#stormwindian

Dame Alison Clement’s prior words echoed callously through her own thoughts; she reflected on them, attaining faint distraction from the unexpected after-effects of evoking a recent healing spell.

“The Light doesn’t simply answer someone for being a ‘good’ boy or girl. It … responds to one’s motives and the strength of faith they have in their motives.”

As each sentiment presented themselves, the dame continued to sway forward with fatigue. Having exited an infirmary room and entered into a keep’s stonework halls, she found herself unable to regard the path being took.

While walking, Alice clutched her right hand which shook with incessant tremors.

It was a cost that came in tandem with many others, including a pounding heart and violent migraines. The dame wasn’t unaccustomed to such aches, as they were common when her spellwork might typically be brought to its limitations.

In a cruel irony, it seemed the tighter Alice made her grip the more emboldened her prior sentiments became.

“It’s difficult for me, at times… A lot of  times, actually.”

The knight shut her eyes, then continued to meander forward.

“I used to tell myself that, because I’d managed to manifest its energies prior— It wouldn’t be impossible when I next needed it.”

Minutes passed and Alison eventually felt the bitter chill of late autumn air grace upon her cheek. Wind whistled from the keep’s entryway, which Alice haphazardly arrived to move past and close.

Just after the dame’s eyes opened for the task, however, she masked them again. Miss Clement brought her hands upwards to massage her face, brow, and scalp in an attempt to beget a sense of composure.

“Now, things are getting … uncomfortably harder.”

Alison’s self-soothing actions had meager results, though the effects were dampered soon after her hands fell away.

Weighted by confliction,  Miss Clement could only attempt to bridle her frustrations and trepidations. Doing so merely left her confounded. — Months ago, suffering such expensive consequence for producing so little would have been unheard of, for her.

Left questioning and wary, Dame Alice took a soft breath of air into her lungs before stepping outwards onto the cobblestone path.

She began to walk, not knowing the time it would take for her tremors to settle.

She knew not how long they’d last. She knew not if the price might worsen, next time. She knew not if they’d grow impeding and unsustainable.

All Alison knew, was a single truth.

Just got this piece done by @galaxiesto and I love it so much holy HECK. 

These questions were whistled over the very winds around Alison.

The young knight was caught in an endless migration; for how long she had been lost within the arid wasteland, she couldn’t tell. She was beleaguered, nearly beaten by the inhospitable environment.

With what vestiges of strength she had left, Alice raked her dirtied fingers into the sand in order to generate some manner of momentum and force herself further forward.

She climbed the dune, much like she had climbed those prior to it. If this was the dozenth, hundredth, thousandth, or even millionth of its kind, Alice did not know. Time felt unchanging, much like the setting itself was dauntingly constant.

Upon reaching the mound’s peak, her tired gaze was cast upwards.

There, she was met with a black sky; the horizon was empty and devoid of anything that might impart a sense of direction. A distant star hovered over the dame and, like a far off flame, the dim light gave off a slight warmth and offered meager illumination.

The light was barely strong enough for Alison to glean a sense of color, let alone the never-ending nature of the desert she’d been trekking across. When she looked over her shoulder, the girl felt as though her foot-tracks went on for ages before fading into shadow.

The breeze began to blow stronger, causing grains of sand to gust against Dame Alison’s face. She was quick to cover her mouth and get low for stability. With the winds came the questions she’d heard countless times.

“Why were you alone?” “Why are you scared?” “Why can’t you stop?”

Dame Alison entered into her home, pulling the door shut harshly behind her. Reckless, she made sure that it slammed against the abode’s frame in a manner that made most of the nearby furnishings shake. 

In her left hand was a silver locket, recently removed from her own collar. Clement threw the item to the far side of the room, watching it impact a distant sofa before falling to the floor.

Wrath and despair had consumed the woman in a spiral of emotional disaster. When Alice moved forward, her first instinct was to bring a gloved fist downwards against the central dining table. Most of Clement’s furniture and items were considered heirlooms or fragile gifts yet, due to her state of anguish, she could pay no mind to their worth.

No, she needed to break things. Anything.

