Swallowtail's blog

Beads rattled in the dreadlocks of the woman in her thirties who poured dark steaming tea in four cups. Shaw'shaw, known in Common as the Swallow's Tail, was still a handsome woman, her vibrant eyes bright in a deep burnished dark face framed by her fine long braids.

Swallow sat relaxing in her apartment high above Shattrath. The Aldor had been good hosts. Good friends. Chaminuka, now almost three, had befriended some Draenei children, and used some of their tongue interspersed with Kadanga at home when he sat at the low table Swallow had purchased. Nehanda watched from within her playpen, clinging sturdily to the upper edge of the slatted construction.

Swallowtail lay on the bed she had made in the corner of Aradhel's room. The huge Kal'Dorei warrior insisted they share a bed, but when the human wished to curl in her own blankets, Aradhel never asked otherwise.

There were still nights when Swallowtail did not wish to speak or think, but only lie and feel her baby's kicks in her belly, and try not to think of the man whom she'd once loved. It wasn't easy to forget someone she'd loved so utterly and deeply. She'd meant it when she'd sworn to him that no other man would lie with her. None would. Only Aradhel, her lover and mentor. Only Aradhel would know Swallow's lips or the feel of her body beside her in the bed they usually shared. After Ythfas... other men felt hollow to the girl from the jungles of Stranglethorn.

We were privileged to see a thing I have never before seen in all my years of playing this game. A GM, in the flesh, come to spawn and then kill a boss for my group to allow us to move beyond a bugged door. He even RPed!!

Swallow sat with her back against smooth polished wood. It was a reassuring pressure, and somehow supportive. She had spent so many hours reflecting on her life until so recently, only to come to a realization that nothing mattered but now. It was a truth she'd known once before the wiles of the grubby world outside her home permeated her vision. She was only truly free so long as she knew that single essential truth. The chains of the past were impossible weights otherwise, clanking sullenly about her ankles, tainting the future and the present with the rattle of their imprisonment.

 (Continued from Sekhet's "A Request" )

Swallowtail eyed the message sitting in the slot at Aldor where she usually found ores her friends sent her, or gifts from her teacher and lover. It was writing. Writing!

Ugh.

She'd never really understood why the so-called "civilized" peoples of the world felt a need to limit themselves to such transitory things as paper. Their memories faded like leaves after they ceased to exercise their minds. And the notion of capturing thoughts.. it was repugnant. But, it was common, and typical.

She eyed the bird-like scratch marks on the page, and briefly entertained a fantasy in which a bird had written to her.

I miss you, Owaissa.

The clouds veiled the sky in a soft gray, and the rain pouring from them wove a haze which obscured the details of the distant mountains. Swallowtail sat with her back against a tree which dripped with residual moisture from when the storm had been squarely overhead. The mossy green branches of the single gnarled tree indicated no shortage of such storms, which was unsurprising in a temperate rainforest. Her hair was damp, and a bead of cool humidity formed to plop from her chin to her forearm.

It wasn't the jungle. The trees did not sweat beneath a burning sun, and the dappled shadows did not loom with spotted shadows ready to leap and claw. There were no distant screams and howls as troops of monkeys moved through the gloom beneath the swaying branches.

But it was beautiful.

I believe in God who made of one blood all races that dwell on earth. I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying, through Time and Opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and in the possibility of infinite development.

Swallowtail pushed back her soaking hair and squinted through the driving rain. The banner of the Arathor folk hung limply from the weathered pole behind her, and the grass was rapidly turning to mud at her feet.

Swallowtail turned and looked around the room she'd bought for a handful of glittering coins. The Aldor Rise loomed high above the city of refugees below, and held a sort of perfect beauty to it. The Light which coruscated upward like some trailing ribbon of joy lent an air of peace to both the Rise and the City below.

Swallowtail hefted the pack to her shoulder. She'd carefully oiled her ceremonial blue - and -gold armour and felt that curious lump in her throat again. It didn't defend her, and this place was filled with enemies from the top down. She would have liked to wear it. Would have liked this to have been the home she'd wanted it to be for herself and her son. Her face dark and cold - a good mask, she was finding, to hide how very much it hurt inside to be betrayed in this way - she pushed open the door, taking the steps to the nursery, trying to force her mind from how bruised her heart felt to how much she loved her son.

Swallowtail regarded the mirror in the room once hers, now belonging to her daughter. In it was a lean dark brown woman with hard eyes and bristling with weaponry.

"You were not, are not, and never will be my equal."

She snorted at the reflection. Ythfas' words rang in her mind like the weak mewlings or yappings of a shrill beast. He claimed she was his lesser. That almost all he met were. The arrogant idiocy made her lip curl.

"You forget your place. Bathe and feed the baby... I assume even you can manage to protect my children"

She rolled her eyes. The man was so afraid. Afraid of ever having an equal. Afraid of a world in which he might be challenged. A world in which he might be wrong. His fear, his weakness, made him fashion unclimbable walls of pride, beneath which he claimed were all others.

Swallowtail woke in darkness, long before the sun's rising. Lost for a moment, she blinked, then winced as she recalled the prior night. The hatred in Ythfas' voice. The hissing, venomous words.

Why does he hate me so?

She lay back among the scattered blankets of her makeshift pallet by Ythane's crib and tried to reason it out.