#hexfold glories: rawboned by 10k lies

[6of575-oldblog]

happy end - excerpt

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This elf, sin’dorei by the look of ruddy skin and forest green eyes, is an older elf. Like him. There’s a weariness here. It’s in the flat stare that sizes him up, and the introductions that come without a customary bow. Niceties get waved aside with a rusty voice and a gleaming metal hand.

“I’m Ven’ari Daybreak,” this elf states in cultured Common that’s at odds with the informal treatment. “You’re Senumeros Quicksand. I already know, so let’s move on. Oh, and--do me a favour? Skip the teacher-student claptrap. The day I let someone call me “honoured master” to my face is the day I die. ”

Meros clicks his teeth, points clattering together to bite off scripts he’s learned in meeting others. He’s grateful for less to talk aloud with, but at a loss for its lack.

Ears held loose and low with uncertainty, Meros trails behind at Daybreak’s back. Night elves are usually taller than their exiled “cousins.” Daybreak is no exception: Meros might be a little short for the standard male night elf, but he still has several inches of leg on this blood elf. He has to mind his pace or trod on unfortunate heels.

Besides, what Daybreak loses in height is gained in bulk. The bare, broad back and squared shoulders Meros stares down at are just further reminders of old inadequacies he still sees with his own lanky body.

One of his other adopted brothers joked with him once that at least his heathen god Elune saw fit to edge him in hard lines and gave him an ugly face to match his uglier voice. They’d had a good laugh about it, a troll and an elf, both making light of raw truths.

And it is true:

His lost years took their toll. Ate him away. Gentler curves that She graced him with were the first to go and sure he counts his blessings--but still. Still. He’s put on a lot of muscle he’s proud of in the long years since the eldest of three trolls found him amid desolate ruins but it’s none of it the blocky hips or the wide back of the elf he walks with.

Meros is always going to be too narrow-shouldered and long-limbed. Too small in body. Too... Meros.

Daybreak leads them to a rope-and-plank bridge. It spans a vast ravine and a part of the temple Meros has yet to visit. He’s a bit charmed that Daybreak pointedly marches across the swaying walkway with chin lifted and eyes pointed straight forward.

More so when he hears, “I’ve mastered many things--but fear of heights is still a daily walk.”

He grins his laughter at Daybreak instead of give it out: a close-mouthed grimace of all his teeth and his eyes squinted almost shut.

Daybreak looks at him from the side for it. Says nothing at first.

Meros isn’t so good anymore at knowing the correct expressions from others. He can’t name whether he’s offended his substitute teacher or not, but the weathered face that he carefully watches for clues of doesn’t smile back at him, and those pink ears, reddened even more for the brisk chill, are set forward and held stiffly high.

When they reach the security of the other side and Daybreak has feet planted to firm stone again, Meros shyly offers a mangled apology in quiet Thalassian. He means it--even if he can’t say his rhotics right ever again.

The new look this earns from Daybreak is a lingering one, though the distant expression and neutral cant of ears remains. Meros thinks maybe it’s sort of searching. Or confused. He wouldn’t blame Daybreak for confusion. He knows exactly how he sounds, and it’s not just his accent in Thalassian that’s atrocious.

“Lianji mentioned this,” is said to him at length, and not unkindly.

His heart stutters in his chest, torn between anxious shame--and shameless gratitude.

“I’m not going to ask.”

Meros blinks slowly, his head canting sideways enough to be noticeable. It dredges out a laugh from Daybreak at last. Rusty as the blood elf’s voice. Twice as soft.

“I don’t care about what happened, here--” Daybreak reaches up and taps Meros on dull grey lips with metal fingers made too cold to be pleasant. Then promptly pantomimes throwing something aside. “--Or there, yesterday. I’m sure that’s rude of me, and I’m sure both things came from justly, tragic places.”

Daybreak stares off briefly into middle space. Starts to massage fingers into where grafted metal joins flesh. Finally says, more lowly, “We elves are good at that, aren’t we?”

Meros thinks of another elf with a false limb like this. Skin so deep red it makes Daybreak’s look white. An elf so small and so young and so full of spite, as much as with hope.

Meros airs out his grimace some more, masquerades it as another smile so it strains his hawkish face with his efforts.

“Yeah,” Daybreak agrees with a squint upward. “Sure as the sun, we are.”

Then with a roll of his strong shoulders in a careless shrug, Daybreak adds:

“Elves endure. We keep going. Like you and I should be. This way.”

Falling back into step slightly behind and to the side, Meros mulls over Daybreak’s comments while they take winding stairs down and down and down further. These fan out and circle at their end into a modest courtyard, penned in by a trickling moat and graced with a well-tended shrine.

