Attention (Tylien)
((Old writing from 2009, I stumbled on this tonight, and liked it. Rare to like my own writing so reposting! Tylien is married to a Highborn who had survived the Sundering as an adolescent.
A small group had gone ICly into Zul’Aman for this story’s background.))
He has had a purpose for as long as he can remember. Before all else, his attention has been there. Before family, friends, hearth and home, his attention settles elsewhere and makes his fingers itch for his bow, his ears hear the breeze, and his eyes see them, hidden in the forest.
Trolls. Perhaps now, it is done. We few set out and hit them again. Finishing what was started so very, very long ago for Razyel. A war he remembers beginning,  when it was simply the way of things for the rest of us. Who could remember a time we were not fighting trolls? Trolls, with their lightning lives—shortened further with perpetual fighting—certainly could not. No one for generations in Quel’thalas could remember peace.
Back and forth. Back and forth, through millennia he has fought. It’s foolish of me to think I should come first. Everything that made him what he is was tied to that long, growing battle in him. War with the trolls has shaped them.
For all his hate, I do not think he knows anything so well as he knows trolls. That hate has become mixed up in near love, I think. So much of his passion in life has been thrust on trolls.
His feelings for me I cannot doubt, but I know I still seem such a child to him.
It smarts, but he is not entirely wrong. My eyes are open, and when I look at myself, I still see the childish desires. A girl still, but growing. I want to grow with him. I want to have earned his respect for who I am, not just the girlish potential he saw in me a century ago.
Purpose now quiet, I worry he will fade and I will never truly have his attention again.
Snatches of it, here and there, throughout the years, have made me dizzy on the drunken sweetness of it.
There was no question trolls were an enemy. They stole children. Cannibalized each other and their enemies. Their enemies being my people and way of life. They raided our villages and we raided theirs. We each blessed warriors and sent them screaming at each other. Each of us using our bloodlusts to convince more to come and square off, rattling our spears against shields. Our voices were different, but I bet the things we yelled going into battle were never all that different.
We pretend we’re refined, somehow ‘civilized’. Better than the trolls. It’s not true. We’re just different children, squabbling over the same playgrounds.
Things will never be…easy between our peoples. But we have started to listen. Some with better hearing than others. And some with wild abandon and feeling little loyalty to history. Too tired, too hopeful.
Sethlion was annoyed. Petulant even. Yes. We are alike, he and I. Still growing, still so young. I never remember how young we both are, until I look at him and see myself reflected there. But he came, unhappiness at our purpose evident, but his blades flashing for love of us and our need.
He is … confusing to us. So eager and easy to accept the culture and people we fought so long. He fought them, was in the cavalry. How can he just forget what happened? What they have done. What *he* has done.
I cannot forget. I think that has always bothered my dearest friend. I could not accept his trolls. His friends. His almost-lovers.
My almost-enemies.
How jealous I was—or, if I am honest, how jealous I *am*—of his attentions to trolls.
Both of them.
( Tagging sethlion )
