#turkey-day

In which Sharpen, even in absentia, acts very much like a buttered-up goofball turkey during the holiday.

Part four: The Jadescythe family reacts!

When Wisthera finished reading Sharpen’s private love letter to Jiroki, his other three sisters were in tears. Jezzca Jadescythe, the very youngest of the family, cried quietly while looking down at her food. When Jezzca realized the letter was finished, she swiped at her eyes and tried to compose herself.

“Don’t you go, too!”

Jezzca snapped up, blinked at their mother who was pointing right at their youngest.

“You’re not fully trained, Jezzca. You’d do more harm than good.”

“Mom, I know that. I already considered all that!”

Then, quiet. Hiyuna and Liziqi* were crumbling before their eyes. Liziqi got up, just as their father nodded that they could be excused.

Momma Feline Jadescythe kept peace at the table again, her silvery-green hair falling over one shoulder as she gestured emphatically for Hiyuna to go and comfort her sister. “Then bring her right back to the table.”

Jezzca frowned, “Mom!”

In which Sharpen, even in absentia, acts very much like a buttered-up goofball turkey during the holiday.

Part three: Later, at the family farm in Pandaria…

In the end, after a lot of bickering around the dinner table about whose fault it was… who had spoiled Sharpen as a child, who had let him get away with too much as an adult, who had failed to introduce him to this friend or that friend who would have him settled and married by now, which hunter trainer of his went wrong, Wisthera realized she needed to just read her brother's letter. To put it in Sharpen’s own words. Though, Sharpen's eldest sister had wanted to keep the full contents private; it wasn’t something Sharpen intended the entire family to know. Though, that was shortsighted of him. If it was the last thing he ever wrote, of course the family would want it, demand to read it. And they would have every right.

Sharpen’s love letter to Jiroki.

Dear Pumpkin Pooh,

Sorry for the new nickname. I’ve been sad and thinking a lot about the holiday recently. Do you like it?

I’ve searched and asked everyone in the Tarts, and in the Greyshields that I could get my hands on. Alessandre didn’t know. And some of them have already left. Perhaps they even followed you…

If I was wrong, then goddess help me. And I pray to Elune also, that you forgive me if I left your side at a time when, yes, the world was in great danger and I didn’t have to. But what I want to explain, if the worst has happened and I disappeared forever while you are somewhere with your beautiful family, staying safe in all this… Perhaps my love for you caused me to finally find the courage, but my thoughts over these last few days, about the War of Thorns and how I wasn’t there, and when the Scourge attacked but I played it safe in Winterspring… my guilt about that, when I am supposed to be a soldier for not just the Alliance, but for Azeroth herself, this beautiful world we have and its creatures… I found myself finally able to think about all that has happened over the last couple of years, finally able to face my actual contribution when so many have lost a lot, when a lot of our people have lost everything. And when I did, when I gazed at the fire and tried to imagine what it must have been like… I let myself, at last, try to feel their pain fully, rather than remain innocent. I tried to truly visit the hurt so many Kaldorei must feel. How you felt, when you went through the ritual and your eyes changed to the color of Elune’s sacred night. I admit now, I freely confess now that I felt ashamed.

In which Sharpen, even in absentia, acts very much like a buttered-up goofball turkey during the holiday.

Part two: Wisthera convinces Al to come home for the holiday… somehow

Al slid off his bar stool. Tavernkeep Reese Langston took that opportunity to snatch up Al’s beer drink and turn some of the lanterns off, but Al and Wisthera held on in that near darkness. A bar man’s snark was typical for rogues to deal with and having a sour holiday, alone, in a dead-end bar was now the very least of Al’s problems.

“He went? I heard Tyrande practically leapt through there… which took courage, or it was plain dangerous—I have mixed feelings about that.”

“And most Kaldorei know better than to question the Night Warrior’s actions these days. We’re all still holding our breaths, waiting for Malfurion to react.”

“But your brother went? Was it because of Tyrande.”

Wisthera let out a breath, slipped a crisp white envelop from her vest. “You know that cabin he keeps in Winterspring? Sharpen always drags his feet, trying to bring a menagerie of pets over to the family farm for the holiday. Some of them winter there too, because Pandaria has a more stable climate—” She pinched the bridge of her nose, unable to take it. “My fool brother! He really is the sweetest… stupidest sweet thing. And I don’t know how to break it to my family. If anyone should have gone, it would have been me. I’m the bloodthirsty cutpurse, right? I can handle some sinning on the other side. I’ve got plenty of enemies who won’t miss me.”

