Halodante

"I wander through these barren lands

Path of the bare and raw

From the frozen world within my soul

To the rocks I walk upon" - MS

  Two months had come and gone since she convinced the warlock to go north with her, the mistake in that choice still rode like a thick blanket on the air of the house.  Ixinane had been quiet about what had transpired, unlike Dante whose childishness had yet to catch up with her growing body. 

Where is my friend? Where is my Teufelia?

...

Where is my mother? My Ixinane?

...

Where is my sister? Where is MY Dante?

...

Where are they at? Where have they gone?

They have all gone away.

They have gone away from you.

Liar.

...

Fine, then I will go away too.

The world will burn if you don't help it.

You do it.

But I am the one holding the match.

I can't see the dawn but I know it is coming. A pull in veins that has no other words to describe it. An ending, a beginning. Nothing will be the same for this tiny handful with no sharing bloodline. Mother is as cold as the world around us. Three came on six feet and only four are left walking. One shift, one change coming on the snowy wind with the scent of cold and copper. Cold one has become colder and mother has become frozen.

Very soon we will be going home.

So this is our chosen path. Today the cold bites worse then anytime before, today the frozen world seems to howl with the task before us. I can feel them behind me both huddled in their cloaks as deeply as I did my own. Dante and Dane my loyal and dear household I could not leave them behind despite the monolith of dread erected like a frozen creature before us.

Icecrown.

From an Inn in Orgrimmar…

He would have been the size of an ogre if he ever had the will to eat, but eating required more then the lift of a hand and the downing of mana, so he wasted.  Too lazy to care what happened to him, his mind, his body or the world around him.  Long black hair tangled in a mess no finer then kelp lost on a sandy beach. So easily tempted if one said they had cheap Mana.  He was a worthless slip of useless breath, a grain of sand on the same beach.  I do not know how he died, that was not of my choosing. He was a present, a gift for one who knew what to do with Sloth.

Oh I like her, the pretty priest.
So full of curiosity it would be like tossing a ball for a kitten.
I find her delightful and full of questions.

I must be out of my fel ridden mind. That’s it…finally official, I am completely insane.

It was so easy, little butterflies and jars.

Sit in the sun and cry, weep, wail, snivel, sob and bawl
I am a just a little girl such things attract such nice people
Like the Fuzzy hand that laid on my shoulder

  Watching her was almost like watching some nightmare unfold.  One you are not expecting and the kind that creeps around in a darkness you don’t see coming until it’s already smothered you.  Subtle movements, subtle concentration she was figuring it out, not only her abilities but the world they worked in.  She was growing up and faster then I hoped.

Shh.

If you are quiet you can hear them, no not the ones in my head silly beasts those are for me.  But listen carefully, the walls talk and utter words from the ones who stand behind them. Perhaps it is because they just use very loud voices, oh but it is enough.  If you have no sight, you learn just how wonderful listening can be.

“No one keeps a secret so well as a child” - Victor Hugo

They said it wasn’t lying, the Peddler and the Actor.
I think they are right.  
Everyone has their secrets after all.

It was a steady beating rhythm, she could match it with her heart if she believed in them, she had no belief in hearts, not that they existed or thrummed blood through ones veins.  They did not beat, love, bleed or break, they did not exist for the evil in the world had vanquished them, dried them up and blew them away with some deep breath, this is what she believed and this is what her voices told her.  

A moment of clarity as I sit by this river.

  Mother is a double word, one split into two just as I am split into many. I am split because my mothers are split, because my father is split and a part of both mothers.  Don’t understand? I doubt you do, and you will not unless you are within me, the others I am understand, even Mother and father do not understand, it is something so deep in the rivers of my veins that its surface will never coat my tongue.  

The world has become so angry, seething in its bowels and wracking its skin with cracks.. oh how horrible it will be.  The angered ground carved out a place in my mother’s home, poor poor demon ridden mother, how she is broken, breaking.. much like the earth.  I will save her from herself, which is why we must be quiet as to where we are, Gelis will not be happy as I am far from him, as mother and the cold priest are far from me. 

