#When ya' tryna warm up for ur English essay but you decide to write edgy OC fanfic instead
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Tales of a Wanderer (1)
I think I’m going to start writing a bit about Leora’s backstory on here! It’s kind of (very, very) long, but it was fun to doodle around for a few hours and do some proper writing for the first time in forever!
Word Count:Â 3000
  Leora tapped her nail against the side of her porcelain cup as she waited. She wasn’t sure which was going to chip first, her nail or the thin layer of pastel paint along the side of the cup. She hoped it’d be neither- picking paint off coffee cups or chipping your nail didn’t exactly look professional. She put the empty cup down on the oak table in front of her, to keep it out of hand’s reach.
Her parents sat across from her on a small velvet couch. Leora had never liked this room of the manor much. She found it overly posh, decorated with its thick pastel wallpapers and overly ornate furniture. It felt too much to her like the room was trying too hard to show how classical and noble it was. But it’d been quiet, and that was the most important. They’d chosen a small sitting room in the west wing of the manor, something intimate and private- less likely to be eavesdropped or walked in on. Something she’d insisted on.
Leora’s eyes darted toward the open window as she continued to wait. The thick drapes had been pulled back and the afternoon sun lit up the pale little sitting room. Every few moments she’d hear her father shift his weight or her mother rustle and her eyes would quickly snap back to them. Both of them still sat in silence, contemplating what she’d asked moments before. Her father’s nose had scrunched up and was flaring like a rabbit -like it usually did when he was thinking hard- and her mother continued to fiddle with the fat silver ring on her slender finger. Both of their coffee cups sat on the table in front of them, stone cold.
The silence was too much to bear, she decided to push a bit further. “I know it seems like a long way away,” Leora began as she watched her parents, “But The Eastern Kingdoms really isn’t more than a month and a half away by caravel--maybe two by a frigate. I’d write regularly as well. It wouldn’t be any different than me living in Boralus.”
Her father’s nose scrunched up even harder, but her mother’s hand stopped to rest on the ring. “Aren’t you worried?” Her mother’s tone was quiet, which only made Leora’s stomach flop. She was a woman who didn’t like to yell -she’d said it was something people did when they couldn’t charm or persuade someone in a discussion. It also made it incredibly hard to read what the woman was actually thinking, which drove Leora up the wall. “If you didn’t know, the mainland isn’t the safest place right now.”
“I know, I’ve done all my reading and I’ve done as much research as I can,” Leora responded. Her back began to ache but she resisted the urge to slouch backward. “But that’s not going to change anytime soon. The world’s been consistently on fire for longer than I’ve been alive. I can’t just wait it out forever. I want to venture out and now’s better than any time. The Alliance and Horde are in a truce against the Legion and they’ve stopped most of the demonic invasions on the mainland.”
“What about the seas?” Her mother shot back, “You can see them on the horizon sometimes -those massive black ships of the Legion that hang in the sky. You don’t think a boat could out-sail that, do you?”
“I trust the captains,” Leora said simply. That was enough for her father to finally break his silence.
   “And when you get to the mainland, what do you even hope to do?” Her father asked. The man hunched forward and reached for the small bottle of rum that sat beside his cold coffee. He winced, a pain shooting up his old back, as he returned to leaning against the couch. “What could the mainland provide that you couldn’t do here?”
Leora had been ready for this question, she’d rehearsed how to dodge it too. “I think it’ll be a good way for me to broaden my horizons,” she said agreeably, “Make something of myself through my own sweat and hard work,” she said with an affirmative nod. The answer had been completely devoid of any proper answer, very wordy and flowery without much content to it. Like a souffle that somehow was even more filled with hot air.  It wasn’t a lie -she didn’t think she could bring herself to lie to her parents who’d always been nothing but honest with her- but it wasn’t exactly answering the question. And, from the way his nose scrunched back up, Leora’s father knew it as well.
She’d dreamed of going to the mainland for years now. Stormsong Valley was nice, and so was Boralus, and a lot of the world saw Kul Tiras as idyllic. There weren’t many places these days where the biggest and most important question was “How to save for a vacation?” or “How much should I put into my bank account”. It was idyllic and stable, and most people could earn some good money. But -after nineteen years- idyllic turns to boring and stable quickly turns to the ossified. When nothing changes, things start to get lazy and decadent. Leora could see the writing on the wall; when people were going on monster hunts for glory and fun, rather than to protect their families, something was missing on a spiritual level. Something the mainland had. Probably. More than likely.
   “But there are so many dangers on the mainland,” Her mother had cut back in. She’d began to fiddle with her ring again, the elderly woman’s manicured nail tried to dig into the silver of the band anxiously. “You could be kidnapped, or swindled, and there’s a lot of people who don’t speak common on the mainland,” she said, her voice a nervous twitter now. “What if you end up lost and you can’t get back to us?”
