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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Jul 1, 2021 16:00:08 GMT
July the First
Nat emerged from her rented room in Upton Borough in Boralus feeling every bit as awful as she looked (being quite clearly, quite awfully, hungover), yet, for all that, there was a small smile on her round, pale face. She trudged across the main square, passing Pinky’s Groggery on the right with a wince. The open-air whiskey bar was closed at this early hour, of course. She stopped, thinking for a moment. She was wanting to write about her week before going home and changing out of the clothes that were drawing stares…
Nat blushed, looking down at her outfit, trying to remember the events that led to her wearing it. A checkered green and black long-sleeved lumberjack’s shirt, suspenders, brown linen pants with some sort of gaudy, brilliantly red-orange leggings with swirling gold patterns embroidered over them, boldly buffed black shoes, and huge charcoal-grey mittens with spikes on them. Nat’s blush deepened as the early-morning nobles of Kul Tiras stopped and flagrantly stared at her. She hurried on, not wanting to draw even more stares by sitting at a table at the open-air bar at this hour, wearing this outfit.
She passed the Barrel and Crate store on the right, Tucker’s Toys on the left, the latter of which got a fond smile for the many memories there. She found herself passing under a covered space with a bookshelf, a desk, and lots of furniture. Exiting out the other side, she found what she was looking for… a good spot to sit and write about yet another fully-loaded week before heading home to get changed out of her silly outfit and clean up, and maybe do something about this hangover.
The spot she saw was the huge bonfire under a third covered area. The bonfire burned brightly through the early-morning mist of the rocky harbor city, looking quite inviting. She moved to the far side of it where all the enormous sitting pillows were, smiling weakly through her hangover and having a seat. Nestled in, she withdrew her diary, ravenfeather quill case, and inkwell from her pack, opening everything up and beginning to write.
Dear diary,
Gosh, what a FANTASTIC week! It makes up for Celeste being out this week on a fishing trip with her uncle, now that the excavation of the basement/workshop/flying machine hangar is completed. I'll be spending some downtime in there, painting it up where Celeste left all the carvings in the walls of sea turtles and fish and coral reefs and stuff, making it look like a whole coral reef dive. I just hope I can paint as well as Celeste carves rock! Anyway, we packed the Turtle Beach tent up and sent it with them when they left, so I actually slept in my house for the first time in a little while. Then there were two nights at Nah’s house, where she made this funny little bed out of her grizzly-skin rug in her sitting room for me to sleep in. It was surprisingly comfy! Then last night… gosh… I don’t even remember half of it… all I know is, I woke up in a rented room in Boralus wearing a green lumberjack’s shirt, gaudy pants, and funny shoes by the bed. I think Nah and Cari stayed here too. I’m pretty sure, anyway? I can’t remember…
Anyway, this WEEK! Oh my GOSH! There was Lex and Ellie’s Midsummer Gala Saturday night. It was so much fun, I actually stayed up TWO HOURS past my worknight bedtime to stay! It was the most fancy to-do. Everyone was all dressed up, and I had on my fire festival dress I got at the fire festival LAST year, and when we got to the estate house that the gala was at, they had us all line up at the door at opening time, and introduced us all individually in a yell, commenting on our outfits. It was so fancy! I ended up going over to line up first somehow, which was wildly embarrassing, but then we got in, and Lex did such a great job with the announcements, and Ellie was there, putting stickers on people’s back for the icebreaker game. You had to ask people questions about what the word on your back might be, and try to guess it. It was so much fun, and so silly in a lot of cases! Ellie had sooooooo much food at the buffet, and, of course, lover of food that I am, I went over and ended up with an embarrassing amount of it. Then there was dancing! Yeah, that went well… I fell down a whole bunch and slapped myself in the face… twice… But it was still really neat! There was a dance floor they led us all down to after food and the first game, and people were taking turns each song to dance with each other. Cari and Maya – who are together now, yay! – were pretty much INSISTING that I dance, and that they were gonna help me, so they did! Then I danced with Lex and Ellie and their friend who was really really nice to me, though, tired as I was after a fourteen-hour shift, late as it was, and the fact that I’ve never met him before and haven’t seen him again since, I can’t remember his name… but he was a really cool guy! Then there was a lull, a brief intermission, in which I darted off to Mags’ stall at the monthly market to restock on all her amazing soaps and stuff. It was all the way in Westfall! Thank goodness for Aedie teaching me portals in our mage lessons! Mags had TONS of business, so that was good to see. There was a whole line in front of me, even! She’s now selling a new type of bath bomb, too, the bath grenade! It’s shaped like a gnomish grenade, does twice the fizzing and bubbles, and has a toy soldier inside! What fun! Mags had on these really neat shades and sunscreen, because of the heat in Westfall this time of year. I could hear my buddy Gommaan wrestling in the distance, or rather, the announcer announcing it, though I didn’t have time to go and watch; the intermission was almost over at the Gala! I thanked Mags and Elsa for bottle of each product in lavender and goldthorn, and the other in Summer Rain, which smells amazing, by the way! and rushed back to the Gala. When I got back, there was another game on. Lex’s friend and I were part of it. Ellie and Lex were doing this game where they say a thing, and you find someone there you have that thing in common together. Lex’s friend and I won one round, a question about a pet peeve you have in common. We both really hate it when people interrupt others who are trying to speak! So we won a bouquet of flowers apiece for that one! After that, there was more dancing, and then I had to go after a few more of those; it was nearly two hours past my bedtime! I really wished I could stay later! It was so much fun!
The next night, after work, I found myself in the Blue Recluse with lots of friends. Maya and Cari were making me blush, as usual, with comments… Someone said spitting was bad, and… well… the BFI and Nah corruption is REAL! I sort of said… that’s what HE said… and then it all went downhill from there. I didn’t mean to blurt that out! Ais’la, bless her, she got all confused, being a Draenei who’s still learning Common. Maya got up and went to whisper the explanation to her, but Ais’la kept replying in a normal tone of voice. Gosh, was it awful… “Spit is bad? Vy? …Oh! Iz no tasty? …Iz no good eat? …Iz man eat? …No?” I wanted nothing more than to sink through the floor and maybe just come back some other night…
Hanging out with Ais’la and Jornaar, that happy Draenei couple, as well as Maya and Cari, was loads of fun, as always, and Zarshal too, who was also there and being funny. But it felt sort of incomplete without Nah there intentionally making Ais’la’s comments worse… haha… I wondered where my bestie was for a while. Later that night, when the two happy couples had gone to bed, Ellie was just about to head out on some errands, and Zarshal had headed out to go for a walk, this Kul Tiran woman came in, and I found out where the heck my bestie had gotten off to…
The Kul Tiran woman came in and was talking to someone else there, and mentioned and Illidari woman who had gotten pretty badly beaten up by some other Illidari woman. She said the woman looked to be in pretty bad shape, but had mentioned finally defeating her past. I knew right away this was my bestie Nahlia Lifebloom, formerly Felbloom, and her self-proclaimed “sister,” Thalia Felbloom! Thalia had been mad at Nah for ages, ever since Nah wanted to put the fel life behind her way back in December, and had been looking for her to have it out ever since. She wanted to drag Nah back, kicking and screaming if she had to, to the ranks. Nah would just rogue-style poof every time Thalia came around, and just disappear until Thalia left. So, I jumped up and ran after Nickol, the Kaldorei priestess of Elune that the Kul Tiran was talking to, and Nah’s adoptive mother, who had gone back to the Cathedral to check on Nah. When I got there, it looks like Nah had, in typical Nah fashion, hopped up out of her cot and left before the priests were done healing her. I was worried; I didn’t want Nah to roam the city and get jumped by Thalia again while she was already hurt! Well, it looks like I was worried over nothing – apparently, when they finally had it out, as bad off as Nah was when I got to her house (where, as it turns out after checking there first off a Nickol tip, she was resting up) to check on her, Thalia was worse off by far! It seems Nah had beaten her so badly, Thalia wasn’t too keen on trying it again. I just hope that sticks…
Nat paused there, putting her ravenfeather quill in her inkwell of purple ink and setting her diary to the side. She rubbed her roiling belly, wishing she hadn’t done so many shots at Deathrolls last night. She wasn’t used to drinking at all, and to do seven shots of… whatever it had been was just the worst idea she’d had in eons. But, she had fun, and memories… kind of.. .to look back on.
But, what was dominating her mind more than her aching body was the state Nah had been in. She hadn’t seen Nah looking like that since last year, when she and her arch nemesis of the time, Rick Riggermoter, had been duking it out all over the city. Demon hunter versus demonology warlock gnome riding a mechanical dragon with a flamethrower in its mouth… Yeah, Nah spent lots of time all bandaged up before finally ending Rick once and for all. And that night, she’d been in the same state once again. Nat sighed, shaking her head, grinning and grimacing at once. Her grimace was both for her memory of taped-up Nah and her own awful physical state at once.
Once it seemed like she was gonna be just fine, Nah offered to let me sleep there on her bearskin rug, as camp was packed up, and I was exhausted from three fourteen-hour shifts and a late-night Midsummer Gala. I accepted, and had quite a good night’s sleep! But before she went upstairs to her room, she told me something startling… Richard Riggermotor was there, brother to Rick Riggermoter, in Stormwind City, and was going to be the warlock to perform a ritual we’d been discussing for an Illidari client… to purge a Kaldorei soul of the clinging demon soul! The thought of Nah exposing her soul to a Riggermotor warlock like that was terrifying, though, admittedly, the plan he’d explained to us about withdrawing the interlinked souls into a soulstone, splitting the soulstone into two after targeting and isolating the demon soul, then restoring the pure Kaldorei soul back into Nah was much safer than the ploy I’d come up with involving visiting the Caverns of time to go to the Well of Eternity and try and nab the Demon Soul artifact, and then escape before the original Sundering of the world into lots of separate continents 10,000 years ago. Well, safer for the rest of the party, but still mortal peril for the Illidari who’s having a literal demon soul separated from her own… especially done by a Riggermotor! I had to agree, though, when I heard the plan, and go along with it. It did sound like a significantly higher chance of success than trying to use the Demon Soul artifact for it during the Sundering at the biggest moonwell in world history. But I knew, though, that if that little gnome made one wrong move… I was gonna goosh him.
Sleep was troubled that night, but I ended up with more or less enough of it to get by. That night was the ceremony. We met up at Nah’s house again, chatting a bit and having some wine to calm my nerves when Richard Riggermotor showed up. We discussed the plan one more time, then moved to the Hyjal portal to use the other part of my plan, one involving the post-ritual work after the Well of Eternity visit in the Caverns of Time. In Ashenvale are the Moonwell of Cleansing and the Moonwell of Purity, plus one more normal one at Raynewood Tower. The idea was in my head after visiting there a week or three ago with Nah and finding Nickol at the Moonwell of Cleansing. Moonwells of those two traits would surely finish cleansing any lingering fel from a post-demon-purging ritual, right? So we headed to the Moonwell of Cleansing first. Riggermotor pulled out a device he’d explained to us at Nah’s house, the T.M.R.D., or, the Timewarp Manipulation and Regulation Device. He used it to put Nah into chronostasis, which seemed to knock her out and totally froze her in place. I gotta admit, she’s brave, to let a Riggermotor to that to her… It took everything in me not to yank it away from him and smash it over his head. But, if Nah trusted him, then, well, I had promised to as well, so I held my tongue and allowed him to proceed without interference from me.
When Nah was frozen, he did the ritual. It was kinda long and involved and, admittedly, a fascinating experience. There were fel runes, and a sigil like what Vengeance-specialist Illidari used to bind Nah in fel chains – more trust was needed from me then – in order to keep Nah’s inner Sayaad from escaping and attacking or zooming out loose in the world. Then he did the ritual itself. I recognized the soul drain and soulstone spells. Splitting two that were battling inside one into two separate soulstones was a whole new thing. Riggermotor looked troubled at first, talking about the two both resisting it, and Nah’s soul, without a body, trying to get through the veil to the Shadowlands. That terrified me! I thought I was about to lose my best friend! But then, just when things looked most bleak, Riggermotor succeeded! He got the Sayaad out, banished it to the Twisting Nether, and got Nah’s soul back into her body! He brought her back out of chronostasis, but she looked exhausted, as one might expect after such an ordeal.
Next, I was up.
I pulled out a vial I brought for this, scooping out some water and sprinkling it along Nah’s tattoos and along her blindfolds. It was working… the fel was fading out of her tattoos, and they healed up! Her skin returned to normal! It was then that I found the most hope that Nah’s eyes would grow back and return to normal. I saw the movement underneath the blindfolds, which were becoming sort of translucent due to being wet. I got her to drink a few drops, holding her unconscious head up and dribbling a few drops into her mouth. That seemed to strengthen her even more. Eventually, we decided heck it… and just decided to drop her right in the moonwell. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but, Riggermotor, he’s actually a Mechagnome. Was Rick one too? I don’t know, and I haven’t asked. Anyway, Riggermotor’s enhanced mechanical arms helped him actually just scoop Nah up and put her in the moonwell. We let her soak and heal and get cleansed in the Moonwell of Cleansing there, while I held her head up out of the water and just splashed the water along there too. Then, for good measure, we decided to go to the Moonwell of Purity, for whatever difference there was between the two. After the same process there, Nah finally woke up again. She looked really good, really healthy! I pulled back her blindfolds then, with her consent, though I didn’t think it through… her first physical vision, due to the way I was sitting and leaning over her, was upside-down Nah face looking down at her like a dork. I had to rectify this… I got her convinced to put the blindfolds back on, flew her back to the Moonwell of Cleansing (as it’s on a beautiful hidden hiking path, and the Moonwell of Purity is right on the edge of a lingering bit of fire damage from way back in the Cataclysm). There, I got her to take off her blindfolds completely, and really take in the world around her for the first time in a while. She was digging it, though, as she grew up there, it was all stuff she’d seen before, and she wanted to see a different forest.
She decided on Elwynn, so I teleported us back to Stormwind City after a huge amount of thank-yous to the pleasantly-surprisingly-trustworthy Richard Riggermotor. I have not reached the point where I can totally let my guard down around him, but that night was a step in the right direction! Riggermotor left for home, and Nah and I went for a late-night hike. She was darting around Stormwind, excitedly taking in the sights, her brilliantly golden orbs darting this way and that, loving the trees, not digging so much stone. So, we went out the front gate for the hike instead. Elwynn Forest was much to her liking. Redridge she liked okay, though she liked green more than the red hues there. I personally think the Redridge Mountains are beautiful, though I can understand a Kaldorei wanting to be under trees and surrounded by things that grow green and are glad. We ended up turning through Duskwood and meeting Sir Thomas Bates there, the kindly old paladin ghost that roams Duskwood, always there to protect it in his own way. We had a nice little talk with him, and he was chivalrous enough to escort us to the western borders of the forest. We got into Westfall, and Nah REALLY wasn’t digging that one so much. Bright golden trees and nary a tree to be seen. She thought the chasm was fascinating enough, however. Then we found the road taking us back into Elwynn Forest again, and that made her happy once more. She enjoyed taking in the sights with her newly regained vision so much that the whole circuit took a couple hours to do. By the time we got back to Stormwind, it was well after dark! We ended up heading back to Nah’s house, and I slept in the bearskin again. It’s so oddly comfortable! I slept much better that night, so glad for my bestie to have her sight back!
Nat paused, dipping her ravenfeather quill for more purple ink, when a Kul Tiran woman happened by and brought her back to the present. The Kul Tiran, an attendant for the bonfire area, recognized the signs of a hangover and had brought a simple glass of water for free. Nat smiled at the kindly woman and accepted the glass, taking a sip. She looked back at her diary, blinking a bit as she was suddenly startled by how much she’d written, and it was only through Monday! Gosh, what a week! She giggled to herself a bit, taking another dainty sip of water and returning to her writing as the bonfire crackled and popped and merged with the sounds of the sea winds whistling through the rocks of the island city.
Tuesday night, Nah took a break to recover from Sunday and Monday’s ordeals, and the Whitewind Company expedition for the week turned out to be a mission to find a missing Whitewind Company wagon carrying boar meat and pelts from Westfall to Darkshire that had apparently disappeared along the road somewhere. Lady Whitewind, Jornaar, Ais’la, and myself went down and met at the covered bridge where Nah and I had left Sir Thomas the night before. We could see the tracks of the wagon coming in over the covered bridge and rolling into the forest. We headed along, following the tracks on foot and enjoying some sweets Ais’la had brought along. It was uneventful at first. We ended up about halfway across the forest before meeting the two Night Watch that guard the crossroads of the east-west road and the road south into Stranglethorn Forest, as well as the overlook down into the ogre mound that used to be an iron mine. A Gilnean was there, too. Apprentice Fess. He didn’t say much, but I had a chat with my friends Dodds and Paige, the Night Watch pair, and they said that the wagon had passed by just fine, but that they HAD heard a loud bang or snap or something some time after that. We thanked them and went on our way. Surely that noise was something that had happened to the Whitewind wagon!
