#veldrinath

The worst part of Veldrinath’s passing was how she never had the chance to say goodbye. There was no body, and his spirit didn’t return as the wisps their people tended to do. After all, he passed away in the scarab, old god worshipping infested desert of Silithus.

——

A distance from the central hub of Bel’Ameth, Nara’enil wandered until she found the area where the barrow dens were going to be readied. People poured into the town every day, be they visitors or those who intended to settle at the kaldoreis’ new seat of power. The High Priestess declared all were welcome, including the now-former outcasts that were the Illidari and the undead, along with the sorcerers of the Shen’drelar who leaned towards more sinister magics than the arcane. Only two named defectors of Druids of the Flame were with them. As for the Horde, they were allowed to visit, albeit with the invisible watchful eyes of the Sentinels constantly trained on them.

Though it gladdened her heart to see the new town built from scratch and to witness the joy of her kin as they celebrated and started their lives anew, Nara’enil felt the same hollow that never left her since she could remember. The same hollow that yawned more painfully in the wake of the deaths of both friend and family. The same hollow at witnessing the estrangement between her foster father turned honoured teacher and his son, her brother and best friend once upon a time.

Don’t be ridiculous, her sisters in battle often chided her over the millennia about the latter. You can’t mourn those who are still alive, they said. Immortal then and with immortality taken for granted, the end of a life was the utmost incomprehension despite how many were lost in the war of the ancients, and were still lost in the war of the satyr and of course the shifting sands. How ironic, thought Nara’enil at the time, that the lives of the hated were taken so cheaply in the years after the exile of the Highborne when the strays were hunted down and slaughtered.

And immortality taken for granted meant that any rift, while seemingly permanent, had the chance to heal be it centuries or millennia later. A disowned son, a former friend, a divorced spouse - any of them may return and perhaps be forgiven eventually as the passage of time healed the wounds that caused the separation.

But it wasn’t the same any more.

Some felt their mortality more than others. Nara’enil’s own hair, a rich navy for her entire life, greyed after Nordrassil was attacked by Archimonde. Fatigue had set into her very bones, despite her being in the prime of her adulthood at a few centuries before her fourth millennium, and she suspected it was less physical than emotional.

It was astounding how the state of mind of a mortal being affected its body.

But perhaps her late sentinel compatriots were right in the end: here at a new beginning, feeling the consequences of borrowed time both bad and good, it was her late husband whom Nara’enil missed the most painfully.

——

Those who passed or looked towards the southeast of the isle would see a solitary druidess strolling near one of Amirdrassil’s mighty gnarled roots threaded with the unusual blue that pervaded its bark. They’d see a wisp appear, seemingly from thin air, and float towards her.

Minutes later, if they were still watching, they’d see the athletic form of the woman hunch, her shoulders sagging while the wisp circled her. It touched the staff on her back, a wooden branch of blossoming blue leaves curled around a dreamcatcher at its head, and turned the living green threads into a soft blue similar to the threads patterned throughout the world tree. The wisp then hovered by the tear stained face of the druidess as if to give her a kiss, and then it floated away, disappearing into the non existence from whence it came, leaving the elf sobbing and defeated as her fingers tried in vain to reach for the spirit of her lost love.

She crumpled to her knees on the grass in a perfect picture of utter grief.