   Leora’s stomach flopped again, this time with guilt. She didn’t want to see her mother like this, she had better things to do than to be worried about her daughter. “I’ve saved money, Mama,” she said soothingly, “I’ll put it into a bank on the mainland and I won’t touch it unless it’s an emergency. You won’t have to worry about anything.”
   “Except for why you’re going, of course,” Her father said, a sobering hardness in his voice. The room went quiet, a few gulls squawked as the waves crashed beneath the window as the three of them stewed in their own awkward muteness. Her father leaned back and crossed his leg, his nose unscrunched. He had an aged, aristocratic look when he wasn’t hunched over. Leora had found it scary when she’d been younger, now she kind of respected it. It made people listen to what he had to say. “I’d rather you be honest with me. You’re not leaving because you don’t think we care, do you?” he asked, no expression apart from a placid calmness as his daughter winced from his question.
   “Papa, I’d never do that!” Leora exclaimed as nearly shot to her feet. She reigned herself back in at the last moment and remained sitting.
   “Then why? Why leave everything you know on a gamble for something you might find something on the mainland. We can help you find it here,” Her father said. His calm, sagely expression broke, “I do care about you, even when you’re away in Boralus. I want what’s best for all of you,” he said, his voice a soft coo.
   Leora licked her lips as she picked up the empty cup and brought it back into her lap. Her nail went back to picking at the paint, “Can you find different inheritance rights?” she asked. Her mother’s brow creased.
   “We’re not talking about money, Leora,” the aged woman said adamantly, “We’ve always said that inheritance doesn’t matter- we take care of each other. There’s no point in running off for-”
   “Eliza, she has a right to be worried,” Her father said soothingly. He slipped his fingers between his wife’s and squeezed it lovingly, coaxing her to sit down. “Yes, you’re not getting anything from the inheritance as one of the youngest.” There was a twinge of guilt in his voice, but he had little control over it.
Inheritance was an odd, ugly matter for the rich in Kul Tiras. A fortune was sliced up unevenly to keep children from fighting; the eldest having the lion’s share to keep order and each younger sibling gets a consistently smaller amount. Leora had done the math, with twenty-four other siblings the Strauss fortune would be cut up incredibly unevenly. Her eldest sister, Hannah, would get nearly thirty-four million gold. Leora would get about three gold pieces. But the family was supportive of each other, and Hannah had already offered to give out loans -at a lower than market value interest, of course. It still sat ill with Leora, all the same, and her father knew it.
“You have an education -in the law of all things- that’d have you set for life.”
   “Which I need to be in the aristocracy to use to any effect,” Leora responded, “You know better than anyone that the gentry has a monopoly on the law- lawyers can get arrested for prosecuting noble cases.”
   “Cedric is aristocracy. You just need to..tie yourself to him.” The conversation had a quiet death and the room went into an ugly quiet again. They both knew what that meant. Cedric was a good man, and Leora and he were technically married. But certain things had to be done first before it was legally considered a full marriage. Certain things that take about nine months to do. The thought alone made Leora queasy, nearly as queasy as it made Cedric to think.
   “We have a child,” Leora deflected, “Howard’s nearly a year old and he’s a son Cedric had when we were married so-”
   “The bastard of your husband’s mistress doesn’t count as your son,” Her father interrupted coldly, accompanied by a quiet hum of animosity that he kept hidden behind a quiet demure. “People snicker about that, you know? They make fun of you.”
Cedric Beaumont was the heir to a small, impoverished barony near Boralus, middle-aged but still in his prime. More importantly, and more horrendously, he was also thirty years Leora’s senior. The match had been agreeable economically to the families; a gargantuan plebeian fortune paired with an impoverished patrician family. But -as Cedric was fond of saying- “it was as sick and wrong a pairing that one could ever make”. “I’m a nobleman, not a monster,” Cedric always said firmly to those who would listen. It was the reason why Leora liked the man; he was the only person more horrified with their arrangement than she was.
It was odd to bond with someone like that; over how wrong it felt that you’d been forced together. But it had made life tolerable, and it suited their agreement. They’d live in the same home in Boralus, for reputation’s sake -their families still were eager to see them together- but they’d live separate lives. With separate beds in separate rooms. Hell, Leora sometimes forgot they were married- they acted more like hunting buddies and roommates.
