Suntwist Scribbles

The lawyer is a human with a thick Westfall accent. As he approached the stand, he places his reading glasses strategically as not to frighten the doe-eyed girl. The courtroom is abuzz-- it's hard to distinguish between thoughts and idle chatter from the pews.  What follows are the stenographer’s notes, translated:

"Hello, Mrs. Mournvalor. Now, I promise, I won't take too much a' your time. Would you please tell us 'bout ch'your relationship to the de-ceased?"

“Yes, ah… We were work acquaintances–though our circles didn’t cross too often.  He worked in investigations.”

"Are you currently em-ployed? What was your last place of employ-ment?"

“No, sir.  Not since my wedding, sir… I worked for the city as a correctional counselor before that.  Augur’s Row division.”

"Now, Mrs. Mournvalor, can you tell us about ch'your husband? What is he like?"

“Zelion?  Oh, he’s… he’s a quiet man.  Pensive, a little sad… but a man of clear values and a strong sense of justice.”

"Do you recall the de-ceased meetin' with ch'your husband?"

“Yes, he trained under Zelion’s father as a squire for years. As I understand it, their families were quite close.”

"What about the night of August 14th, Year 631-- that's year 38 for you elves-- do you recall the de-ceased comin' to make y'all a visit that night?"

“...Yes.”

"Could you tell me how you were dressed that evenin'? How 'bout ch'your husband and the de-ceased?"

“It was late… I was already in my bedclothes.  Zelion had been up working–he was in his shirtsleeves and lab apron when Larin–the deceased–arrived in uniform.  Well, partial uniform.”

"Do you recall either of them two men actin' strangely or errat'cly?"

“Larin, he… he was pounding on the door and shouting… He’d been drinking.  I… I couldn’t understand a word he was screaming, his speech was so slurred–”

"They say that ch'you can hear the thoughts a' men. Can you tell me what was on the de-ceased's mind that night?"

“He… he was so intoxicated, it’s hard to say.  He was angry.  Something about interference in a case?  His badge?  I… I’m sorry, it was all a blur–”

"What 'bout ch'your husband's?"

“... to protect me.  Protect our home.  He hadn’t done anything wrong–”

"Mrs. Mournvalor, do you believe your husband is the type of man who could take a life?"

“...yes, but–!”

"I rest my case.”

---

Gilneas - 17 years ago

The floorboards creaked in an otherwise silent house as Lizzie brought the final piece to the altar: a wooden deer head candlestick, with wax bleeding from a single eye.

She made the altar beautiful, just as her mother taught her. Poppy and corn cockle made for striking flowers, with their dressy, vibrant petals. Yellow rattle looked funny in comparison, with its many heads poking out from spiked leaves, like little baby bird beaks. Bluebells were her favorite-- it was said faeries rung then to summon their gatherings, and if a human could hear the chimes, they would be lost in the woods forever.

She placed the bouquet behind the candlestick and kneeled, hands folded in her lap and head bowed in prayer.

Every night, she lit the candle, just as her mother taught her. She didn't know what it did-- only that on nights when she forgot, something lingered outside until dawn.

She could feel its gaze through the glass, steady and unblinking.

On the outskirts of town, magic permeated the air. Rumors floated about; a shambling, fleshless undead was said to have been spotted two miles south of the Emberstone mine; a wolfman with a ravenous appetite in the Northgate Woods; and a swamp creature lurked Blackwald Bogs, waiting for their next catch.

Many dismissed the rumors as hearsay. The Gilneas wall was impenetrable, they said.

Lizzie was not among them. She'd seen the cracks in the wall and knew of the bodies buried underneath. She knew the pain the land felt when it was split, with parents and pups divided, and not enough harvest remaining for hungry mouths, human or otherwise. She knew of Crater, and the wayward students cast out from there, driven bitter and lonely with madness.

The matchstick seared in the dark. She held it to the candle. When she drew back, the wick was naked.

She held the match to the candle again, until the flames stung her fingertips. The light was snuffed on the fleece blanket below the altar.

The candle remained unlit.

Her breath caught in her lungs. Fear was a cold rock sinking in the pit of her stomach. 

She struck another match.

Nothing happened. The wick remained pristine white.

This time when she struck the match, she saw it-- eyes in the darkness outside her window, locked on her.

She yelped, flames licking blisters on the tip of her fingers.

The deer head candlestick looked up at her mockingly.

Her heart raced.

Vines creeped in beneath the window, slithering like snakes. Slowly, the window cracked open, guided by grimy fingers.

The creature was big and shaggy, except for its man-like torso. Beady eyes peeked out from a boar’s head.

