#laeynna

She also wondered how much she could recognise. The adventure so far had been... informative. Enjoyable. She'd brought along the book she'd inherited from her father and had already spent years putting diagrams, sketches, and no shortage of botanical research and observations into. Despite having it, however, she hadn't much used it. This was supposed to be holiday, after all, and Laeynna didn't take holiday very well. It would have been easier to work, but the problem with so much work was that she got so focused on it sometimes she forgot to look at the rest of the world.

Maybe that was hard to do when she loved plants and flowers and greenery of all kinds. Was there anything more beautiful than the very presence of life itself in front of the eyes? Except all the world was living and beautiful. What a very unfair comparison that might have been.

The time spent was nice. They'd seen the beaches of Stranglethorn, ruins, the coliseum, and even stayed in the bay for a little. On the ship down to Pandaria, they learnt about engineering and the schematics of the ship itself, that Laeynna still very much had a fear of heights, and that some of the others were not the most appreciative of loud noises aboard. In Pandaria, they'd gone fishing, though hadn't caught a single thing as the fish were simply too clever, visited the breweries, saw the silk worms, appreciated the oversized vegetables and fruits, had sushi and no shortage of other neat culinary delights. In some ways, the downtime was maybe a little more relaxing than she wanted it to be, and she didn't relax well either.

Something was different, though. She didn't know what it was. Something felt different. He looked at her differently, she thought, spoke to her a little differently. Maybe something more gentle? Andaeros had always been gentle, though. That wasn't it. She didn't know what to make of it. She just knew that it wasn't the same. Part of her wondered if it was because the distance between them during his extended absence, resigning herself to the notion that he might not return, and becoming somewhat emotionally detached might not have fully left her.

Things were better now, of course. She was better now. He'd certainly deserved that instead of the relatively cold and self-preserving welcome she'd given him. Although it had never been personal. In her head, there was no way to immediately jump right back into things the way they once were, especially not with her hang ups and history with that kind of closeness with someone. Coupling that in with realisations that work and effort expended over time felt like it had amounted to nothing had been a crushing blow.

It had been so bad, in fact, that she'd gone to stay with her parents for a few days, and that had been when she gave a farewell to her hair. She hadn't known how to proceed forward. She hadn't known how to just accept things for what they were, especially when she felt like she deserved better. Laeynna knew she wasn't entitled to anything when it involved other people. She wasn't arrogant enough to believe that, but at the very least, a little communication would have gone a long way.

That, she'd believed, was the bare minimum.

So when they'd return to Quel'Thalas, what was she going to do? Just keep doing things as she felt she was expected to? Feel guilty when she didn't do those things and be isolated for not doing them? Were those really her only options? And if they were, did she even want to put herself right back into that situation?

Laeynna sighed, not knowing the answer to any of that, and wondering if she simply expected the worst because it had largely been the worst before she'd left. Almost. Right before, there had felt like a small, tiny little piece of promise, a little tiny piece of hope. But she didn't know if she could trust it. Hope had, so far, only done terrible things to her. Hope was dangerous.

She suspected, in the end, it wasn't going to immediately matter. They still had a trip to Northrend to make before even returning home. No amount of worrying until then would mean anything, would hold any sort of weight. With the entire world in front of her, it was a wiser idea just to live in it, with unanswered questions and uncertainties alike.

Laeynna could do that.

Well. It was a pleasing thing to occupy her time with.

She enjoyed studying. In fact, she’d enjoyed coming to study the Light, its intricacies, and all of the profound things that it came with. Just studying it had provoked her to think about so many things in life—and life, in general—in considerably different ways. Of course, she assumed therapy had something to do with that as well. It was all a process.

But this afternoon was not meant for study. At least, not of that kind. With a fond, light smile, she eyed the letter she had received. Although it was addressed to her, there hadn’t been any other distinguishing marks about its exterior. When she opened it, however, she found herself growing pleasantly warm. It had been from her sister. Ankalei had made the kind of request that Laeynna had never imagined receiving from her, of all people. Unfortunately, that had also come with something of a time limit, and Laeynna wondered if her twin had to self-coerce to even get the letter in her direction.

Ankalei wanted something for… unconventional garb. Flowers. In her letter, she included a broken piece of… Well. Laeynna couldn’t readily identify what it was. Glass? Porcelain? Maybe it was both? She suspected it was actually melted down and swirled together. Ankalei had wanted something that would match in colour scheme to that. So after a couple of days ruminating, Laeynna paid a visit to the family estate south of the city and plucked what she felt was a decent amount of inspiration from the garden. Although she’d made mention of it to her father, she hadn’t much lingered beyond that, simply issuing him some reassurance that no, she’d not forgotten she was meant to arrange dinner with him and her mother.

And her other half, which she was still dragging her feet on, knowing very well she didn’t want any of them to spend extended time with one another. But she couldn’t run from that forever either. Andaeros thought he knew what he was in for. Laeynna was certain he didn’t. Sure, maybe an inkling, but he didn’t really know, and she didn’t really want him to know.