Alice needed to feel the crash and splinter of wood beneath her movements; she needed to hear the breaking of structure as audible cracks might remind her of what physical destruction was in comparison to the far less tangible scorn that enveloped her pounding heart. 

She needed to destroy whatever she could yet, when she raised her hand to hammer the fist back unto the table once more, she found no energy to do so.

Clement held her hand in the air as what little sense of reason that remained in her mind staggered wrathful action. Her eyes opened, fluttering from one piece of decor to the other in a searching manner.

Unfortunately, whatever it was that she sought, it was not there. — Even if it was, it’d be impossible to identify; tears welled up in the girl’s gaze, blurring away her sight as she was forced to not only pause her movements but also choke from her own tempestuous rage. 

“Light,” was the first thing to pass from her lips once she was behind closed doors.

It was a pained vocalization and, despite being only a single word, it also represented a call for aide; it was a prayer, a beg, and a demand for a cosmic force to answer her need for comfort. 

“Why did I do this?” she spoke out while lowering her hand, slowly.

The girl brought her hand unto her head and began to rake her fingers through the long tresses of blonde hair that stretched and curled across her upper body. Despite this mane of physical insulation and warmth, she was cold. So much so that she could only find heat when she spoke outwards. 

“Am I an idiot? A fool? Some mundane, blunt-minded tool? — It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d said anything differently, I’m sure. — I wasted my time! I wasted hers! And ...  And all of this was a petty farce... !” Her tone of voice croaked with a weary sob.  

“I could have been anyone else and still remain being played with. A mere flavor to be picked or denied as a simple ‘taste’ of what it means to get a brief reprieve from their true interests, I’m sure ...” 

A scowl was produced from Alison as she continued in her tirade.  Slowly and with a difficult discernment of where she was walking, the girl made her way to the far off sofa. She set her hands onto the furniture and leaned down, resting as her mind and heart saturated with spite, anxiety, and sorrow. 

“And ... what does she mean to be dysfunctional? Is there not a more articulate, rational reason? If anyone else is irrelevant, why is loyalty such a burden to accept or appreciate?!” 

Shaking, she lowered herself down onto her knees.

By now, the girl’s voice had grown hush, barely even being a whisper as she spoke to herself. 

“It was all a convenience for her and she knew what she was doing. — She knew what I wanted and only thought it’d take the winding of a string to stretch my time back out for her... And yet, all of that time was wasted... I wasted my time. — I wasted hers ...”

The knighted woman slid one hand downwards, touching the floor beneath her knees so that she could find the locket that was thrown earlier. Tightly, Alison clutched the silver jewelry as she brought it up to her chest.

Alice’s knuckles whitened as she grasped the item. Subconsciously, she wondered if she could break the gift if she tried hard enough. 

Every time Clement squeezed, however, nothing happened. 

With the weight of her mental adversity already proving exhausting, Clement’s head dropped onto the sofa’s cushioning. Her long locks formed a wavy, messy pile around her skull. She felt no power could will her upwards again.

All Alison could do was convulse and continue to shatter against herself.

“I just wanted to believe,” she lamented. 

“I just wanted to believe that you believed in me.”

In truth, she wanted a lie. Something that never would occur, no matter how far she might plan and no matter how much affection she tried to shower. She wanted this to be a mere hurdle that she could leap over and she wanted to believe that, at some point, there would be a knock on her door to tell her that everything would be better. 

She wanted a lie; to be told that all of this was merely a test and that she’d passed with flying colors. 

She wants a home.  — She wants to feel comfortable.

She wants a place she can go to and let everything out.

She wants somewhere she’s free to tear off her medals and metals and brandish her scars without feeling judged for having them.

She wants to be taken in. To a place that isn’t so cold and where a fire is always lit; where embers of trust, love, and unequivocal joy to have her there will flicker, radiating a welcome like no other place might be capable of.

She wants to know she can smile, cry, laugh, frown, yell, whine, complain, cheer, love, and hate without overstepping herself on the boundaries of this small space that protects her.

She wants a face and name to associate with this wholesome abode, knowing it will always be there for her.

She wants that place to have a voice, so that it can tell her everything will be alright.

