Spoiler: Comprehend Elements {Fluff}:
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The spirits of the elements do not usually take a coherent form. Elements have a wide range of personal, semi-personal and impersonal spiritual forces that simply move through their respective elemental matter, as blood moves through the body of a human or troll. When a particular spirit is compelled by magic, or prompted by request, or compelled by need to take a more substantial form to do battle or perform a physical task, they muster their element around themselves and manifest as an elemental. But even disembodied, they are able to make certain measured impacts on the physical world as it please them.
Jakk’ari recognizes this unusual fluid motion as a distortion in the physical created by the act of an elemental spirit - possibly the water spirit he spoke to the night before, returning the favor of his courteous contact. Because of this, the shaman has an instinct to gaze carefully at the puddle to which his attention has been directed. There’s nothing in it - not a fish to have made the disturbance, or any track of a recently passed creature. But the water now stilled so completely makes a reflective surface, in which you can now see the reflection of the treeline from which Zachary and Jakk’ari came just minutes ago, and a stealthily hunkered, undoubtedly orcish figure watching with enduring patience.
Spoiler: Isaera’s Dream, Continued.
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The strange logic of the dream expressed true things, though in a collision of truths. At that breakfast table, all of your siblings chime in at the announcement of their father’s coming enlistment.
“I think it’s very noble, father.” Of course Kaleneus would say so; eldest and, you have often suspected, most favored of your family, Kaleneus is the spitting image of your father Daeden without the wry wisdom and paternal softness to temper every smile or grimace. Your brother bears the pronouncement that he is considered unready for war with grace and admiration - and absolutely no fear that your father could be among those who will be required to give their lives.
“I’m enlisting whether or not you let me! But if we enlist together, then we can be attached to the same battle groups. I can help you!” Aleeana’s hands grip the edge of the table with such restrained frustration that her usually perfect nails are grooving the wood. She bounds her declaration in words that suggest a virtue of impetuous courage, and a desire to follow your father’s legacy; but knowing Aleeana, it’s hard to discount the possibility that she like so many elves has not understood the gravity of the war, and is angling for the action that will provoke the maximum rancor from your mother. To your young eyes, Aleeana’s purpose in life has been to counterperform every rule or requirement your mother has given her. Only some years later would you reflect and consider that she trod the path trodden by so many middle children before her, defining herself away from the ‘dutiful scion’ pattern so completely fulfilled by Kaleneus, whilst stinging with resentment for how quickly she lost the mantle of youngest and most adored to Tarien, and you. Your mother rebukes Aleeana, and they go back and forth with an expected series of charges about youthful ingratitude and matronly tyranny.
Tarien says nothing. He looks to you, some hope dying in his eyes as he sees that you haven’t miraculously changed your mind about his idea to run off and spontaneously become Farstriders together. But with his foolish hope breached, he can do nothing; and he turns his eyes to the woodgrain of the breakfast table.
Your father performs some of his magic, then; that supreme art of the masterful patriarch, standing up to lean well across the table and to clap one hand over his wife’s, and one over the clenching, wood-grooving grip of his eldest daughter. “No one else is enlisting. It’s my decision, and it’s final.” This, you know, is a half-truth. It was the decision of he and your mother both, if the latter only by convincing; but he frames the matter as unilateral and so disarms Aleeana of her grounds to gripe. Not prepared to attack her father with the same readiness as her mother, Aleeana simmers with disapproval, but holds his hand and accepts his verdict.
You weep, as your recollection drags you back down this road; but your father does not extend his big comforting hands to take yours, and your mother does not enjoin you to calm in soothing tones, and Tarien does not hug you in your distress. Your grief, flung backward in time to this moment, is unable to penetrate the reality of the past. Your father left, that day. You did not see him again for five months.
In his absence, your mother moved your family to Windrunner Village, your mother’s home town and the primary port dealing with the human ships. With so many battle mages being sent to the Alliance, your magical studies lost their consistent teachers. Hiring a rotating series of tutors from those magi on shore leave was a cunning solution, and dovetailed nicely with your mother’s desire to dwell near to her own sisters, Jaana and Reyna, whose families were also struggling with the departure of their patriarchs. Your life in those months found plenty of distraction with exotic visitors from human lands and magical training from magi with tales to tell of orcs, and ogres, and monsters from another world. Not to mention a mess of younger cousins who found you, moreso than your brothers and sister, worthy of their fascination. Kaleneus was your partner in crime to impose some sense of order on the swarm, for much of that time; with Tarien more a follower than leader, and Aleeana more of an obstacle than either.
But the dream blurs through all of that. It takes you not to the happy and peaceful interim, but straight to the day your father returned. He hadn’t shaved in his time away, grooming when he could affort to, and the presence of facial hair made him seem ancient. He had indeed acquired a scar, and not a subtle one; a crescent moon that began just above his right eyebrow, cut through it, and arced around the socket to terminate just on the inside of the cheekbone. He would explain to you, after the war was over, what caused the scar. But on the day he returned, he did not offer stories; only grim tidings.
Your mother seemed almost to know it was him by the manner in which the door opened behind her, and she spun about and flew into his arms, assaulting him with needy kisses. But even these he could barely afford to receive; and he brought much more grief with him than joy. Aunara’s husband had returned; but Jaana and Reyna’s had not, and they never would. The defense of the human lands had gone too well: the Horde, halted at their landing, had been forced not to advance north, but jagged eastward and in doing so found willing help in the ancient enemies of the Quel’Dorei: the Amani forest trolls. Even now, this bolstered horde was surging into the Eversong woods, bringing with them warlocks capable of dismantling the ancient runestones that for countless years kept the trolls at bay. The ships broke from port with all the supply they could take from Windrunner; and you, and your parents, and your now widowed aunts and their swarm of confused and frightened children, and a thousand other desperate elves made their break to the road on all the carts, and hawkstriders they could muster. Most, like your family, made the march to Silvermoon on foot. You remember the sight of the smoke on the horizon behind you, as Windrunner was put to the torch. You remember passing a unit of two dozen Silvermoon guard, marching down the road as you came up it; proud and strong songs and daughters of Silvermoon destined to delay the oncoming trolls by giving blood in combat, and then their bodies to the bloody appetites of those creatures. And you remember the words of your father to you, as your flight to the capital was coming to an end; the grand archway open and in sight as refugees streamed in from the roads all over.
He takes a moment to steer you away from the rest of the caravan, and walks with you alone for a little. He’s quiet at first, like his time away has robbed him of the easy charm with which he commanded his family’s love before; but it starts to come back to him, with a clearing of the throat.
“They tell me you’ve been practically keeping the family together with your own strength. You and Kaleneus. I don’t know if your mother has been saying it, but you’re an example to your siblings, and cousins. We’re very proud of you.”
He means these words as much as he has meant any in his life; but there’s a little trepidation in his eyes, like he is hedging against the slim chance that you might consider throwing his compliment back in his face for abandoning you these five months.