Scrunching her nose as she stared down at the project she’d begun, her thoughts forcefully shifted. She could continue to worry about all of that later. Tilting her head, she looked at what she’d sketched out, which was incredibly rough and really only there to provide inspiration and minute guidelines on what she wanted to make. Then her gaze, largely peridot with the smallest flickers of gold, moved over to the actual project on the table, which was… Well. After days of working on it here and there, and trying to keep Rags from playing with flower pieces, she felt like the end result sort of matched what she had.

Taking a step back to eye the full piece, she began to pace from side to side. Through the clever use of flower petals, carefully pieced together, and fed through thin lines of bendable bark, she’d been able to create a billowing effect, which she then layered in full blooms and smaller ones alike, flower heads, fern leaves, and wispy bundles alike. It consisted of flowers of all kinds. She didn’t know what sorts Ankalei liked and she could have asked, but she questioned if her twin even found favour with them. In the end, she suspected her sister might have preferred the skirt was made from things that Laeynna liked.

…Didn’t that make it more special? The very notion warmed the botanist’s heart.

“What are you missing?” she asked aloud to herself and she was nearly certain she’d heard Andaeros grumble from the kitchen. Probably something about how he hadn’t been able to use the table for his coffee since she’d started this whole thing. He’d been an awfully good sport about it. She’d have to do something special for him. 

Laeynna paced a few steps more, tipping her head this way and that. She wanted it to be special. Unique. A purely Laeynna creation. And then she lit up. Proverbially. Figuratively. Literally. “Oh, I know…” Approaching the skirts, she admired each individual line where flowers draped. And at the very end of the first one, as if testing out the idea, she rested a fingertip to the bottom petals, infusing them with soft shimmers of Light. A modest ripple of gold gradually spread up each individual petal in nonsensical lines.

Studying the first attempts to the idea circulating about her head, after a moment’s consideration, she nodded. Yes. That was what it needed. The skirt had been done in all shades of blue, as Ankalei had requested, but Laeynna felt that just that small touch of gold was a perfect contrast.

“Okay…” she began as she dropped down to lean in nice and close to the petals and as she knew she had so many other times, she couldn’t resist talking to them. Except they weren’t in a garden and they weren’t growing, which probably meant talking to them was a moot point. It certainly didn’t stop her, however. “So… every time Ankalei moves… I want you to gently light up. My sister is a star. She just simply does not know it.”

That wasn’t how things worked, of course. But she liked believing it anyway.

Once she had finished adding the very same touch of Light across the various hanging pieces of flowers, she rose back up, reaching down to pick up the skirt. Then holding it to her waist, trying to imagine what it was going to look like on her sister, she beamed proudly. Yes. It was perfect. In that perfectly imperfect way that everything in Laeynna’s life was, including herself.

“I did it, I did it~!”

Looking towards the kitchen, she tried not to feed her girlish enthusiasm, though was surely failing to do so. “You can have the table back!” After she cleaned it, of course.

In the days that followed, the very same skirts, all flowers and Light were packaged nice and neat and delivered across the water to a waiting twin of silver hair and blue eyes. Laeynna hoped she’d like it. And that she understood just how much significance there was in its very making.

People took a great many wonders for granted, it seemed to Andaeros. Portals were one that he thought about often. People jaunted, to and fro, hither and thither through swirling aether without a care for the intervening space. Distant lands and alien horizons became tourist destinations, but Andaeros never took for granted how vast the journey was that was saved each time he endured teleportation.

The Outlands. What would have become a graveyard if not for the Dark Portals, was somewhere people traveled often, given new life through trade and culture and pilgrimage. But, people hardly gave thought to the unfathomable space between, for how great a distance the Great Dark Beyond stretched between Azeroth and what was once the living Draenor. It was, to the greatest astromancers and telemancers of Azeroth, a guess, how many millions of miles separated those two titanic worlds. For all they, or Andaeros knew, they could have been on opposite sides of the Universe. Between here and there, could have been everything.

And between here and there, how many millions of worlds existed? How many millions of people on those millions of worlds? How many decisions made by each soul? How many of those worlds flickered out in apocalypse or were saved in utopia because of those decisions? A cosmic coin, flipped heads or tails, every time every soul chose. A trillion coin flips atop a trillion spinning plates floating in an unknowable expanse of Everything with Nothing in between.

How many of those decisions, how many of those coin flips, how many of those cosmic crossroads where two decisions met, ended in Love? With every soul born into the Universe, what were the odds that two similar flames could find each other in all that chaos and smoke and become something greater than they were alone? To choose one another.

No, it was no small thing for two people to Meet. And it was no small thing for two people to fall in love.

How many decisions and people and events outside the scope of two people did they have to pass by to find each other. How close had they come to never finding each other at all?

Andaeros couldn't help but chuckle to himself as he sat atop the overlook they'd cleared for camp, overlooking the pines and sat beneath the rolling auroras. He was a sap. Romance was such grand a notion in his head. He really needed to reign himself in, but it was hard with the ring in his hand. He afforded himself a bit of leeway, as a treat.