We followed the tracks down the road again. Lady Ciel asked me if I knew a spot locally that bandits would use as a hideout. I mentioned the old two-story house at the Rotting Orchard. Sure enough, as we passed the road leading up to it, we found the wagon! It had been picked clean, of course, and the bang we heard was a wheel being violently snapped off the axle. We were just about to head up the road to the house to investigate the tracks leading off up there, when we were ambushed by two huge, snarling worgen, front and back! Jornaar turned around and got the one at our back with a huge shield slam. Ais’la tried to kick it, but ended up just jamming her leg a bit on the big worgen. It didn’t look like it felt too good! Meanwhile, Ciel and I had the one in front. It was fixated on me, for some reason! I tried to ward it off with my frost magic, but it got me good across the left shoulder. Shredded my black dress with the purple trim, too! It’s STILL being mended… and that shoulder slash HURT! Then Ciel got him with a Tiger Palm attack. For a noblewoman, she can really “throw hands,” as Nea liked to call it! That hurt the worgen in front, but he still came after me! Jornaar said that “Friend Ciel is strong like Company!” followed by, “Come at me, little furry man!” and had the one’s attention behind us pretty well, banging his mace on his shield. “Little furry man need different chew toy,” he said. “Come, chew on my mace instead!” The worgen in front of us was dodging pretty much ALL of my ice spells. Ais’la healed up my shoulder in the next moment, though, and Ciel healed up a return attack from the worgen in front that had slashed her across her chest. Then Jornaar got his worgen over the head with his mace, and that one fell down and did not get back up. After that, it was all over for the worgen in front of us that Ciel had already hurt. Four onto one! Ais’la was really mad at the worgen for going after me, and threw her staff RIGHT at his head! It bonked him in the noggin, knocking him out, Jornaar-style! It seems we have TWO cannon-arms in the Company!
After that, we snuck up to the house. There were three more worgen in there. I could see two, peeking around into the door that was missing from its hinges, and hear a third. One heard me and came out to poke his head out to investigate. Ciel reacted instinctively and hit him with a monk’s paralysis strike! It worked, and the worgen fell over. The female in the group, who seemed to be the alpha, told the other to go see what happened. That one poked his head out as well, and Jornaar got him right in the face with his mace! He laughed, comparing it to the Whack-A-Gnoll game at the Darkmoon Faire. Then the fight was on! The worgen tried to fight back, but Ciel got him with a Blackout Kick, which knocked him out. Jornaar smashed the paralyzed worgen’s knees with his mace, which finished him off. But then the female worgen, the alpha, sent a shadowbolt at Jornaar. Jornaar deflected it easily enough with his shield, but Ais’la was still angered at the shadow magic assault on her mate. She flew across the room, hoof up, and kicked the POO out of the female worgen’s face! Ciel finished her off with a Chi Blast, and that was that! We searched the house after, found what meat the worgen didn’t pig out on, and all our pelts, and Ciel found a large chest of the worgen bandits’ gold they’d stolen, and confiscated that as well. It more than made up for the loss of the wagon and profits, and was good to pay those who had been escorting it a massive amount extra for their abduction. We got the goods the rest of the way through to Darkshire without further incident. Mission accomplished, and another threat removed from my home forest! YAY!
Then, somehow, I ended up finding Aedie’s Company communicator light activated on mine. I asked to meet up, if she would like to go ahead and do the week’s mage lessons now and free up her morning the next morning. She agreed, and we met up at the usual spot at the lake with the portals north of Stormwind, on the north bank. We ended up delving into the different choices one can make as a frost mage, or “talents,” as they are called by most. She showed me the different advantages and disadvantages of each, explaining them pretty thoroughly to me. I learned lots of really neat stuff! Like for instance, how to make a Frost Nova go off around a target instead of around myself, how to order my thoughts to where I can cast while moving for a long moment, different ways of focusing arcane magic buffs, like Incanter’s Flow, Focus Magic, and Rune of Power, what an Ebonbolt, Glacial Spike, Comet Storm, and Ray of Ice are, with homework on practicing those. It was a really neat and fascinating lesson, and I learned loads!
Also of note this week – the battlepets are raised to their maximum training, and are ready to help out with pet battle contracts in the Shadowlands and elsewhere whenever called upon, and man, do they hit like a Jornaar-tossed bucket! This should be quite handy, quite often!
Nat paused for a longer, refreshing sip of water, slowly helping herself recover from the poor drinking decisions of the previous night. She looked down at her absurd outfit, giggling a bit, and moving on to write about that next. She took one more long sip of water, then reached down to dip her ravenfeather quill for some more purple ink, applying quill to diary page once again.
Then last night was Deathrolls! It was an otherwise ordinary day at first, hitting the newly-discovered lost city of Korthia with my friend Calleigh for like the third time in the week, followed by a hangout with Mags and then Jornaar later in the day. Did some contract battles with Jornaar in the Shadowlands and made plans with Mags to go and see real Thyzzes (giraffes!) in Sholazar Basin, where there are some without orcs prowling around, like there are with the ones in the Barrens. She said she’d talk to her Company and see if she could go. I hope so! It sounds like a fun trip!
But then, Deathrolls… Oh gosh… heh… Maya is out for a while with her druid students, so she said she’d miss this game and the one next week, but Cari, Ais’la, Jornaar, and Nah were all able to come! It was Nah’s turn to pick, so we went back to Pinky’s Groggery here in Upton Borough. The move from hot, sweltering Stormwind to the city on the rocks surrounded by snowcapped mountains, with the breeze blowing off them and through Pinky’s, was a welcome change. The view, as always, was just gorgeous. Deathrolls was hilarious, blushworthy fun, as always! We all met up in the Recluse first, people making me blush, as usual – Jornaar learned how the word “screw” is a slang in Common for, well… anyway… making me blush a whole bunch, and cracking jokes and having a good time. Jornaar even learned from Cari how to speak Pandaren… Just talk while eating a huge sandwich! HA! Jornaar, of course, wanted to try it right away. He went to the bar, and Joachim pointed him to Angus, their chef. Angus was having a bit of fun with Jornaar as he tried to order a sandwich, and, by the time it was all said and done, Jornaar was learning to speak Pandaren while eating two two-foot-long turkey – excuse me, “gobble bird” – sandwiches with all the veggies and condiments, and stacked tall with every type of cheese they had! It was priceless!
Then we moved to Pinky’s for the actual game. It was so much fun, and so hilarious! Cari revealed a Truth about how she secretly wanted to tie ropes to a Draenei’s horns and have them pull her on a sleigh during Winter Veil in the snow. Jornaar had Nah making train noises for a while. I had Jornaar and Cari doing elegant swan dives into the Bay of Boralus. Cari came prepared this time, after the wet clothes last week. She switched into her swimsuit, which, of course, made me blush and look away. Then I had them take a good, long look at Nah, and figure out what was different… Yep! The Illidari purge! Nah’s a whole new Kaldorei now! We celebrated that for a minute, too! Ais’la had people singing songs about other people. Eventually, the two had to leave, as they usually do, as they have work on weeknights. The three of us just kept right on going, though! Before long, it had devolved into us doing shots every time those weird streaks of everyone rolling threes happened, ticklefights were doing on left and right, and I ended up somehow in this outfit with the green checkered lumberjack shorts, brilliantly red-orange pants, and funny shoes and spiky mittens. Apparently this is now my Tickle Fiend outfit! HA! I had Cari breathless with the next tickle Dare until Nah finally relented. After that, my memory gets fuzzy. Lots of Dares involving lots of laughs – tickle-induced or otherwise – and then it was time for bed. Neither Cari nor I felt it was a good idea to summon a portal while that wasted… I remember now, in my waking moment, a story of Celeste basically having like, portal roulette going on one time. So, the three of us eventually just found a place to rent a room for the night. I woke up this morning and came out here for fresh air with this awful hangover, and just decided to relax and write as I recovered. I now feel, with this water they keep bringing me, significantly better than I did when I first woke up. My gosh, what a week! And it isn’t even over yet – what in the world will happen today?! I can’t wait to find out!
Nat tapped off the excess ink from her ravenfeather quill then, replacing it in its case and capping off her inkwell. She sat there, leaning back on the luxurious pillows that were propped up behind her for seating, sipping at her water in silence and smiling a small smile at the bonfire and morning fog as she thought back over the week. Her bestie had triumphed twice over her past this week, this time for good and all. The Midsummer Gala had been nothing short of brilliant. Mags’ soap store for the weekly market was as amazing as ever, and she’d really outdone herself this time. Another little victory in her success in raising battle pets. Another triumph for the Company Tuesday, another memorable – mostly, she reminded herself, wincing at the thought of seven shots of various forms of whiskey – game of Deathrolls, and all the Shadowlands stuff with Calleigh and Jornaar. And still, a whole final day of her minication to get into some fun and adventure today. Ah, life is grand!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Jul 8, 2021 13:15:15 GMT
July the Eighth
Nat stoked the campfire, ready to start some breakfast for herself, Celeste, and Dordy. Celeste was in full flow for her plans with the goblin shredder Nat had rented. Celeste, in a stunning move that still had Nat surprised, talked the goblin down in his shredder rental price, demonstrating a bit of quick engineering knowledge in the conversation and assuring the goblin that she’d fix it up for him if he came down on the price a bit. Nat grinned at the memory. Talking a goblin down in price was like getting a wolf to go vegetarian, yet her Sun had done it! Celeste never ceased to impress her. After discussing plans, Celeste turned to the bulky grey humanoid-looking flying lumberjack machine, a can of oil in her hand. She began oiling every joint, every rotor, every part that moved. The massive saw blade affixed to the left arm was as imposing as the green-glowing goblin face with its jagged teeth in the middle. The right arm had claws big enough to lift the trunks of large trees. The stout legs had claws as well, built for gripping the ground and setting a firm base for the machine while it performed its primary function. The bulky torso looked big enough to fit numerous people, though really, it housed the engine, Celeste explained, and much of the rest of the inner workings that made it go. Too, the cockpit and its seat and controls where there. Nat listened in awe as Celeste looked the machine over, doing some preventive maintenance, checking for any broken parts, and describing the machine in detail. Eventually, she got completely in the zone, and went silent as she worked hard on the massive gizmo, now working on the jet pack in the pack and ensuring that it was properly fueled.
Nat placed a couple of frying pans on a stand over the fire once the flames reached high enough to slip through the metal bars of the stand and lick at the pans. In went the bacon, lining across it and then around it, nearly covering the large pan in the world’s favorite breakfast meat. The pan slowly began heating up. Nat smiled in anticipation of one of her favorite smells ever – bacon frying. In the meantime, with eggs and bread for toast at the ready on the side (elevated out of Dordy’s reach), she picked up something else she had at the ready: her diary, ravenfeather quill, and inkwell of purple ink. With Celeste now having turned to tinker with the imposing-looking goblin shredder standing idle on the misty morning beach, Nat dipped her quill and began to write.
Dear diary,
It’s been a week of hard work this week! First there was a bunch of stuff to do in Korthia, this new area of the Maw that the Jailer chained in. I worked really hard there with my new friend Calleigh Silversong, a Kul Tiran druid lady who seems sort of harsh, but is really sort of nice at heart. She’s a pretty powerful druid, at any rate, and together, the two of us did quite a lot of work in there. In thanks, we got an item that allows our mounts to take off into the skies beyond the veil! I put that to quite a bit of use, gathering lots of ores and things for the auction house and made quite a pile of gold! Some of it I sold in a merchant capacity for the Whitewind Company, to help out our company profits, but a bit of it I sold for my own plans for this week – homebuilding!
With those profits, I was able to get a goblin shredder rented for the house Celeste and I are building in Pandaria! Now that the excavation is complete, and Celeste’s amazing uncle Rugnar has returned home after the two of them went on a week-long fishing trip to catch up with each other, the work resumes on the house! We spoke to Suyin, Celeste’s Pandaren friend, about bamboo, which Celeste wants to build with. Suyin told us of an area along the eastern borders of the Vale of the Four Winds where some alarmingly rapid bamboo growth was threatening to encroach on some farmland, and that the locals would be glad to have it cleared away. Celeste agreed to harvest her bamboo from there, where such clearing would be welcome. All parties happy, she’s now prepping the goblin shredder as I write and breakfast cooks. Logging efforts start today after breakfast! I’ve taken the time to clear off the landing pad up on the spire so Celeste can land plenty. I’m certain she’s going to have fun. She has always loved tinkering, and the thought of flying and chopping and carrying has her pretty excited, especially as all the fun is for our new home!
Mentioning breakfast in her writing, Nat looked up, setting her diary to the side and her quill in the inkwell. She grabbed a pair of long tongs and began flipping the bacon, now that the pan was beginning to get good and hot. Sizzles and crackles and pops were heard, and the aroma of cool, misty morning beach air blended with that of bacon frying and a faint hint of machine oil. Nat froze for a moment to just deeply inhale it all. Ah, the smell of happiness! Satisfied the bacon would keep for the moment, she returned to her writing.
Not much else has happened this week, in comparison to most weeks I’ve had since joining the Whitewind Company. Things have been relaxing, really, outside of the work in Korthia. Celeste and I have explored the Krasarang Wilds here around Turtle Beach where we’re camping. Dordy loves those outings so much! He likes to dart around with us, sniffing everything and marking his territory. He’s just adorable when he’s that happy! We still have yet to find a true artifact among the old Mogu ruins here. The adventurers from the Pandaren campaign years ago really do seem to have picked it dry. There is still quite a lot of gorgeous scenery, though!
Last night was Deathrolls. The Wednesday games are just so popular, and so many people keep describing them as a “highlight of the mid-week.” It makes me so happy to see my friends having as much fun as I do during game nights! This time, Ellie was able to make the first one in a while. Maya missed last night’s game, as she said she would early last week, but she should return from her druid students in the Moonglade today! It’ll be nice to say hi to her again! She’s fun! Then there was Zarshal, Jornaar, Ais’la, Cari, Ryle, Vey, and my new friend Lady Oracula! We had a blast! I got Ellie to surprise Lady Oracula, who we call Ori, in a Whisper Dare. She got up a couple rounds later, when Ori least expected it, got down on one knee… and proposed to her like a gnome who really loves engineering and working it into their speech! It was sooo funny! Ori, who, I’m guessing, maybe hasn’t seen a Whisper Dare in other games she’s played around Stormwind, was SO confused! She played along well, though, politely declining the marriage proposal articulately and with kind words, as she’s actually already married to a guy named Aldo, whom I also met last night. They’re a really awesome couple! There was another Dare in which Vey had to talk to a sack of flour as though it were a damsel in distress, and she was a heroine, there to rescue her! Vey was having a hard time coming up with something, so she was allowed to bring in a volunteer. I ended up going over and standing on a stack of barrels, pretending to be the damsel in distress in a burning tower, which was the Dare. I was saying stuff from the Romulo and Julliane play, but with a twist, like, “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks… ‘Tis the light of love, the light of-…ohmigosh… the light of FIRE! O, my plight! For I must needs call for rescue! HELP! O, great hero or heroine of the fiery night, whereforeart thou?!” and a whole bunch more crazy stuff. Rylee was providing commentary for special effects for the fire, which was great, and Vey was doing a really great job playing the heroine. She looks pretty athletic, and she’s like over seven feet tall, so I figured she could catch me when she said jump… That was a scary jump, but catch me she did! Then there was Rylee, having to do a lap around Ironforge while screaming animals names at the top of her lungs. She did a great job of it, too, yelling out some names I never would have thought of. I really lost it when she yelled out, “Silithid!” Jornaar and Ais’la, ever the adorable couple, were the subject of a poem Dare. Jornaar was reluctant at first, but then decided not to risk it in his new Common, opting instead for Draenic. When he made up a poem for Ais’la on the spot, the rhythm was of a limerick, yet I heard Ais’la’s name, and Ais’la lit up like a Winter Veil tree. Jornaar’s voice, reciting a poem, even a limerick, in Draenic was like listening to an otherworldly bass instrument or something. It was quite musical!
Nat stopped for a moment as the bacon sizzling reached its peak. Celeste was now up in the cockpit, working the controls as she read the instruction manual, seeing what did what. The shredder was on and clanking and rumbling, but Celeste kept it on the ground until she learned more about its operations. Nat smiled as her Sun, focusing silently as she did when she was in the zone, taught herself how to goblin shredder. She flipped bacon that wasn’t quite done yet, piling the pieces that were onto a platter laden with large napkins to drain a bit. Rearranging the pieces that were left, she returned to her diary, picking up where she left off in the same huge paragraph that actually seemed to be making up for the lack of content that her entries usually included.
Cari had a Dare from Ellie in which she had to walk on a barrel, rolling it across Bruuk’s Tavern, where we were playing. Bruuk was glad for the chance to entertain the regulars, as long as I paid for anything that got broken – including Cari. Cari made it only a few inches, though, before the barrel went one way, and she went the other. She landed squarely on her rear! She was okay, though, but she did take out her wand and ice her chair over to sit on… Ha! Ais’la had a Dare in which she had to talk like a Dwarf for a while. I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to manage it, as she is only just now picking up Common, but she actually did a fairly amazing job! She picked up the (temporary?) nickname Dwarf’la from that one! Then there was Zarshal, getting scritches from Rylee on a Dare until his leg started thumping. It didn’t work – Zarshal is a person, after all, though he did eventually relent and do it on purpose. Such a great sport, and so fun to play with, Zarshal! There were some spicy truths revealed, too, like one about who’s done what in public. That one made me blush… But one Dare that’s STILL paying off is where Ori had to eat half a Halfhill Habenero… It didn’t work out too well! She drained half the drinks at the table! But I got to take the other half with me, the half with all the seeds around the base. It’s going in my scrambled eggs tonight! Sprinkle the seeds in, mix it in with the shredded pepper itself into the eggs… Gonna be a good breakfast! And what a great game night!
