Moonshine (or, Why Druids Are Assholes Sometimes)

[Kestrel]

(( The story is based on pre-Guardian RP between a couple of our people (Anadurion and Silnaen) and alts of people in the guild. The narrator is Auburn, and because I wrote this for a competition, I took minor liberties the specifics. This is why TCG occasionally has a human paladin doing it's business.

Posted as an example of why druids are really assholes when it comes to people, not nature. ))




I


I never meant to be a paladin. I never bought into the faith and holier-than-thou, until the Scourge came to Lordaeron. That changed my mind. That convinced me there are things worth believing in, and dying for. Not that it made any proper paragon of chivalry out of me – I wouldn’t be on this boat telling tales for my moonshine if it had – but it screwed my head on most of the way. There’s some Light and right in this banged up armour of mine, even if it ain’t as shiny as most.

Liz, Elizabetha, she wasn’t like that. She knew what she was going to be, probably since she was born: she had the fire of Light in her, pure and bright. Everything Lightbringer ever said, she knew by heart. She was the paragon type, the sort that would make your teeth hurt with piety if they weren’t so obviously, completely sincere about it. Brave, gallant, kind – too kind. It was that trusting streak in her nature that let the that traitor witch get close to her, close enough to carve Liz’s eyes out and leave her for dead when she finally realised her most trusted sister had been a Scourge cultist all along. We got the witch, in the end – but we never got to Liz in time. Not till the damage was done, and one of our best broken for life.

“There’s nothing left to heal,” Liz told me afterward, serene as the statue she sat beside in the Cathedral library. She’d been praying for weeks, for healing or a miracle, but sight hadn’t come back to her. She was still blind, still relying on novices and a slim stick to get her around safely, still wearing that stark and neat blindfold – now more to hide the ugliness of her wounds than to protect them in hopes some magic could still fix them. With that pretty gown someone had given her in place of her armour, she could have passed for any minor noble’s wife, if it weren’t for the old sword calluses on her hands.

They’d fade, soon enough. No place for a blind woman on a battlefield, even if she was once a paladin trained. She could still serve, as a priest or confessor – but that wasn’t what she chose or prepared for. Blind, her true calling is wasted, and hearing her just give up, I couldn’t have say which burned more – what had happened to her, or that she was willing to just lie down and quit.

“There’s a way,” I told her. It wasn’t reassurance, it was a fact. I didn’t know how I’d do it, then, but I knew it was true. One of those moments that Liz and my dad used to have, the kind I almost never do. The moments when it’s the Light talking and I’m just making words so it can be heard. I must’ve sounded a right pompous ass. “Da used to say there’s no sin but despair,” that’s what I told her. “No way to lose Light but that. Will finds a way, Liz. We’ll find a way.”

She shook her head, told me she had tried, and that she had held out hope as long as she could, until accepting reality just became the lesser arrogance. I don’t remember what I said to that, but it was off-colour enough to make half the priests in the place look at me like I’d better shut up or leave yesterday. So instead I just told her that her feelings are hers and no-one else’s to change, that anger is less paralysing and easier to work off than despair. It turns into a joke – sweet Liz angry, as if anyone could take that seriously – and we trail into sillier topics, but it ends up being useful anyway. I’m not sure I leave her feeling better, but I hope I leave her re-evaluating her response to her ordeal. That’s good enough, for one day.

Question. Always question, always look for a way forward. The Light, the kind I learned in Lordaeron, that never worked through prayer alone. At some point it always needed a sharp sword and a strong shield to work through, a hammer to possess and make those miracles happen.

So I left to sort out other business, but the thought stayed with me, unfinished. There’s a way.

[Kestrel]

II


So you ain’t bored yet? Sure I can go on, always was fond of Darkshire’s finest. Pour me another, then, and I’ll tell you about that way I knew was out there. I found it weeks later, in Netherstorm. I’d spent the day looking for flowers, ones that eats the mana-motes of Netherstorm like bugs – Silnaen takes me the strangest places, sometimes. Yeah, that’s an Elvish name and no I’m not telling you how I ended up on a first name basis with a Night Elf druid, it’s a longer story than this one and like most things with Sil, it mostly involves her skulking around on kitty feet and obsessing about steak.

