignored her. Embarrassment passed quickly. This was his home and he should notice things out of place. Her opinions on her ability to hide versus his ability to find conflicted.

He wanted the steak back but she was hesitant, wondering if orcs could get the plague of undeath that might be transmitted in her saliva. She hadn't seen any amongst the Forsaken, but maybe that was because being part demon already they were probably immune.

The grey-black-green cat twisted her tale left and then right, seeing if he'd let it go if she refused to cooperate. The slobber which dripped off the steak was a by-product of her long fast without meat. Druids needed their carnivore diet like ants need fallen fruit (3). Bread-and-cheese human fair did not satisfy the craving of a creature of nature who's every form hunted the flesh of others.

The hand stayed on her tail and a thick blue eyebrow went up. "Spit it out," the orc said politely. He seemed to think tone alone would acquire compliance.

In just a moment she wondered the following: Did he think she was just some hunter's pet run off or by seriously random chance did he believe she was an actual wildcat who'd managed to get this far into his city without notice? Though she knew there were light-skinned cats native to the Barrens south of Ashenvale did he think she might have somehow wandered down from Darkshore? Orcs might hunt in lower Ashenvale but the Sentinels at Maestra's Post made sure the ones who dared try for Darkshore did not make it back to the Warsong lumber camp without horror stories.

Her arrogance at assuming she was strong enough to take on the bears of Ashenvale was her downfall. Speed and agility were not enough when multiple predators had heft and girth. She was a little cat who wandered too far south of Darkshore. Cats need their meat, however. Was one steak too much to ask for?

Looking the orc in the eyes she shook her head, refusing to give up the steak.

The other cooks snickered. The orc with her tale frowned, narrowing his eyes in such a way as to make her shoulder's slink down. Refusal betrayed intelligence. Not some wildcat after all.

She broke stealth.

The cooks stopped snickering. They stared.

"What is that?!" Alarmed, both prep cooks took up cleaver and knife and advanced closer.

Alarmed herself, the little druid hissed around her mouth full of steak, sank her teeth in to the gums and swiped at the hand holding her tale. For a split second the hand released. Her paw went flying by. The other hand camped down. The quickness caused dismay. She didn't even gain forward momentum. Irritated at being handled so easily she hissed again, this time at the main cook.

He looked back to call his companions off, she swiped again. This time she did not miss. Her claws, sharp enough to maim most things, did not even break the thick leather of this orcs skin. She chose the wrong cook to steal from, yet he let go in surprise. Pulling back he inspected the damage, looked puzzled there was none.

Darting forward she made for the waterfall and fishing pond.

Lets see if orcs will break their swimming taboo for posterity. What was one steak from a mountain of dead animals? Hunting must be good in Durotar.

Five feet latter her steps ground to a sluggish pace. Air thickened to tar. Bones which were lightweight before felt like stone. The cook advanced. She crouched ready to spring away but even gravity was the enemy. Up and back down, frustratingly landing in the same spot. Her struggles made the air thick and her bones even heavier.

The cook snatched the stake from her mouth rather unceremoniously. He sliced off the broken bits, not at all affected by the sluggishness which had overtaken the cat, and threw them onto the fire. She growled with annoyance to hear them sizzle and pop, wasted. Why waste good meant? The light glow of her eyes tracked him back to the grill. In doing so she discovered the source of the most pressing of annoyances.

A totem. It sat sat happily sending out waves of grounding energy(1). Five whole seconds latter she managed to turn completely and stare the pole down while the cooks went back to their food. As far as they were concerned the sickly cat was taken care of. Orcs were large. Could she blame them for not being afraid of something which probably didn't outweigh their cleavers? They babbled in a barely understood Orcish, mixing several words from unknown sources into their language. Her stone could not translate them all and she was left to deal with the totem while they ignored her.

Shaman. The cook was a shaman. She swiftly dismissed his shamanic abilities if he were reduced to cooking steaks for social gatherings instead of being a wild thing out in the wild where wild things belonged. From her understanding shamans were a different kind of thing from druids, but that they were twin branches of the same tree. Or something like that.

The alliance had no real understanding of shamans at all. They had a habit of stepping out of their bodies during questioning and just, annoyingly enough, not participating in the session. Attempts to torture them ended badly when mere will alone invoke a kind of rage which dwarfed that of a warriors in scope, breadth, and damage. As a draw back it was also shorter lived, just like the jailers who had brought on the rampage. All that intelligence agents (2) could discover was that some could heal, some could control the weather, and all of them were adept killers given any sized blunt object and two seconds to invoke that eye-reddening battle lust. Strong sedatives, body anchors for the ghost, and manually returning the spirit to the nether once the body died were all they had figured out. Otherwise it was not uncommon for dead shamans to just resurrect themselves and ghost away.

Most annoying, high-maintenance prisoners ever.

Shifting out of her feline form she called the powers of the unseen moon to her bidding and aimed the bolt of Elune's power at the totem. She was back in feline form and charging the cook the next instant.

"What was th-" - cook.

"-get it off the-" - prep-cook 1.

"Magic from that thing?" - prep-cook 2.

They all talked at once: she tuned them out. She was on the cook like a spider, climbing thick leather pants and wide belt like a tree. Thick skin gave her claws purchase and she didn't even think they could do the orc damage. His skin had no different feel to her paws then the leather of his belt. Though he was shirtless he did keep a sheath for a long blade over one shoulder. The blade was currently hilt deep in a wolf carcass and carelessly left out of easy reach.