He doesn’t really quite know what to think or feel about Daybreak’s easy dismissal or the deliberate omission. Others have been eager to draw out all the details; their appropriate noises of sympathy are always paid like some kind of ticket bought to a goblin’s sideshow. A part of it, Meros is sure, is morbid fascination. The need to share an othered experience for a few moments without the horror of actually living it all the time.

He decides it’s a relief: to not have to struggle through vocal explanations for once. For his handicap to simply be expected, adapted around, and moved on from to other things more pertinent and pressing.

It’s a little like being home with his partner. Abruptly, Meros has got another kind of smile slipping onto his face. It must be a particularly stupid and mooning one for how Daybreak eyes him even longer after they both stop at the centre of the stone shrine.

Feigning study of elegant coils chiseled out in the Jade Serpent’s image, Meros tries to school his face into something at least marginally less lovesick.

“That’s the closest thing to serenity,” Daybreak says next to him, “I’ve seen on you since you came here.”

It’s Meros’ turn now to look aside. He raises both bushy brows until the feathery tips quiver at bowed ends with their weight. He tries hard to make his unspoken question plain enough. He also tries just as hard not to give into the full-body blush threatening to heat him up from inside out at the thought of being observed so closely enough or for long enough that such words apply.

His effort works. He thinks. He isn’t laughed at and Daybreak takes half a step into Meros’ space. Close enough to jab a finger at him, just under his hooked nose.

“Whatever’s got you making that ridiculous dopey face--you should use it.”

He considers this even while reflexively leaning his head away for breathing room where Daybreak isn’t yielding it.

In faint puzzlement, Meros says, “My... fah-moh-ee?” like it’s half an answer, half a question. He watches the moment of struggle as Daybreak’s mouth moves to repeat what’s been awkwardly given. Meros is painfully familiar with this soundless shaping of the limited syllables he can actually voice and the old, disgusted shame threatens to creep back in.

Finally: “If that’s it.”

Which is vague enough it doesn’t tell Meros if Daybreak knows what was said or if pride just won’t allow admission.

Either way, the point’s been made. Daybreak withdraws, that finger kept levied in his direction with an unerring aim.

“Focus on what helps. The pandaren’ll all tell you meditation’s about clearing your thoughts. It is, and--it isn’t. They like to use breathing as their focus--didn’t work too well for you, did it?”

Ah. There it is. He can’t hold back the body blush or the shame now. Face burning in spite of the cold, Meros tucks his ears and tips his chin down until the puffy green bangs curling thickly at his forehead slide low to hide his eyes from view. The bound tails at either side of high cheekbones slip across his collarbone and dangle weighted before his chest.

“You’re not alone.”

He peeks through his hair at Daybreak. The blush gets worse just like he feared. It’s a dry awful heat spreading down his tattooed neck and up along his long, heavy ears.

Rather than clarify, Daybreak’s index finger slides to one side of Meros and draws his gaze with it. Ears rising some to swivel that way, Meros stares back up the winding steps and thinks of the ease in walking the path down to here.

“There’s a multitude of methods, Quicksand. You just have to find yours.”

Teeth clicking and lips thinning out, Meros counters dubiously with, “Whah if I cah-ah eveh fie ih?”

“If you can’t--? Oh. Tch.”

Silver-coin eyes tilt around to Daybreak, though Meros keeps his face angled to the steps.

“With that attitude, sure. Be hard to find, then.”

Reflexively, Meros shows his teeth again, and this time--Daybreak smiles, too. It’s reserved and small and done mostly with the eyes. Daybreak’s closed smile is comforting to Meros because it’s familiar. He almost asks:

Were you a soldier, once? Because it reminds him strongly of another just as reserved who smiled only with their eyes. Who always spoke kindly and encouraged him, too.

He doesn’t ask. He’s aware he’s desperate to chase away his loneliness in this remote peak surrounded by strangers.

But still.

He flicks the lighter greyed tips of his fingers from in front of his mouth on outward. As he tilts his left hand so that it fluidly presents from sign to outstretched palm held out and waiting, he forces out:

“Fhake Ou.”

“Sure,” Daybreak takes his hand and clasps Meros by his forearm with the other. “Let’s begin, yeah?”

The moment that he’s let go Meros bobs his chin--and his fist. He’s eager agreement in a wider flash of all his filed teeth with ears forward and quivering in anticipation.

“Yes.”

The smile Daybreak shares is kind and the blood elf’s not so terrible company either.

So maybe this teacher will like him.

#world of warcraft #blood elf #sin'dorei #night elf #kaldorei #quel'dorei #monk #hexfold glories: rawboned by 10k lies #yellow tomorrows #transparent stories #6oftext