Even slower weeks are still loads of fun… Life is SO great! I can’t wait to see what happens next minication!
Nat grinned, anticipating her delicious spicy breakfast as she pulled the last of the bacon out of the pan. Dordy got a few slices, the molten pupper seemingly impervious to the dangers of eating people food. The eggs went in next after the bacon grease was cleaned out, and toast into another pan. These cooked up quick, being ready right around the time Nat had her ravenfeather quill’s ink tapped off back into the inkwell, back into its case, the inkwell capped off, and her diary’s pages dry enough to pack away as well. Her focus was now on whipping up breakfast, and she was quickly getting into the zone as much as Celeste was in the zone learning the flying machine. She had it hovering several feet over the ground now, learning how to turn it, raise it, and lower it, still nose-deep in the manual. Nat, meanwhile, was piling bacon and eggs onto two plates, having stirred the pepper into her own. Coffee was brewed quickly. The smell of bacon, eggs, buttered toast, and coffee wafted up toward Celeste, and it was one of the few things that could have brought her back to the ground in that moment. The two sat in their camp chairs, looking up past the campfire, past the waves, up, up, up at the top of the rock spire where they could see the landing pad, discussing the first moves with the logging project. Celeste would be gone most of the day, so that meant some free time to handle a few Shadowlands contracts and then hang out with friends. Nat had plans too… She knew a certain happy couple that was in the market for a new home so that they could get out of the room they rented from one of their bosses, and she had hopes to help show them a few places, as she had for her bestie Nah not too long ago. Nat hoped the couple was game for this… House-viewing was fun! Last day of the minication looked to be an exciting one!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Jul 15, 2021 22:49:01 GMT
July the Fifteenth Turtle Beach was as tranquil as ever this warm summer afternoon. Sea turtles lay idly on the beach, sunning themselves, knowing they were safe from predators due to Dordy’s tendency to try and play with other critters that flew or skittered in too close. Being charged at by a yip-yip-yipping molten corgi was just too much for most of these. For now, however, Dordy lay curled up near Nat, who was leaning back against Onyx the Netherdrake, in her bikini, her legs stretched out into the encroaching waves of Turtle Bay. Onyx, like Dordy, had a full belly and was curled up on the beach to sleep off the food coma. Dordy wanted to curl up near Nat as well, but showed his displeasure with a low growl at the waves from time to time when one would reach high enough up the beach to lap at him a bit and send up a wave of steam while he was trying to snooze.
Nat was full as well, but, rather than sleep off a food coma, she was stretched out on the beach at the edge of the waves, lounging luxuriously against Onyx. Her diary was in her lap, her ravenfeather quill and inkpot of purple ink ready to go. She heaved a happy sigh at her fun week, with an additional smile for her four-legged friends, and another up at the top of the rock spire, where a rudimentary shed had been erected with bamboo. Smiling at her love’s relentless work ethic and effort, she drew her knees up to prop up her diary, and began to write.
Dear diary,
This house is going to look SO great when it’s finished! The foundation is leveled out into the spire, the shed is full of tools and bamboo, the outline of the ground floor’s rooms is done, and Celeste is harvesting bamboo faster than I could have imagined! She’s still LOVING that goblin shredder, now that she’s got it all fixed up, and the air shows she puts on when she returns with a load are just so fun to watch! I think we almost have enough building materials now. I can’t wait to see what the next step is!
And also, what a week this has been! After last week’s light level of activity, it was right back to the action! Sunday night, I encountered my bestie Nah, Maya, Cari, Ellie, Zarshal, and Rylee in the Recluse. We got drinks and hung out for a while, and then we decided to move to the music studio that Ellie frequents. Nah, as it turns out, is quite the musician! Ellie usually plays the piano up there, but this time, Nah broke out her harp again. I’m used to her playing that once in a while, but I didn’t know she was nearly as good on a piano! Nah moved on to that from the harp, and soon enough, she had some really fast, upbeat songs going, and a dance party started off! Ellie had some purple and green glowsticks, and we had ourselves an impromptu dance party! It was so much fun! Then Jassinn arrived, a Kaldorei guy who’s really nice that I don’t end up hanging out with as often somehow. He had the best dance moves of anyone there! And the glowsticks really made it even cooler! Then there was Nyr and his girlfriend, I don’t remember her name right offhand, but another pair of Kaldorei. They hung out, but didn’t dance. I don’t think Rylee did either, though they were still fun to hang out with! We all danced ourselves into exhaustion. Everyone said I was doing well, but I know they were just being nice. It was all I could do not to flail around and hit someone, and even then, I still hit my own self in the face twice!
Monday, I found Ais’la in the Recluse, and we went outside for a bit of walking and spotted Mags like right away. It turns out she hasn’t met Mags before, so I took her over to introduce them! Mags and Ais’la talked a bit, and Rylee came by, too! Turns out this month’s big market is the same night that I host Deathrolls, so I wasn’t able to go, but I told Ais’la that Mags still takes mail orders too! Ais’la had to go after a while, and I decided to get her her first order myself! Peppermint-scented stuff, of course, as she’s crazy about peppermint stuff! I suppose Draenei don’t have that stuff on their world. I hope she enjoys her surprise!
Mags had to go after that, but then Zarshal came along! We talked for a bit and decided to go and find Nah as well. We walked all over the city trying to find her. We looked in the Recluse, the Lamb, Lion’s Rest, the gazebo, her house, and all the way back to the Recluse again before we finally heard music coming from the music studio. She was in there again, jamming on the piano once more! We went up there to hang out, but it wasn’t a dance party. We kinda hung out for a few, then got the idea to go hang gliding off the top of Blackrock Mountain! That was so much fun! The first glide went really smoothly; we were able to coast right to the Mage Tower. Then we decided to go again, and see if we could glide all the way to my house in Darkshire. That one… didn’t go so well. We ended up quite a good bit short, landing right around Manor Mistmantle. That old house is still a broken-down wreck! Zarshal and I landed just fine, but Nah smacked her shoulder on a tree, and Rylee’s foot hit a tree and twisted it up something awful! We got her to the inn in Darkshire, and that was as far as she felt able to go. We looked at her ankle. It was all twisted up pretty gnarly! It was big and swollen and purple and looked like it was growing a second head! She ended up going to bed there in the inn after a bit of self-medication at the bar… heh… But she is okay now. She saw a healer the next day! Nah got her shoulder fixed by Anna after that. She’s all good now! We still want to go gliding again. I think the next time will be off the top of Storm Peaks and into the Grizzly Hills… What a view that’ll be!
Nat dipped her quill for more ink, looking up suddenly when she heard the roar of a familiar engine. Celeste was back with her latest load of bamboo! The harvesting and stockpile was coming along quite quickly, and she had the shed pretty full. The tools were in there too, kept safe from the elements. Dordy and Onyx looked up as well, watching the huge goblin shredder soar across the sky with its jet pack, its massive claw full of a massive tied-up bundle of bamboo. The shredder landed on the landing pad, stomping over to the shed and depositing the bamboo. Another roar from the engine later, and the shredder was taking off again, diving toward the trio on the beach to do a few barrel rolls and loop-de-loops before waving its enormous claw at them and them letting loose the afterburners to scream across the sky back toward the Jade Forest. Dordy yip-yipped, Onyx thumped his tail on the beach, and Nat waved as Celeste put on her air show before taking off again. Nat giggled a bit. She always enjoyed Celeste’s air shows. She seemed to enjoy showing off with her shredder. Nat thought a bit about just buying Celeste a shredder instead of renting it, then went back to her writing.
Tuesday, though… Tuesday was something else! The Whitewind Company – me, Ais’la, and Jornaar, along with Maya, Calleigh Silversong, a Boralus citizen who was our point of contact for this mission, and her employee Cletcher Tidebringer, went to the slums of Boralus to investigate allegations of extortion, racketeering, and organized crime against this guy Marcus Brinebreaker that lives over there. There’s a contract out, and we’re hoping to both help the slums’ locals, who this guy’s purportedly been preying on, and make some money for the Company with that contract. We were going to meet Maya out there, but she had to come later, due to some things of her own she had to take care of. We started off with Captain Donnel, the Boralus security chief for the area, who gave us a lot of useful information on the area. Ashvane Company Yards, Dampwick Ward, and Hook Point were the points of interest, and the military ward past that. He also put us onto Joanessa Seaslums, a woman who apparently has the inside scoop on the Brinebreaker gang somehow. We walked by the gallows, where there were pirates about to be hung. That was scary! I hurried past that before anything could happen. Ashvane Company’s spot was packed full of huge sea creatures caught and being butchered right there in the open. That was icky! Then there was wall upon wall of huge rolls of cloth of different kinds! Then we went through these bouncers who recognized Calleigh and let us past. She’s handy to have around in Boralus! That led us into this outdoor fight arena and a bar. Past that was Dampwick Ward. That… is one sad, sad place. There was this distraught young couple who had made financial plans to have a child, but then they found out, after planning it and conceiving, that they actually have TWINS on the way. They don’t know what to do to afford a second child. The man suggested sending one to an orphanage where the child will be safe and fed, but that just made the woman cry harder. She did not want to make the choice to raise and nurture and love one child and send her other child away! Then we passed these three kids next, small ones who were talking amongst themselves about whether they’d be able to eat two days in a row with what they’d pickpocketed. That was sad too! Ais’la was able to talk to them and get some answers on the area and the gang. This kid named Rob, a sharp-featured boy with sandy-colored hair, seemed to be their leader. Joanessa Seaslums came up again. Ais’la gave them some gold and silver coins, which was really nice, and we moved on. We also passed some desperate poor folk listening to a Tidesage who was spreading doom and gloom, even though they were desperate to find some hope somewhere. There are also these shifty-looking city guards. Calleigh questioned one of them rather harshly, and Joanessa’s name came up yet again. I think those guards are on the take, though, because he was really scared and reluctant to talk!
Eventually, we found Joanessa at a home Captain Donnel described. Waterfront property, on the border of Ashvane’s area and Dampwick. She’s super super nice! She plays Deathrolls and everything! I want to go and hang out with her sometime either this week or next. I hope she’ll come and play with us soon! She also gave us some crab legs she had prepared for the poor folk. She had a ton, so she offered us some too! She’s so sweet! Ais’la doesn’t trust her for some reason. I don’t know why. She feels that Joan is suspicious, having all that food and stuff. But it’s just her crab traps that her husband left her when he got lost at sea a couple years ago, so she got the crabs for free, with just a bit of cutbait from fishing to put in the traps. Also, it seems that Joan had given Jornaar a long look and then looked away blushing, but I didn’t see that happen. I dunno. I hope they can be friends soon! She’s really sweet and nice!
Anyway, Joan gave us a lead on an open-air tavern that was being extorted by the Brinebreakers. We went over there to investigate, and that scared the bartenders out of their wits! It seems they didn’t want us there, because if they were caught with patrons around who weren’t Brinebreakers, then they’d be in trouble with the Brinebreaker gang! And sure enough, a quick bit of looking around, and we found a threatening letter from Marcus Brinebreaker himself ordering them to reserve their establishment for his gang and his gang only, and another paper that was a ledger of money extorted from them. We hurried back to Joan’s after that, because we heard a ton of men coming and yelling threats at the bartenders, and we didn’t want to get them in trouble, nor get overwhelmed. But, when we got back to Joan’s, no sooner did she open the door and smile and greet us than her expression turned to horror… she yelled at us all to duck, tackled me onto her porch, and, just then, there was this loud bang from a high-powered rifle!
Maya came along right after that, rushing over to see if we were okay. That tackle really hurt, but other than that, everyone was fine. It was a warning shot, we think, because the shot went into the mud several feet away from anyone. After that, there was a big commotion inside Joan’s house. She got us all calmed down and sent us out her back door after that, which leads out into Ashvane territory. She advised we ask around in Priscilla’s Parlor next. That didn’t go well! The blushworthy music stopped instantly, nearly everyone fled, those few left were glaring at us, and the bartender yelled at us to get out! But then Calleigh told us someone gave her a note when he left, and it was saying that, if we want Brinebreaker information, go downstairs to the pier underneath the Parlor, and we’d meet Rolfe Braxton there with his boat, making the rounds. So we did, and he came!
Rolfe Braxton is pretty mad about the Brinebreakers, and wants them to go away ASAP! He apparently was lost at sea for a couple years, and, when he came back, his wife and son were nowhere to be found, he’d been declared dead, his house and all his belongings auctioned off. All he had now was this boat, and now, the Brinebreakers wanted a big chunk of his profits from that, too! Also someone stole a locket from him while he was drunk, apparently. It’s a tarnished silver locket, he says, with a sunburst embossed on the front, and a picture of his wife inside. We’re gonna keep an eye out for that for him! He also told us that the best way to free those bartenders up from the Brinebreakers is not to go through the heart of their territory again, like we had before, but rather, approach from the rather more upscale strip on the far side. He said his boat could take us right to an entrance alley to a boardwalk where the Brinebreaker underboss leading the crew that controls the bar sits at a table under an awning there, and, since the middle- and upper-class people there don’t really care about the slums, no one ever enters from that way, so it’s lightly guarded. It was great intel – we got the drop on that underboss and his guards and, between the surprise attack and the overwhelming numbers, we had him and his guys knocked out, shackled, and off with Calleigh’s men to the local stockade in no time at all! Next week we’ll be returning to do a bit more investigating! Those poor, downtrodden locals will be free of that rotten old Brinebreaker gang soon enough!
Nat dipped her quill again for more ink, then left it there for a moment, watching the waves. It was so, SO good to have friends like these. Not just her four-legged friends curled up on the beach with her, or Celeste, who was the very best thing in her life, but also her friends back in Stormwind. The ones who were there not just for the good times, but the hard times, like the Boralus mission and the sailing trip that had come so close to ending in catastrophe. She appreciated every single one of them, and they always brought a smile to her face. The thought reminded her of the events to happen next, which widened her smile. She picked her quill back up and went back to her writing.
Last night was Deathrolls! I met Rylee, Zarshal, Cari, and Maya in the Recluse, and we were soon setting out for the World’s End Tavern in Shattrath City! I love playing there – good food, good drinks, good rock shows, and good comedy shows! Ais’la and Jornaar met up with us soon after that. Then Vey ended up coming along with a couple of her friends, and we had way too many people, so Rylee and Zarshal decided to do another table for those three. We had two games rocking in Shattrath last night! The games were insane! Before long, Cari was running around the other group’s table acting like a dog, I had to go be a goat and really eat paper and swallow it, with Ais’la as my Dwarven wrangler, both of which confused the other group. She made me cap it all off by forcing a FART on their table! Gosh! I went ahead and went the extra mile, though. I took a handful of grapes with me from the tavern and put them behind my rear and let them drop like goat pellets from behind my rear when I forced the fart. That was the most embarrassing thing ever, but it got laughs, so it was WORTH it! Also, Truths! A bit TOO much information, as always, was revealed in Truths. Jornaar had Ais’la and Cari drinking protein shakes, which was some sort of weird powder and raw eggs… ICK! Then Cari had Maya and Ais’la pick each other’s noses and eat it! EW! Rylee came over from the other table all in a fuss because of some carnage she had witnessed. It turns out her Dare had been to come and tell us that someone had peeled the skin off a bunch of bananas! THE HORROR! HA! There was dancing on the tables and lap sitting. Jornaar had to go over to the stage and pose and be decoration for a while. Ais’la liked that quite a bit! Then later, as people started filtering out, we merged the groups to have full groups again, and were still in the World’s End Tavern. Somehow every round ended up being the Million-Die Roll, so that was fun! Three people rolled ones on one of those rounds, including the subsequent Truth or Dare rolls, and I got the Dare, so I Dared them all to get into a fight with an imaginary foe… and LOSE! Then cap it all off with a human pyramid! Then, to close out the night, I got to Dare Zarshal to go over and hit on Raliq the Drunk, a huge ogre that’s always drinking at the bar across from where we sat. He was so awkward! It was great! I love Deathrolls! HA!
Today I’ve done nothing but loaf around the beach here where we’re still camped. It’s been an exhausting week, so I’ve just been resting. But next week there will be more Deathrolls and who knows what else! I can’t wait! I love life!