She wants to give all of this back, and more, as a way of saying “thank you.”

She wants a home and to be someone’s home, in turn.

She was still afloat. 

Alice stood there quietly, leaning against the ship’s frame. Her arms were crossed around her torso, tucked just under her bust so that she could idly pinch at the fabric she wore; it was an unconscious action to sate her anxiousness.

Between the occasional pull, the blonde woman chose to look around the hull. Most men and women within the League were asleep, but there were still a select few awake for their own reasons. At the least, Clement felt she was making a more considerate use of her insomnia tonight.

To her right was Chthonia, a Night Elven priestess who continued to channel a holy spell, which encapsulated and protected a comatose woman laying on a hammock between them both.  Alice had no words to offer; she had no conversational intrigues to pose nor any intelligible and appreciable topics to raise for thought.

No. — For now, her mind was aflutter with considerations that were too tempestuous to be voiced.

A small, inaudible sigh escaped the dame’s lips as she briefly shut her gaze. The way the boat swayed across the Baradin Sea made her body bump backwards against the vessel’s structure. When she impacted the wood, her green eyes opened wide. Thankfully, it was just a small motion.

She was still afloat.

In a way, it was almost poetic. Since the northern crises began, all Alice had felt about herself was that she was just floating along and watching those of higher calibers push and pull to change the figurative current. 

In fact, Miss Clement had no qualms with that on a professional level.

Rather, there was a distinctive pain that was produced by the nature of her perspective; she remained aching to be necessary and suffered a wanting of purpose without having to grandstand or impose herself. 

With her eyes open again, Alice flickered her gaze onto the limp woman that was settled between herself and the nearby Night Elf. The dame looked towards the pale Tirasian as laid there in the rope-woven hammock. 

The dame turned more listless with each passing second that her eyes remained upon her.

Her eyes started to move aimlessly across the sleeping figure, eventually pausing at the sight of the jewelry around her neck. It was an item she’d donned onto the cursed woman only a few hours ago.

It was an amulet of Thalassian origin. In fact, it was a gift that Alice, herself, had given to the comatose woman for a Winter’s Veil, almost two years ago. She chose the item for its foreign luxury and also because the material was silver. Superstitions implied that the metal had natural properties which augmented holy spells; some travelers hoped that divine watchers might find the metal favorable and protect them from the unknown. 

Whether it was fact or fiction, the metallurgy meant little to her; all that mattered to Miss Clement was that the item was being worn by its proper owner. For the moment, she felt as though that was all she could do for the suffering woman.

A small, bittersweet expression crept over the blonde’s lips, then, as she turned her focus away towards the exit. The rains of Gilneas’ natural weather was finally starting to stagger. This meant the ship was coming towards smoother waters.

She was still afloat.

‘I would have preferred to return it with a conversation, though,’ Alison thought to herself with regard for her prior sight. Immediately after the reflection, Alice felt regret.

Was it not satisfactory that the woman was found alive?

‘No,’ the girl’s mind answered.

It wasn’t good enough. Not for her. — When Alice found the woman’s amulet among wasted flesh and dilapidated carcasses, she did little more than choke under her own distress and turned voiceless as those of higher statuses and influences echoed past her own unsaid lamentations and anxieties.

At the time, self-derogation took hold; she scolded herself for having such little capability in the situation. Then, she told herself that her words would be of little weight, regardless; who would listen to the professed fears of someone whom they might only barely recognize the name of? 

Now, however, Miss Clement was regretting her prior passiveness.

Perhaps if she wasn’t passive, those of similar mindsets could’ve been spurred into action?

Perhaps if she wasn’t passive, she could’ve helped plot a sooner rescue and give it more attention?

Perhaps if she wasn’t passive, the comatose woman, near her, would have been saved before reaching such a tragic state? 

Perhaps if she wasn’t passive, she wouldn’t be guarding the nearly-corrupted woman like an inadequate dog that was unsure of what to do with itself?

All of these hypotheticals, and yet — here she was. 

She was still afloat.