All the old wounds in my life seemed to groan into life, I swear I could feel where Dutaee’s fist collided with my face all those years ago, it wasn’t really the case, but brew fest seemed to be like all the abuse I had ever taken rolled into one painful mess.

I held the solid weight between my fingers.  Heavy…dense enough that a pile of it shorter then I, would weigh far more.  Saronite, such a fascinating stone.

“You’re not going.”

Melidane’s body barred the pathway between the door and I, taller then me and the thicker bone structure of a human, she had the physical advantage.  It wasn’t hard, I’m short even for a blood elf and fel wasted thin,  it made me strong in magic only, physically was an entirely different matter.

“Move.”

I had just returned home when I found yet another of those irksome pieces of post which no man in his right mind cares to be handed. I'd aided in escorting the priestess Lirriel Meterein to the wilds of Feralas to there save from certain death one Melidane, a human in the employ of my own vassal Lady Ixinane Stormcren.

Such formal thoughts.

Yet as well to consider formality with all things considered. My dear Theryl and I guided Lirriel to the destroyed home - the demon Xannivard had evidently attempted to take some sort of asinine vengeance for Ixinane's research into his own grimoire - a gift from me to her. In the process I finally met the elusive Blackmarrow, who had the astonishingly silly name 'Pukebile'. I must take him up his offer to discern more of his past than that. I privately promise myself that I will never address him by that silly and repulsive epithet.

((The following occurred over a month ago towards the start of Faraji’s "The Adventures of Sefu the Ravenous" blog series. I am far behind, but attempting to play catch up!))

I had a lot on me mind. This wasn’t completely unusual – I kept a lot in there most times: meeting schedules, running bar tabs, gambling debts owed to me, names and faces to avoid, Drunken Fishball League scores, delivery schedules for me clients, mana & thissle orders, produce Kharris wanted me to pick up, sailing conditions in Booty Bay, and so on. But this was on a completely different level. It wasn’t just me own inner voice bouncing around in there. It was mine. It was Mum’s. It was Ythgar’s. Strangest of all, it was Halodante’s.

“You’re here!” she giggled, her voice wispy and young – seductive in all the wrong ways – in me ear.

The source of her elation was the enormous, dark gothic club I was pacing in front of. It towered up into the Underbelly of Dalaran, built right into the stone – dank sewer water ran down the mossy, black stones and pooled under my boots as I stepped in puddles – the only sound echoing down the large annals of the floating city. Somewhere deep and far off, a pin prick of light cast creeping shadows that rats and frogs shifted through. Outside, it was noon – the sun high in twinkling blue sky with gauzy white clouds. Down here the club sat silent, waiting patiently for visitors to trickle in after dinner hour and fill its dance floors with writhing, sweating bodies. Overpriced drinks to be served, lines of mana dust to be snorted, pulsing music by the latest mechano-jockeys to be discovered. And then later, of course, it’s back rooms with bolts set into the floors and walls to be utilized in ways that I highly doubted the girl I was meeting here had even heard of. Had I been in a better mood, I’d have liked nothing better than to set about horrifying her by sharing just what she was to be walking into. But as it was, I was hardly of the mind to bother. 

“I’m ‘ere for Aji,” I reminded the voice, but we both knew it was half truth. I sucked nervously on the Thalassian Black bloodthissle cigarette hanging between me lips.

The events of the past few days had lead to this.  I had reached my limit.  Torn through emotionally, beaten down physically…. What was left in the aftermath was the ruin of the gates to my home.  The spattering of battle and bodies along the smoldering ground of a once healthy garden.

She is a white blur as she twirls, sightless eyes upwards in the confines of her room.  Her pale lips spread in a smile, dancing to the music only heard by her own stunted ears. Her voice is soft, a high soprano half cut off by the occasional giggle and tripping upon her own feet.

