[ Left for Avie -- when she returns from the infirmary -- is a bottle of whiskey, relatively expensive and clearly bought and carried from Ironforge by its purchaser. ]

Avie,

I haven’t heard anything from you. But I heard what happened to the Dawnspire. I don’t know when you’ll get this, but it seems like you’ll probably need a drink or ten.

Happy Winter’s Veil. E.

-

[ Left for Elystirra at her door to her rooms in Suel’thalas is a bottle of spiced rum and a covered plate. If it is investigated, there’s a significant pile of handmade sugar and chocolate chip cookies. ]

Ely,

I hope you like cookies! I made them myself while testing recipes for the party next week.

Oh, and enjoy the rum. E.

-

[ Left for Cayeli is a letter, along with a strange statue. Blue-purple in color, it appears to be spun from pure mana made solid: a lifelike recreation of Caye’s pet raven. The entire thing glistens slightly, as if it could spring from her hands at any moment. However, one wing is shorter than the other, the entire thing slightly deformed -- as if the maker ran out of mana right at the end. If she takes her eyes off of it -- lays it down, forgets about it -- she may catch it taking an ambling flight around the room before landing back in the spot she left it. ]

Cayeli.

You said you wanted to get to know me. I’ll admit, there are plenty of people out there who will tell you I’m not the best friend you could want or have. I don’t even think I’m a good friend. But if you want to try, then I suppose that’s fine.

Happy Winter’s Veil. I tried to make you something neat, but I ran out of mana -- Synthiel always tsks at me about mana management. The only person I know who makes pure spun mana statutes isn’t around any more, so I’m trying to recreate the process by just examining my own and reverse engineering, basically. 

He flies, sometimes. All the mana statues seem to come to life, occasionally. But it’s never when you expect it. E.

-

[ Ithranicus receives a very large package at his campsite delivered by a very grumpy panthara -- who hisses at him, attempts to nip at his fingers, and then disappears into the woods. Inside are two things: a small, bound tome in as neat Thalassian as Eleeria can manage, describing her training and day to day care of Valkyria. The second is a bow -- made out of a branch, clearly made following the lesson he taught her. ]

Ithranicus,

Never let it be said I haven’t been listening to your lessons.

I thought you might like an account of training Valkyria. A lot of it was trial and error -- I used to train children in assassin’s work. A long time ago. It felt kind of like that. I was using it as translation practice since I’m still not so proficient at Thalassian. I’m sorry if parts of it are dodgy, but I was trying to make it legible...

If you...happen to see your sister sometime, can you sneak her something? It’s not wrapped or anything.

Thanks.

I’ll have your book back to you soon. Reading is slow. I have to look up some of the longer words in a dictionary before I understand them, but I’m trying. It’s kind of neat, really. Eleeria

-

[ Siildore’s present is unwrapped, and relatively simple: a necklace, relatively short and elegant, with three small sapphires embedded in the silver. Clearly it’s made to wear with some of the dresses Siildore enjoys so much, but not be overly ostentatious. The note wrapped around it is small, with not much description. There’s only so far she can break the rules, really.  ]

Made it myself. E.

[ Shahin receives a very large plate of a variety of cookies! There’s no real wrapping other than foil to keep them soft and warm -- delivered to his door by a redhead who quickly disappears from sight. Hmm. ]

Shahin,

I was going to get you a sword but then I got busy and the blacksmith I have making the sword may actually be dead. So! Cookies! I hope you like them!

See you soon, E.

-

[ And finally, Synthiel receives a book -- a copy of a lexicon of poisonous plants and their uses. ]

Synthiel,

This is the only book I read. I thought you might find it interesting, and I’m so tired of getting you alcohol (though you’re welcome to come over and drink any time).

Happy Winter’s Veil! E.

Oh, what a fool she had been. As her body wracked in pain, watering eyes staring up at the stars that extinguished one by one above her, she could not imagine anything she should have done more than grieve for her lover. The darkness saw into her soul and saw her fault lines: the pride, the arrogance. I should have died instead. I should have died. He shouldn’t be dead. Foolish girl, thinking she could take on the world’s ills when her own clawed at her heart so thoroughly. She could not bear the weight of the world and also the weight of her own self-imposed torture.

