#foxrun

Mun-Li busied herself with the large amount of dough in front of her, fur covered in flour. She was kneading it harder than necessary, to be sure, but it was helping to clear her mind.

Everything felt hollow. Well, not everything. She was home with Tyra and that was FAR from hollow. No, the victory in Stranglethorn. The city. Foxrun. Those felt hollow.

She slapped the dough hard against the counter, frowning. People fought and died and won against impossible odds. After victory, there was a party. A party full of those who did not even fight, who just showed up to celebrate the victory of others. They sold wares out of the old medical ward where a bright joy of a Tidesage had been snuffed out only the day prior. It was...sickening.

SLAP. Everyone went back to the city and it was business as usual. Abighail running around attending to errands. All the rest embedding themselves into whatever the latest drama was. Even after Mun-Li had said a piece or two about slowing down. Taking it easy.

SLAP. No one listens to her, though, Not to always-happy, easygoing Mun-Li. She was just a pretty face who knew how to brew a good drink and was decent with a blade. She couldn’t possibly understand the importance of all these tasks, all these commitments. Mun-Li huffed. What could possibly be more important than juicy court gossip?

SLAP. CRACK. She looked down at the unexpected sound. The wooden board was shattered, fragments of wood kneaded into the dough. Mun-Li scowled and wiped her brow. She threw the dough and what was left of the board into the trash outside just as it began to rain.

The dull roar of thunder echoed around the walls of Stormwind. Mun-Li stepped into the street and let the cold rain soak her and the flashes of lightning illuminate her. She thought of Thundering cloud serpents, magnificent creatures that wound their way around arcing electricity and roared with the fury of the storms they so loved. They bathed in rain, too. Perhaps she needed to roar with the same fury to get people to listen.

“Mun-Li? Ummm. It’s raining. You know that, right?”

Mun-Li turned at Tyra’s voice coming from the doorway. Tyra looked equal parts concerned, amused, and confused.

Mun-Li smiled back at her, her heart fluttering with the butterflies she got every time she saw Tyra. “Yes, I just thought I saw something. I did not expect to get so soaked so quickly!” 

She moved forward and kissed Tyra on the forehead, then went into the house to dry off. Tyra did not look entirely convinced but seemed content to not pursue any further questioning.

Outside, the thunder roared again. 

A cold morning rolled over the harbor at Foxrun Station, painted in muted pinks and blues over a misty grey water. Waves lapped at a galleon anchored there, its rear windows still hidden from the pale sunlight that crept over the Wetlands from the east. An easy morning in the early fall aboard a quiet ship, undisturbed, its crew and captain still sleeping off the favour of the night before.

All but one.

Valoren sat at the edge of the bed with a letter in her hand, autumn-coloured hair pooled around her waist. The captain beside her drew his calloused hand to hers through a thick blanket of sleep, green eyes barely open, mumbling a dream of a longer night into his pillow. It had been a week since her first mate left the station, following a lead on the location of the Wavebreaker with only her alpaca to accompany her, and the week was spent in quiet concern, anticipation, at what she might find.

“Bal’a dash, my love,” Lithraea’s script was Eversong; of Fairbreeze village and the twists and curls of the soft white wood there. Of the amber pods that glowed at the end of every branch and boasted magic and care in every leaf and stem and root. A memory of a beautiful place in ink and script, rendered by an elegant, beautiful hand.

The letter came by way of Bogpaddle, attached to a box that chilled her hands to the point of stinging. Ice cream and banana rum. Of course. It sat on a nightstand beside the bed, closed and protective of the treats within. Perhaps she’d let Kaerlic try some. Perhaps not.

Bogpaddle was a long way from the Wetlands. Lithraea was traveling far for her sake. Both their sakes maybe, and that of the crew. The Golden Banana was never meant to be permanent, after all, and when they had The Wavebreaker back she’d be a proper captain again, with a proper ship, proper crew. A chance at revenge on the man who took it from her.

“Forever yours, Lithraea”

A broad hand made its way up her summer brown arm, pulling Valoren from her thoughts and the letter in her hand. Sturdy arms and enough scars to tell a story; ginger-gold threads and salt streaks and years that pulled at the corners of his eyes when he smiled. Kaerlic pulled his Starlight closer to him, easily plied.

“Lithraea?” was all he managed, eyeing the letter as she set it atop the frozen box. “Absolute sweetheart. Miss her.”