Dante hummed, her robe muddy from the knees down from the afternoon rain.  She didn’t seem to mind, I had given her the finger bones from the scourge I had tortured and killed for the sake of information.  She knew what they were, and merrily rolled them about in her palms, then tossed them away from her.  The game to her was actually practice, for where ever they landed she had to listen for their faint fall to the ground, and then find all the pieces. 

and the place I work...bein bugged by my coworkers

Bright light and a heavy consciousness greeted me, for a moment I thought I was dead.. then in the moment that followed I realized how ridiculous that sounded.  Its not like I haven’t been dragged back from it before once.. or twice…hmm.. Was it three times?  There was no bloody bright light… no shining tunnel.. or burning fires to hell… it was all rather disappointing.

''Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man
with my three wishes clutched in her hand
the first that she be spared the pain
that comes from a dark and laughing rain
when she finds love
may it always stay true
yes I beg for the second wish I made too
but wish no more
my life you can take
to have her please just one day wake
to have her please just one day wake
to have her please just one day wake.''

The boy sang, under the bed of the maiden he loved.

A lullaby, from one twisted heart to another.

Just who exactly was the lullaby meant to put to sleep, was not clear.

They had just come back from their first adventure together, in the neighboring woods of her mistress's domain.

He remembered every little detail, and as he fell asleep under her bed, listening to her own breathing slow down, a smile, genuine in nature, spread across his lips.

Once upon a time, a boy looking for his father followed a dangerous woman home.

Her part of the forest reflected her nature, the gardens around her home smelled of deadly flowers, their scent derived from the corpses buried below them.

The house seemed to be embraced by the forest, plants growing onto it. Fierce trolls and dangerous forsaken protected it.

The boy had to be carefull not to get caught, or he would not live to find his father.

He waited, and waited, knowing his father often visited that home. The days passed, slowly, rain gave him water, gave him the scent of the forest, the trolls would not find him. In the tree, hidden, the boy kept watch, hoping to see the man he'd been waiting for.

Midnight in my small garden was the perfect time to think, warm nights like this one with the curling scent of flowers left over from the day. Halodante’s weight pressed against my leg, her soft humming voice, sightless eyes staring off into darkness none of us would ever see. I ran my hand through her fine white hair, it was getting long. Strands of silk run though my fingers, it caught the scab healing in my palm. Another scar, another mark of loyalty, another blood promise to someone else.

A few words can throw a bloke off balance with the same weight of a mace or great sword. Resulting in a stumble. A trip. A staggering fall.

When you’re outside the jungle and someone asks you to describe it, you’re likely to say “hot.” When you’re in the jungle and you want to describe it, suddenly your words get a bit more descriptive: “suffocatin,” “swelterin,” “blisterin,” “stiflin,” “mucky.” Un-bloody-bearable. 

The sun was beating down on us so ‘ard I’m pretty sure me forehead was developing a bruise. More likely it was the fairly nasty beginning to a sunburn that would end up in even more freckles for Kharris to count when I got back. She’d be having a field day with me shoulders and the tip of me ears as well. I felt a bit like a wee peach that had been shoved in a wet, muggy oven – my soft skin heating beyond its tolerance and bubbling up. I’d be cracked and oozing in a few days, without a good spell or healing potion.  

We were ambling along through enormous rubber plant leaves and swinging vines that brushed past our legs and shoulders as the raptor under us swayed through the jungle brush. I wiped the back of me hand over my forehead for likely the hundredth time that hour and it felt like I’d conquered Mount Hyjal in that single raise and fall of an arm. I bit back on the complaint about the heat that I wanted to pointlessly whine at my riding companion. I silently applauded my manliness in refusing to complain and then, as wantonly as any tartlette with a case of the vapors, leaned back against the enormous black Gurubashi pressed to me back. Balla’s skin felt cool and hard against mine and he smelled pungent – we both did – but it was somehow comforting. He smelled like the jungle; he smelled like sweat and sex and sun-drenched skin; he smelled a bit coppery and dirty from the grit of the ride and it was like laying against an enormous shadow panther. There were all sorts of nasties that could jump out at us at a moments notice and I should have had me guard up, but with him behind me, his arms circling to hold the reigns and his huge, bone tusks brushing affectionately against me shoulder as we rode towards Zul’Gurub… I embraced me inner dandy and laid back into his safety as me mind wandered over the exhausting events of the past few days.