The point is, I trust Sil. She’s as stubborn as I am and she has the worst eating habits you’ve ever seen, but I trust her. It’s a wonder how she works, listening to trees and animals like I listen to Light. I have to make her repeat herself half the time when she’s too lazy to put all the words into a sentence, but when we’re not bickering, we work well together. We agree on what matters.

That’s why I asked her what to do about Liz. I’ve seen Sil fix plants, animals, people, and weirder things she made me promise to forget about … if there’s one thing she’s good at, it’s cutting past crap and making broken things work again.

So I feed her when we’re finished with her flower hunt, tell her what I was thinking, and ask her if it’s even remotely doable. She shrugs, not looking particularly convinced. “I can look,” she promises, and says she’ll come to the Cathedral the next time she’s in Stormwind.

I say nothing to Liz until Sil turns up a week later, asking to see my friend who sees with a stick. Liz takes it with as much salt as I thought. She’s had idiot solutions thrown at her in abundance, potions and incantations and gnomish contraptions. She’s told them all the same thing: if the Light will not restore her sight, then it’s not meant to be restored. But I’m more stubborn than I should be, most days, so in the end she gives in and lets Sil poke around, see what there is that needs fixing, if fixing is possible at all.

“Not me,” is Sil’s verdict. Did I mention her Common’s horrible? It is. It’s not just that she leaves half the words out, she also swallows half of what she does say with that singy Darnassian accent of hers. I’ve got the hang of listening now, but the first few months, half of every talk we had was us both going ‘huh?’. Anyway, she has an idea. “We talk to Bear,” she informs us. “Special eyes. He knows.”

The Bear-bit makes me wince. I’ve met Sil’s teacher once. He’s older than half the rocks on this continent, and about as interested in talking with people not fluent in bearspeak. But that’s what she says, so that’s what we do.

[Kestrel]

III

Getting to Moonglade took almost as long as you took getting me that third cup of moonshine. I was less than happy when I found out it wasn’t because the druids were tetchy about letting an outsider into their holy place, just because Sil had been playing panther again, and got sidetracked by stag tenderloin. She drives me bats with her priorities sometimes. If nothing’s burning down, she sees nothing wrong with taking time for treats. It’s not like there was a rush, Liz could hardly get any blinder.

Anadurion – that’s the Old Bear’s real name, which he doesn’t answer to anyway so Old Bear works just as well – was a wreck, and doing his best not to look it. I asked what the hell happened – he ignored me as per usual, and so I just explained our business.

Turns out he actually does speak Common, which was more than he’d deigned to do the last time we met. Not that it did a lot of good. I’m a bitch, not a sadist, I take no satisfaction in watching a proud old druid struggle with my language as well as whatever injuries he’s determined not to show some human infant his student’s taken a liking to. So Sil does the talking, and translates for me when she remembers to, which isn’t lots. Finally, she nods, and tells me we go now. If we fetch Anadurion a scroll, some lost druidic magic, maybe he can help. For a price.

I ask what the price is. It’s not important, they say, neither I nor my friend will pay it. Elves and their damn better judgement – the paranoia I caught from Liz getting her eyes carved out by her best friend sparks with a vengeance, and I make a fool of myself demanding details. Silnaen looks me in the eye, and explains: this is no easy thing I’m asking. But Anadurion is wise, he wouldn’t promise more than he can give.

Elves. I can never shake the feeling they aren’t telling me everything. But Sil’s never lied to me, and they’re offering what I came for, so I just end up feeling a brat for being ungrateful enough to question their generosity. I swallow the embarrassment, and try to thank them. I try to remind myself a paladin should never feel like a fool, just learn the lesson and do better next time. Remember that bit, because it’s going to come up again.

Eldre’thalas is where Sil says we should go. I’ve never heard of it, but what the hell. I signed up to fight the Scourge when I was seventeen because some things you just have to do – I can prowl the bones of an elven city to find eyes for a sister in faith. The second is no more stupid than the first, and this time I tell myself it’ll serve some purpose besides my damn pigheaded pride.