He'd agonized over it. He battled between tradition and vogue in his thoughts for weeks before he'd even begun to approach craftsmen. Laeynna was, in Andaeros's most esteemed sentiment, a woman of dissonance, of dichotomy. Laeynna in some moments respected tradition, and followed it, and in some moments he felt she raged and railed against it, as if she were trapped by it. Fashion, to Andaeros, could be fleeting. What was in vogue one decade was mocked in the next. And so he'd decided, instead, on sentiment. Sentiment was always warm, no matter the weather.

He'd not gone with gold or silver. Obsidium was a dark metal, and when it was wrought and shaped and folded, it lightened into a charcoal grey-black that reminded him of the dark colors of the dress he first saw her in. She had always seemed fond of dark things, as well. It was shaped, given the motif of vines, of leaves, of thorns, because of her great love for plants, so central to her. Its gemstone, not diamond, not ruby, not sapphire, not emerald. He had chosen Amethyst, or perhaps, she had chosen Amethyst so long ago. When they had courted.

Andaeros chuckled to himself, an inward thing that was more a huff than a sound. He still needed to keep quiet to not wake her. Courting. It was such an innocent word, full of butterflies and laughter. It was a word that felt like someone's hand in yours. It felt like a kiss on the cheek. But, it was what they'd done, even if they hadn't necessarily intended to. They had started as simple letters, sharing fondness and jokes. And then they became invitations. And then, before long, they became tokens.

She had sent to him an amethyst, so richly purple, unshaped, and raw. She had called it her favorite, and it became one of Andaeros's too. He had kept it, and he thought it fitting it should be the stone fit atop the ring he'd give to her.

It glittered as it caught the light, just as she did.

He opened the tackle box he'd brought with them to fish. It was one of those invitations. It was, to Andaeros's recollections, perhaps their first "date". It was a mutual love that they shared, and they shared it over getting-to-know-you questions and a little lake in the Hinterlands.

The fishing line wrapped once, twice, around and around, ending in a knot attached to the bobber. It'd keep the ring above the water when he cast it. He was putting an awful lot of faith into this fishing line and into this knot. It was, perhaps, not a terribly bright idea to tie such a precious thing to something meant to be thrown into the depths of cold waters. But, it was a decision. A coin-flip that the cosmos would answer if it worked out. A coin-flip that would lead to another decision, but one that would be hers.

It was, to Andaeros's mind, no small thing for two people to meet. It was, to Andaeros's mind, no small thing for those two people to then fall in love.

But surely, it was no tall order for the universe to flip a few more coins in his favor.

It had already flipped so many heads in a row already, what was one or two more?

Would have been if it weren’t for the knotting apprehension that was eating and chewing and consuming Laeynna’s insides. Was it noticeable? Probably not. She had, for years, become accustomed to simply holding everything inside of herself. That had, of course, done terrible things to her. Everyone else did too, though, didn’t they? Wasn’t that just a normal thing people did? Bottle everything up, never let it out, just slowly and slowly grow more resigned and angry and upset. She was almost positive that was virtuallythe definition of being one of their kind. She’d always had such a grim way of looking at it all, though.

Peridot gaze carefully flicked to her right just in time to watch fishing line and lure hit the surface of the water. The sound she heard first, breaking into her self-perceived silence, and she watched as ripples started small and grew larger and larger. People were like that a little, weren’t they? Like ripples. They all started as a singular, individual piece on the playboard in the cosmologically vast thing called ‘life’ and over time and circumstance, that piece became more than it was.

Today, you are more than you were yesterday, and thus for you, my love continues to grow. Tomorrow, you will be more than you are today and thus for you, my love shall continue to grow.

The words echoed between her ears and though she tried to ignore it, she felt the cold stab of her worry, wrapped into a single grand mass. Its clutches pressed along the small of her back, like sharp fingers that grappled along her. Pulling, pulling, pulling. Where was it going to take her? She didn’t want to see. The flutter of panic began to rise from her insides. The intensity of her breath, which had been nothing at all, suddenly shifted—quickening and just as sharp as the touch had been.

“I can’t imagine you invited me out here to just stand around in silence.” There was the telltale adjust of her posture and the soft leathers she was donning on the very dark morning. “On the other hand, it’s you we’re talking about, so that might be your intention after all.”

“Sorry—” Laeynna’s response was almost immediate. It felt practically like a muscle memory, words sitting on the tip of her tongue. Yet, it was stupid to think that ‘sorry’ was going to fix anything. Especially when it came to her life’s reflection. All of the feelings that had begun to swell to something she wouldn’t be able to control were hastily wrapped up and shoved further deep into the darkest parts of her person. “Of course I did not invite you along to say… nothing. I just… I have not known what to say. I keep thinking about it. For days now before this one, I went through all of the words I could use and none of them feel right. I thought perhaps I could practise what I wanted to convey, but even that—”

“It’d be really impersonal if you did that,” her sister chimed in, a hint of amusement in her thin voice. “I get it. I do. But instead of trying to be perfect, why don’t you just… I don’t know. Be you. It doesn’t have to be an art piece. It doesn’t have to be grand. It doesn’t even have to make that perfect sense that you seem to be obsessed with. You’re not being evaluated, Laeynna. Not everyone is going to do that. Maybe relax a little.” Ankalei lifted a hand and she gestured out to the lake in front of them, crystal blue clear water that they could see right down to the bottom of, teeming with fish. “The fish are definitely relaxed. Do your best fish impression.”