“I’d miss you, and your husband Onyx, obviously. Your son. And the Kaldorei Rogue Network would be a shambles without you… don’t make me keep stating the obvious. Anyway, we discussed this. You are the queen of the hivemind. Your strength is in using your connections, pressure points among the network of rogues. The Shadowlands stuff, what little we know of it so far, is for the real bloodthirsty purse snatchers and cutthroats, men like me. I just… hadn’t made up my mind about it yet.”

“Please come over for dinner and help me break the news to them. I can’t face the other Jadescythes, not with this. I really can’t. And… you know her. Far better than I do. I only met,” Wisthera had to shut her eyes a moment, banishing hurt, anger, anxiety, “I don’t want to pass judgement on her or what their… connection is. But one of the reasons Sharpen clearly went was because of Jiroki.”

“WHAT?!” Alessandre snatched the letter and started reading it for himself.

“He assumed that I would find it in his cabin since we travel down to Pandaria together every year. Sharpen assumed I would deliver it to her if I could find her, having the job I do, it should have been a cinch for a rogue to track her down if even he couldn’t. Sharpen held out hope for as long as he could but that ultimately prompted him to not take any more chances with it and just… go on and go.”

Al unfolded the letter and read ravenously as they walked out of the dark bar together. The moment their boots hit the wood porch, Reese cheekily got the rest of the lights off, dramatic as ever.

“Your, let’s face it, sweet, animal-loving, himbo brother is the very last person who should be in that nightmare hell. Nothing I’ve heard about what’s beyond the veil has been any good.”

Wisthera had to give Alessandre a hug.

“What is wrong with your brother, falling in love with Jiroki Glaivefall anyway!”

Wisthera smacked him on the arm, “AL! That’s not the point! Anyway, I’ve seen her. You mean you can’t guess? That lady is a knockout, for a few reasons.”

“Wish she’d knock me out.”

Wisthera started walking, “And you wonder why your wife won’t let you in the door to see your son and family again. Come on, we have some explaining to do. How do I break the news to Ma and Pa? What’s the best strategy?”

“Say their idiot son finally took somebody’s advice and took a long walk off a short pier. Except this pier was in Icecrown of all places.”

“Alessandre Mirothalas Shademoon! Do you want me to leave you in Stormwind! Cause I will, in the canal for the crocs, in bloodied pieces!!”

In which Sharpen, even in absentia, acts very much like a buttered-up goofball turkey during the holiday.

Part one: Wisthera recruits Al into the madness

Wisthera Jadescythe Bane sashayed up to everyone’s favorite rogue to loathe, Alessandre Shademoon, in a very familiar way. In a way that made him glower, while he was hunched over stale bar peanuts and his stein of beer gone sour. Sour? It was that time of year, in this part of the Stormwind City. All the good stuff had been bought up for the Pilgrim’s Bounty holiday. It was in Angus Stern’s house and Matthias’ Shaw’s house. It was already in King Anduin’s… palace. It was everywhere but at the bar where the lonely so-called estranged Night Elf husband had decided to spend his holiday before Al was eventually kicked out into the street. Even the barkeep of the Pig & Whistle needed to be with his family at the end of the day.

The sultry way that Wisthera greeted Al, both of them fellow rogues and long since past the point where either of them might have been young, frisky, and risked marrying one another? It was a private joke between the two. Once upon a time, long, long ago, Wisthera had walked up to him in much the same way, but the bar was at a tavern over in the Dwarven Lands, Loch Modan. Before she even said much to the handsome night-blue haired Night Elf, Alessandre rejected her flat-out, and in such a thoroughly sadistic, rude way, Wisthera had decided to sabotage his career as an ‘eff you buddy’ because that’s the kind of professional she was. And Al had lost his contract with King Magni Bronzebeard investigating the Maker’s Terrace, back before anyone knew that Troggs were related to Dwarves. Because that’s the kind of illustrious career Al almost had, before he insulted the cleverest, most dangerous of all the Jadescythe sisters. It was how their hate-love-hate you again-alright, we’re sort of family by marriage now connection began.