[Kestrel]

IV

So Eldre’thalas, right? Tell you the truth, would be a hard time talking about it if you weren’t being so free with the moonshine. Sil’s told me some stories of elvish history, but she never told me about Eldre’thalas. When we got there, I understood why. I haven’t seen much of Kalimdor – which is stupid considering I’ve been up and down every damn hill in Outland, which is a lot less next door – but what I have seen, there’s no place that reminds me of the Plaguelands as much as that broken city did. Ghosts and demons, corrupted soil and twisted, angry plants: when magic goes bad, it doesn’t kid around. The place had gone as mad as half its denizens. It’s not the sort of history you’re proud of. It’s not something you share with outsiders, if you can avoid it.

Fighting that sort of odds would be suicide, so we don’t. Sil picks the way, I do my best to guard her and not make any more noise in this shiny tin suit than I absolutely have to. Once a ghost jumps Sil through a wall before I can warn her, once I walk into some weird strangling plant things on plain stupid – like I’m can tell which vines are just vines and which ones have enough demon in them to bite? – and once we have to leg it like all hell when this stupidly huge tree thing takes exception and tries to step on our heads, but we manage. Sil mutters to herself, repeating instructions Anadurion gave her. Right at the big tree, break the shiny wards, kill the demon, uncover the hidden library the writings we need are in – I should be pissed when I realise Anadurion explained to her exactly what we were getting into when they were talking in Elvish, but there isn’t much point. It’s not like her warning me about it then instead of now would have made me not come.

So we find this half-collapsed library, and Sil searches through a few thousand old scrolls while I make sure the ghosts we chased out of the place aren’t just fetching mates, and that’s when I find out Sil actually doesn’t read old elvish. I probably said a few unkind things about the exact relations of druids and those trees they hug, if they end up blockheaded enough to forget that kind of minor details. Anyway, we take a guess, pick the oldest scrolls, and hope we don’t have to come back to steal more. Next time, it won’t be this easy.

We get out. Sil puts on her feathers and heads back to Anadurion with the scrolls bundled in her claws. I head home, trying to figure out what I’m going to tell Liz.

Turns out the truth is enough. She’s uneasy about an unknown price, of course she is. She wants to see the Old Bear first, and I tell her she has to anyway, not like he can give her eyes without her being there. I didn’t intend it to be funny, so I’m surprised when she laughs. She surprises me in general – she’s in another dress, more like a lady than a priest. Her hair’s braided and combed. She looks nice, and I can’t figure out why she’s taking the trouble, suddenly. And then I forget to ask, because for the second time, she asks me why I’m doing all this.

I brushed it off the first time. I don’t now. “Because you could live like this – but you can be more, too,” I tell her. “And so can I. If I think I can help and I don’t, I’m just cheaping out on the both of us, ain’t I? The Light helps them as helps themselves.” I’m not sure I get the words out right, but that’s what I mean. We trained as soldiers, not priests. Where others talk, people like us are trained to act.

Liz is quiet when I leave her to her prayers. I tell myself to keep busy, and quit fretting about the girl’s state of mind – nothing for it, till the Old Bear finishes his reading and Sil gets back to us with a way.

[Kestrel]

V

No, I ain’t had enough, and if you wanna hear the rest, you’ll keep it coming. What’s that, almost half a bottle still left, hardy a time to be quitting. Are we good? Good. Cause this is the part where it gets complicated. Or interesting, if you prefer the Elvish phrase for fucked up beyond all reason.

There’s a temple on the edge of Moonglade – a good place, strong with nature. That’s what Sil says when she sends us there to wait. She and the Old Bear, she says, will come later. The magic we brought back is old, and old magic lures demons, like the ones in Eldre’thalas. They don’t want that in their holy place, and they don’t want a blind woman slowing them where it’s not safe. They’re uncomplicated, that way. Strength is survival, and survival is what comes first.