The characteristic gentle furrow of her brow ensued and Laeynna looked between her twin and the water indicated. “...Glub… glub?” she asked somewhat dumbly as her lips scrunched up into what she imagined a fish mouth’s might have.

She was rewarded with a laugh and it echoed in the quiet otherwise around them. “That’s pretty good, actually. ‘Glub glub’ indeed.” Grinning, with the same hand, Ankalei motioned for her to continue. “Humour’s a pretty good start. Use that energy. It’ll help you get out everything that you feel like you need to get out. And—” As she looked over to Laeynna, her blue eyes found her counterpart’s with ease. “If it’s too hard, don’t rehash it.”

Laeynna simply stared at her for a moment or two, the similar dumbfounded expression drawn across her fae-like features. Then she moved her gaze back onto where her fishing line met the water, untouched by the lake’s plethora of denizens. An idle thought rolled around in the back of her mind about having brought the wrong bait, but it was merely a moment before it was replaced with the matter at hand. Drawing in a deep breath, her thoughts still spun, continuing to wonder where she should begin. Yet Ankalei’s reminder had been needed. 

She wasn’t being evaluated. Not everyone was going to do that. She didn’t always need to stand on ceremony or expect the worst of others. Like so many of her other habits, it was going to be another difficult one to overcome.

The same breath released and Laeynna struggled to find her voice, a gentle little waver in her tone, as if she hadn’t quite committed herself to the words just yet. “I took everything from you.”

“Laeynna—”

“Please,” the dark-haired elf began. “Let me say this in my way. It is the only way I know how to.” From the corner of her eye, she could see her sister wearing a somehow softer, gentler pull of her expression. If she was distracted from her thoughts too much, she wondered if she’d still have the courage to continue. “I… took everything from you. I wish… I wish I knew why I did it. I have spent years thinking and thinking and thinking about it. It is not something I can undo. I wish that I could, Ankalei. There are… so many things I would... if I could… go back and do differently. But there is nothing in my life I regret more than what I did to you. I wish that I could give you my life.”

She shook her head, shaken breath falling out of her, and she could just scarcely feel the gentle tremor in her arms, as if the weight of her fishing pole was daring to become too much for her to endure. It was not… grand or over the top. As her sister had said, maybe it didn’t need to be. Maybe all that was needed was for her to be straight forward and honest. Both of them could go over everything with a fine-tooth comb, but what good would that really do? That was then and this was now.

Her sister was quiet, undoubtedly thinking in her own way about how to approach the matter. Perhaps surprised, even, that Laeynna had been willing to take the sisterly advice she’d gotten. Still housing that gentle smile, however, there was sincerity, a warmth of older days, and a sadness all combined into one, showing that even a curve of the mouth was not always as simple as it appeared to be. Nothing in life seemed to be, really. Complexities abound.

“I know,” Ankalei finally began, her weight shifting from one foot to the other, causing the moist dirt beneath her boots to adjust as well. “I know that you regret it. I know… that things have changed a lot. For both of us. And I know that you worry. Not just about what happened that day or how I’m handling it, but about everything.” When she looked over to Laeynna, she shook her head, “You don’t need to worry so much. Unless you’ve got a miniature member of the Bronze that you’re carrying around in your stuff—highly unlikely—you don’t need to get caught up in trying to revisit the past.”

Her hand lifted, covered in ashen colour, damaged nails from normal wear and tear and her poor habits when she lived, and she gestured around them. The forest, in its perpetual autumn, was beautiful. Trees of plated gold and licking flames of orange and red, creating canopies that looked as royal as the growing reconstruction of their fair city.

“We all want to do things differently,” she continued, then. “All of us. We can’t and we begrudgingly accept that. Because we can’t, it’s important to do the best within our ability each day.” As she began to reel in her line, her chin dipped. “None of us can live in the past. We shouldn’t. The present and the future are in front of us. Maybe not the way we envisioned, but that doesn’t make it any less worthy a present and future to experience. You get what I’m saying, Laeynna?”

Laeynna watched her sister finish retrieving her line. As Ankalei set down her pole, nice and orderly, she gestured to her twin and it didn’t take long for her to pick up the hint. Following in suit, she accepted their loss of fish with what elegance she could, and in the minutes that came after, her pole sat with the other. She joined Ankalei in the grass not far from the lakeshore and as they sat, Ankalei offered her lap, guiding her sister’s head of sable hair to it.

As Ankalei began to carefully card her fingers through the ends of dark hair, Laeynna felt a soft little lump form in her throat, something she tried to swallow down, though it did nothing and she was unsurprised. “...I do,” she agreed. “I have been living in the past for a long time. For so long that sometimes… I forgot what it was like to live in the present.”