And so she had broken; she curled into a ball, unwilling to move. Eleeria had, for one of the rare moments in her life, let the pain wash her somewhere else.

Let me die.

She wanted nothing more. She wanted to go wherever Waraylon had gone -- she did not want to exist here, in a world so vast and lonely that she would never find another quite the same. The world was awful without him, a fact she rarely allowed herself to accept. But now, as the awful force of the void bore down upon their camp and swept debris past her face, as structures collapsed around her, she accepted how awful she felt. She accepted that she was miserable, that she was lonely, that she could not imagine a world in which she didn’t come home at the end to Waraylon’s smile, his voice, his touch.

The tears were not from pain; even as Buran healed her and others passed from around her still form on the ground of Mac’aree, she curled into herself. She could not understand what they were saying around her -- or perhaps she didn’t want to know. She did not want to care any more.

At some point, she found her legs. They carried her back to wherever she could find a tent to lay in -- her own tent had escaped destruction, it seemed, which was well enough for her. She wanted to lay down and never get back up again. Eleeria didn’t understand why the world had given her such a good thing only to take it away; she didn’t understand why she was still here when the good in the world was not. She didn’t deserve it. If anything, she wished that Wild had left her to die on that field tonight.

Eleeria let the remnants of her acid-slashed armor fall from her form, mutely pulling on one of the last shirts she had that belonged to Waraylon in their stead. Slowly, the small woman curled into her cot, eyes staring at the beige of the tent, at the darkness encroaching, at nothing at all.

And she didn’t get up.

She stopped trying.

“Y’always so cuddly?” His voice was amused -- thank the gods for that -- and infused with some warmth. Eleeria shook her head no -- no! she wasn’t cuddly at all! -- even as her body betrayed her, still snuggled up next to her companion for the evening. Resigning herself to never getting more sleep once someone started talking to her, a dark green eye opened, staring between the strands of hair that draped over her face to see her grinning friend, completely unrepentant. Eleeria sighed, blowing the hair out of her face as she pulled herself out of the small ball she had created of her own form.”’M joking, I promise...” He seemed vaguely nervous -- their conversation from the night before was not forgotten, she assumed. And it shouldn’t be; she would have been offended if there had not been some hesitation, after the secrets she had shared. Eleeria examined him for a long moment, long enough that she could sense the nervousness building in his chest -- perhaps too long for a real conversation. She realized that staring at people, especially those laying naked in her bed, was likely off-putting. Although she desired nothing more than to simply stare and work out his secrets that he wrapped so closely around him like a second skin, the small woman settled for the second-best alternative.

“Oh, shut up.” She huffed, brushing her hair out of her face again before leaning in to him. Shanks was so warm; she had missed this, the physical sense of another person in her bed. Eleeria pressed a series of kisses to his jawline, hoping that the action would at least dispel some of his worries. She did not intend on harming him; quite the opposite in fact, remnants of sleep making her more amenable to affection than she normally would be. Shanks let out a soft exhale, his arms wrapping around her slim frame with a surety that she would almost certainly call cocky, but that right now she didn’t quite care to define in any way other than pleasing.

“Cuddle me, I’m cold...” She whined softly as she continued to pester him with affection, kisses trailing along his neck and down his shoulder, simply because she could. Shanks obliged, tugging her back under the covers as he wrapped her in his own warmth as well. Gods, did he have so much hair; Eleeria let her hands move up to tangle in it, tugging softly at the strands that she admired so much.

“I’m not going to say it’s ‘cause you took yer shirt off, but...”

“Do you want me to put it back on~?” She stopped her examination of his warm skin with her lips, turning her head to raise an eyebrow at him.

“Oh no, no. Continue being so gloriously naked...”

“That’s what I thought!”

“Though yer ankle gave me the vapors, seeing you like this...I may jus’ faint.”