“Oh yes.” The blankets were warm over her legs, and warmer still were the string of kisses on her neck and shoulder as she settled back in. “So do I.”

accompanying music 

Campbell is asleep before his head hits the pillow. The Station Rot is taking its toll. It’s all he thinks about some days. The Rot and the death and the stench that never leaves; an ever-present burn in the back of his throat. It’s no wonder it follows him in his sleep.

When he was young, his father took him out on the ocean on a calm night. A lesson he can’t quite remember now; about getting lost in the black. On a calm night, there are no waves or swell or gentle undercurrent. There is just the water and the horizon and the starlit sky; merging together into one. A mirror that spans on forever.

At first, the dream reminds him of this. But there are no stars and the water is not quite water and the clouds are at his feet. Soup blinks. Breathes. Opens his eyes to the smell of salt and seaweed. To the Rot of trapped and dying fish. A lonely gull hovers overhead, crying and crying and crying until it plunges itself into the water that does not break and does not splash. 

He reaches, just a little, out and upward to clear away the fog, and finds his reflection staring back at him. Wrong somehow. Broken by ripples that should not exist. He was… standing. Yes. He was standing and now he is sitting; in a drifting boat, all alone, hand dragging against the cold wet murk of the water surface.

There’s bodies here. Bloated and Rotting. Fish and eel and a whale impossibly speared. His dog. His child. Himself, floating face down. His little boat, moving without oars, pushes them all aside, descending deeper and deeper into the endless fog that meets the sky that meets the water.

The voice of a son he never did have. Singsong. Come home. Come home. Come down here too. 

Mun-Li sat at her desk, her head propped up by her paw leaning against the stained wooden surface. In front of her sat a clutter of ingredients both common and exotic though most were at least partly sticky with the residue of various honeys.  Though anyone would agree that it was a disaster, Mun-Li could only focus on the small glass bottle in front of her.

It was filled with a dark green liquid that smelled like fresh mint. The liquid itself was very thick, almost like a very rich barleywine. It was mead, of course, but it was not the sort of drink she would share at the office or anywhere for that matter. No, this mixture was intended for the dying or injured as a sedative. Mun-Li frowned at the thought. No. It was INTENDED for the already dead. The fact that it worked in small doses on the living was a happy accident.

Samantha wanted to dream. Keerian wanted to enhance his senses. These simple things were inhibited by the fact that they were dead. Mun-Li had set out to achieve this seemingly impossible task and had felt she made a huge breakthrough when Samantha had announced that it was the best sleep she had ever had.

The joy was replaced with concern and frustration moments later when Samantha also admitted that it increased certain aspects of her condition. She didn’t have to say it. Mun-Li knew that the Death Knights and others like them had to inflict pain and even kill to sate some part of their essence. It was an awful curse, one she did not wish upon anyone nevermind her friends. So here she sat, trying to brainstorm something she could do to perhaps remove that aspect.

“Perhaps the blood or life essence of something freshly killed? Does the person themselves have to do the killing?” Mun-Li frowned and muttered to herself. She rubbed her eyes and opened her mouth wide in a yawn. She did not know the answer to those questions. Not today, anyway. She would experiment, though, and do her best.

Mun-Li leaned her spear against the side of the dilapidated stable that Foxrun was using as a camp. Around her buzzed insects and conversation which, thankfully, did quite a bit to drown out the cries of the wounded. There were a lot of wounded.

She sighed and sat down on a pile of hay, unstrapping the bulkier pieces of her armor to as to hopefully get some rest. It would be a long time until sleep took her.

She dreamed of smoke, fire, and suffering. Gyrocopters dropping their cacophonous payloads that sent dirt, stone, and body parts into the air. The smell of sweat and iron and earth. The pleading of a dying man before she drove her spear into him, ending his life with mercy.

Mun-Li was no stranger to war. She was a devotee of it. She had judt forgotten how bloodthirsty the rest of the Alliance forces could be. They seemed to revel in the bloodshed, going goremad and becoming a vicious whirlwind of malice and hatred. In those moments they seemed not so far removed from the Horde they hated so much.

Mun-Li woke and sat up. She meditated. She could not bother herself with why others were here. Why was she here? Why did she fight?

For everyone. She fought so they might not have to.

For Foxrun, for Stormwind, for the Alliance.