Together with them lived a woman named Clarrisa, an elven woman, and Cedric’s true love. Leora liked Clarissa; they liked to read together and she’d even taught her how to shoot a rifle along with Cedric. She was the one who’d given birth to Howard, who Leora and Cedric planned on legitimizing. It was the right thing to do, and it made all three of them content- Cedric and Clarissa would have a family and Leora would be off the hook in that regard. But...people do talk, and none of it was pleasant- about the twenty-something who let her husband sleep with women behind her back. In her own house. They wouldn’t make fun of her to her face, but she always heard the snickers. The cruel little jokes.
Leora dropped the matter quickly, she rested the coffee cup in her lap. “Papa,” she began, “I know it sounds crazy and dangerous, but I can’t stay here forever. We both know I’m nearly last in inheritance- I won’t get anything.” She gripped the cup tightly, “I don’t want to live my life tied to somebody else’s success. I don’t want to have to ask for an allowance from those who get the inheritance or live as the wife of a baron in poverty. I’ve grown up with so many privileges, so many things that other people don’t have, that I don’t want my life to go to waste. I want to do something worthwhile and good with it” The flood-gates were open now, and the truth seemed to tumble from her lips before she could control it. “Even if I fail, I want to at least know I tried to do something glorious with my life. Something that I can be proud of and that I know did some good for the world around me.”
“And what happens if you die?”
She thought for a moment before she simply shrugged, “It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” she said. Her mother’s eyes were wide, her lips pulled tightly together to try and keep herself from crying.”It means I put my life on the line for something bigger than myself.” Leora’s stomach flopped again. Her father had no taste for dramatic martyrs or the sacrificially noble. He found them obnoxious and less than endearing But, she couldn’t let this die. Not now. She got to her feet and put down the cup, “This isn’t a matter of me asking for your permission, this is me telling you I’m leaving for the mainland,” she said firmly. Silence descended back to the room and her parents stood wide-eyed up at her. For a tremor of a moment, she wanted to take back her words. Maybe there was still time; she could say she was joking, or that she wasn’t thinking straight, or she’d-
“Then I suppose I can’t stop you, Lulu,” her father said as he rose to his feet. His aged face pulled back into a small, smile. It’d been years since he’d used her pet name, and Leora was caught off guard by the sudden affection “ You’ve always had a spine, more than a lot of people here. And I don’t think I could stop you, even if I wanted to,” her father laughed. “If you really believe it’s for the best, and this is what you want, then I wouldn’t want to stop you.”
Leora looked dumbstruck for a moment before she reached across the table and gave her father a warm hug. “I promise I’ll make you proud! I’ve already booked the passage to the mainland on a ship, it’ll give me four months at sea to get used to a harder life. I’ll send letters and mementos and everything once I get there!”
“Just promise me one thing.”
“Anything, papa!”
“If it doesn’t work out, you’ll come home and settle down,” he said with a nod. “You have youth right now and chase what you like, but it doesn’t last forever. You only have so much time, and when you run out, swear to me you’ll return to life here.”
Leora’s stomach lurched, but her heart fluttered with excitement. “If I can’t make it work-out, then I will,” she said. It felt insincere to tell him she would, but it was better than starting an argument! She turned toward the door and marched out, a triumphant skip in her step, “I’m going to start packing immediately. My passage is in two days and I want to be ready!” she exclaimed as she slipped onto into the gilded hallways of the manor.
Her mother looked absolutely aghast, “Phillip,” she began breathlessly, “Do you have any idea what sort of ideas you’ve put into her head?!” she asked with a look of pure bewilderment. “You don’t actually believe she’ll go and do the things she’s talking about, do you? Running off, doing something “good”- whatever artsy nonsense that means to her! She has a lovely heart, but she’s going to get herself killed!”
Her father shook his head, “No. I use to be the same way when I was her age; young, brash, ready to drop everything to go out and do something that would get me famous,” he chuckled. “She won’t make it a half year on the mainland. She’ll pack up and return home and she’ll finally grow up, probably a bit for the wiser.”
The older woman frowned, “Well, that doesn’t exactly pleasant when you say it like that. But...you have a point,” she nodded, “The mainland isn’t some land of heroes and grandeur like she believes, at least I don’t think it is. She’s smart, and she’ll know when to quit.”
Her father nodded, watching the doorway where his second-youngest had marched out in a flurry of her own perceived triumph. “You’ll see. I know her type like the back of my hand,” he said soothingly. “She’ll go out, she’ll fail or end up destitute and unable to fail anymore, and she’ll return home and realize it’s time to put away childish fantasies like goodness and heroes away,” he nodded. “When Leora fails, we’ll be waiting here. It’ll all work out fine. I’m sure of it.”
#Tales of a Wanderer#Leora Strauss#When ya' tryna warm up for ur English essay but you decide to write edgy OC fanfic instead
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