“Don’t you dare! Shanks, if you decide to faint on me while I’m being cute, I swear to whatever fucking god is listening I’ll beat you up!” Eleeria laughed, hands reaching for Shanks’ cheeks to pull him in for a proper kiss. A breath too long, a heartbeat too sentimental -- she felt the empty space left behind by Waraylon in the moments between seconds, the sad ball in her chest still looming despite her present enjoyment. But...it didn’t hurt, as much as it did before. It wasn’t consuming her. She supposed she had Shanks to thank for that: his laughter was infectious, bringing a genuine smile and even a giggle bubbling from her lips. She had laughed sincerely for the first time in what felt like weeks, letting the trauma and pain ebb from her shoulders. Eleeria put down her burdens for a night, letting the pirate who occupied her bed ease them for her, if only temporarily. And although she was certain her mourning was not complete, she felt...better. Slightly better. There was nothing clawing at the underside of the bed to haunt her. There were no ghosts to drag behind her as she crossed the unfamiliar planes of this world and the one beyond, hanging in the sky.

Breaking the kiss, the small woman flushed, suddenly at a loss of what to say. Shanks paused for only a moment, examining her face in much the way she had his only moments before, before leaning in to close the gap between then once again, lips pressing against hers, if fleetingly.

“I’m sorry....” She didn’t enjoy apologizing, but it felt merited. In the moment, she felt ashamed that she had to put such heavy feelings on his shoulders. Eleeria could feel the line she had crossed in some tangible way, tugging him closer than she had intended to, even as they both strove so hard to keep one another some semblance of away from the truth. And the fact that she had done it out of selfishness, to heal her own wounds to the heart, made her feel suddenly exposed in a way that she had never been before. The assassin paused, features laden with sadness as she watched the man who had, despite his own problems, spent the evening making her feel like herself again. Shanks smiled, reaching out to brush a thumb against her cheek -- catching her chin before she could duck away.

“Don’t be sorry.”

“I--” She let him cut her words off for the moment, another kiss pressed to her lips. It was her choice, to tug him closer -- pulling him on top of her, reassuring warmth effusing her slim frame. She let her body speak the gratefulness that she could not manage; the words she wanted to say, caught behind a wall of stubbornness and pride, coming more easily in the sound of her caught breath, the arch of her spine in pleasure.

When they finally parted, Eleeria moving across her apartment clad only in the topsheet and a halo of her strawberry hair to find something to eat, she finally broke the silence on the subject. “Thank you.” She glanced over her shoulder, watching the man who reclined so casually in her bed. His smile was cocksure, something carefree in the gesture. As if his kindness came so easily that it was nothing at all for him to offer something so profound. It took him a long moment to respond -- Eleeria was nervous that he was going to say something she could not handle in the moment, fingers caught in the sheet wrapped around her anxiously--

“I can think of at least ten other ways y’could thank me, if ye were so inclined...” The obvious gesture he made towards his pelvis made Eleeria gasp, gathering the topsheet into a ball to throw over Shanks, her cheeks flaming

“Ass!”

“But a handsome ass! Hey-- not the pillow-- ow, I’m dying! Murder!”

Not that it mattered; running away was a fact of life and one that was, honestly, completely comprehensible. In lieu of a verbal response to her inner demons, she raised the glass thing to her lips. Rum. Almost out of rum. She had gone through several bottles of rum. She could not remember how many counted as several. At least five. She thought. She couldn’t be sure.

The day had long since passed in a whirl of color and sound. Shanks had been here at some point -- but he wasn’t here now, Eleeria thought, gone in a whirl of lilted vowels and sordid promises. She wasn’t sure how long ago that was -- the bloodthistle and fel crystals had taken care of any sense of time as of yesterday, and the small woman was not keen to come down from the high any time soon. Perhaps that was why he had left. She knew as well as anyone the type of person she was when high -- things disappeared from her mind like smoke: ephemeral, fleeting. There at first, and gone in a laugh, a smile -- what had she been thinking of again? Right, Shanks.

She still had to talk to him. About what, she couldn’t remember; her thoughts slipped away again. Water through her fingers. That was alright, she supposed. Water had been good to her, until it hadn’t, until that orc had grabbed her by the hair and shoved her head into that piss water--

Eleeria gasped, sitting up with a dangerous swish of the rum. Securing the bottle between her knees, she used her sole hand to run through her hair. It was dirty. When had she taken a shower? A bath? Days. More than days?

Another long drink from the bottle.

And another.