The steak dangled temptingly from one hand. She made it to shoulder height in the blink of an eye and launched herself down that arm. He wasn't fast enough to avoid having the ripe bit of flesh pierced by her fangs a second time. He'd have thrown her to the ground easily if he wanted to, yet did not.

And here came the priest. The druid didn't know when he appeared or how long he had been watching, but judging by the settled dusk he'd been there long enough to justify wearing his expressionless expression. From experience she knew he was controlling his emotions with practiced perfection. He displayed no amusement or opinion while watching an orc try to shake a starving feral cat off a piece of meat, and two others laughing as they dodged her knife-claws.

The two other cooks howled with laughter. This brought the entire wedding party to the edge of the wall and they too started shrieking in delight. Try as they might to grab the writhing animal she fought back. One of them remarked that they would pull back stumps for fingers if they kept trying. She yowled around the steak, tale lashing, claws spread wide and far. One paw at a time gripped the bracers while the other defended territory. All hanging two feet off the ground suspended from one arm.

The Priest walked his horse slowly over to the pair. She saw him coming, laid back her ears and gave her most menacing growl. It threatened his ability to have children should continue this unwise course of action. He ignored it, staring her down as he came.

The crowd gathered atop the wall including a great many women cheering half for the mystery cat and half for the orc. That is, until the priest showed up. The cheering changed suddenly: it was between herself and the priest and she appeared to be the new favorite. In another form she would have snorted and stuck her tongue out at him. Apparently the blood elves ranked below wildcats in the orcish popular opinion.

Kayas was more than mildly flattered.

It was better to get away than continue to fight gravity and now the priest. Flipping herself upright she sat down on top of the wide arm of the orc like she owned the place and did not move while the Priest drew near. Every hair on her body stood on end. Whispers went up at the increased glow of her eyes and fell-bright scars. Up on toes she went, back arched like she had seen house cats do in human memory crystals. She spat hatred and drooled.

Still he drew nearer.

~ End Notes ~

1) Some Notes about changes to Shamans, in order to avoid a lot of tiny notes in future chapters. Some of these notes are not relevant till latter, but I still chose to put them here as an anthropology-type quick read.

a. In Vanilla only Horde had shamans. Alliance had Paladins. This story is set in late Vanilla-very,very early BC. The Exodar has not brought Draenie to Vacation Fun Island yet.

b. Totems lasted 2 minutes, except elemental totems which lasted 30 seconds. You could only summon one at a time and it had a 15 minute CD (if I remember right). I go by the original totem utility, CDs and graphics.

c. Shamans used to rely on MP5 gear for mana. This did not drop reliably till the late 50s. Because they had the smallest mana pool in the game this meant you'd have to level enhance to avoid spending more time on your butt drinking than fighting mobs. Players dealt with not being able to use their laughably ineffective totems (at least for questing) because of this small pool until ICC. When ICC hit and MP5 was taken away and shamans converted to spirit the discrepancy in mana pool size (we're talking thousands of points of spellpower, not just a few hundred) sent players rioting over the forums setting them on fire with complaints. Blizzard promptly patched in larger mana pools for shamans, making them match those of druids. To this day I have a theory that crappy sized mana pools for Vanilla shamans is why Thrall never dropped totems when people raided Org to kill him.

d. For anyone who ever though complaining on the forums on Tuesdays when the servers were down would get us nothing, I'm here to attest to the Power of the Player ™. "We Want Blue Glowing Hands" is a thread that maxed out five times with player signatures (mine included) and is the reason shamans were given their own auditory and graphical healing animations. They used to share druid healing animations despite their healing powers being water based. I retconed that change in my writing, giving them the updated graphics.

e. Shamans used to have faction totems only. All Horde shamans had orc totems and all Alliance shamans had Draenie totems. I have deemed to retcon the racial totem change, allowing each race to keep their own totems.

f. Shamans used to quest for their totems. For instance you could learn rank 1 grounding totem at level 28 from your trainer, but could not actually use the totem until you did your earth totem quest at level 30. I love class quests for obvious reasons (RPG, anyone?), and have opted to keep them in my story despite Blizz removing most of them from the game.

g. Back when you had to learn your abilities from class trainers it was annoying leveling horde druid or alliance shaman in BC. The Eastern Kingdoms didn't have a druid trainer for horde side or a shaman trainer for alliance. Blizz has since fixed this, parking way too many druid and shaman trainers everywhere and removing most other trainers. This to make up for years of players forced to hearth from a questing zone on one continent all the way to another so they could get training every other level. You'd do that to avoid having to run all the way to a class trainer then back to your quest zone. Even with mounts at level 30 you'd still have to do a lot of running if you rolled druid or shaman.

2) SI:7 and the unnamed agencies of rogues employed by other alliance faction leaders. I really wish I had done the rogue quests for the Night Elves back when each class had race-specific quests that let you know why that race was allowed to play that class. I'm curious to know what these quests were and what the quest givers had to say to players who decided to to roll the socially outcast, pariah class.

3) This is true in real life; people who begin shamanism training as vegetarian/vegan will always go back to an omnivore diet. There has so far only been one exception to this rule and even then the lady went from being vegan to just vegetarian. Cheese Morals, for shamans at least.

5/10/15-8/22/15 and edited 9/28/15