Nat finished her entry with a smile, tapping off the ink from her quill back into her inkwell and capping that off, depositing her quill into its case. She closed up her diary next, the pages now dry, and packed all three items away in her pack. She shifted that off to the side, leaned back on Onyx again with a heavy, happy sigh, and sat sunning herself (though she somehow never lost her pale complexion and could never seem to get a tan, much to her chagrin) and sipping occasionally at a hazelnut iced coffee, her drink of choice this summer. She watched the clouds pass slowly by, observing certain shapes in some of them, waiting on Celeste to come back with the last load of lumber for the night before she parked the shredder to join her for dinner. There was a nice big bucket of shrimp and a variety of veggies she planned to make a stir fry with, as well as a keg of mead. A relaxing end to an exciting week!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Jul 22, 2021 18:05:43 GMT
July the Twenty-Second Nat lay sprawled out on the foundation of her and Celeste’s future house on top of the rock spire that overlooked Turtle Beach in the Krasarang Wilds in Pandaria, the warm summer wind blowing in off the sea with a smell of salt and blowing her long, shimmering black locks about. The two were taking a break for lunch, having cooked their first meal up here ever! They were excited about that as Dordy seemed to be as he feasted on scraps of different meats and veggies they’d flown up for the occasion. What had started out as a simple picnic lunch of sandwiches with cold cuts and veggies and quickly dissolved into a funny concoction Celeste wanted to try by crumbling up the bread, dicing up all the veggies and meats instead of slicing them, putting them all into a big bowl, and giving it a good, long shake. What emerged was something akin to a lunchmeat salad with mustard and mayonnaise. The two had had a good laugh over Celeste’s experimentation, but, as Celeste made Nat to admit with a grin, it was still every bit as good as the previously-planned sandwiches, being made, after all, of all the exact same things.
The two had eventually fallen into a tired silence, Celeste picking at the remains of her sandwich salad as she filled up, tossing pieces out for Dordy to chase out to within several feet of the rock spire for him to chase and hunt around for in the grassy boundary. It was completely safe for Dordy, as an invisible, silent arcane barrier erected eight feet high by Celeste would prevent any of them from falling over the edges. Nat, in the meantime, was sprawled out with her diary, picking at the remains of her own enormous sandwich salad, savoring lettuce and ham, diced tomato slices and turkey, green bell pepper slices dipped in condiments found in pockets around the bowl with hard salami speared at the end. She flipped her diary open to the first empty page, dipping her ravenfeather quill into her purple ink and beginning to write.
Dear diary,
It’s been a relaxing week this week, though we’ve finished flying in all the bamboo and other supplies, and have made a start on the framework of the house! I decided to do something for Celeste for all that cutting and flying she did with that shredder she had so much fun with – when we took it back, instead of paying the lease bill on it, I negotiated a price with the goblin and purchased it for her to keep for forever! She loved that! Now she has a flying machine that she can do work with, in addition to the faster, longer-range Flying Nosebleed for travel! That’s one way to make an engineering girl happy!
Celeste, though, good as she is at engineering, hasn’t really done construction on buildings quite so much. So, we went down the spire to Angler’s Wharf to find out who designed and built it. It turns out that two of the Pandaren who either were there when it was built, or else knew how to build from bamboo, were present Shen and Marzai came up with us to the rock spire, and we were able to begin construction! The Pandaren were showing us how to set up the skeleton framework of the house. Supports and beams and reinforcement thingies, it was all brand-new jargon to me! I did what I could, holding the ends of bamboo in place to be secured by Celeste or Shen or Marzai and retrieving tools and such. Dordy did what he could to remain under everyone’s feet, until Celeste finally scooped him up and took him down to the basement workshop/hangar she and her uncle Rugnar excavated a while back. I still gotta get down there and paint all those undersea rock carvings Celeste did with her magic! In the meantime, though, we’ve got a pretty good start going on the framework! For now, though, Shen and Marzai have returned to Angler’s Wharf for a bit of fishing. Celeste and I plan to join them for a bit before we all return to construction work.
Outside of construction, though, yeah, it’s been a pretty relaxing week! Sunday was Ellie’s party that she had set for that day. Girls’ Night Out! As soon as I got off work Sunday evening, I checked in on Celeste and Dordy for dinner, then high-tailed it out to Feralas, where Ellie, Lilyann, Cari, Maya, and Rylee were already swimming in the steam pools near the Silithus border, right at the edge of the forest along the cliffs. If you ignore the giant sword towering to the skies and beyond directly overhead, and just look around you at the scenery, it was actually pretty doggone perfect! The steam pools were hot, and took a bit of adjusting to, but I was eventually to the point where I could just swim freely! I had on my black bikini, the one with the purple trim, and the warm, wet sand felt great between my toes. I dived in deep, skirting the sandy bottom of the shallow pools, swimming once to the far end and back. When I got back, we all just kind of hung out at the shallow end, relaxing and letting the steam pools go to work on our bodies as we had some fun conversation. Ellie had hot dogs and soda for everyone, and that was delicious! She’s so nice! Eventually we ended up going down to the resort itself, where they’d already been once that day. I completely missed the massages while I was at work! Doh! But we went down to the beach to the huge lake there, and did a bit more swimming in the cooler, but still reasonably warm, waters of the lake. There was a dock we could dive from and everything! Eventually, the night drew to a close, and there was a final walk around the lake and then souvenir shopping! What a great way to end three fourteen-hour shifts of hard work!
Not much went on Monday or Tuesday. There was hanging out with friends around the Recluse and stuff, but really, it was just a restful couple of days. I did get some work done on contracts around the Shadowlands and stuff, so the extra cash is still rolling in! But yeah, mostly, it’s just been loafing around and taking a break.
Last night though… Last night was really something else! Deathrolls is always good for the most enjoyable form of chaos! Ha! Lex came for the first time, too! I’ve known the guy a year, and still this was his first-ever attendance at one of our games! The poor guy didn’t make it out unscathed, either… Zarshal ended up taking his shoes, he got completely smashed, Cari did up his hair into pigtails with blue ribbons and a peacebloom flower, he had to spend a round or two strutting around the table at the Beer Garden in Dalaran where we played last night and squawking like a chicken, and that was just around the first part of the night! Cari brought out a platter full of shots of vodka for us to drink every time there was a roll of two… I lost count after like seven or eight, but I know there was a good bit more… Rylee ended up having to bring me a bucket full of mead from Zarshal’s Dare and telling me, in a rhyming poem, that I must take this bucket from her and dump it on her head! I did her one better… I dumped it on her head by way of plunking it onto her head like a bucket helmet, then playing the tomtoms on it! Ha! We had four people – Ais’la, Jornaar, Ellie, and Lex – come in just a bit after the first four of us – Maya, Cari, Rylee, and I – got there, and Maya’s first Dare was to go and greet them all like a hyperactive dwarf offering them pints and such. That was my Dare, though the tables got turned on me – I had to go with Maya and be her Wildhammer gryphon and squawk and flap my wings at them and stuff! That was embarrassing, but it was worth it; all four of them were completely confused and had no idea what was going on! And there were Whisper Dares too, of course. I had Lex wait three rounds, then randomly tie one of his pigtails to one of Ellie’s pigtails, which Zarshal and Cari teamed up to make for her, and then strum it like a banjo while making banjo noises, all without context or a word of warning. She was SO confused, and so was everyone else! It was great! Rylee gave Zarshal a foot rub. Cari had to sing a song about how Deathrolls was fun, which she punctuated with a drunken belch. I had to hang off Lex’s back like a cloak. Zarshal had to lick the inside of Maya’s shoe, which she then had to put back onto her foot. He also had to suck his own toes, and, at one point, had to strip and run all around Dalaran! I was SO not watching that! At one point, I had to go over to Cari and hit on her… like I think a MAN would! So I took her my mead mug, sat backward on the bench and leaned backward to get in front of her, leaned WAY into her personal space, slid her my mead, and I was like, “You look pretty, I like your hair, here’s your drink, are you ready NOW?” That was embarrassing, although, come to think of it, Deathrolls frequently is… But, as everyone agrees, it’s always a highlight of the mid-week! What fun!
Today is mostly just construction and fishing with Celeste and Dordy and our Pandaren neighbor friends. Then later, I’ll be in Stormwind City to hang out with the usual evening crew before my early bedtime for what Nah refers to as my “workend.” Heh. I’ll be finishing off the week the way it started… relaxing with friends! I can’t wait!
Nat smiled at her memories of the fun week, tapping off the ink from the tip of her ravenfeather quill before replacing it in its case. She capped off her inkwell and packed both items back away in her pack again. She sat up, eating more of her lunchmeat sandwich salad, then packed her diary away after the pages dried. She scooted over to sit next to Celeste next, her tummy full, assisting a similarly-stuffed Celeste in making Dordy’s tummy feel the same way. Dordy was having a blast, barking at flying food and hunting it eagerly in the grass as he chased each piece, happily wolfing the little morsels down as he found them. Celeste and Nat ended up tossing Dordy the last remaining vestiges of their large salads this way, having fun playing with him together before scooping him up to fly Onyx and Cloud Dancer down to Angler’s Wharf for fishing with Shen and Marzai while Dordy barked himself hoarse at everything the four of them caught. Conversation and laughs abounded as much as the plentiful fish. Angler’s Wharf, always a happy, relaxing spot, was even more so until the four agreed it was time to have some more fun with the house. Eagerly, they sold off what fish they weren’t keeping for meals to the innkeeper for his common room dinners and flew back up to the top of the rock spire for more exciting work on the framework. Dordy ended up behaving himself this time, his belly full and his energy expended for the nonce, curled up into a molten ball in the grass and sunning himself (as if he really needed that!) and watching with mild interest as the four began giving the house shape with bamboo and other materials. It was coming together quite nicely, and, they all agreed, it was going to be one heck of a good-looking house!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Jul 29, 2021 15:51:38 GMT
July the Twenty-Ninth Nat smiled as she bobbed along on the water, strapped into a fold-out seat bolted onto the side of the Flying Nosebleed. Celeste’s flying machine, with its nose painted to look like her Direhorn she’d named Nosebleed, was mimicking the bobbers they’d set in a wide radius around the plane, which had a new addition – pontoons! The Flying Nosebleed was now a seaplane! Nat looked up next, closing her wide purple eyes and smiling up into the sun, soaking in its warmth upon her pale face that never seemed to tan or burn. The rest of her skin, mostly exposed with the black bikini with the purple trim she wore, also never seemed to tan or burn. She shifted a bit in her seat. She wasn’t altogether comfortable, strapped into this little folding chair on the side of the plane’s fuselage, but she didn’t mind. The sun was warm, the spray from any rolling wave that splashed against the pontoons high enough to wet her feet, and adventure was at hand!
Nat opened her eyes again, looking forward. There was Dordy, his adorable aviator goggles strapped to his face once again. The molten corgi was secured in what was essentially a large bucket bolted forward of the cockpit, giving him a splendid view out over the waves. He happily bounced up from side to side, front to back, zip-zipping in every direction, yip-yipping excitedly as he did so. The harness that secured him in the bucket had the usual fire protection spells upon it, and was doing its job in securing him safely in place.
Nat looked a little to the right from her port-side chair, which drew her eyes aft in the plane a bit. Her heart leaped into its chest, a familiar sensation when her Sun was around. There she was, facing the other way, peering off at different bobbers off the starboard side. Nat’s eyes drifted over her love’s bikini-clad form. Petite, athletic Celeste was wearing a colorful bikini with a strapless tube top. It bore a plethora of brightly-colored fish and seashells, a nod to her love of the water and all that dwelled there. She was curled forward a bit, leaning over the starboard side of the plane to peer even closer at her bobbers. Her strawberry-blonde hair was getting longer, trailing down her back nearly long enough for a ponytail again, the way it had been when she’d finally returned from…
Nat put that thought aside. She was here, now, with her, and they were having an adventure again, just like always. She watched as Celeste’s hazel eyes continued to be glued to the spyglass, her dainty hands twisting a part of the glass that zoomed in and out, or else focused the image more sharply.
Nat sighed happily, returning her eyes to the bobbers off her side. They were all still there in the distance, waiting on something huge to come and give them a yank. She peered around, swinging her legs and feet on either side of the chair idly as she did so.
Time passed. She figured this part would come, the part where they sit and wait on the fish. She’d come prepared, however. She turned, reaching into her pack. Celeste was there, not looking up, utterly fixated on the gaff she’d brought, a sort of spear that had a hook instead of a spearhead on it. She was double-checking to make sure the hook was on securely. Nat smiled at her focused girlfriend, then reached into her pack, pulling out one of her favorite pastimes, turning back around in her chair and setting to work…
Dear diary,
Whew! What a week! It’s had its ups and downs, that’s for sure… The week kicked off well, at least, with a few hangouts over the weekend on worknights, including a game of One-Word Sentences with friends in the Recluse, including Mordale, or “Spice Dice,” as he’s now known, after a joke that came up during a Deathrolls game months ago. The game involved lots of flatulence references, including, “Farting Zarshal squirrels.” I don’t even know how all that happened! HA! One of those nights, though, was a bit of a bummer… Ais’la is not too happy about me being friends with Joanessa Seaslums, my friend I hang out with in Boralus sometimes that we met as a point of contact for our Brinebreaker gang investigation the Whitewind Company has going on over there. Joan seems to like her mate Jornaar, which really sets Ais’la off. I’m trying to get Joan to just let that one go, so we can all just be friends and be nice to each other, but Ais’la is convinced Joan won’t rest until she’s got him, and, in the meantime, is giving us awful leads on the Brinebreaker gang in which she’s trying to get us all killed. I don’t believe a bit of that. I’m just gonna try to get Joan to move on from Jornaar so we can all just be friends and get along!
Sunday evening, after work, we played another new game! Cards Against Humanoids! It’s something Ais’la has a deck of cards designed for. Basically, you get seven cards, and you go around the circle clockwise, starting with the person who… well… did the poo-poo the most recently out of all the group… That ended up being me, which was REALLY embarrassing! The person whose turn it is, though, draws a black card, and has a funny topic to talk about. The rest of the players chose a white card from their hand that they think will be the funniest match to the black card. For example, “When I am king of Stormwind, I will create the Ministry of… what?” My answer to that one was to give a card that said, “Fiery poops” on it. How embarrassing… but how hilariously absurd! Another one was, “Fifty percent of all marriages end in… what?” That one ended up being, “…giving birth to a demon in the bathtub!” Basically, the person drawing the black card gives the topic, then picks whose white card is submitted as an answer is funniest, and that person gets a point, and gets to draw another white card. The person with the most points when someone runs out of white cards wins! Maya ended up winning in a landslide. She had some great cards! We’re thinking this game might become a regular thing in the future!
Monday night was cool too! Maya, a Gilnean druid, is teaching Rylee, who is also Gilnean, how to perform druidic magics, and Cari and I were invited along to watch! We decided to do it on a beach while making s’mores, and we chose Turtle Beach! Celeste was out at the time, working with the goblin shredder, but Dordy was there! I had to keep him out of untended s’mores the whole time, though! Anyway, it looks like Maya’s been teaching Rylee for a while now; Rylee already has a pretty good handle on how to channel life or nature magic. Next is learning to focus it into actual spells! This time, Rylee wanted to learn an actual spell, and the one she seemed to want was Moonfire. Cari and I worked on making s’mores, and I got some small plates and cups and a jug of ice-cold milk from the tent while they learned. It took Rylee much of the night, and she had a few mistakes, including burning her own hand once, but, in the end, she was able to obliterate a mirror image I had out of myself with a Moonfire shot! I bet Rylee’s going to be a GREAT druid!
Nat looked up from her writing, finding herself with her feet up in the seat and the diary resting against her bare thighs. She blinked a bit, surprised she hadn’t, in her usual clumsiness, lost her diary and ravenfeather quill in the rolling waves as the Flying Nosebleed bobbed gently in the calmly rolling waters. She remembered what she was supposed to be doing. Adventure! She peered around hopefully at the bobbers… still nothing! No matter; Celeste had told her all about the rare but predictable current that would push a heavy amount of zooplankton into Turtle Bay. The zooplankton would attract a massive horde of larger fish. The larger fish, in turn, would bring in something else… Nat looked down at her diary again, not seeing any action from the bobbers for the nonce.
Tuesday night, though… Tuesday night was scary! It started off well enough; I spent the day with Celeste working on the house before heading off to visit Joan ahead of the next step in the Brinebreaker investigation. We were having fun, telling old stories and eating crab legs for dinner while we waited on the rest of the group to come. When we got there, though, Ais’la was giving Joan the stinkeye while Joan seemed to have eyes only for Jornaar. Joan gave us another lead, though, sending us to find a young man who was known for wearing a bright red, wide-brimmed hat, who claimed to have the REAL inside scoop on the Brinebreaker gang. But, before we left, Joan suggested that we all head out there to talk to him while Jornaar remains behind with her to talk and make plans for the next step. I thought Ais’la was going to kick Joan’s head right off her shoulders for that! Joan relented, though, and we all left. I felt bad for Joan. She really needs to move on from Jornaar, but I mean, she’s been lonely ever since her husband was lost at sea and declared dead when he and the Kul Tiran fleet went missing a few years ago.
We found the young man in the red hat quickly enough, though. He told us he’d give his information in exchange for a favor from us… He wanted us to entertain him somehow! He didn’t say how, though. He just took Jornaar and I with him away from Ais’la, Cari, and Maya, the latter two of whom had come in place of Calleigh and Cletcher, who hadn’t been able to meet us this time. I was just wondering what we were going to have to do to entertain this guy when he grabbed me around the waist, shoot his grappling hook up at the mast in the middle of the Ashvane Company Yards fighting arena, slammed me against the mast in the middle of the crow’s nest, and was slipping chains dangling from the mast over my head before I knew what was what! Then he just grappling hooked again and swung down! I was trying to Teleport or Blink outta there, but I think the chains had one of those magic suppression spells on it! What the heck?!
