#shashibala

((Site Write 23, concerning grief. Featuring almost all of my Draeneidorks, minus semi-NPCs. How is it that Shashi seemed to know Nili, but Nili didn’t know Shashi? Why did Nili follow stupid Boj off into the wilderness when the Exodar crashed? Why does Shashi view flowers as the highest form of affection one can give? So many little pieces of story in convergence. By the time the Site Write is over, I won’t have any story threads left to lay out!))

Being on the Exodar afforded Shashi more opportunities to slip away than being in the house in Nagrand had. She was full of gangly energy, brimming with curiosity...and she knew how to spot and take off access panels. She was growing fast, but she was still small enough to wriggle through them to other areas if she was sure that her father would be somewhere else for a while.

This was one such opportunity, a few moments of precious freedom--

There was a soft whimper of a sound coming from an open door nearby. Shashi blinked, going still, and felt a surge of almost panic rising in her...she fought it back down, clenching her teeth. She needed to help.

She hovered in the doorway to the small, dark room, there was what looked like a woman curled up on one of the beds...her hand was hanging over the side, and in her grasp was a crystallized red flower.

"She is wounded," a voice rumbled next to her and she startled, wheeling back. The man who'd spoken chuckled, watching her with a slight smirk, and scratched his chest idly.

"...why does she have that?" Shashi said, her attention drawn again now that she was sure it wasn't suddenly her father, looking for her. It was drawn to the flower in her hand, and the way that she was holding it like it might cut her palm if she gripped it any tighter.

Boj shrugged, shaking his head slightly. "If I had to guess, I would say that it was given to her by someone important to her. Perhaps someone who cared about her."

There was an ache in Shashi's chest...she was only just starting to come to understand that while she was hidden away, something awful had happened to a lot of people. It was why they were on the ship now. "I should heal her," she muttered.

"She does not want to be healed."

Shashi blinked, taken aback. "Doesn't...want to be healed? Why?"

Boj's shoulder rolled. "She is angry at the Light, perhaps. Or perhaps she wants to die...but she should be healed, should she not?" His eyes fell on her again, watching her the way her father watched her sometimes, when he was asking her to remember her lessons.

Shashi nodded firmly, entering the dark space...it wasn't a dark space for long. She lit up with the Light, it had come more and more easily to her call with time to the point where there were times when she felt like it might burn up everything inside of her, banish every last trace of the shadows that her father hated so much. The healing energy rushed into the woman on the bed, who took a ragged breath as some of the tense, coiled, pained energy faded from her.

Shashi smiled warmly, bowing her head, and started to leave...

"...why did you do that?" The woman's voice was thready, jagged and rough, but barely more than a whisper.

Shashi cringed back, biting her lower lip. "...you were hurting."

There was a long silence. "There is nothing to be done about that," she growled, softly, and let the flower fall from her hand.

"Oh!" Shashi blinked, skittering to pick it up, all gangly limbs and an ungainly tangle of hooves. "You dropped--"

"It does not matter anymore," Jalanili said, her voice flat. "Keep it."

Shashi watched her for a few beats longer, waiting to make sure that she wasn't going to change her mind...finally she backed out of the room, glancing around. The man who she'd been talking to was gone. Her eyes fell to the flower in her grasp again.

((Site Write 22. Open prompt. This is a story that I’ve been meaning to tell for a long time now, a key piece of Shashi’s backstory. There’s a companion second part that goes with it, but I thought that for now this stands pretty well on its own. Also? Zolahir is a dick. Just sayin’!))

Shashi watched the little bugs on the floor of her room with delight. The air around her turned dark, shadow flickered across her white skin as she marched them in a line of two from one side of her spanner to the other...

There was a silent presence in the doorway. "...what are you doing?" Exarch Zolahir murmured, his voice a low rumble.

"Look what I can make them do!" The little girl laughed, clapping her hands together...it wasn't until her eyes came up to see him that she saw the look in his eyes. Horror. Disgust...fear.

Her glowing eyes went wide, she blinked. "Father? Did I do something wro--"

He was suddenly in motion, lifting her off her little hooves. "What are you DOING?!" He thundered, his voice was a bellow that filled the whole world. "You cannot use this kind of power! What if someone saw you? What if you--"

He paled, setting her down again just as abruptly as she'd been picked up. "You are forbidden to do such a thing again. I will show you the proper use of the Light."

Shashi didn't dare leave when her father did...she never did. He'd made it clear early and often that she was to stay in her room at all times, away from the terrifying and corrupting world. When he did, he was holding something small and wriggling wrapped in a blanket...

Shashi gasped and her eyes went wide with wonder as he uncovered the baby clefthoof. She had seen something like it in picturebooks, but had never seen a live animal before, let alone so close! It made a confused bleat of a sound at her, and enraptured, she reached out for it.