“I know,” Ankalei reassured her with the same gentle smile. “Sometimes I’m like that, too. For a long time I thought the only place for me in the world was the Order. Thought if I couldn’t make it there, there wasn’t a point to anything. But uh… that’s not really true. You know that guy, from the clinic. Shit—what’s his name. Veilos? I don’t even call him that.”

“Veilos Dai'goa.”

“That’s the one. Right.” Ankalei carefully shifted the way Laeynna’s hair framed her face in its overabundance of waves and… well. Length, in general. It practically drowned her lap as she was really looking at it. “I don’t remember the exact wording he used, but there was a night a bunch of us were sitting in one of the city’s taverns. All around a table. Well—most of us anyway. He brought up a good point. That in my case, I don’t have to be just a soldier. Wasn’t just him, either. Everyone there had good guidance.”

A pause ensued where ordinarily a breath might have been taken. Ankalei emulated the sensation, but even Laeynna knew that it was only an emulation. Something to make her seem like she was one of the living. Maybe habitual or a subconscious reaction made by the company she kept.

Laeynna nodded slowly as she looked up to her sister, “I… noticed that. I mean, that they are…” Awkwardly she paused and then she smiled somewhat sheepishly, light and subdued, as if she was afraid to let it become anything more. “They are good people. I like them a lot.”

“...Hm. Look at that,” her twin looked fond then. “You admitting that you like people.” In a way, her tone had betrayed just a tint of jest, but then, there was a subtle shift in her expression to something a touch more serious. Thoughtful. “I don’t think you realise it, but you’ve changed since you met them. The clinic. The bakery. I’ve been watching you for a long time. You aren’t the same person. You’re more than you were.”

Laeynna felt uncertain then. Conflicted. Not because of the notion that her sister had been looking after her, but because as ever when something like praise entered the situation, she didn’t know how to handle it. Instinct told her to refuse, to shove it elsewhere, and perhaps to pretend she’d never heard it to begin with. Compliments about her person were still difficult to hear and just as difficult to accept.

“...Mayhaps,” she finally agreed with a quiet little sigh. It wasn’t exactly acceptance, but it was something like it. Better than nothing considering she had often protested otherwise or used less than shining words to describe her person.

“Bet you’re wishing Andy was here, huh? He’d probably lighten everything up with some of that humour of his.”

Even as Ankalei’s face broke into a grin, Laeynna’s expression nearly darkened. She tried so hard to avoid him coming up into conversation. Just days before, Junarra had shown to the bakery dressed as him and Laeynna had felt so emotionally conflicted that in one moment, she wanted to laugh because the notion was so incredibly sweet and then in the same breath, she’d nearly burst into tears. For all she wanted to answer, she couldn’t bring herself to use words to do so. Instead, her gaze moved off of the twin who leaned over her and back onto the surface of the lake, thinking it was so much more still than her insides were.

“Yeah… That’s what I thought,” Ankalei observed with a slow nod. “When’s he coming back?”

Laeynna shook her head, “I hardly know. He—” For a moment, they stopped in her throat, trapped by that lump that had formed their previously. Was it her imagination or had it grown? “He has not written me since he left. I write to him and receive nothing. Does he even get my letters? Does he even want to?” He wouldn’t have abandoned Rags and that she knew. Did it mean, then, that something had happened? Maybe he’d realised in his absence away just how unworthy she was of him. Maybe he’d realised in their time apart that he hadn’t loved her. Or he’d simply fallen out of love with her. Out of sight, out of mind, no? Her hands lifted and as she felt her expression contort and twist, she covered her face to hide behind.

“Hey, hey—” Ankalei stopped fiddling with her hair and she reached down to touch her sister’s hands. “Hey, it’s okay. Come here. It’s okay.” Helping guide Laeynna up from where she withdrew into her proverbial shell, she pulled her twin into her arms and embraced her tightly.

I miss him so much. The entire world feels dark without him here.

Every time he got mentioned, she was afraid she’d start crying. She felt like she kept lying, though in reality, she didn’t have the answers. Didn’t know how long he was going to be gone for. Didn’t know how he was doing. Didn’t know if he’d gotten himself into danger. Didn’t know if he’d come back in one piece. And the more time she spent thinking about it, which she did plenty of in her solitude, the more she worried and the more she expected the worst.

“I’m sorry—” she murmured into her sister’s shoulder.

Ankalei shook her head, carefully, soothingly drawing a hand up and down Laeynna’s back. “No, no,” she began. “Don’t do that. It’s not a weakness to show feelings, Laeynna.” Resting her forehead to her twin’s temple, she dropped the volume of her voice. “He’s gonna come back. I don’t know the guy well, but if you’d seen the guy I saw when he found out you were missing, you’d get it. He’s not going to let anything stand between the two of you. He’d claw his way back to you if he had to.”