He left, having Jornaar stand in the yard, and returned with the other three, positioning them around the yard. He told us Jornaar was going to entertain him by fighting a whole bunch of opponents in the arena, and that his only hope for survival – he wasn’t allowed his war mace or shield – was for the other three to find clues and solve puzzles in order to discover helpful things for Jornaar to fight with. Then he brought in THREE street punks from Dampwick Ward to fight against Jornaar, who was all alone with no weapons! Jornaar held his own, though he took a few shots. Ais’la found something aboard the ship behind the tavern there that told him there was a shield hidden in the shark’s mouth that was hanging up by its tail there. From there it was all a big mess. I didn’t know who was where and finding what clues, but, next thing I knew, Jornaar was drinking different magic potions to make him stronger in different ways, and had a cheap war mace and shield in his hands, and was fighting not just the three street thugs, but also, there was a huge YETI roaring and stomping into the arena! I don’t think it knew it was supposed to be on the three young men’s side, because they were turning around and eyeing it in terror. That’s when Jornaar bonked one of them right in the noggin, and that was the last hit that one could take before falling over! From there was all confusion! I couldn’t see down below through the crow’s nest platform, but somehow, Ais’la was in with Jornaar, healing him and fighting, Maya was leaping off a balcony onto the yeti’s back in her worgen form and clawing it up, a grenade went off that got the yeti too, then suddenly there was this big, burly, barrel-chested Kul Tiran brawler, a wicker bear, and a TON of wicker men running around! I heard a portal spell, and then the Kul Tiran disappeared. He must have been shoved through it or something! Then all these beams of what looked like starlight was all falling right in front of me right after the wicker bear got Maya in the back really badly, and the starlight stuff, which must have been Maya’s druid spells, got the wicker men and blew them to pieces. Then Cari was casting spells at the wicker bear while Ais’la did a flying kick and kicked its head right off, all while Jornaar finished off the three street punks! It was all a confused mess, but, thanks to everyone’s quick thinking and combat prowess, we all survived it! One thing’s for sure; I’m never letting someone con me into being chained up while my friends fight ever again!
The young guy in the red hat was really, really mad that people had jumped into the fight, though. He had said that Jornaar was supposed to fight alone while the rest looked for clues, but, with all the clues found and all the items in Jornaar’s possession, they had jumped in and helped Jornaar anyway! He said rules were rules, though, and he’d keep up his end of the bargain. He said that there was always a bigger fish… that there was a real, actual Tidesage pulling the Brinebreaker gang’s strings! Right as he said that, though, a tentacle that looked like a small kraken’s tentacle, except this one had void energy pulsing from it, whipped out of the water by the boardwalk, curled around his ankles, and dragged him screaming into the water! He didn’t get a chance to tell us how to look for the Tidesage… if that was more than a rumor anyway!
After that, for some reason, everyone there, not just Ais’la, was blaming Joan for all our bad leads that led us into danger. But Joan’s leads got us written proof from the open-air bar that the Brinebreakers were involved in organized criminal activity, and also put us onto this Tidesage! I don’t know what’s gonna happen next. Joan’s a good friend, and her leads have gotten us information two of the three times she’s sent us out, even if it hasn’t always been safe. I promised to be fair, though, and investigate her as we go along investigating the Brinebreaker gang. We’ll see what happens!
Nat looked up again, peering around at all the bobbers. She turned to place her diary and quill in the seat of the cockpit, noticing the spyglass lying there. She looked up. Celeste had disappeared! Surprised, she looked around a bit… Then down at the starboard pontoon below. There she was, stretched out, eyes closed, arms folded behind her head, sunning herself on the pontoon, not seeming to mind the droplets of warm seawater splashing up onto her as each wave rolled against the ship’s floatation device. She smiled down at Celeste, happy to see her relaxing and enjoying herself after having thrown herself into house construction for a month with a frenzy she knew must mean she was working to keep her mind off of rather more unpleasant memories that had lead to her going on an indefinite hiatus to this land. Seeing her loaf around on the pontoon, surrounded by things she loved most – water, fish, fishing gear, bobbers awaiting bites from very large fish, Dordy, machinery like her flying machine, and she herself, Nat… it made Nat smile to see her recovering this way over the last few months. To see her loafing around without a care in the world, just going on another epic fishing adventure. Her heart warmed, Nat lifted the spyglass at last, looking around at the bobbers on both sides of the plane now. Still nothing! She placed the spyglass back in cockpit seat, pulling out her diary and ravenfeather quill again.
Deathrolls was last night! I started a new theme for them, just to see if it might be popular enough to keep going. The theme is… summer picnics! For now, for as long as people seem to really like it, we’ll be playing in scenic locations one might picnic at! I started in Grizzly Hills, as it’s still the dead of summer, and a somewhat more cool location might be more welcome, as far as sitting in the sun. We played on a stump in the middle of the creek upstream from Amberpine Lodge, the one reached by a plank bridge on either side, with waterfalls above and below. People really seemed to like it! It was me, Ais’la, Maya, Cari, Rylee, Mags, and Zarshal! The game got blushworthy right off the bat, with Rylee opening the game by walking off a bit and gathering a massive armload of moss off the redwood trees that surrounded us. She came back and Dared Maya to stuff her bra full with it! I couldn’t watch! Then Mags’ eyeliner came out a few times, and, by the time those Dares were over, Cari and Rylee had rather posh, bushy moustaches drawn on, and Mags had some chest hair drawn on as showing above her collar, and Zarshal had eyeliner with sparkling pink eye shadow on! HA! The Truths for the evening were rather less blush-inducing than usual, but that was fine. Bit of a relief to catch a break from time to time, heh. Then I got Dared to go find a mushroom and put it in a bun to make, and I quote, “a mushroom bun volcano.” So I walked off the bridge, finding a whole bunch of them behind the nearest boulder. One was even taller than I am! So I brought it back, taking it to my spot on the stump and leaning it against my back so I could tie up my hair around it. Then I carefully sank down, my loose bun sliding down the stalk. Doomshroom volcano! Then I had to do it again after getting Dared to go up to the higher waterfall above us, ride piggyback on Zarshal’s back, and let him dive off the waterfall with me. That was cold, but nowhere near as frigid as the time I did it back on that one March morning that I dived off that same one. I think people just wanted to get me into my bikini, and Zarshal shirtless. Heh. Zarshal’s makeup, though, was prompting a series of, “Pretty Pretty Plushie Zarshal” jokes, though, in which we were thinking of having makeup-wearing Zarshal plushies made! There was another Dare in which I had Mags go over to Ais’la, who was wearing, as cold weather gear, the most ADORABLE wendigo pajamas ever, including wide, cute eyes in a hood that had horns, and toy cloth jagged wendigo teeth all around the opening, which was a wendigo mouth. Mags had to pretend that she was a wendigo that thought that Ais’la was a real wendigo, and try to do things she thought a wendigo might do to attract the Ais’la wendigo as a mate. Ais’la, though she seemed to be entertained, is, of course, Jornaar’s mate already, and she declined, which made Mags turn around and pout at me. It was so funny! Zarshal Dared Cari to do a bellyflop off the stump, which had to hurt all the more from the height and the fact that it was frigid northern mountain stream water. Cari was brave, though, doing the bellyflop and returning with soggy clothes and a runny makeup-drawn moustache! He also Dared me to sing a song about Mags’ soaps, which I rhymed as much as I could and everyone seemed to like okay, especially Mags! Then there was a Truth in which I had to tell what makes things so strong between myself. I answered simply, “Love,” but, as I expected, that wasn’t enough for them. It ended up just being our story. All the things we’d been through. Good and bad, scary or calm, intense or just slice of life. The way things have progressed from me being a ridiculous woman on a ridiculous broomstick wearing a ridiculous witch’s hat a day after Hallow’s End had already ended, to the plushie and lunch moment in Upton Borough, to the outfits Celeste tried on one after another at my place one day, the tragedies and the triumphs, her brother’s involvement, all the way up to us building this house together. I warned them ahead of time that if I told that story it would take a lot of time, but they seemed eager to hear it, and they seemed riveted enough throughout, so I suppose I shouldn’t feel quite so bad about taking up so much time with one Truth. But hey, they asked! That more or less brought the game to a close, too, with a few more truths at the very end wrapping it up while people got sleepy. It was a really fun and interesting night, that’s for sure!
Then this morning, I got woke up by Dordy trampling me in bed. It turns out Celeste had arisen before me, something that doesn’t really happen super often, as I never need much sleep usually. Turns out she had a fishing trip planned! She came in to tell me she’d cooked breakfast and packed up all our fishing gear and was wanting to fish for… surprise… sharks! I was like, what the heck, we can’t fish for sharks! I know I, for one, am nowhere near strong enough to reel one in! But it turns out she had a plan, of course, genius that she is. We were going to fish first for smaller fish for cut bait, then leave that out on bobbers on a wide radius around us. Then, if we see a bobber start getting dragged all over, that means a shark is hooked, and we’d go and use a gaff to hook the line and attach it to the Flying Nosebleed with a cleat hitch knot. Then we’d just pull it out of the water using the Flying Nosebleed! She’s a true genius, this woman!
So now, here we are, bobbing along leisurely in the water on the Flying Nosebleed, which now has pontoons, making it a seaplane! Celeste even has it worked out to where she can use the motor to propel the plane forward on the water like a boat! The pontoons cut through the waves pretty well. Now we have an anchor overboard, a nice, cool sea breeze, and the warm summer sun on our faces. I haven’t seen a bobber do anything yet, so we’re still waiting, but it should happen any time now – we’ve noticed lots of large fish drifting into the bay already! Fingers crossed! In the meantime, we’re going to be relaxing and having a nice, fun, calm time on the water! I love it!
Nat smiled, figuring she should get back to bobber watch. She tapped off the excess ink from her quill into her inkwell, capped the inkwell, and packed both items away. She picked up the spyglass next, giving another sweep in all directions. Still nothing. She laid it down as Celeste stood, climbing back into the plane with a smile at Dordy, who was trying to leap out at her. She freed him, sitting him down with her and giving him some playful pats, riling him up with a light wrestling match. She and Nat joked back and forth a bit about Dordy feeding frenzies, how they were so much cuter than a shark’s feeding frenzy. Nat packed her diary away next, the pages dry, then found herself eyeing Celeste’s bikini-clad form with an appreciative smile.
Next thing Nat knew, however, Celeste was gasping, reaching up to gently turn Nat’s head away from her bikini and pointing out into the water. Blushing, Nat reached for the spyglass again. Sure enough, a bobber had disappeared from where it was! Watching closely, it reappeared elsewhere, then was roughly dragged back and forth, dipping and disappearing often, only to reappear, being dragged around as though by an angry sea creature. Celeste leaped into the cockpit seat, turning over the Flying Nosebleed’s engines. It belched its usual black clouds as Nat strapped herself in tighter, holding on tight to it and the gaff and signaling that she was ready. Adventure time! It was time to go catch a whole shark!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Aug 5, 2021 13:34:55 GMT
August the Fifth Nat’s legs dangled from either side of the plank walkway, easier to do than usual, as she was wearing pants instead of a skirt or dress this time. Her black hair and white blouse, the one she left unbuttoned but instead tied at the bottom during hot days, were blowing gently in the breeze at this altitude, high on the peak of the rock spire upon which she and Celeste were building their new home. Her plank was laid across the breadth of the second-floor bedroom she was to share with Celeste on the west side of the house, where they could view the sunset over the beach, jungle, and ocean from their bed on one side of the room by looking out the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling window with the Pandaren-style sliding door that would be there at some point.
For the time being, however, her gaze was cast instead at her diary, sitting there on the plank Nat was sitting on where the bedroom floor would be installed at some point. The whole house was just framework. The bottom floor was done; the top floor was started and surrounded by even more bamboo that was set up as a scaffolding. Celeste was below, giggling madly as she played tug-of-war with Dordy with a thin bamboo reed. Dordy, each time he got it, was running circles around Celeste as he tried to pull the reed away. Sometimes he’d lose his grip on it, others, Celeste would let him have it, at which point a chase would ensue. Nat smiled down at her loves as they played, enjoying the show as she pulled out her ravenfeather quill and inkwell of purple ink. She planned to write until the day’s work on the house began. Their Angler’s Wharf Pandaren friends, Shen and Marzai, were due at any time. They were likely stuffing their faces somewhere with a heavy breakfast. Work on the second floor framework would begin when they did. For now, though, Nat opened her diary, found her spot, dating the page and beginning to write.
Dear diary,
VACATION!
And boy, has it kicked off well! We’ve been able to work on the house quite a bit this week, and got the bottom floor framing done! Now we’re working on the second floor framework, and it’s coming together nicely! Shen and Marzai taught us how to do Pandaren-style bamboo scaffolding around the sides of the house, inside and out, so we’re able to reach the upper floor and get the framing done there, as well. It’s so much fun to watch this thing grow and develop! Celeste and I are really happy with it!
Shen and Marzai really liked the shark fishing adventure we had Thursday, too, as well as pretty much all of Angler’s Wharf. We hooked an ENORMOUS hammerhead shark! It has such a weird head, and it was REALLY scary! I was still strapped into my side seat, legs dangling off the chair in my bikini… That, in retrospect, might not have been the best place for me to sit when the bobber dove and we went to go see what was hooked. I should have gotten into the cockpit at that point! Oh well… The memories of this adventure will live on in infamy, and scary adventures are memories too!
Things didn’t exactly go according to plan, however… I got there, was gonna get the gaff like Celeste planned, but, when I did, this huge dark shadow in the water appeared, which made Dordy go NUTS with aggression. Understandably so; that shadow was spooky… it reminded me of the time the kraken appeared under the water to attack the Whitewind’s Grace! Next thing I know, this humungous hammerhead shark is breaching, jaws open, row upon row of huge, jagged teeth coming right at my dangling legs! I yanked them up quick, casting a frost barrier around myself, but the latter proved unnecessary; the shark didn’t quite make it up as high as my seat, thankfully! It splashed back into the water and dove, and I quickly got the gaff and hooked the line, tying it down to the tie-down with the cleat hitch knot Celeste taught me for this. Celeste was cheering for me, which felt great! We were just about to start the engine and take off, though, when the diving shark suddenly yanked the Flying Nosebleed down on my side, the port side, and it almost flipped over, and Celeste, who wasn’t strapped in like I was as she had to move about the plane some, was thrown overboard, right into the water with the shark!
I was so scared then! I didn’t want that shark or any other to get her! I unstrapped myself and dove in, using an underwater breathing spell Uncle Kanrethad taught me when I was little, and one more for Celeste. Her bright, colorful bikini was easily spotted, and she was okay, swimming quickly for the plane and waving me up with her. We were able to get back on, though the slippery, wet pontoons made it difficult for a moment. The shark was already visible again, that dark shadow approaching the plane at VERY fast pace! Celeste said the big splash drowned out the engine, and she needed to fix it or we’d be in trouble out here, and that I’d have to fend off the shark! That was like, scary and thrilling at the same time, but I was ready for it! I started casting frostbolts into the water, hoping to slow it. I got it on the second try, chilling the shark and making it swim way slower. But then it dove again, and I couldn’t see it anymore, and the Flying Nosebleed jerked twice pretty hard.
Just then, Celeste found the problem in the engine, something about an air intake manifold. She needed something to block the manifold, something cloth, quickly. I didn’t have any cloth handy except my bikini top. I was SO glad there was no one else around… I ended up just passing her that! Celeste turned to stuff it into the intake manifold to block it, but then stopped when she realized what she had, grinning and saying something about the day getting better and better. That made me blush so much! But it had to be done! After a few failed tries, the engine roared to life! We cheered, and Celeste throttled the engine to full and made an abrupt turn that almost flipped the Flying Nosebleed over. The line to the shark went slack, but then tightened again. The engine whined as it was pushed to its limit, but steadily then more and more, the machine gained ground. We cheered again as she Flying/Floating Nosebleed picked up speed, clearly dragging the shark along for the ride. Celeste aimed the craft towards Turtle beach, and didn't stop until it bounced across the sand and came to an abrupt halt not far from our favorite statue, the one of Lei Shen riding that huge turtle! The shark was flopping helplessly in the sand… Never really my favorite part. I’m more a catch-and-release kind of girl, but I understand that we’re omnivores and meat helps make us strong. I just don’t much care for the killing part. So I let Celeste do what needed to be done, and meanwhile, we could hear the cheers all the way across the bay at Angler’s Wharf! Thankfully, I had the plane to block the view of me when we were a bit closer to them, and the distance made making people out at this range nigh impossible. I used my mithril charm bracelet to get a spare bikini top on. My other would have to be mended. I got that done a few days later, as it’s my favorite one.
All our friends from Angler’s Wharf were emptying out of the village, meanwhile, rowing over to ogle at our catch. We ended up making an impromptu party of it, Celeste and I, with enough shark to go around for everyone! It turns out that shark doesn’t make the best seafood, but their fins are good for some recipes. Other Nat says that fishing up sharks just for the fins is terrible, and could kill off too many of them too quickly if they were harvested only for their fins, but if all of a shark is used, and not often, it doesn’t upset the natural balance of things. For now, though, the shark fin soup was tasty, and the rest of it supplemented the meal with everyone’s own personal favorite seasonings. I personally found it to be tasty enough with enough hot sauce!