We go, we wait, and I can tall Liz is scared. She talked with Anadurion before he and Sil left, and though she says it’s alright, I know she asked him about that price he refused to tell us about. She has a weird sort of pride, Liz – never accept charity, never admit need, because all her life, she’s been the one to supply the first and answer the second. It goes against the grain, to take help that isn’t divine providence undeniable, and it doesn’t help that Anadurion told her bluntly: her Light may believe in giving freely, but Nature’s gifts are never free. I may not be the brightest candle in the Cathedral, but even I can tell Liz is obsessing over the debt already.

I do my best to keep her thinking about other things while I watch the road. When Sil finally arrives – late, shaken and panting, arms scabbed to the elbows and stinking of hastily cleaned demon blood – I know something’s gone wrong. Anadurion isn’t with her.

Liz asks, confused, but Sil doesn’t explain. “Was harder,” she says, and just unwraps a single blue eye from a thin leaf. I’m worried as hell and I ask if we have to do this now – Sil tells me yes, so I just nod and tell Liz to quit arguing and demanding we see to Anadurion first. Whatever happened to the Old Bear has happened. We’ll have time to worry after we make sure his sacrifice wasn’t in vain.

It’s hard, it’s bloody. Sil lays Liz out on the stone floor, claws out the old scars, carefully sets the new eye in, and, and then sings while Liz screams, coaxing reopened wounds to knit the way nature meant them to. I can’t do much, except wipe blood away, and pray. I wish I was anywhere else.

Minutes, hours, it’s all the same. Finally Sil goes silent, slumps back, tells Liz to try to move the eye. She can’t. When Liz finally manages to open her eyes, she sees only darkness. I won’t have it, I won’t accept it, and for a while I actually argue with her about it, as if I could change reality by just disagreeing with it long enough. Sil crumbles and walks away while I chase my tail, and I don’t go after her. She knows we failed. She doesn’t need to be humiliated by being seen crying for it, too.

I wish I could do the same thing. Liz was always the one with the kind words and good heart – me, I’m the wrath of the Light, not its mercy. Without an enemy or an obstacle to climb, I have no clue what to do. All my pigheaded will is useless here.

But that’s not good enough – so in the end I just do what I can. I pour some water into Sil when she comes back, make sure she’s strong enough to get someplace safe to rest. I carry Liz to the horses, get her back to Nighthaven, get her fed and resting. I tell her not to worry, to give it time, to rest. I tell her I’m sorry, though I don’t think she hears me. I tell her to sleep.

Then I go out, far enough not to be heard, and I waste what’s left of my strength pounding a broken tree till my knuckles break and I can’t stand anymore. I drink as much of the dwarvish moonshine in my medic kit as I dare, and try to figure out what the hell we do next. Sil is shattered, Liz is in pain and still blind, Anadurion could be anywhere between here and the moon, anything from just exhausted to dying with that damnable dignity of his. It’s not my fault, any more than success would have been my victory – but it is my responsibility.

That’s the shit bit about being a paladin, the reason why there’s a lot more common soldiers than there is Silver Hand. When we make a mess, we don’t get to say we tried our best and walk away. Got another round over there? I think I need it.

[Kestrel]

VI


Someone liked me, 'cause I actually got away with that dwarvish moonshine without a hangover. I was up sometime after dawn, trying to fix the mess we made. Liz was still out and sleeping like half a barn of logs, so I left her to it. I had this plan about getting Sil and making her show me where she last saw the Old Bear, but when I finally find the damn cat, I realise she’s barely strong enough to wake up, let alone talk to me or go after Anadurion. I kick her in the ribs long enough to get a place and a few rambling sentences out of her, and then I ask the druids of Nighthaven for directions. Felwood, they tell me once they figure out what the name of the moonwell that I’m grossly mispronouncing actually is. I don’t waste time swearing, or regretting that I didn't make Sil talk to me last night. I mount up and blaze on after the Old Bear, hoping I’m not too late.

Have you been to Felwood? Put it this way. If it’s green it’s toxic, and if it’s greener then it’ll probably kill you just looking at it. Another one of those places where ancient elves screwed around with the wrong magic and some heavy bad came down on their heads. The moonwell Sil sent me to is in the ruined city of Highborne stargazers, one of the places all that bad comes to hang out and have a high old time. It’s not Eldre’thalas, but it’s enough to make me glad I have the Light and for once an actual map on my side. A crap and hastily drawn one, but still some clue of where I’m going.