Rogues lead such interesting lives, don’t they?

Wisthera stood there, hip cocked. “Why don’t you come home with me to Pandaria for turkey day?”

Alessandre had got very drunk indeed. It took him a while to pull his answer together and sound sober enough. “I have better plans.”

Reese Langston, one of the main proprietors of the Pig and Whistle, looked squarely at Alessandre and announced loud enough for the entire bar. “Closing time! I want your last drink orders. You having anything, miss?”

Wisthera winked in a way that said she was going to take care of his final unruly customer, and then she placed a hand over Al’s drink, that no, he couldn’t have any more.

“Don’t you have the perfect Night Elf family with four-point-five children in it and the family nightsaber, and acres of land in Pandaria?” A wonderful image once, but now more of an insult with most Night Elves had lost so much in the War of the Thorns. The Jadescythe family was an unusual exception, painful in its own way, and that big family move to far-off Pandaria was partly to deal with that.

Wisthera leaned on the bar, as if she was going to pick him up, dragging on that age-old rogue’s joke between them, though it had been many years since they first became rivals. They were now married to different people. Well, Al mostly.

He blurted out, “I can’t believe you lied about being an orphan!”

She smirked, “And yet, I can completely believe Opal used a magical barrier to keep you out of the house when you tried to come home for turkey day supper about three hours ago. Come on, we’ll be waiting on Sharpen anyway, there’s a Pandaria time difference so you can still make the Jadescythe clan dinner. She then narrowed eyes at him, “And that was on our last mission before we got promoted—it really was an age ago, Al.”

Alessandre brooded. “Wisthera, pregnant with her first kid. We think we’re sending her over to Duskwood for safety with her peacebloom-picking, potion-chugging parents. Odd, but at least inconspicuous. Close enough to Stormwind, but safe out of the way… of… Shadowstep and whatever else we were lucky enough to worry about in those days.”

“The Scourge and the Burning Legion?”

“No… Zarteaus was… Twilight Cultists. That mission, with Onyx and Shadowstep. And your mother-in-law Feathershine, and me and… Sharpen?”

“No, no. Sharpen was still in training back then, practically a kid at two-hundred and fifty years old something like that. And not even then because as you said, I lied about my last name and who my parents were so that you all wouldn’t ship me off to Feralas. I wanted to stay close to the mission. Ah yes, the good ole sweet-as-pie Twilight Cultists, who aren’t trying to invade the afterlife. How lucky we were back then... How could I ever forget?”

Alessandre sighed and had the last of his drink. “I’ll just go to bed, I think. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe Opal, and our son, will forgive me if I try again tomorrow. You think so?”

Real sadness. It was there, though Wisthera had hid it so well up until now.

Not much could take Wisthera down a notch. Al leaned in. “What’s gone wrong?”

going to sleep on October 31 and waking up November 1

For his height, the shape of his face, his ability to grow a full beard and his dumpling-making skills.  

'Tis the Night of the Roasted Turkey, but in the afternoon, my mantoy and I wandered in on a great dumpling-making spree.  Great-Uncle (one of a brood of twelve that included my maternal grandmother) cut little rounds of dough, which he then rolled one-handed into circular, palm-sized wraps that Great-Aunt (who could not speak anything but one of the myriad dialects of Mandarin found in Northern China) wrapped around a filling of shrimp and pork and bok choy.  

Boy and I were happy to help and we all laughed at the lop-sided attempts at creating the circular wraps or the crescent-shaped suigao (dumplings).  In spite of the fact that the edges of his dumplings needed to be pinched a little more tightly, or the fact that they largely resembled winged, sugared Timbits, Great-Aunt was in raptures over Boy.  

"Good looking," she would tell Great-Uncle to translate to me.  I would then exercise my meagre grasp of Cantonese to relate the compliments to Boy.  "Nice-shaped face."

"Hairs?" Great-Uncle asked, gesturing to his face.

"They like your beard," I said to Boy.  But she shook her head: no, it was his facial features he liked.

Boy is white.  He is guailo.  But Great-Aunt and -Uncle are too nice to say that and I don't think they really noticed, beyond noting: "Tall!  Gao-dai!"