The Pandaren were clamoring for a tale after dinner, and Celeste was all too happy to oblige, especially after having a few pints of Pandaren spirits in her. She climbed up onto the Flying Nosebleed to use it as a stage, making grand gestures as she retold the tale. It made me giggle when she embellished heavily on a few spots, but I’ve come to learn that this is a typical angler’s way of life… telling “fish stories!” And she was good at it, too! The Pandaren grinned knowingly at bits of it too… Dordy did not, of course, single-handedly hold the shark’s mouth open to stop him biting me, I did not, of course, use my own bare hands to help drag the shark along when the Flying Nosebleed got going, and Celeste did not, of course, ride the engine like a surfboard as she fixed it using nothing but an old fishbone, nor did any of them get into a fistfight with the shark while they were in the water with it. Either way, I loved every second of that tale! That was fun!
Eventually, the party died down, and people started leaving in twos and threes to return home to Angler’s Wharf, chuckling to themselves, or else singing fishing songs. A few of them even stayed to tell us how to mount shark jaws on the wall as a trophy! Everyone was pretty well sloshed by this point. It was such a great party! Celeste and I ended the night with just us and Dordy making a starlit stroll on the beach, the waves lapping up around our feet and ankles. We even ended up sleeping right there, under the stars, at the edge of the waves. What a perfect day!
Nat smiled, heaving a happy sigh at the memories, when a commotion broke out below. Dordy, evidently, had tried to jump through the framework of the lower floor and gotten the bamboo reed lodged between two vertical stands of bamboo frame, and either end was wedged between those vertical stands and others coming in at an angle. Dordy was refusing to release the reed, so he was basically stuck in place. Celeste was raising a fuss trying to get the reed out of his mouth so she could free it from the framework, But Dordy was flopping around like that hammerhead shark had once it was stuck in the sand. Eventually, Celeste got him freed, and she sat back with a light thud as she tried to get her breath back from the effort. Seconds later, however, the two were at it again, this time Dordy chasing Celeste around while Celeste laughed and waved the reed over his head. Nat grinned a bit at that, dipping her quill into her inkwell for more purple ink, and returning to her writing.
The rest of the week has been calm. Just hanging around Stormwind for a few evenings with the usual Stormwind crew as we all had drinks and shared laughs. Gosh, but those guys love to make me blush… heh… but then last night… DEATHROLLS! We played in the pub in the back of Anvilmar this time. It was Maya, Cari, Zarshal, Ori for her second time ever with us, Ellie, and I. It started off a bit slower this time, a few Truths that weren’t as spicy as usual, but were very insightful as people shared this and that about themselves. But it ramped up quickly… Next thing I know, Maya’s doing something called a “kegstand,” doing a handstand on top of the keg while Ellie stood on the counter to hold her feet up in the air. Maya dipped her face down toward the keg and drank and drank and drank until the level of Dwarven whatever it was in the keg was quite a good few inches lower! I had to act out a scene in which I was a gnome inventing a pancake flipper, and Cari was my pancake. I ended up pretending to use a remote control steam tonk toy as a mobile pancake flipper, with the barrel holding an arm that holds a spatula, and the button to fire the cannon on the remote control was the one that made the spatula flip the pancake. I reached under Cari to mime the spatula flipping her, but ended up accidentally tickling her instead, which made her laugh and fall off the railing she was lying on and end up in the floor! Oops! There was another in which Ellie wanted me to pretend this mason jar was Celeste trying to make out with me, except pretend Celeste had horrible garlic breath… That was embarrassing to act out! But, I love Celeste, so in the end, just as I would in person, I ended up… well… I won’t get into that! Julia joined us later, and one of her Truths she had for me was what was my type… That was easy… Just described Celeste! Lively, energetic, highly energetic, funny, fun to be around and go on adventures with, strong and able to protect me, someone who would take care of me and allow me to take care of them, someone to have serious, meaningful, stimulating conversation with, someone tender, who could share deep, loving moments with me. The list goes on and on, but they got the basic gist of it! Then people were daring people to drink something besides alcohol. I ended up drinking hot sauce twice. Ellie drank straight soy sauce. Ori drank vinegar. I personally love spicy things, so mine was easy enough, but Elli and Ori had a pretty rough go of it! Zarshal had the worst, though… one part vinegar to three parts absinthe! I could SMELL how bad that tasted! Zarshal took it in stride, though, and made it through the night without puking or passing out, so that was good. Ellie had to sing this weird song while pretending to be a shark, which was pretty fitting, considering Thursday’s adventure with Celeste! She was singing something about baby shark, mommy shark, daddy shark, grandma shark, and grandpa shark, then going, “doo doo doo doo doo doo.” I don’t know what the heck that was, but it was hiliarous to watch her do up on the second-floor balcony of the Anvilmar pub! The game went on until late night, so there were way more Truths and Dares. I ended up with the final Dare of the night, having to strut all around the pub like a hen, squawking and everything. It was embarrassing, but it drew lots of laughs, so it was worth it! It was such a really great night!
It’s been a fun-filled week! Usually, this is my last day off work before I have to go back from the minication, but not this time! Vacation rocks! I’ll have all the next three days off, plus next week’s usual four! I can’t wait to see what we all get up to this weekend with all this extra time! So far we have another girl’s night out planned for Sunday, and a bunch of us are going on a hiking trip up Highmountain on the Broken Isles on Saturday! I can’t wait! I LOVE VACATION TIME!
Nat smiled once more, tapping off the excess ink from her quill and replacing it in its case. She capped her inkwell, putting the two items back in her pack. Looking down from her spot on the plank walkway across the middle of their bedroom, Nat watched Dordy, now in Celeste’s lap, getting spoiled with hand-fed pieces of jerky. Nat smiled fondly, then saw a large shape begin to float up from Angler’s Wharf. It was Shen and Marzai, coming up in their hot air balloon! The two landed on the landing pad, as usual, shouldering twin packs full of tools and other supplies… which usually meant copious amounts of food and various Pandaren brews. Nat closed her diary, the ink now dry, and replaced that in her pack as well. She scooted along the plank to get back to the scaffolding, shouldering her own pack and heading for the ladder to climb down and greet their two friends. They were already helping Celeste spoil Dordy, who had run straight to them when they reached the peak, expecting his usual treats from them as well. Dordy gobbled them up, enjoyed pats from the two, then scampered off on some adventure only he understood. Greetings and small talk were exchanged all around, and soon, Nat and the Pandaren were climbing the scaffold, while Celeste was piloting the goblin shredder to bring them more bamboo and hold it in mid-air while they went about the now-familiar task of securing each one into place according to a set of blueprints they weight down with jugs of brews. It was sure to be another happy day of dream home construction!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Aug 12, 2021 22:29:04 GMT
August the Twelfth Nat relaxed on the iceberg in the bay, floating over the previously-dangerous Narsong Trench where she and Celeste had been fishing for sharks the previous week. The rare current that had brought in all the phytoplankton was gone again, and it was safe to swim in the bay once more. As mages, she and Celeste were well-versed in the use of barriers of fire and frost, and much the same principle applied in protecting themselves from the same elements. Thus it was that Nat could sprawl out on Celeste’s iceberg, enjoying a pleasant cooling sensation on her back as she sunned herself on a sunny afternoon on Turtle Bay.
Nat’s black bikini with the purple trim contrasted sharply from Celeste’s more colorful bikini that resembled a coral reef; blue water was her tube top and dainty bottom, covered in seashells and brightly-colored fish. Her petite, athletic form also called for a much smaller fit than Nat’s unathletic, heavily-curved build. Even their hair and eyes were as different as night and day; Celeste’s strawberry-blonde hair and hazel eyes were considerably brighter than Nat’s jet-black hair and deep purple eyes. Yet different as they appeared, however, they were as perfect at match at heart and soul as any could ask for, and it showed in a plethora of ways, right down to moments like this one, where Celeste could focus on her fishing and Nat could focus on her writing as they enjoyed each other’s company in silence and could just… be.
So it was now, with Celeste in her bikini and, as ever when casting a line, donning her wide-brimmed floppy fishing hat. So it was now, with Nat stretched out on her back, enjoying the bobbing motion of the iceberg on the gently rolling water, her knees drawn up and her diary propped up against them. Nat glanced around. Celeste’s eyes were focused on the bobber, as were those of their molten corgi, Dordy, who was ready to bark up a storm the moment it dipped. She looked over at the beach. The prominent statue of Lei Shen astride his turtle was cast in shade by the jungle trees of the Krasarang Wild. She tilted her head backward, giving herself an upside-down view of Angler’s Wharf next to the rock spire upon which they were building their home. The rock spire’s newest addition was prominent from down here; they’d have to disguise that. A cluster of bamboo piping going from the bay all the way into the excavated basement could easily be an eyesore. Her eyes returned finally to her diary. Memories of the week rushed back into her mind, and she began to write.
Dear diary,
It’s the last day of my vacation. That’s a sad thought! Yet, it’s not so bad. I have one more available for use between now and the end of the year, and that’s just four and a half months, which means I’ll get to do this again here pretty soon! I can’t wait for the next one!
Not much has happened since the shark fishing adventure, though. Stormwind City has been more and more empty over the last month or two. My closest friends are still around, but things have been quieting down, it seems, most places I go. It’s sort of sad to watch it empty out. If it empties out fully, with everyone I know moving away, then I suppose I’d just retire to Pandaria myself and live out the rest of my life with Celeste and Dordy and Other Nat and all our Pandaren friends. I do hope it doesn’t come to that, however. I want to keep all my favorite people in my life! Whatever happens, though, I’m just happy that I’ll still always have Celeste!
What has happened, however, has been pleasant enough. I’ve gotten to hang out with Maya and Cari quite a bit. I met a new Quel’dorei friend that Maya also met, named Fae Faline. She’s an odd duck; dresses up like a sprite darter and has a sprite darter pet named Pixie that gets the zoomies and steals her food sometimes. She likes to prank people. I met her the other morning as I was heading to the Blue Recluse for a late breakfast and a bit of reading. There were these two drunk guys that spotted me and were saying really lewd things to me. Then one of them started coming toward me! That made me kind of anxious, but then, out of nowhere, the guy just trips over a huge rock! He fell flat on his face, and then Pixie (who I hadn’t met prior to this) came in out of nowhere and zoomed around the other one’s head so much that he made him dizzy and fall over too! They were both so drunk, even at that early hour, that they just sort of seemed to fall asleep where they dropped. And then Fae appeared! She was dressed up, as usual, as a sprite darter, complete with the hoodie that looked like a sprite darter head. I was going to ask her if she’d had anything to do with saving me from those drunk men, but she poofed! That was weird. I looked around for her, but she was nowhere to be seen. Then other people started walking by in ones and twos. Every time one did, though, this loud farting noise came from somewhere nearby. It was Fae, I know it had to be, because she’s proven herself to be quite the practical joker since then. And she even did it with a woman and her small child coming by! And no one would believe it wasn’t me actually farting! It’s funny to look back on now, but in the moment… Gosh!
She also came to Deathrolls last night, by invitation from me! I am hoping to get her to join the Whitewind Company, as she’s got a lot of talents, so I sent her a message by courier. The guy was able to find her easily enough in that outfit she wears, I guess, because she showed up just as we were getting underway. The site, in keeping with our “summer picnic” theme we’ve had lately, was that little island on the south border of Stone Cairn Lake in Elwynn Forest, where the creek flows out of it in a fork before joining together at the other end of the little island. Fae had quite the introduction to Deathrolls, too; we’d had a couple rounds already, and I’d Dared Maya to stuff one of the little island’s frogs down the back of her hoodie when she showed up, and Zarshal had Dared Maya to hop around the pair of them like a frog when Maya did that. Meanwhile, this all happened right after Fae rolled a one on her first round of Deathrolls ever, so Maya was also Daring her to lick a frog. So, Fae licked a frog, which then got stuffed down the back of her hoodie, all while Cari was hopping around her like a frog. It was so funny! There were fewer Truths this time around, though they remained as spicy as ever. Maya got Dared by Fae to tell a dirty joke at the end of every round for the rest of the night. Maya happily obliged, and boy, does she have a repertoire! Cari and I ended up having to pull a hand apiece into our sleeves and tie our sleeves together and stay that way for the rest of the game. That was hard to tie, with just one hand apiece available! Then every time a Dare happened, one of us would get tugged along! Mags had a pretty good Dare. Cari brought along a Steamy Romance Novel specifically to Dare someone to read it to me out loud in their most seductive voice. Mags did a fantastic job of that, and it made me so red, I probably looked like a tomato! Zarshal got Dared to chase around Pixie, Fae’s sprite darter. He didn’t stand a chance of catching him, though! Then the night ended after Cari and I, still with sleeves tied together, had to sit on Zarshal’s shoulders and be carried around for one round, which meant Mags had to keep bring our dice to us to throw and tell us what we rolled. That was weird, but fun! I’m really surprised, though… All that water around, and not one person got Dared to go bellyflop in it or anything! Cari and I stuck around after everyone else left, though. We still wanted to play, so we did a few rounds of two-person Deathrolls that eventually just sort of settled into deep talk about our pasts and hopes and dreams and whatnot. We shared a few personal things, talked about our loves some, and how happy they made us, and why, before we finally went to bed sometime after midnight. It was a great way to end the evening!
Nat jumped as Celeste suddenly gave a whoop and Dordy started barking like a maniac. Whatever Celeste had hooked, it was big, and putting up a fight. Nat secured all her writing paraphernalia as she watched, cheering Celeste on. Celeste’s rod was bent double, and she was reeling and yanking, reeling and yanking. Every petite, but hard muscle in Celeste’s athletic body was flexed in contraction as she fought the fish. She eventually got it reeled in… She had apparently been using her reef octopus bait and bait-dancing technique, because a particularly large octopus came squirming out of the water. If the little reef octopi had alphas, this would certainly be one! Fortunately for the big octopod, though, the fishing expedition for today was just for pleasure, as they had plenty of food, and dinner plans besides, after Nat’s trip to Stormwind to spend one last evening with friends before her vacation ended. As such, the big octopus found himself the recipient of several S.E.L.F.I.E. flashbulbs to the eyeballs, resulting in a good bit of ink all down Celeste’s front, though fortunately, it was aimed away from Nat’s diary. Dordy caught a bit himself, the ink sizzling into nothing as it landed on the molten corgi. Celeste laughed, released the octopus back to his home, then took a few more pictures of the three of them on the iceberg, Celeste’s front all black with splattered ink. Nat laughed with Celeste, returning to her diary after Celeste baited her hook and went back into another round of quiet, focused angling.
The framing is done on the house! Now we’re doing plumbing! With the phytoplankton current gone, we came up with the idea to use the normal current around the base of the spire to capture water coming in at enough volume that it can push its way up a cluster of bamboo piping, all the way up to the top of the spire! We’ve had to seal a lot of joints and more than a few split sides, but nearly all the water makes it all the way to the top! Right now the ends are capped with some sort of heavy-duty material that a gnome visiting Angler’s Wharf told us about a few weeks ago. Eventually, those will lead to various plumbing applications all around the house, and it’ll have nearly as much water pressure coming out as normal gnomish plumbing at ground level! It’s going to be so cool! The entire thing will be cool! I can’t wait to get the house done and move in! For now though… Celeste is fishing, and I want to join in!
Nat reached her ravenfeather quill toward her inkwell, tapping the excess ink off before capping the little jar. The quill went back into its case, and both items went back into her pack. She picked up her bamboo fishing rod, fashioned from a bamboo sapling that wasn’t remotely large enough to be used on the house but had ended up coming down with the others around it. She looked through the selection of bait, grinning at Celeste’s ink-covered front and deciding to join in that fun. Reef octopus bait went onto a hook set to sink to the bottom of Turtle Bay, with a bobber set to the appropriate point on the line. Closed her diary next, the pages now dry, tucking that away in her pack. Standing on the other side of Dordy from Celeste, she casts in a line, making sure to keep away from Celeste’s so that their lines didn’t tangle. She sat down next, dipping her feet into the water of the bay, the warm water mixing pleasantly with the cool feeling of the iceberg. Celeste followed suit – it seemed she was more cognizant of Nat and the rest of her surroundings than it appeared at first glance when she was focusing on fishing. Dordy settled down between the two, head on his paws to take a bit of a snooze now that the excitement with the large reef octopus now over. The sun proceeded westward behind the happy little family, inching toward the horizon and beginning to cast long shadows over Turtle Bay, Turtle Beach, Angler’s Wharf, and a pair of lovers sitting peacefully on an iceberg with their dog.
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Aug 19, 2021 15:21:05 GMT
August the Nineteenth Nat waved goodbye for the present as Shen and Marzai took up their Pandaren kites to glide back down to Angler’s Wharf for Third Breakfast. The two big Pandaren, still helping Celeste and Nat build their home, had just finished helping them with the roofing enclose all the walls around the house this week, and were here this morning to begin bamboo-weaving lessons. Celeste and Nat were glad to have the framing done and the house enclosed. The windows and the outer doors were also in place, but the inner doors, like to the various rooms in the house, still needed to be done, and the flooring for the first floor, over the leveled rock foundation, as well as the bottomless second floor, still needed to be done. Shen and Marzai’s bamboo-weaving lessons were for exactly that.