A trembling hand scooped the deer effigy off the altar.

“Fuck you!” she screamed, throwing it at the monster. “Don't come any closer! I won't let you hurt my family!”

The creature tilted its head, observing her curiously.

Dawn bled in through the curtains, but Lizzie hadn’t slept.

Her father had burst in, but the candlestick was gone, and so was the thing that had taken it. He found his daughter sobbing in the corner of the room, curled up in the fetal position.

He carried her back to his bed and brushed the hair out of her face, but she wouldn't say what had happened.

She didn't tell anyone-- fear sealed her lips, and deep inside a quiet promise formed: next time, she'd be ready.

And she’d never trust that fucking deer head again-- not after what it let in.

@daily-writing-challenge

Cory had a dream that he was drowning.

The boat was long and narrow with a knife-like bow cutting the water. The sail bore his family crest: a red rose against a black banner. The deck was crowded with aristocrats and heads of state.

Someone pushed him.

The water welcomed him. The view of the boat receded quickly, its noise and ceremony fading. It felt good to be alone.

The image of his father looming at the rail-- arms crossed, expression like stone-- was the last thing to fade from view.

I should swim up, he thought, and out of obligation he moved his arms. The surface grew no closer.

A tendril coiled around his ankle. The water grew cold and inky black. Air bubbles fled his lungs.

I should panic, he thought, but mustered nothing but curiosity for the depths below.

It felt good to be alone.

When sunlight filtered through the skylight above his bed, he rose and poured himself a cup of bitter black coffee.

It had been a while since he had that dream. Years, in fact. He wasn't one for tea leaves or tarot cards, but there was no denying that things happened that he didn't understand. Waking anxiety could always bleed into the sleeping realm.

But he hadn’t felt fear in the dream.

He remembered the cold. And how good it felt to disappear.

@daily-writing-challenge

Hey Ma, look! No hands!

No one ever tells you how much work it is digging up a dead body.

A year ago today, before the fall of Dalaran...

It was a matter of time before Kallarel discovered Bruce's dark, dirty secret.

At first it was easy to hide. There was so much to do-- so much furniture to craft.

Arcane was like a frost in Dalaran. The Element of Order permeated organic material, making oak stiff and unworkable. Everything had to be imported to the floating City, and it was no small secret that one wood resisted Arcane better than all others: the driftwood-like gray slabs from the Felwood Forest.

But Felwood Forest was the territory of satyrs and demons. A portal master was easy enough to befriend and bribe, but a logger proved difficult to hire.

Until he mentioned it to Kallarel, who waved a hand dismissively. Her contacts proved more exorbitant than originally anticipated-- something about a broken contract-- but a few violet crystals from storage hired the services of a Felguard for a week.

He tried not to think about the sweat-soaked basement where trusting men spilled their blood upon a scarred stone altar.

The wood was soft, so he painted it with resin until it took on a warm, reddish hue and shined it with varnish. It was easy to preserve the contours of wood for their bedframe, which he decorated with intricate filigrees and a luxurious crimson canopy, but lockboxes for the jewelry store and cabinets for their kitchen required composite.

The work was often tedious and repetitive, but satisfying and creative to assemble.

After a few months, only one project remained: the one which would reveal his darkest secret when finished.

It was far from the first bookshelf he ever made. The longest felwood pieces would become the sides of the case. A composite was suitable for the rear. Three shelves became six, divided by a vertical panel down the center, under which he placed a filler piece to act as a support and prevent sagging when it was full. When the varnish dried, it was time.

He unpacked the books from her home first, stalling for time, but then--

He checked his Thalassian dictionary three times in disbelief.

Dalore Rio’more. Translated to common: Star Lovers. A story, he gleaned, about the forbidden romance between a night elf and a high elf.The spine was well-worn. His heart thrummed.

Baal Lodan’o. Translation: Pact of My Passion. She was a purveyor of the occult, the back of the book read; he, a dastardly rogue with a warrant for his arrest.

The third novel he went to place on the shelf: a simple Thalassian translation of the Steamy Romance Novel series. Of Elven Bondage.

His dark, dirty secret withered away.

Suddenly his favorite series of smutty pirate novels seemed not so out of place in their new home.

Previous

Do what you will with her, Zelion's letter read.

Don't waste this opportunity, read his father's.

“How strange that you should take your time.”

He shook the memory from his head and threw open wide the door.

He always hoped she would visit his workshop.

Mess that it was!

She arrived at his mansion in the remote mountains of the Plaguelands a month prior, moon-eyed and on stilt-like legs with a sungrass joint tucked behind her ear.