Whether she knew that or not, Laeynna had to wonder. Had Ankalei seen something in him that she hadn’t? Something that she, perhaps, had been blind to? Something she’d been unwilling to let herself see? She wanted to believe Ankalei was right. Her heart wanted to believe it with such a ferocity that she almost couldn’t contain herself. But… what if she was wrong? What if she suddenly developed hope and the worst came to pass?

…She didn’t want to think like that.

As Ankalei drew back, she studied her sister carefully, taking in every feature. Guiding some of that dark hair back behind long, graceful ears, her own resolve strengthened, perhaps. Maybe in recognition that Laeynna needed someone to be her supportive tower. The role of the older twin. Ankalei had been made for that.

“I think…” she began, words betraying a depth of thought that had likely lingered and welled for some time. “Do you remember when we were younger, there was something you wanted to do. Before you got caught up in Dad’s things. Do you remember, Laeynna?” Fingertips gently bunched up tresses of dark hair and the focus of her stare sought recognition. “Remember that. The person you wanted to be.”

Held so securely by her sister, Laeynna knew what Ankalei spoke of. She’d never really discussed it at length. In fact, she’d only made mention of it once or twice and such moments had been brief.

Laeynna began to shake her head, “I… I would not even know where to begin. I am much too old to begin—”

“No. I won’t accept that,” Ankalei broke in, not giving her twin a chance to protest. “You shouldn’t either. Find a tutor. Someone you can learn from. Start reading about it. Start practising. Start studying. It’ll give you something to do.”

Freeing a heavy sigh that did nothing to relieve the weight atop her chest and her shoulders, Laeynna shook her head. “No. I… That time has passed. That possibility ended years ago. I made that impossible.”

Ankalei’s hands carefully dropped from the round face of her counterpart’s and to her shoulders. The touch there gentle until it wasn’t. She gripped, perhaps tighter than she’d meant to. Just enough for Laeynna to feel the ache in how she was held. “I didn’t die to watch you wither away, Laeynna.” With just enough force as if she could jostle her sister’s poorer thoughts out of her, Ankalei carefully shook her. “Just because you don’t want to see it doesn’t mean others can’t. Or that they won’t. I…” 

For some moments, she quieted, as if considering her approach. Then she found herself shaking her head. “Zaihne didn’t give me the details about what happened down there. But he did tell me it was serious. Based on the stories given by the others the expedition recovered, I can take a guess and I’m probably not far off the mark.” Looking her sister over again with scrutinising eye, Ankalei rested a hand along the curve of her neck, thumb passing over the throat. “I want to tell you to get looked at. That you need help. That you can’t keep trying to do everything alone. And it’s fine if you don’t want me to be involved. But if you feel like you took everything from me, the closest thing I have to having anything is you. You’re what I have left. It’s your responsibility to make sure it stays that way.”

Laeynna met her sister’s severe expression, somehow sharp and gentle at the same time, and she wallowed in muted thought. Perhaps she’d never considered it before, the idea that if Ankalei felt like she had so little, she still had her sister. She still had her life’s reflection. Regardless of how things had come to be as they were in the prominent present, they still had one another. Despite the way Laeynna had deliberately built a wall between them, no amount of running could save her from the truth. Ankalei was an animated representation of so many of her regrets, but in that same body, there was an undeniable validity to her sister’s claims. She hadn’t been the same since the City of Threads.

Dropping her glowing gaze onto her hands that somehow seemed more frail than she even knew herself to be, her insides swirled with uncertainty and a desire for the same strength and resolve that her twin wielded. She didn’t have to be Ankalei. She never had to be. She could get away with just being herself, as long as she allowed it. The only person who had stood in her way was herself.

…But how was she to begin? It all felt so daunting.

“It’s okay to be scared,” she heard her sister say. “And it’s okay not to know. But it’s not okay for you to lock yourself in this prison you’ve made.” When Ankalei took her hands, Laeynna lifted her gaze again, words on the very tip of her tongue, more protests, but she wasn’t given the opportunity to say them. Not when Ankalei continued in that authoritative voice. “You’re a botanist, Laeynna, but you’re not a flower. You’re not an experiment. You’re not a poison. Not to me. Not to Mom and Dad. Not to your friends. Not to Andy. You’re so much more than that. Than all of that.”

The sum of all of her parts, good and bad, and more.

“So you owe it to yourself more than anyone else,” Ankalei kept her trained focus with a short little nod.

“Open a book and start there. Everything else will fall into place.”

Laeynna had thought about it all night. On the walk to the apartment. Once she’d come in. Even through her slumber, she suspected, which had been far less than she would have liked. As a result, in the dead of night, she stared out into darkness, curled up on her side, Andaeros holding her to him securely as he had so many nights after his return, turning the words over in her head. And when dawn came again, she was still thinking about it.

Lynesse was right, of course. She’d said it then and she still believed it. She still knew it.

She had never been a combatant. Once or twice, once Ankalei had begun training, Laeynna had tried to lift her sword and could barely do so. After that, she wondered how her sister made it look so effortless. Perhaps she had gotten comfortable with seeing her face do it that it had been easy to think it was almost as helpful as the real thing. Her skill had always lied with magic. Before hosting discipline, Laeynna was further ahead in her studies. A natural affinity, though the argument could have been made that all of their kind had been practically made with magic in their veins.