His eyes steadily on her, he set it on the ground. He placed a large hand on its back, and he pressed down...

There was an awful crunching sound. The small creature cried out piteously, a sound mirrored by Shashi like she had been crushed herself.

"Heal it," he said, his tone flat and his eyes dispassionate.

She was staring, horrified, tears started streaming down her face. She didn't even hear or understand what he was saying, her entire universe had narrowed down to the clefthoof's rending cries.

"Heal it," Zolahir said, firmly and loudly, drawing her attention finally. "It will die if you do not."

"I don't...I don't know how!" Shashi sobbed, brokenly. "Help it!" She pulled at his arm frantically.

"You know how. If you can wield Shadow, you can also wield the Light." He exited the room, closing and locking the door firmly behind him.

Most of the first hour was taken up by frantic pounding on the door. When she had exhausted herself and bruised her hands almost beyond use, she started pleading with the animal. "Stop...please stop...please be better..." she whispered, urgently, covering her ears to try and block out the awful noises it was making. The only thing that was answering inside of her when she called was black, dark inky blackness that shifted under her skin, feeding off her panic and her fear and her pain, until she was nearly covered in it...

Hours later, its noises were quieting - not because she had accomplished anything, but because it only had so many breaths left that it could take. Shashi had long since run out of tears, all she could do was make the jerky noises of sobbing without the associated tears. Finally it went still and silent.

"...please don't die. Don'tdiedon'tDIE!" She cried in a fresh panic...and when she did, something inside her, something answered her call. Golden Light filled her, flashing from her hands, the relatively tiny cleftoof in her lap jerked, breathing again, moving again...

((Site Write 18. Featuring Zhaara, Shashi’s evil Eredar mother, featured in several of Shashi’s other stories, and ones by @thegoddamnhawkman too. I always did kind of wonder how the whole ‘b-t-dubs having a baby’ conversation went when she got back from her undercover infiltration mission...This story also features what Shashi sounds like when she speaks Draenic, as opposed to muddling through in Common. Is different-like, yes?))

Zhaara was a force to be reckoned with. The powerful Man'ari Eredar sorceress specialized in illusions, and yet she was lean and muscular as well, toned curves tempered by fel, her own power, and the strength that she'd gained when she was a Vindicator.

While she now had her head bowed and her fists clenched, she still did not kneel. Despite being terrified out of her mind...not for herself. But for--

"What have you DONE?!" Mazrethok bellowed. Despite the energy that had made her as tall as the other corrupted Eredar, the Pit Lord was larger by far. She wondered, in idle moments, what sort of people the Annihilans had been on their homeworld. If they had always been so massive and violent, or if somewhere there was a smaller refugee version of the race that looked like it was made of hodgepodge parts stuck together that enjoyed crochet and writing poetry...

"Felweaver ZHAARA." The creature shouted, sensing that it didn't have her attention, and she leveled a neutral glare up at it.

"I am with child," she declared, her chin drew up and her shoulders squared, prepared for battle...

There was a long silence, one that spread over the area as hushed whispers spread from where she stood in waves. The silence took on almost a tangible quality as the Pit Lord's massive face came down to bring his eyes level with the Eredar's...

His laugh was booming, hearty, it nearly knocked her over with the sudden force of it. "With CHILD? What did you DO? Do your people have no idea how to prevent such things? I assume that the father is the idiot that you were sent to corrupt--"

It was a different idiot, she mused to herself, her fingers curled on her belly, but she remained silent.

"--will be useful enough, I suppose. We could submerge it in a pool of fel to see if it becomes something interesting when it is born."

Zhaara's fingers tightened again, her body still but inside her mind was spinning, reeling...

"I have a different plan," she declared, defiant. "One that is none of your concern. If you take issue with the fact, I feel that I must warn you that my power is in no way affected by my condition..." Red misty tendrils rose around her, roiling and reaching, and the milling, curious imps and succubi close by took a step or two back.

Mazrethok scoffed, but it was with a wide, malevolent smirk. "We are all looking forward to seeing the result of your little 'plan', Zhaara. I hope, for your sake, that it is an impressive one..."

******************************************************

"And then we hit the lever, and FWOOMP! The tailfin-sail deployed! The whole ship started SPINNING! I thought we were going to DIE!" Shashi enthused, her hands spread wide as she laid her head in her mother's lap. She didn't bother coming to her in disguise anymore, or in her dreams. Her visits were rather straightforward, albeit typically in the dead of night, under the cover of illusion as she came and went.

Zhaara couldn't help but chuckle. "It sounds like quite an adventure..."

"My life is full of adventure now that I'm a pirate. It's the best," Shashi sighed, smiling widely up at her. "Dad helped me with the changes to the ship. I mean...I kind of let him help. I knew what I was doing, but I like to give him an excuse to get off the Talbuk farm once in a while."

