Between Moonbeams & Budding Leaves: 001
In a small camp not far from Stormwind, Jaehana sat with a needle and thread gingerly sewing bright blue pinion feathers onto her pauldron. The feathers were few and precious, difficult to come by, but somehow Gethran had managed. With delicate claws, she poked the needle through the hollow calamus of the vane, then fit the new feather into a gap left in the pauldron when it had lost the original feather. Once she was satisfied with its position she began to carefully weave needle and thread in, out, and through the calamus and the tough leather beneath to make sure that the new feather was tightly pinned into place.
As she worked, there was a fondly sad but faraway look in her summer sky blue eyes, her thoughts on another time, another place… another person. The pauldrons had been a gift from him, her mentor and, in some ways, her saviour. Elusirion had been a druid of uncommon patience, luring her out of the wilds with his soothing voice and scraps of meat. He sat in the snow for hours, coaxing her little by little from the hollow dugout she’d made for herself beneath a large dead tree. He talked to her, never knowing whether or not she understood. He told her stories, snippets from his own life, things he remembered from millennia past, and the things he hoped for his future.
Days gave way to weeks, Elusirion managed to convince her to join him at his camp. It was there he reminded her what it meant to be human. He found clothes for her, helped her re-learn how to dress herself, to eat with a knife, a fork, and Light forfend, a plate. To take small bites and chew them thoroughly, instead of bolting down her food lest some other predator or carrion beast steal it from her. He reminded her how to speak, to converse, haltingly at first, but converse all the same.
Weeks gave way to months, she traveled alongside him now, learning all that he had to teach her as a Druid. The names of plants, their uses, what were good for people, good for animals, or bad for both. How to use the plants to heal herself or her allies — or how to poison or incapacitate her enemies. In time, he taught her how to shapeshift into a swift-footed deer so that she might escape trouble before it ever reached her. Then, with exceeding patience, he taught her how to shapeshift from worgen to human…
Tears welled in Jaehana’s eyes then, the druidess swallowing hard past the lump that rose unbidden in her throat. Elusirion had given her so many precious gifts, so much of his time and his patience, even if he had lived, she could live the whole of her life and still never repay him for pulling her back from being nothing more than another wolf in the woods.
Her time with him had been all too brief, their idyllic existence shattered when Elusirion had attempted to wake her out of a nightmare. In her night terror, she attacked him, nearly biting him and turning him into a worgen. He could have slain her then and there, but the kaldorei had not even reached for his weapon. He stopped her only with the power of his voice and the strength of his love, mentor to apprentice. It sealed her Fate, however, as Elusirion knew that she would not be able to overcome her primal nature alone. So he snuck her down the Dreamways of the Druids and took her into the Emerald Dream. There, he settled her to slumber, hoping that Goldrinn would find her there and teach her to allay the wolf within.
As she curled up in the bed he’d made for her, Elusirion snugged these very pauldrons around her shoulders. To protect her, he’d said, and to remind her that she was more than what Arugal had made. The pauldrons had been a gift to Elusirion once, from his own father, and now he gifted them to her. A symbol of hope and a symbol of all she might yet become.
Drifting off into viridian dreams, she could only recall his voice fading into the distance. You will be come more than I could ever dream to be, Jaehana.