But she had been something special. She still was. She could almost hear her father’s praise in her ear when she considered her studies. Aside from Andaeros and necessary guides, she had up until the night prior, kept them largely to herself. Even when she spoke of them in front of the Shielded Mind, she had done so rather vaguely. Almost as if she had something to be embarrassed about. As if she was still under the impression that everything she did was so small and insignificant that no one was going to be as interested as she was.

Over a cup of rose tea, Laeynna sat by the window that overlooked the entryway into their section of apartments and she gazed out atop paved streets and the proud colours and heritage of their people. There wasn’t a crime in being proud of her achievements. There also wasn’t a crime in sharing that with others. In the same way that there wasn’t a crime in sharing herself with others. She had… done relatively good the night before, hadn’t she?

She’d tried, though in hindsight, she realised perhaps she had asked too many questions. Although really, it was mostly because Lynesse was such an interesting woman that she couldn’t help herself. It hadn’t been societal expectation or niceties. Could she have been a woman like that once upon a time? Had that always been fated to be Ankalei’s role instead? No. Of course not. She still didn’t believe in fate. That had simply been how the pieces had fallen.

In another timeline, in another era, Laeynna could have been the impressive soldier rather than the impressive magic user.

Propped on her right forearm, with her left hand, she traced the rim of her teacup thoughtfully. With focus, a clear mind, a moment’s push that wasn’t quite instinctive but that was steadily growing more comfortable and familiar, a soft golden glow emanated from her palm and moments after, a small shield formed around her cup. The more she did it, the easier it became. The first time she had shown Andaeros, he had spoken to her of battle clerics, and the strength of one’s soul to create such things.

He had always told her that she was an extravagantly strong woman. Laeynna had questioned it, doubted it, as she doubted herself on so many different levels, but there was an undeniable truth in the observation. She was strong. She had overcome so much. She had survived exile. She had survived a life where she had nothing. She had endured and bore no small amount of scrutiny and lack of kindness from others. She had worn so many wounds upon her heart and even some on her body.

She was incredibly strong. Incredibly resilient.

The shield, ethereal in its nature, warm, with its soft, comforting glow, eventually came to fade. But the strength with which she had conjured it remained in her hand. She could feel it lingering there, as if she was on the cusp of some great discovery, some great acknowledgement of self. Something nearly tangible, but perhaps still only existing in concept.

When was the last time she had gone to the frontlines? Over a year. And before then, she had almost always been involved at some point. Always travelling. As she had admitted on the stairs, a clear difficulty in keeping herself to one point. Like she knew she was a force that couldn’t be contained, no matter how much she might have tried to for the sake of others, for the sake of some strange expectation that had been put upon her. That spirit inside of her had always been just as intense. She balanced it with propriety, though that largely won out in the end.

A year before, she had been one of a few that had been abducted by nerubians, kept in a wicker cage, and experimented upon. She could have placed fault. Could have stated that she hadn’t been paying attention. That she hadn’t been more observant. Too much time had passed to continue playing that game. In the end, all that had really mattered was that she had survived. Zaihne and the expedition had found her. But it had been terrifying, teetering between life and death, barely able to compose the words she’d wanted to, unsure if she’d ever be able to use her body again for anything. To say nothing of her mind which she had felt had surely shattered under the weight that she could have, certainly would have died there in the dim yellow lighting.

And ever since then…

Laeynna had been terrified. She had relived that scenario over and over again at night, resulting in more often than not the inability to sleep. To focus. To concentrate on much of anything. It had seemed easier to hole herself up in the apartment and to hide herself away from the world. There had been other things too, of course, that had contributed to that preexisting desire. It had all compounded and she easily remembered months in which she had been so utterly miserable that in front of everyone else, she had merely worn a mask. Things had gotten so much better since then, however.

She didn’t want to be afraid anymore. Hadn’t wanted to be for a while. As she thought back onto the frontlines, those that had gone, the idea that she didn’t yet have a place there, all she really wanted was for everyone to come home safely. Perhaps it was fine for her to stay home for the time being. To continue to refine what she was learning. She knew easily enough, however, that she didn’t always want it to be that way.

The burning in her heart, in a place where no one else could see, but that she could feel with an undeniable intensity, it told her that she wanted to be out there. With the others. She wanted to help. She wanted to protect. She wanted to make a difference. If she was so strong, then she could share that strength with others.

Drawing her gaze, peridot and gold, up to the sky that overlooked their fair city, so filled with a history of capable swordsmen and magisters and rangers, she felt that adamant resolve. One day she would be a part of them again. But she would do so for the right reasons. Not for validation. Not for approval. Not for what she thought anyone else expected out of her. Purely because she wanted to be there.

I want to protect the people I love. I want to protect that which I care for. Within these two hands, there is inevitable, undeniable promise.

Mayhaps that had been the realisation all along.

