#And she'll do just like Iloam taught her in other ways too! Like bottling up ALLLL of that hurt & letting it fester!

[musee-de-muse]

The Tower

DWC November 2024

Day 1: Haze/Sexy

OC: Lilliana Whitedawn, Sindorei 'Felblood'

(I never wrote about the fall of Dalaran, and there's a couple characters who have feelings about it, so now is as good of a time as ever.)

@daily-writing-challenge

It was early enough that the morning haze of fog still kissed the sea's gently rolling surface, as it lazily lapped at the shore – well-worn leather boots carrying the fair-haired Sin'dorei deftly along the damp sand of the beach. Her gaze swept the strewn rocks, and debris – still in shock. One moment, all was well – the club had been as it was every other day, or night... teeming with gyrating bodies – while wishes were fulfilled in the shadows of her insidiously sensual domain.

And then all the lights had come on, the music coming to an abrupt halt as the crushing press of flesh below began to blink out of the fog of pleasure and lust, the exits blazing with a soft, red-tinted arcane glow – the emergency features put in place long before her time had cut the party swiftly short, and... with relatively little harm done, security had escorted all those in attendance either out of Dalaran itself through portals, or back into the underbelly to make their own ways to safety, family, or whatever else called to them in these frantic, confused moments of invasion.

It had been so fast. One moment, bodies pressed hotly against one another – dark secrets traded for dangerous desires; drugs, alcohol, flesh, magic... or simply a release from the expectations of every day life... this was the legacy she'd been handed. The club she'd practically been shaped within, herself – the walls therein holding secrets the likes of which she'd no doubt have killed, to keep.

It was the one, big thing that had still tied her to those now forever gone from her life.

“Was it too much to ask for just this?”

The waves shushed her as gently as they could.

“Not only was a whole city I loved utterly destroyed – a symbol of what we can achieve with alliances, instead of war. A testament to our prowess over magic, and our ability to bring that power to everyone...”

What was she even trying to say? That not only did it hurt her, as an Elf... but that it felt like a knife in her gut. It felt personal. It felt like Ythgar leaving all over again. It felt like Iloam's goodbye, in which he had accused her of being a demon in disguise - in which he had told her to never speak to him or his again. It tasted like having had love at her fingertips, only to lose it over, and over again.

It was a whole era of her life being ripped away from her again.

It was an anchor to the young woman's humanity that had allowed her to not only stay rooted in a safer mindset, bound up in memories and legacy...but it had allowed Lily's demonic side to be sated in a convenient manner without causing anyone any real harm. It was a tie to a part of her life that had felt so safe, in the early days – a time that, despite the turmoil it had all ended in, had forced her to take shape in her first days truly on her own.

And so Lily let herself grieve there on the shore, by herself – she let herself grieve in a way she never really had had the time for, since all the loss. She'd been busy mourning herself – her mortality, and her fel corruption - and raising a daughter, and fighting to save Azeroth, and sating her demon, and getting her estate back on its feet in the strain of the years since the fall of Quel'thalas... and she'd barely been an adult, when it had all begun. She grieved for the that girl, too – the Flower Girl. The one who hadn't known any better. The one mocked for her naivete.

She was a mother to a preteen now; beloved friend, and trusted ally of dragons; half a demon; still, as ever, a Crusader to be called upon by the Argent Crusade; a hobbyist historian, a professional relic-retriever with her own ship and crew, now... who would have to return to piracy on the sly, with the club now removed as a 'hunting ground' to sate the demonic side of her.

Lilliana was all those things, and more – this towering woman, who now sank to her knees in the sand... one hand firmly in the moist earth, gripping the sand tight between her fingers, as the other clutched at the 'silver' pendant of a lioness that she'd worn since the day Ythgar, the Marquis of Vynguld, had gifted it to her.

As the pendant dug into the flesh between her knuckles, the Elven woman shuddered – taking a steadying breath, as the memories... as the anger and the grief washed over her... and she let it pass, pushing down the demon it rankled to life in her breast.

“But a bilge rat always survives.”

Soft and hoarse, these words to the empty beach – and yet, the lessons Iloam had taught Lily as a naive, young paladin had buried themselves deep in her psyche, and still held her in their grip. One knee comes up, plants a booted foot under her, and she hefts herself up in a singular motion – the hand that cleans her face leaving a smear of sand in its wake... and behind her, the pristine, damp sand is broken only by steady footprints that lead away from the messy disturbance she'd left in the sand, in her moment of delayed grief – all that hurt put neatly back in a box, and away out of sight to haunt her another day.