Nat was seated on the rock floor of the house, just inside the front door, with one of the bamboo mats in her lap. Celeste was at the opposite end of the house, near the new floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall window that comprised the vault back wall of the house and showed a magnificent view of the Great Sea on days when the sun shone and the mists didn’t obscure the rock spire. Nat watched as Celeste peered at the stove, lost in thought. She was trying to come up with an idea to have the stove burn continually without having to constantly fly the goblin shredder down to get more wood and fly it back up. Celeste herself, of course, could keep it going with her fire spells, so this was a project she had for Nat’s benefit, if Nat didn’t have Celeste near to hand. Nat knew she wouldn’t be quite so interested in bamboo weaving; the simplicity of the engineering and repetitive nature of its crafting made her jittery. The only repetition Celeste really enjoyed was fishing.
Dordy brought a grin to Nat’s face next as he came sniffing around the new stove, investigating the new metal box himself. The thought had occurred to her that Celeste might well just end up tossing the molten corgi in there when it was time to cook and tell him to take a nap. Nat new Celeste would never do such a thing, of course; they both loved animals, and Dordy was particularly near and dear to their hearts. Still, the notion of a Dordy-fired stove was an amusing one, Nat thought, finishing off her current mat and stacking it on the others. The mats would serve as comfortable flooring over the rock foundation, but they'd need to get some real wood planks done for the side rooms upstairs and the wrap-around balcony surrounding the vault-ceilinged main area of the house.
Looking around a bit, Nat thought about what to do next. With Celeste immersed in her latest engineering problem solving and Shen and Marzai off for yet another meal, Nat decided to take a break herself as well. She reached out from where she sat for her pack, withdrawing her diary, ravenfeather quill, and inkwell. Placing these on the stack of bamboo flooring, she opened her diary to the next fresh page and began to write.
Dear diary,
It’s been a busy week, getting back to work from vacation and all, but it’s been an enjoyable one, too! Celeste and I, with lots of help from Shen and Marzai, got the roofing, the outer and inner walls on the framework, and the windows and outer doors done on the house! It’s so eerie now… without proper lighting done yet, it’s gone from a brightly-lit framework to an enclosed cave. The windows help a bit, as do the lanterns and candles, but it was still such a huge change the more siding we put on the house! We’ve had lots and lots of spare bamboo, even after using compressed woven bamboo planks for the walls. Celeste brought so much back from the bamboo invasion on that one Pandaren farm that we were able to use bamboo roofing, and now Shen and Marzai are teaching us how to weave it into flooring! It’s a bit too repetitive for Celeste to maintain interest in it, so she’s working on other parts of the house now instead. I find it relaxing, however, so I’m enjoying it! More for me! I gotta move quickly with this, though; we need it to be able to work more efficiently upstairs. Right now I can look up and see into every upstairs room in the house, because they have walls, but no floors! I gotta get these mats done for the lumber floors we'll have up there. So, I’ll be working hard on this during days off before I go back to Stormwind!
The weekend returning to work went by like SO fast. The evenings were pretty relaxing as well, though somewhat less so for Cari. She was dreading having a meeting with her parents, who want her to find nobility to marry into and have this interested count that’s like twice her age interested, but arranged marriages and the pressure and all are just pushing her pretty hard away from the idea. Plus, she’s super happy with Maya, so she was sweating that meeting with her parents to finally clue them in that she’s living her own life. She was dreading that all week, so we tried to keep her cheered up throughout the week. She finally had that meeting yesterday, before the Deathrolls game, so we ended up going extra hard on the game last night to make up for it. But, as with most things, the anticipation of a thing is usually much worse than the thing itself – Cari’s meeting went better than any of us dared to hope. Her parents are upset, it seems, but they are willing to find a middle ground with her, she says. So that’s a hopeful sign! The rest has just been hanging out for the first part of the week. The usual crowd; Cari, Maya, Zarshal, Mags, all the fun people! And now, my bestie Nah is back from Kalimdor to hang out again, so I’ve had a pretty good time!
Speaking of Nah, we had a pretty good adventure Tuesday night! It all started out as just a nighttime hike in Grizzly Hills under the stars, but there was an unusual amount danger around that evening, not the least of which was that stinky outhouse near Amberpine Lodge… heh… Nah said she’d already taken care of business, and she wasn’t going to say where… EW! Anyway… What was originally just us catching up and strolling along the path was interrupted by a trio of native trappers-turned-worgen that were working the northern paths as bandits! We ended up having to fight our way out of that one! I ended up getting squished by one that pounced on me that Nah shot with her pistol, then another one that she got with her dagger. That didn’t feel so great, and it was really scary, but we got out of it with our lives! I was able to get the second of the three with a Flurry spell Aedie taught me. The ice shards did that one in. After I got out from the bottom of the dogpile, we decided not to let bandits wreck the entire evening, and kept on walking. We reached the bridge where we played Deathrolls a couple weeks ago, and I told Nah all about that game while we admired the waterfall in the light of the moon and stars. We made it all the way to Granite Springs before running out of path and turning south, making out way downhill over much rougher terrain. We found a path again, but it led us over to Conquest Hold, a stinky Horde fort. Figures… two more attacks! Orcs with axes! The fight was a bit more evenly matched, and, though I ended up with even more bruises and a cut on my hand, we powered through! We ended up going further south, then east to go across that hollow log bridge that has all the clover growing in it. That was really pretty, and had a good view of the little river flowing out to sea, too! Further east, we ended up getting just a bit too close to the Vrykul village of Voldune, and a shieldmaiden came out after us! Three fights in one night, and all we wanted to do was hike! That was one biiiiiig woman, but we got the best of that encounter too! She ended up dropping a bag that looked like it came from the Eastern Kingdoms. Gnomish, by the stuff inside, so it looked stolen. Spare parts and some kinda druid-ish looking costume. There were some runestones there too, so we left those by the village to be reclaimed, as I think those actually did belong to the Vrykul there. After that, we were able to hike back uphill over rough terrain again and find a path back to Amberpine Lodge. The hike was scenic, mostly peaceful, and very pretty, even in the dark, and we didn’t let the encounters with ruffians spoil it for us. Great night!
Nat heard Celeste’s voice suddenly. She looked up, but then immediately knew, from a sort of babytalk tone, that she was speaking to Dordy rather than her. She smiled over at the back of the house. Celeste was crouching next to Dordy, fire protection spells allowing her to take his molten face in her hands and get her face licked from the excited pup as she started telling him all about plans he’d never understand, but would love when they were put into motion… Celeste was planning a fishing trip to Mount Hyjal! Apparently, she believed that fishing up the Volatile Fires from the lava around the old portal to the elemental plane of fire, the Firelands, would solve the problem of an inexhaustible fire source for the stove. Dordy was wiggling and bouncing on his front paws to lick Celeste’s face, not understanding a word of what she was saying, but excited that she was excited, and that she was giving him so much attention right now. Nat giggled a bit as she watched Celeste in full flow of her fishing trip plans, of how she’d use the same sort of fire protection spells on the fishing gear, and how Dordy might even love a swim in the lava (as weird as that sounded to her), and how Nat could use her frost spells to keep them cool as they stood on rocks surrounded by all that lava and fire. She seemed as excited as Dordy as more and more thoughts flooded into her head and came pouring from her lips a second later. Nat smiled, already feeling excited about the trip herself. She dipped her ravenfeather quill in her inkwell of purple ink and returned to her writing.
Last night was Deathrolls! With the summer picnic theme still going, the next spot I had planned was Shadowmoon Valley on Draenor, at a space Celeste took me fishing once. It’s on top of a big hill with a HUGE weeping willow with beautiful white drooping branches that stretch out from the island it’s on to reach out over the surrounding pond. The entire hilltop is just absolutely gorgeous! The group this time was Nah, Maya, Cari, Zarshal, and I. Cari, who badly needed the stress relief after that meeting with her parents, sure got exactly that! She rolled a one for the first three rounds in a row! Before we were done with her, she was having to end all her sentences with “cluck-a-doodle-doo,” dance in the rain, and tell us which nation in the world she would lead, if she had to lead any of them. She had a pretty nice answer, too… the low-maintenance Wildhammer dwarf nation. The sub-clans pretty much just keep to themselves, so there’s not that much for their national leader to do! Ha! A funny theme of the night was people opening each round with a roll in the nineties, only for the next person to immediately drop the roll off a cliff by rolling in the teens or single-digits! It just kept happening! Maya Dared Nah to steal my umbrella and take off with it and make me catch her to get it back. Needless to say, I stood no chance at catching my athletic bestie, even if I didn’t regularly trip over my two left feet if I try to run. I had a Whisper Dare for Cari… Wait three rounds, when people least expect it, then GASP and run over to Nah, grab her nose, and wiggle it all in a panic, as though trying to get it off her face, and saying stuff like, “It’s STUCK! It’s stuck on there good! Oh, no! It won’t come off!” That one was hilarious! Nah was SO confused, and everyone was cracking up! I love Whisper Dares! Then they made me do something I did at a party one time before… I had my old troll voodoo mask thing and a troll dress, so I put those on and proclaimed myself to be Ohmigosha, the Loa of Fun and Partying! So that ended up being a thing the rest of the night, besides people stealing my mask a couple times and pretending to be Ohmigosha themselves. Ha! Then, for the third time this year, I rolled a one out of one hundred, which, according to how we play, means you have to do your normal Truth or Dare this round, plus join in on whatever goes on with the roller of a one during the next round. That one had me catching one of the waterflies around the pond and bringing it back to Zarshal to offer it up to him as though he were the Loa of Fun while I was a troll follower, followed next round by me being carried around by Zarshal for the second time in a picnic Deathrolls game. Zarshal had to sprint around the weeping willow, which meant splashing through the pond on the far side, while carrying me. We got rained on, and the splashing made it worse, so there were a lot of wet dog smell jokes after that! Meanwhile, this whole time, we were hitting a somewhat new tradition pretty hard… We’ve always had this weird thing happen where like, if someone rolls a two, then lots of people roll twos, and everyone just yells, “TWOS!” Cari modified it a month or two ago so that every time we have TWOS! everyone has to do a shot of some sort of adult beverage. So, with Cari needing to de-stress last night, we did quite a bit of drinking. Then, with all of us getting pretty soused, the final Dare of the night after a Million-Die Roll, I Whisper Dared Cari, wrapping it up just like she started three rounds in a row, to go down to the pond, get a huge mouthful of water, come back uphill, and slap her cheeks to spout out all the water like a fountain, then run around cheering and whooping like she just won a hundred million gold. It was hilarious, as the witnesses had no clue what the Whisper Dare was going to be, so the absurd randomness of it all just got all these drunkards guffawing! It was a really great night! After that, I tried to do a portal to Dalaran for poor drunk Cari, but ended up opening it to where Dalaran USED to be… the crater! We were able to get slow falls and such going, so that was good, and we reached the bottom of the crater safely. Nah used her vial of the sands to go all sandstone drake and fly me back to Stormwind, where we hung out a little bit longer before calling it a night. I vaguely remember, through the drunken haze, her pulling out a book to read me an absurdly-worded bedtime story about a rabbit nearly getting trapped by a maniacally cackling tree stump. It was funny and adorable, and a great way to unwind before heading off to sleep!
And now, this morning, Celeste is over here in full flow of plans for a fishing expedition to Mount Hyjal at some point to fish up some volatile fire essences from the lava around the old Firelands portal. The idea is to use those as hopefully a sort of inexhaustible source of fire for the stove so we aren’t constantly having to go out and find wood and fly it back up to the top of the rock spire. Celeste won’t need it, of course, as she has her fire spells, but it’ll sure help me cook if Celeste isn’t available to light it for me! I’m betting Dordy will love the lava area. It’s his natural element, just like Celeste, though I’ll have to keep she and I cool with some light frost spells. It’s going to be a really weird adventure, but it sure sounds like fun! I can’t wait to go! What a great week it’s been, and what a great week next week already looks like! WOO!
Nat smiled as she thought about the planned fishing trip and tapped off the purple ink from the tip of her quill into the inkwell, replacing that in its case and capping her inkwell. She looked up to see Celeste back to the stove again, her hands on it as she was kneeling over the side, muttering something about a safe volatile fire essence storage compartment on the side of the stove. She next seemed to grab an imaginary handle and pulling it down, after which she quickly leaned over to look inside the stove. She seemed to already be planning an engineering upgrade to the stove for the safe transference of volatile fire from storage into the stove proper. Nat smiled warmly at that; her ingenious, resourceful girlfriend hard at work to make Nat’s life easier. Nat always endeavored to do the same for Celeste, working two jobs – the town hall in Darkshire and the Researcher position with Whitewind Company – as well as weaving the bamboo flooring and other such tasks around the house. The love she and Celeste had for each other seemed unbreakable, and, from big, life-changing words and acts, to simple little things as bamboo weaving or volatile fire storage, there was nothing they wouldn’t do for each other. Nat heaved a happy sigh, thinking of the future. Sharing this house with Celeste, sharing this life with Celeste, was going to be absolutely magical, and she couldn’t be happier!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Aug 26, 2021 14:21:09 GMT
August the Twenty-Sixth The waves of Turtle Bay lapped up gently against the beach that carried its namesake, splashing over the feet and ankles of the curvy young woman lying on her tummy in the sand, her favorite bikini mended from the shark hunt and pulled on to enjoy the sunning morning. Her belly was full of bacon, eggs, and biscuits with sausage gravy, and her mug of coffee was shoved into the sand nearby. Not far away, a much more athletic and trim young woman with a somewhat long strawberry-blonde ponytail, also clad in her favorite bikini, was throwing, of all things, a wrench all over the beach for the pair’s molten corgi to chase, then chasing him when he wouldn’t bring it back. The shouts of glee and laughter were continually accompanied by joyful yip-yips from the molten pup and soft giggles from the young woman lying on her stomach, who had a diary and an inkwell open in front of her and a ravenfeather quill in one hand.
Nat was eager to get up and play with Celeste and Dordy, but, her belly full, she needed to relax and digest a bit first. She thought back over the roller-coaster week she’d had. All but one night had been good. Her heart ached with the loss of a new, but already close, friend. Her hope was that not just the man who committed that crime, but also his entire gang, would be rounded up and served justice. She shook her head, wanting to clear away the negativity. The rest of the week had been pretty great, and she couldn’t allow herself to dwell on the negative. She’d always remember poor Joan, but she also knew Joan wouldn’t want her to wallow in sadness. She sighed heavily, dipping her quill in her inkwell of purple ink and beginning to write.
Dear diary,
What a week it’s been… Highs and lows, fun times and tragic loss, a near-death experience of my own, and an adventure with Celeste in the searing heat of the shore of a lake of lava.
The week started off well enough. Celeste and I got the flooring done, with Shen and Marzai’s help. It was the simplest bit yet, after getting all the bamboo mats woven. The downstairs is now all smoothed-out, comfy bamboo weaving that feels smooth and padded under bare feet. The upstairs all has sanded-down wood planks, with more woven bamboo mats to go over that. The middle of the house still opens up to the second floor ceiling, as planned, but the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom no longer has a view into them from the bottom. We still need to get sinks and a bathtub and stuff brought in so we can attach all the plumbing. I think that might be next!
Monday I got to hang out with Nah, Maya, and Cari some in the Blue Recluse. I was itching to go out and adventure or something, but everyone else seemed a bit too tired to do so. That was okay, though; Tuesday I got even more adventuring in than I had ever anticipated…
Nat paused, dipping her quill into her inkwell and lowering her head a bit. She didn’t want Celeste to see her trying to prevent herself from crying some more. The pain of the loss of her friend was still cutting deep. A few tears betrayed her, but she was able to contain herself and press on. She wondered how much worse it would have been if it was someone she’d befriended a good deal longer, like her bestie Nah… She shuddered a bit, shaking her head and clearing herself of such thoughts. It didn’t bear thinking about! She reached for her quill and returned to her writing.
Something has been wrong lately… I’ve been hearing these odd whispers in my head somehow. They speak of suspicion among friends, and doubt, and divisiveness. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Even when I was practicing fel summoning, before finally learning a more socially acceptable form of casting, I had never had these shadowy whispers in my head before. And, sometimes, I’ll say something, and like, everyone just sort of turns around and blinks at me like I’ve got lobsters crawling out of my ears or something! It’s so weird! They look at me like I said something in some completely foreign language or something! But at least they’ve been nice enough not to say anything about it… Even Celeste is simply accepting that I'm pretty sure I have been speaking in Common... Yet, should they…?
Anyway, Tuesday, we – that is to say, Ais’la, Maya, Cari, and I – returned to Boralus to continue the investigation into Marcus Brinebreaker and the Brinebreaker gang. The night started off horribly! Joan, not spying Jornaar present (he was following a separate lead that night), got into it with Ais’la. It’s been hard, being torn between two friends, but I gotta say, I had to come down on Ais’la’s side that time… which only made things feel worse when what happened actually happened later that night. Joan was snarling at Ais’la how much better for Jornaar she’d be, but really, Ais’la and Jornaar had been together for several millennia, and Joan barely knew the guy. I have no idea what caused her to get so carried away with Jornaar, as Jornaar had barely ever said more than a few words to her, and was clearly very deeply and truly in love with Ais’la already besides. So the fight that started then was fast and furious, and we had to step in and get Ais’la out of Joan’s house quickly and separate the pair of them. Joan, meanwhile, for the first time ever, had no new leads for us, so we were then on our own.