As she pulled out the relatively simple chair she’d assigned to it, she cast a look over to the harp that Junarra had delivered around the later part of the prior year at her humble request. She had worked on it a little here and there, but with the time available to her, and recent conversations fresh in mind, it seemed like a good way to spend some of her free time. She seated herself and as she carefully manoeuvred the small and modest pile of parchment beneath her hands, she looked first at the careful scribbling of notes on staff and the plethora of incomplete measures. Beside that page, a sheet of notes. Rather, a directive of what her piece had been meant to convey.

She’d said that she’d composed it for him. That it was to express all of the complexity that had come from a struggle of understanding her own feelings and how they had evolved from a great deal of wariness into an unspoken love they had exchanged in Wintergrasp. With a tip of her head, Laeynna’s gaze pulled over schooled script, elegant and refined, just one more thing that reminded her that no matter how she could have been pulled out of Quel’thalas, it never could have been pulled out of her blood.

—-—-—

I could not say what drew me to you the first time. Suspicion. Curiosity. Intrigue. The cut of the shirt you wore that night, perhaps. I had tried to be polite and spent the entire night hiding behind my cup of tea, whilst Master Larethmyr hovered ever nearer me. And in the way I eyed you, you eyed me in return. I never liked it much when people looked at me. I thought my appearance strange for years and not in the pleasant way. When I had your attention, I felt remarkably aware of myself. As if I was being assessed. Afraid of trying to understand what you wanted of me, why you looked so intently, I tried my best to hide. Master Larethmyr saw something I did not. We spoke of it once. That he berated the entire evening back to his estate, displeased that you kept looking at me, though we had scarcely exchanged more than polite greetings. Or perhaps he believed you were too observant, seeing things that others did not. How could they know, after all, what was happening? Why would they have? It was never truly their business to begin with, and I had remembered my youngest years, in which gossip was unladylike. Me, being a mere woman with no power to my name, placed in opposition against a member of the Blood Knights. I think you did not know the details then, but I think you knew something was not right. After that… I had thought that would be it. A first meeting. A first curiosity. But every time our paths crossed, every time we were in the same space, still you eyed me. Like you did not care to look anywhere else. As if I was the only thing you really wanted to see. I felt it, like hands atop my shoulders. What did you want of me then, I had wondered. I thought you intimidating. I feared you. You left me apprehensive and wound tight with concern. Perhaps you were inclined to put a knife into my back. Perhaps you knew of me from a different time with a different name. When I finally asked, it was merely that you found me intriguing. That you wished to know more about me. We danced and danced and danced. Always back and forth, spring and autumn eyes and fel ones. Written letters and gifts, like an old, traditional courtship. No one had ever done that with me before. Some had tried, perhaps, but my ambitions so lofty that everything else had fallen beneath what I could perceive. What I had want to perceive.  What made you different? Can the seeds of affection be so simply defined? I should think not, for the moment that such a success made, all of the enigma, the magic, the intricacies of the heart would eliminate what made it so wondrous to begin with. I simply knew then, as I do now, that you were different. ‘You are so dear to me.’ You began to say that and I could not have known then what it meant. Your healing heart unable to make declarations of your love in simplified words, so instead, you used every other way in the world to say it. And for a time, I remained blind and deaf to it, convinced that of all things, I needed to keep you at a distance. Monsters like myself, I thought, were so unworthy of those affections. And to you, I had thought myself no more than a passing fancy and trivial pastime. Yet in the cold, beneath those stars, with flakes of snow in wet hair, I saw how you looked at me, a look I had seen before but had not truly acknowledged. And I felt fear again, afraid you would wrap your hands about my heart and crush it, for if it had been your intention, you had me precisely in the perfect place to do so. That night, my heart pounded with an intensity unrivalled. I had thought to myself that facing my exile again, my proposed execution, would have been easier than braving what your eyes had spoken. What a coward I have been. What a coward I was. Sometimes what a coward I still am.

—-—-—

Coming to the bottom of the page, Laeynna’s lips rose into a subdued, soft, and sombre smile. Just reading the words, she could relive every one of those moments. From late nights where he escorted her home, to baths where he teased her about her inability to swim, to the repeated attempts of his bourbon that she simply could not withstand. Every single moment, every single point had a place in history. She felt them each all over again and though she had most recently been caught up in her worry and concern, she still felt an undeniable fondness.

They still looked at one another the same way. That same intensity, as if they were nearly blind to everything outside of them. But the flutters that once had been fear metamorphosed into butterflies.

Loosing a very soft breath and affectionately splaying slender fingertips atop the page, she found her gaze moving back over to the sheet of music in progress. She was getting closer to its completion, she thought. If Ankalei had been right about his return, perhaps she could finish it in time to give it to him.

With a tilt of her head, sweeping some of her dark hair behind her ear, eventually her eyes found the newest book to have a place on her desk. Its contents, she thought, only one piece to the larger puzzle at hand, a very rudimentary introduction to the concept of harnessing the Light. If she could succeed, perhaps she could buy herself more time. More days. More weeks. More years.

As many as she could to continue looking at him in the very same way, wishing to make him the very centre of her world.