When I get there, the dead satyrs on the ground tell me where Sil got her cuts last night. They don’t tell me what happened to Anadurion. I’m starting to think the worst when something catches my eye – a tree, autumn-dry and gnarled but miraculously uncorrupted, right by the tainted pool. From the right angle, it looks vaguely like a crouching man. Under the branches, it almost even has a face, fixed on a tiny patch of pure water slowly fading from the moonwell. Skin go like bark, Sil told me. Bark. Light, I had no idea.

I’m not sure how long it took for wonder to fully change into realisation of how incredibly screwed that makes us. The ground in Felwood is poison to anything that grows there, and even if Anadurion could hold out against it, the satyrs Sil had fought were already gathering, looking for a rematch. There were … a lot. There was no way in hell they wouldn’t make toothpicks of the Old Tree-Bear if I left to get help from Moonglade, and there was no way I could move a tree.

So. It’s a long day.

We’re hip-deep in dead demons by sunset, but Sil finds us eventually, like I knew she would. She looks exhausted already when I see her crow-silhouette on the dimming sky, she looks worse when she puts her elf-skin back on and she looks ready to just break when she sees Anadurion – but between us, we muddle along. Sil does her thing and talks to the tree, and I keep the satyrs off the two of them, and eventually the tree creaks and opens knothole eyes and pulls gnarly roots from the tortured ground, weaving them into something coherent enough to be called legs. And it walks.

We’re the weirdest and saddest procession you’ve ever seen on the way back. Sil is too tired to walk so I put her on my horse – my arms are ready to fall off every time I have to swing that bloody sword – and Anadurion, he, makes me want to laugh and cry at once, this weird tree thing with tangles roots for legs, stopping to touch trees with his branches, as if trying to tell them they can walk too and escape this wretched place if they just wake up and come with him. There’s this one point where we cross a creek and I’m holding one of those branches of his and it just snaps. And I’m walking, and keeping an eye out for any more satyrs, and holding that broken bit of branch, and trying not to wonder if that was a pinky or some hair or the tip of an ear I just snapped off him. He notices me carrying it at some point, and gently takes is and stashes it in somewhere in the tangle of his roots and branches. Did I mention I just really feel like I’m three years old half the time around him? I do.

It takes half the night but we make it. On a shore near Nighthaven, I tell Anadurion thank you, and leave Sil to say her quiet goodbyes before he sinks his roots into strong soil, and fades, and dreams. She can’t tell me how long he’ll sleep. He might wake next spring. He might sleep till your bones and mine are both dust.

And that’s the part he didn’t tell us about, wasn’t it? Nature's gifts are never free. Maybe not quite an eye for an eye, but still blood for blood. The Old Bear went out on a limb for Liz ‘cause I asked him to … least we could do is do the same.

No, that’s not a tree joke—oh. Well yeah, I guess it sorta is. Heh.

[Kestrel]

VII


Since it doesn’t look like you’re gonna finish this bottle, mind if I do? I’m almost done anyway. Yes? No? I’ll take your lack of protest as a yes, then – in fact, neighbour, it’s practically my duty to protect you from yourself by removing further liquor from the reach of a man in your present condition. No need to thank me, it’s all in the line of duty.

So where was I? Right, Moonglade. And I rather wouldn’t have been by then, because with damage control covered, I thought it’d be best if Liz and me just left quick and quietlike, and let the druids lick their wounds in peace. Only that didn’t happen, because it turns out Sil was wrong about us failing Liz. It was like her body just took some time getting used to it – or the eye took a few days realising it’s not a pinecone anymore, I guess either makes sense if you’re half tree and all elf. Anyway, by the time Sil and I were walking straight and not bleeding into our guts anymore, Liz was seeing stuff. Sparks, mostly, but still seeing.

