Direction

It is the middle of the week.  It is time to prepare.

The week's end is for recovery.  One day in my den beneath the house, cleansing, fasting, healing until I am no longer sick and hurt from the last venture into the Citadel.  The next day I stagger up to Cassie's bedroom and in that high place lose myself beneath her thick bedclothes, beneath her.  Afterward the horrors of the Citadel seem far away, unreal nightmares washed away by wallowing in bliss.

She has become more than a lover to me.  More than the lady whom I serve.  The two attachments intermingle at times, but at the depths there is Cassie, this dark-haired human girl who has taken my heart, and I bring her flowers and plant her roses to make her smile because I cannot imagine my life without her.  I could not be doing what I am doing now without her.

The first two days of the week I live at home.  I take the great gray stallion out to ride the holdings and smile at the snow churned beneath his hooves, so white and pure unlike the sullied snow of Icecrown.  I meditate in the conservatory, fingers deep in warm loamy soil, planting seedlings for the spring gardens.  Sometimes, I don my heavy armor, take my axes and go out.  Sometimes Cassie goes with me.  Sometimes I go alone for the pure joy of spending my strength were it can do most good.  I return to our warm hearth invigorated, limbs spent with exertion but grinning with the triumph of what I can now do.

What I must do.

In the middle of the week, I take up my bow for the first time in four days, and stand at range of the bullseye for hours, loosing arrows.

There is no room for error.

Tomorrow, I will prepare my armor and provisions and pack what things I need.  I will bring Meep back out of the conservatory, where the sporebat has been resting and recovering itself - it seems to require a cleanse of its own, taking days to shed tainted spores and matter before returning to a healthy glow.  I will spend one more promised night with Cassie, then return to Dalaran for any business I have there.  On the last day of the week I will be ready once again to meet the Ghost Scions before another venture into the Citadel.

I do not think Lord Kast likes me.

I try to tell myself it does not matter if he likes me or not.  He needed a marksman, and Arasminna volunteered me.  My skills are up to the task, and I do not believe I disappoint him in combat.  But we exchange glares on far too many occasions. Perhaps we are both too single-minded.  He has told us not to stop him if he moves to take the helm at the end.  I say nothing, but I know I could kill him if I needed to.  I have no loyalty to him.  This is a means to an end.

The others seem like distant figures, like watching other customers at a tavern, eating their meals.  They gripe or they banter or they grin according to what is put before them and what is on their minds.  I worry for the old tree, Nuadhu.  I would protect him, if I could.  If I could, I would plant him in a great forest tamed by time, and let his roots go deep until he turned silver in the moonlight, an eternal beacon.  He pushes himself along beside us instead, limbs creaking.  The dwarves are stalwart and unfazed and never seem cold.  I try to understand the humans - I think I should be able to, living with one!  The old man with the goggles befuddles me, though his heart is light and I can't help but smile.  Too many explosions though.  Too much smoke and bombast.  It is not the way of my people to come in full of fire and ragged shouts, but that is how the Ghost Scions fling themselves at an enemy.

But not Minna.  Even when she is among us, I hardly see her.  I feel her though, her presence, and the effects of her deft hands are everywhere, opening the hallways before us.  Now and then I catch a glimpse of her smile, a wry grin saying to me, "So this is how it is, sis.  Like it?"  I do not think I like it as much as she does.

We talked one night, afterward.  In Darnassus, of all places, a city that had expelled us both for different reasons.  Now we walked through proudly, unbowed.  I looked the Sentinels in the eye.  They would not recognize the soft woman from the potion shop, but she was staring out at them, her head held high.  Minna and I settled in a high sheltered place, where the night wind eased through the boughs.  She told me of her thoughts, the meanderings of her mind that so often lay deep and unexposed.  I treasured her trust and felt the weight of it, not uncomfortable, but like a warm mantle being placed across my shoulders.  On its back is the symbol of our shared name.  One of us, at least, must carry it bared in the light.

She mentioned the Order, her voice tinged with nostalgia, and we spoke of the Ghost Scions, her words were flecked with energy.  I listened as she mentioned passing the Order to Casandora, for the sake of its "doing something" again, while she worked on in the shadows with Kast's little band.  I could see a future where she moves on without me; a future where my scores are settled and nothing is pulling me too far from home.  I told her I had obligations.  She could read into that where my heart lies.  I think she knew before she mentioned it that she need not ask who would stand beside Casandora should she become headmistress of the Order.  That is my place and my guard.

But now it is not that time, for the Citadel still stands dark and potent against the sky, and needs to be reamed and cleansed.  For Hyjal.  For my parents.  For all that the Scourge took from me.  We talk of the future, but there is no guarantee of it.  There is only this day, this week.  This chance to make a mark against the enemy.  For that I prepare, pack, leave my Casandora, go to meet Kast's men, join them again, loose my arrows in the hope of... freedom, one day. 

When I turn my back on that cold spire at last, what then shall I do?