She was a bit stiff, at first, but he was accustomed to that; his family was, after all, enormously wealthy and powerful even among their fellow Sin’dorei.

Or at least Corwin Bloodrose Senior was.

The facade was easy enough to crack. When he couldn't recall the honorific the Mournvalor family title demanded, he took to using several-- and the first of many inside jokes was born. After a few bowls of Horde-e-o’s supped in his Observatory together and a night in which he schooled her in the basics of Hearthstone, the awkwardness of their first meeting melted away.

And awkward it had been. For a fleeting moment, as they sat across from one another at the dinner table, he was convinced she was sent to surveil his research-- his real research, not the Mournstone drivel he did for his father nor the hogwash he used as a distraction for the masses.

And she--

“I think I was sent here to die.”

He could feel it, like a beast lurking in the dark outside a frosted window pane. It began meager, plaintive like a cat demanding entry from the cold; then, the further his fingers trailed down her split bodice, the more fervid it became-- like claws scoring the arcane defenses of his mind.

But proof lay beneath the high neck and ruffles of her stately blouse: a Mournstone, as promised by the letters of Zelion and Corwin Bloodrose Senior.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, but it wasn't her husband's handiwork to which he referred.

It was a golden curl, painted warm by the nearby candle light.

“You have beautiful hair.”

Then-- “Sorry,” he professed for the inappropriate nature of his remark.

And, “Sorry,” she echoed with a wild stare as she slipped the knife into his gut.

How awkward! Until they shared a laugh as she tidied his weak attempt to mend the wound with Holy magic.

“Lady Dame Admiral Hesterlynn Mournvalor! First you stab me, then you apologize and heal me!”

Because she was right!

She was right to act in self defense. She was sent to him to die!

And he was to be her executioner.

“I really don't know how you feel about me at this point. You'd better stab me one more time for good measure!”

“How strange that you should take your time.”

He shook the thought from his head and threw open wide the door.

"Lady Dame Admiral Hesterlynn Mournvalor!” He ushered her into his shop, where a jazzy, swingy mix crackled on the gramophone.

An ugly bruise painted the bridge of his nose shades of violet and red, like a galaxy born of brute and malice. A bandage obscured the worst of it, acting as a stint and padding to the scratched glasses resting gingerly atop.

"I wanna show you something!”

He took her by the wrist and lead her through a narrow path, between tables scattered with gears; between a cooled blacksmith's furnace with a glass-blowing port and an anvil, draped with hooded leather gloves; over the spilled bits and teeth and the toolchest that had fallen; between hanging lights and lamps, all of which could be drawn closer on a gliding rail; and finally, in the rear of the shop beneath the shadow of a mechanized colossus, to an unassuming, messy desk scattered with books, a tobacco pipe laced with mana thistle, a faded photograph of two dark haired boys and their prized Hearthstone cards, and a dozen half-finished, hand-sized projects with dead lights and exposed copper wires.

Cory pushed up the slipping glasses on the bridge of his broken nose and plucked a wrist plate from the center of it all.

It was well past noon when Hesterlynn finally stirred.

Her head throbbed with each sluggish beat of her heart.  She clutched the icy weight in her chest.

Where am I?

A bed, but not her own.  The room was spartan, almost clinical, devoid of any decoration save an ornate vanity by the window, with curtains drawn shut against the red dusted sunlight of the Eastern Plaguelands.  A silver tray held a cold tea service and a vase bursting with colorful wildflowers: violet dreamfoil, white peacebloom, crimson roses–

Zelion’s instructions had been simple: “You are to offer your assistance to Lord Bloodrose in whatever manner he sees fit.”

Hester willed the Light to the awful ache in her skull, and caught sight of her chipped manicure. Beneath her nails was dirt and shredded skin.

She lifted the dull linen sheets. The fabric of her dress was rife with wood splintered runs and ruined by dirt.  A gorey spill of dried blood ran the length of her ruched bodice.

It was not her own.

She should have never gone to that party.

Too many beds

Accidentally kidnapping a mafia boss

Really nice guy who hates only you

Academic rivals except it’s two teachers who compete to have the best class

Divorce of convenience

Too much communication

True hate’s kiss (only kissing your enemy can break a curse)

Dating your enemy’s sibling

Lovers to enemies

Hate at first sight

Love triangle where the two love interests get together instead

Fake amnesia

Soulmates who are fated to kill each other

Strangers to enemies

Instead of fake dating, everyone is convinced that you aren’t actually dating

Too hot to cuddle

Love interest CEO is a himbo/bimbo who runs their company into the ground