Regardless of hindsight, it felt as though inaction was continually putting herself a shelf underneath where her peers were desiring to search. She was insufficient for anything beyond these menial tasks and petty words; she had no impressive firearms or mastery of magical spells to force results with.

Even Rione had phrased her stature with simple fact, when the chaos had settled in Silverpine: Alison was of ‘The Mundane.’

All she had to offer was herself; it was bitter. 

It was bitter that she could do nothing. — It was bitter because she chose to do nothing. — It was bitter because she was still doing nothing.

For a brief moment, a frown crossed the dame’s expression. Her brows furrowed and she found herself looking around to ensure that her brooding did not attract attention. Thankfully, it didn’t appear to; most of the peers who were still awake seemed to be eavesdropping on a brutal conversation between the Commander and a Lieutenant. 

She didn’t pay the chat much mind until it concluded and the lesser-ranked figure meandered past her with a radiant vibe of despondence.

Alison could relate to the emotion, at least.

She was still afloat.

It’s hard to describe what Alice’s childhood was like without detailing the events that occurred during it.

Compared to her adolescence and adulthood, her early years were probably the happiest and most stable. This is primarily because all of Alison’s family was still alive, so the memory of how much she’s lost can give her a bitter perspective

Her parents, Augustus and Cecily Clement, were Stromic expatriates that met through an arranged marriage. There was a huge margin of age between them; Clement’s father was thirty-five and her mother had just turned eighteen, by the time they exchanged their vows.

The two partners had their first child, Katherin, a year later. Katherin was eight years older than Alison and she was raised during the strife known as the Second War. 

As Stromgarde began to decline in the aftermath of the war, Augustus began to lose faith in his homeland. He chose to bring his family south, so they could start a new life in Stormwind during its postwar reconstruction era.

The men and women that the Clements left behind, though, would never forget his decision.

An intelligent investor and a savvy business-man, Alison’s father established himself and his peers as an economic powerhouse within the region of Eastvale. By the time Alison was two, her brother, Richard, was born and the family was financially among Stormwind’s “upper-class.”

With this kind of background, you can probably imagine the type of influences that Alison had. An aristocratic parentage imposed a solid education and northern culture where traditional values honored martial ability. 

Still, as a child, Alice couldn’t pick up a sword yet. She ended up watching her sister commit to those actions while being tutored by her mother for the first nine years of her life.

As Alison and Richard learned Human and High Elven literature alongside mathematics, history, and faith, their sister trained with horses, swords, javelins, and archery. Everything seemed positive for the family, during this period. 

That is, until the Third War began. Terror and strife struck through the northern homeland, bringing back a lot of bad memories for the family. – Things that the children truly didn’t understand, yet. 

Augustus and Cecily tried to make contact with old names from Stromgarde and, in doing so, sealed their own fate. The peers they’d crossed and the friends they had abandoned while trying to forge a new life in the South never forgot their grudges. Out of vindictiveness, they harassed and threatened the well-to-do family. 

It was around this time that Alison’s mother became sick with an unknown illness. Cecily Clement struggled for years before finally passing away. An investigation never found any verifiable evidence, but many relatives believed that the kindhearted woman was murdered for a twisted sense of retribution.

Alison’s family and life was never really the same after that.

Augustus refused to come to terms with what happened; he started making pacts with those close to him and swore to return to the north, one day, and seek vengeance.

Katherine became overwhelmed with disgust for the Highlands and believed that nowhere would be safe until the Scourge was eradicated. She made it a goal to join the Alliance Military, hoping she’d get a chance at striking out against the Lich King himself.

Alison and Richard began to stagger in their studies; they were nine and seven, respectively, and didn’t understand why their youthful environment was forced to change so starkly. 

They both developed anxieties and struggled to look towards the future with positivity. Seeking out approval, they began to emulate the family-members who were closest to them, without their mother’s guidance. 

Alice started venerating her sister as she became a prodigal warrior, while Richard began shadowing his father on the daily. 

It’s hard to describe what growing up was like, for Alison, because the events of her life practically speak for themselves and were characteristically tragic. 

Everything began pure and hopeful, then it all started to be stripped away. And the worst part, though, was that all of this was only the beginning for her.