Zhaara's features drew into a small frown. "...how is your father?"

"Peaceful, mostly. Just kind of, you know. Doing his thing," Shashi nodded firmly. "Now that things have settled down from all the craziness with the other timeline and the other Orcs and the other me, hopefully they'll stay that way for a while!"

Zhaara's glowing green eyes wandered up to the sky and the stars, searching and hesitant. "Shashibala..."

Shashi stopped, nearly on the verge of another story, and craned her neck to look up at her. "Hmm?"

((Sometimes for whatever reason we don’t have time to play out the stuff that we just know is going on, somewhere, at some point. I was glad to have an opportunity to check in with a little Shashi/Spensaar bonding, because I imagine this kind of thing happens all the time.))

"It's going to explode."

Shashi said this firmly, and in Draenic, glowing eyes peering across the edge of the table as she shielded herself - at least partially, and not any part of her face that mattered - from the inevitable crazy fireworks.

"Tch. You have so little faith," Spensaar rumbled amiably. His response was in Common, for the benefit of the other company they had in the Warglaive's hold. Despite being too huge for sanity, he manipulated the tiny wires in the machine they were working on with ease. "I'll have you know that our people were using crystals as a power source when the people of this world were still beating on the ground with sticks."

Sitting nearby, not particularly huddled but in no big rush to get up close to the work the large man was doing, Twigette held up a green finger. "I'll have you know that my people were slaving in mines, thank you very much."

Spensaar pondered this for a moment, squinting at the distance..."Fair enough. Anyway! This should go just fine."

It wasn't that Shashi couldn't have handled the upgrades to the Warglaive by herself. Nili had hit on the idea of using Light-infused crystals to hover the ship over the surface of the water in short bursts to gain speed without drag against the hull, and it had fallen to Shashi and Twig to get the upgrades implemented. Crystals were a specialty, especially ones that made things float.

But if it meant that there was an excuse to work together with her father?

"Hah!" Spensaar brought a broad hand down as the array flickered to life, networked crystaline conduits not only lit the two massive crystals on deployable arms, but also infused the lower hull of the ship, humming.

Shashi sprung up from behind the table, cheering. "You're the best!" She declared, having to jump to wrap her arms around her father's neck and hold on, hugging.

Make-up Prompt #2 – Nov. 10th, 2014: In social interaction, everyone ends up wearing a mask of some type at some point. Describe one of the masks your character wears. Does he know why he wears it? Why does he do it in that situation?

((I think I did this just to make it more difficult on myself to track stories...))

Masks

Mostly for my own reference but it might also be handy for people trying to figure out the tangle of interconnected stories for these characters...

Shashibala/Divya Stories (in chronological order)

Tales from a Life in Exile: How I Met Your Mother (many years ago)

Tales from a Life in Exile: A Wrinkle in the Plan/Reunion by thegoddamnhawkman (many years ago)

About a Girl (many years ago)

Do You Want to Build a Robot? (Many years ago to 6 years before Warlords of Draenor)

8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter/Payback by thegoddamnhawkman (two years before Warlords of Draenor)

First Day by thegoddamnhawkman (about a year before Warlords of Draenor)

Scorpion (eight months before Warlords of Draenor)

Question O'Clock (seven months before Warlords of Draenor)

I Know You/Night Watch by thegoddamnhawkman (six months before Warlords of Draenor)

Flower (three months before Warlords of Draenor)

Care Packages (two months before Warlords of Draenor)

How I Met Your Mother: Redux (one month before Warlords of Draenor)

Strange Things by thegoddamnhawkman (three weeks before Warlords of Draenor)

The Ties That Bind (three weeks before Warlords of Draenor)

A Good Man by thegoddamnhawkman (just before before Warlords of Draenor)

Awake by thegoddamnhawkman (one week before Warlords of Draenor)

Masks (just before Warlords of Draenor)

Shashibala story note: Stories set around her conception, birth and early childhood are labeled as "many years ago" due to problems with the Blizzard timeline created by the Warlords of Draenor expansion locking down the events of the fall of Shattrath to 35 years go. Because the timeline of events is much more condensed now than it was implied to be previously, I'm just kind of ignoring the fact that she would potentially still be a child now in the "clarified" timeline.

Jalanili Stories (in chronological order)

Blue as the Water (36-ish years ago)

Spider/Blue as the Sky/ (7 years before Warlords of Draenor)

It's a Crystal Thing/What the Fuck is a 'Crystal Thing' (4 months before Warlords of Draenor)

Masks (just before Warlords of Draenor)

Teamwork (four months after Warlords of Draenor)

Shaali Stories (in chronological order)

Loss (4 years before Warlords of Draenor)

Illusion (3 weeks before Warlords of Draenor)

Masks (just before Warlords of Draenor)

Rhekkah Stories (in chronological order)