I’ll admit, it’s been kind of lonely up here on Argus. There aren’t many people to talk to -- not like I talk to you or Felo’thore, or Shahin -- and so I ended up wandering to the medical tent. It reminded me of Northrend, a little bit; of Eastern Plaguelands for sure. Sitting around and helping you and Lirelle label items and clean...those are some of the best memories of those times. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it, but there’s something about all the small stuff that’s really soothing. It makes me forget that I’m alone and there’s no one to talk to, and helps me remember to do something useful.

You’d really like the medic in charge. Her name is Elystirra, and just like you I’m pretty sure she would pile drive someone into the ground to make them sit still to heal them. You know, if you could hurt anyone -- but I imagine if you could, you would totally do that. She runs the medical stuff here, I think, and one day I should introduce you two. You could grumble about the stupidity of patients or something. But somehow I think she’s not as excited about paperwork as you are.

When I come back to town, we should talk. I want to pet Talouse and see how Cassi is doing. Has she learned how to unlock doors and run out of them, yet? Maybe she’s too little for that, I suppose -- but if she’s actually running wild I suppose it’s only a matter of time!

E.

[ Addressed to Tyleril Silversword, this one bears an official seal: the azure of House Silverwing, a raven dipping over ocean waves the sealed image engraved in the wax. The parchment is of good quality, the handwriting -- actually a bit terrible, but written with so many exact strokes that it’s as if a very poor writer is trying very hard to make it look nice. ]

Tyleril,

Awhile ago, you made me an offer for a staff of particular importance. At the time, I had told you no; there are other things for me to consider now, and so if you are still interested, I come to you with altered terms. I seek you out under my real name -- I don’t want any pretenses involved in this exchange, no pseudonyms. If people are going to talk of it, then I want people to know who I actually am.

So. I will trade you this staff in exchange for two lightforged weapons. One for me, as you had offered before. And then I request one for Shahin as well; I’d prefer it if you made his first, as he’ll get more use out of it more immediately. I can get you the information you require as to specifications if you accept this proposal.

Additionally. I want you to promise me that you’ll keep an eye on it. The staff, I mean. I know Celtrois myself, and while I think that he’ll do good work -- that thing, I think it corrupts people. Just make sure nothing happens to him because of it, okay?

Sincerely,

Lady Eleeria Silverwing Matriarch of the Fairbreeze Cove

[ Delivered without an envelope, the folded piece of paper with a few bite (?) marks out of the side could only be from one person. ]

Ithranicus,

So I was thinking about all of the books you’ve been studying, those awful boring books, and wondering if maybe you would suggest some for me to study so I could learn more Thalassian?

Preferably nothing boring and/or long and completely awful.

Thanks, E.

P.S.: Valkyria is doing really well; we explored a void-tainted battlefield the other day and she was super brave even though it was giving her the creeps. I gave her a lot of treats for it. The Cat is also doing okay, though it -- I think it’s a he? -- won’t let anyone touch him. He seems fine accepting magic and talbuk meat, though. Just...have to kind of throw it to him so I don’t lose any fingers.

[ Also delivered without an envelope, the paper folded several times -- and without any bite marks. It is delivered in the front cover of an old and molding book, which has been sealed in oilcloth to preserve it on its journey. The book is clearly written in Draenic -- hundreds of pages are missing, and many more are simply defiled beyond reading, but the ones that remain are very clearly something that appear to be akin to the Draenic Karma Sutra... ]

Siildore,

I hope you’re doing alright. I’m sorry if my letters have seemed sparse -- we’ve been up to our noses in things to do, and writing has always been really hard for me. So I’m sorry it’s taken so long for me to write a really good one, though I hope the tons of tinier letters have been acceptable enough to convince you I have not completely run away from home!

Argus is amazing. Devastated. Sad, and beautiful, and desolate all at the same time. I think you would enjoy Mac’aree -- it’s absolutely stunning, I’ve never seen anything like it. Pieces of Argus seem to float into the Nether more by the day, and honestly I’m concerned it’s only a matter of time before Mac’aree goes with it. We’ve been trying to salvage as much as we can to take back with us -- the Draenei among our Order want to preserve as much culture as they can. Some of the books are completely destroyed when we find them, though. This one I managed to smuggle out right underneath their noses; honestly they’re the kind of stuffy librarians who would probably scoff at a book like this, anyway!

I miss you. I wish I could convince you to come and visit, but you’ve got other things to do. So letters and stuff will have to suffice.