She was also seeing a guy, turns out. While I was chasing druids, she’d been seeing enough of him that he chased her to Moonglade after he found she’d gone from the Cathedral – he got there the day after we brought Anadurion back. Shocked the snot out of me, seeing as Liz gave vows of celibacy probably before she knew what the word even meant. Shocked him too, seeing his prettily gowned blind girl chasing about Nighthaven, one-eyed as a pirate and still getting the hang of this wacky lack of depth perception, but already insisting we show her where Anadurion sleeps so she can thank him, and express her regrets for what helping her cost him. We did; I stayed back with Liz’s beau while she and Sil knelt by the gnarled tree at the shore.

I should’ve probably put the fear of Light’s wrath in him then. He watched Liz like a nervous puppy, and told me they’d talked for hours, every day since she was crippled. They’d talked about a life after her injury. They’d talked about love, about a family. He wasn’t sure what this would mean, for them. I never got why he told me, then, seeing as I was the one who practically stapled the wings back on his broken angel – maybe he was just scared and had to tell someone. People should be scared, when they’re in love with the Lightsworn. It means we’ll always belong to something else more than we do to them. Women, they put up with being second best. Men? They don’t have the stomach for it. I saw it in Liz’s guy then. The thought of Liz taking up a sword again scared him silly.

I didn’t know he’d try to turn her from it, if I had I would have put an end to it there and then. By the time I caught on, she was pregnant and he was getting his pretty, priestly wife. And yeah, I felt a right fool then. I felt like I’d wasted all that effort, half-killed a druid older than my whole damn religion, just so one brave, kind, but ultimately soft-hearted girl could realise that she had been a good soldier, but more than that she wanted to be a mother.

I never got that part. I never got how Anadurion could have made such a huge error of judgement, until I saw Sil again.

From the start, he’d talked about a price. I thought I knew what that was, when I saw Anadurion rooted in Felwood. Turns out that was just what the magic took out of him. Turns out Liz and me were just bystanders, see – all of this, the whole thing, was a lesson for Silnaen. It’s like Anadurion said – Nature’s gifts aren’t free, you can’t go around handing them out just because a friend asks you to. I did, and Sil did, and if Anadurion sleeps years or decades so Silnaen learns the patience and wisdom a druid needs, then that’s fair. If one human paladin learns temperance to go with her will, that’s just gravy.

You think paladins have it rough with the oaths and the duties and responsibilities? Druids, they play school of hard knocks in a whole different ballpark.

There wasn’t much I could say to Sil after that, so I didn't. Instead I told her the same thing I ask her to tell Anadurion; that I’m sorry I asked for something I had no right to. That if they ever need me, she or her Cenarion Circle, I’ll be there, because I owe it to them. Silnaen just shrugs, uncomplicated as ever: she tells me, “I help.” For people like us, that’s all there’s to it – so I hugged her, and told her there’s candy apples in it for her the next time I get around to these parts, and I left. I get almost out of earshot before she shouts to remember, poison is bad.

Just for that, I kept my hand off the moonshine till I’d hauled my arse to Auberdine and stashed my nag and myself on a boat for Stormwind. And then you came along, and the rest as they say is history. As is this moonshine of yours, incidentally. Which is probably my cue to let you pass out the rest of the way, and be on mine. But hey, thanks for listening. And thanks for the moonshine.

[Fae]

That was awesome! Well done Kestrel.

[entriia]

I envy your easy flowing style of narrative, reminds me strongly of Nomine's. Nice job ^^

[Heian]

Hm... definatelly one of the best pieces I've read from you, and that's saying something.

[Erandral]

Brilliantly writen as always. I always love to read your work (except for the finnish ones, of course. ).

Your alterations make me look bad though.

[Kestrel]

Technically it makes everyone look bad -- Aubs and Sil for wasting a lot of effort, Liz for accepting it and not following through, and Anadurion for facilitating it all to teach a lesson in humility and non-interferrence. Rich is at worst a bystander who just liked a pretty girl and got stuck in the way of a lot of headstrong types.

[Gwenlyn Omenroot]

I don't know how I missed this in the first place, but have to say that it was a great read. Just left me puzzled how on earth Aubs thought it was Honoria who had stabbed out Liz's eyes when she had been the one to bring Liz to Darnassus for healing.

Nevertheless, had me enthralled when reading as usual.