We got outside, all of us upset, though none were nearly so angry as Ais’la, and understandably so. We decided to put this aside and continue on with the investigation. With no leads to follow, I suggested we split up and go visit the many bars in the slums, figuring the four of us in four bars should turn up something if any of us could overhear people talking about the Brinebreakers at all. The group was against us splitting up quite that much, however, with Maya and Cari in particular not wanting to leave each other’s sides. So it was that I ended up visiting the Hops, Line, and Sinker tavern in the Ashvane Company Yards with Ais’la, while Maya and Cari went to Hook Point to keep an ear out in the Loose Cannon bar.
Ais’la and I didn’t hear anything useful for a while. Just people gossiping about this and that as they enjoyed their drinks. But then this one drunk guy came up to Ais’la and I, hinting strongly that we should follow him upstairs. I was sort of creeped out and didn’t wanna go, but Ais’la followed him. I worried about her, and was wondering if I should go up with her and make sure she was okay, but next thing I know, I’m hearing the increasingly familiar sound of hoof striking flesh, and then Ais’la was there, dragging the guy – who had his pants pulled down around his ankles – back downstairs bodily and then threw him into a corner and upended a barrel of fish all over him! I was so surprised, I forgot to listen for a bit! But then Ais’la rejoined me at the bar, and we listened again after she told me the guy had no information and was just trying to get women upstairs with him to be nasty. That really made me blush!
After that, however, the listening really paid off… It was clear that nearly the whole bar and hushed to watch Ais’la’s scene with the drunk guy. Nearly all… There were two guys at a table who were so deep in conversation that they hadn’t even noticed! We were able to overhear things like, “Brinebreaker,” and “controlled by tidesage.” Ais’la got up and approached the table, asking what the men knew about the Brinebreaker gang. Her question scared one of the guys, who got up and quickly hurried off, but the other guy was like, checking her out, because Ais’la was really turning on the charm. Her tone was sort of flirtatious as she asked the guy what he knew, and he was ready to tell Ais’la anything she wanted to know! I wish I could do that!
Ais’la found out from the guy that there was, as Lady Whitewind first said in the job listing concerning the Brinebreaker contract back at Whitewind Company Headquarters, “always a bigger fish.” Apparently, the rumor we heard before about the Brinebreakers being controlled by a Tidesage was true! The man talked about rumors of a Tidesage controlling the gang, but he didn’t know who the Tidesage was; only that it was apparently a woman. Ais’la was quick to suspect Joan, given her loathing of the woman, but I don’t really see that being possible. Joan had always given charitably to the poor and destitute of Dampwick Ward and Hook Point, and wouldn’t ever be involved in controlling the gang that was tormenting and robbing the very mouths she was trying to feed!
The man also said that he heard the rumors across the street at the Raven’s Flock tavern, so we went over there. Ais’la disappeared for a time for some reason I didn’t know at the time, but when she came back, she had a knife that was covered in mud and fresh blood! The handle had the large, angry-looking red B of the Brinebreakers on either side of the handle, and the blood was still wet! She said she simply found it. That was weird…
Meanwhile, as we were at the top of the stairs of the boardwalk that enters the Raven’s Flock tavern, Maya and Cari returned to us. It turns out they had a similar experience with a man trying to get them to go upstairs to be nasty with him, only this guy actually had some usable information. He didn’t know anything about the Brinebreaker gang, but he did know a lot about contraband items in the area, being a street hawker himself. He’d described a number of items, one of which had sounded very familiar to Maya, who’d been with us for that boat ride with Rolfe Braxton – a tarnished silver locket with a sunburst embossed on the front and a picture of a young woman (Rolfe had said it was the last picture he had left of his wife) inside. The man gave up that he’d sold it to Madame Gosu outside, who ran the black market ring in the slums. It turns out the Pandaren woman was familiar with Rolfe and his story of loss, and was eager to get the man’s locket back to him, so she sold the locket to Maya and Cari at somewhat of a discount, sending them on their way with some of her homemade cookies besides. Imagine our surprise when we opened the locket…
Inside was a picture of Joan!
What was going on?! How did she and Rolfe not find each other upon his return? Why did Rolfe still believe her to be lost? Why had Joan never mentioned her lost husband’s actual name? Where was their son? Was he among the orphans there? So many things she’d kept to herself! At this point, even I was wondering if she had, indeed, been betraying us all this time, and was involved with the Brinebreakers! I waved Onyx down fast, flying off back to Joan’s house in a fury, ready to confront her!
When I got there, however, she didn’t answer. There were people talking animatedly in the street behind her house, however, and I went to look… There was Joan, lying on the side of the road, in a puddle of blood! She’d been STABBED! I rushed to her, trying to stop the bleeding wounds, but it was no use… She’d already died! Then the rest of the group caught up to me, and were trying to figure out what happened to Joan and why my hands were bloody, but then the Kul Tiran guards showed up! Armored and mounted, they pushed their way through the group, interrogating us all. I’d only just furiously asked Ais’la why she’d disappeared and reappeared with what was probably the murder weapon, freshly bloodied, and the guards heard that and wanted to arrest her, but she fled! They got me, though, and hauled me away for questioning. I didn’t know for a while what happened to Cari or Maya! All I know was, they wanted me for the murder, and were talking about hanging me and horrible stuff, talking about having caught me red-handed, and with motive! But I did no such thing! I was trying to SAVE Joan!
I spent the next two hours locked in a Kul Tiran brig alongside truly violent criminals, being interrogated hard about our group’s investigation and our involvement with Joanessa Seaslums. It didn’t go well. I wasn’t able to convince the constable, and he went off to fetch the executioner! He said I was headed for the gallows that night!
Next thing I know, Maya and Cari are back… And they’ve got my bestie Nah and our newest Company member Cletcher! It turns out they’d had quite the scuffle with a Brinebreaker Underboss, and that it was HIM who’d killed Joan and even him that had taken a sniper shot at us way back at the start of this whole thing! They were going to talk to the constable about the Underboss giving his confession, but then I got seized by the prison guards, who threw me over a horse and rode hard for the gallows! By the time my friends showed up, the constable was reading off the crimes he thought I’d committed, and the executioner was lowering a noose around my neck! I have never in my life been so frightened as I was while standing on that trapdoor, except for the time Tomlin had me in a deathgrip and was threatening to kill me and everyone I loved…
But then, just in time, my friends showed up with that Brinebreaker Underboss again! He gave his confession, and I was set free as a result! Apparently the Underboss was more afraid of the group than he was of a potential end at the gallows himself!
There are still so many questions, though… WHY did he kill Joan? Why did Joan never reveal herself to Rolfe? Did she simply never cross paths with him? Was she hiding from him? Was she really involved with the Brinebreaker gang secretly, the same gang that was so forcefully oppressing those in the slums she was trying so hard to feed? Is SHE the Tidesage? If not, who is? Is the Tidesage even real, or is it just the overblown imagination of a gossiping, panicked citizen base? I think she IS real, else why was that young man in the red house suddenly dragged off by a void-radiating tentacle into the sea when he was just about to give the information he’d promised us if we entertained him in that awful arena? And what are these weird whispers in my head, and why do people think I'm speaking in a different language sometimes? Heck, even the constable thought I had at one point, and I was getting funny looks from the group, yet the Brinebreaker Underboss said he'd understood me as speaking Common just fine! And where, WHERE is Marcus Brinebreaker?!
Nat returned her quill once more to the inkwell, rubbing her temples. She winced as she noticed how very long she’d gone on about the whole affair Tuesday night. What had started out as the Whitewind Company simply accepting a contract had turned into a very personal affair that had sewn division and heartbreak among all involved, and had cost the life of a friend. Yet… Was Joan a friend? Had she been true? Or had she been a villain all along? One thing was for sure, though: Nat needed to find out where Ais’la and Jornaar had gotten off to, and issue them both an apology for ever having suspected Ais’la and blaming her for Joan’s death, and especially for accusing her of being a murderer. That was the single-worst thing she’d ever done to a friend, and, weird whispers in her head or not, she felt awful for even allowing a fraction of a second of such thoughts into hear head! Nat shook her head, clearing it once more, trying to return to her writing and get some sort of happy thoughts going again.
Looking up, she smiled warmly, the coldness leaving her, replaced with the view of Celeste happily throwing the wrench once more. Dordy gave chase, throwing up a tsunami of sand as he skidded to a stop and snapped up the old wrench in his jaws, circling around back to Celeste. Nat squealed and giggled as Dordy pelted right toward her, anticipating an impact that never came as Dordy hurdled her, sprinted in a molten blur into the edge of the waves and throwing up a cloud of steam as the water hissed and crackled and bubbled upon contact. Circling further, he gave Celeste a wide berth before rounding behind and back in front of his playmate, spiraling in to leap up into her arms, dropping the wrench into the sand at Celeste’s feet to lick at her face excitedly. Celeste giggled and squealed wrestling with him a bit before dropping him to snatch the wrench up before Dordy could. Another toss had Dordy racing off behind the statue of Lei Shen to search for the wrench, where he illuminated the shadows behind the statue for a while, throwing up his own shadows that danced and bounced, before emerging from the other side to sprint back toward Nat once more. Dordy dropped the wrench next to Nat’s diary, drawing a protest from Celeste, who had been having to wrestle it from him. Nat laughed, cheering up, and gave the wrench a hard toss to her left, which meant it didn’t go more than about fifteen feet or so before sinking into wet sand. Dordy was on it in an instant, sprinting back with it to Celeste, kicking up sand along the beach in his wake. Nat smiled, feeling better now among her happy loves, and returned to her writing.
Yesterday morning, Celeste and I went on that volatile fire fishing expedition! It was just what I needed after all that business the previous night. Once again, though, Celeste had come up with an ingenious contraption to achieve our aims! It was this bulky thing that attached to a thin but very strong line of fireproof eternium. She had the whole thing attached to her mother’s old Kalu’ak fishing pole. There was a bottle instead of a hook at the end that sort of looked like an alchemy vial, except Celeste said it was made of a material that had a much higher melting point than the lava here, with a stopper on a little hinge with a little spring trap mechanism that were all made of the same material, and all enchanted against fire for good measure. Once it gets dropped in the right spot in the lava, there’s a lead weight she can release near the tip of the rod that triggers the spring trap that swings the stopper on its hinge and closes the vial. Then, to find the volatile fires, Celeste made modifications to our goggles we got from Mechagon that reveals secret fish near you. She modified it to also register volatile fires. I think probably something to do with registering extreme temperatures from the volatile fires that are even hotter than the temperatures of the lava. Extra surprise on mine: she painted on a few stars and hearts on my strap, referencing her nickname for me as her “stars and moon!” She’s so sweet, and such a genius! I love it!
Once we got there… ohmigosh… It was so HOT! I mean, duh, right? Because lava? But like, I was barely even able to breathe! I cast a frost barrier around Celeste and I to keep the temperature down, but even then, we were both just POURing with sweat! I had to freeze water to bring it in to keep us hydrated. Dordy, of course, loved it. He was really in his element… literally!
Anyway, we got to the site, and I got our frost barriers up and maintained those while Celeste got her contraption set up. She had me don my goggles and find a volatile fire pool while she did so. It took a bit of getting used to; the world just sort of dimmed a whole bunch when I put them on, with Dordy and all the lava lighting up brilliantly on the goggles. Then, after a bit, I noticed another bit of light, even brighter than Dordy and the lava! It really made my lenses flare up! It looked like sort of an incandescent material, something that just sort of swirled and turned thickly in the lava, except not with the lava’s current. It actually sort of moved against it some. It was really weird! I pointed it out to Celeste, and she put her goggles on so she could find it too, then put them up a bit on her head so she could see what she was doing better. She cast her line with the fireproof bottle and stuff and asked if she hit it. She got close; it was just on the outer edge of the incandescent pool, like only just on the far side of it and to the left a bit. I helped guide her into the pool more by having her reel in a smidge and bring her rod tip to the right. She’s so smooth when casting and reeling, like, even THAT is attractive! Heh. Anyway, she reeled it in to the right spot and let it dangle there a bit, and even without the goggles, she was able to start seeing some of the movements against the current of the lava. She said there was something going on in there, and boy, was there! The next instant, the lava was roiling and boiling and bubbling up like a sea in a hurricane, and Dordy was barking his head off. I could see something way, WAY bigger than the fire elemental coming up underneath the volatile fire. Celeste triggered the spring trap mechanism to close the vial, but the bigger thing had already seemed to absorb it… and now it seemed to have absorbed the vial in the process! Celeste reeled it all in… and then, just as I recognized what it was and was shouting out a warning to Celeste, it came up to the surface of the lava, and it turned out to be a HUGE FIRE ELEMENTAL!
I heard Celeste squeak in surprise, and she was like, “Nuts, I suspected this could happen!” Celeste didn’t let go of her rod and was actually still reeling in, even as she spoke! “Volatile fire isn’t just more fire! Some people suspected elementals reproduced by budding! When they are fueled by a stronger heat source, they absorb extra heat and a new one splits off the first! This must be it! Proof of that theory!” Despite the dire situation and the elemental coming -and looming- closer, Celeste seemed thrilled! “Nat, I think I can get it to split off. I need to feed it more fire but it has to be out of the lava or it’ll get even stronger. I’ll lure it over the rock then throw everything I can at it. You’ll have to throw cold behind it to cut off its retreat and weaken it!”
I was surprised by all that new information, and I was trying to process all that, but Celeste was already dragging the huge, flaring thing up onto the rock with us, and I had to slow it quickly! I cast a frost nova to root it in place, though I didn’t expect that ice to last long around the fire elemental. Then Celeste needed me to chill it around the area the vial was stuck in it, so I cast frostbolt after frostbolt at it. All the while, this really hot wind was blowing all around us and it became even harder to breathe, and all I could hear was the wind, and all I could smell was sulfur and brimstone! I cast a cone of cold through the base of it that expanded behind it to cut off its retreat while Celeste tried to reel the vial in from out of the elemental. The vial was stuck good, so I kept pelting it with frostbolts until the fire faded to a dull blue. Even then, that didn’t seem to be enough. The vial was really jammed in there, and it didn’t look like it was coming back out any time soon!
Just then, another ingenious idea from Celeste! She had been holding Dordy back the whole time with a foot, but then she let him go, and told him to fetch! Dordy launched his molten self forward and leaped into the fire elemental, snapping his jaws shut around the vial and shaking it violently. Good thing tug of war is one of his favorite games! He was able to wrench it free! After that I stopped with the frost spells, and the fire elemental turned and retreated back into his home of lava flows. We had what we came for now; it was time to portal back to someplace way, way cooler! Like a summer beach in a jungle! Heh.
Celeste only just finished installing it in the stove this morning, before we went fishing on her iceberg again to catch dinner to test it with. She has valves and dials and stuff on the stove that will open and close the stopper on the vial to varying degrees, which gives me a really fine control over the oven’s heat. I’ll be able to do the most precise cooking and baking ever, now! YAY!
Last night was Deathrolls. After the events of the night before last, last night’s game turned out to be one of the most tame and rather subdued games ever. It was Maya, Cari, Zarshal, and I, as usual, as well as another fun night with Mags, and a first-ever time for Skylie, who’s fun to play with in the Recluse in the mornings I’ve found her Deathrolling in there, and she seemed to really like the quirks in the games I host, so that was good! Most of what was going on were Truths, most of which weren’t really spicy or anything, though they were still pretty insightful. I did, however, get Dared to lick a fish statue, speak in rhymes for a good while, and go downstairs (we were playing at the table on the roof of the Dawn’s Blossom Inn in Jade Forest this time) for a rice dish that I had to splash my face into and eat with no hands. Mags had made it a bit later than everyone else, and chose THAT moment to happen to show up… HAH! I had rice all over my face; it was so embarrassing! But yeah, most of it was Truths, though I had a Whisper Dare for Skylie, who hadn’t met Mags before, to go over and kneel a few rounds later and introduce herself as, “Skylie, Queen of Poppycock, Hawker of Contraband Stogies, and Ruler of All Gnolls!” Meanwhile, Zarshal, who had rolled a one during the Truth or Dare rolls for Skylie, had to join in, so I Whisper Dared him to go and play the bongos on Skylie’s helm that she rarely takes off while she was introducing herself to Mags. A round or two before this, I had Dared Cari to squawk like a parrot from time to time and repeat what people say, and so she made the whole scene even better by repeating Skylie’s introduction to Mags! It was so funny! It was a tame game for the most part, but we got each other good a few times!
It’s been one of the most loaded weeks ever, and such a roller coaster, but… life goes on. And with Celeste, it goes on in the best ways no matter how awful things happen with… less savory types involved. I know we’ll get Marcus Brinebreaker in the end. With this group? He’ll face justice soon enough, and then we’ll see about this mysterious Tidesage lady! In the meantime… Celeste is playing with Dordy, and I wanna join in. Time for some fun! WOO!
Nat heaved a heavy sigh, remembering… but then shook that thought off yet again. She tapped the excess ink from her quill, replacing it in its case and capping her inkwell. Both items went back into her back. She stood, brushing off the sand from herself and adjusting her bikini, now ready to play. The ink dry on her diary pages now, she stooped to close that and put that back in her pack as well. The pack went back to the Flying Nosebleed, sitting in the sand with the back of its pontoons in the waves. She turned to jog to the wrench-fetching game with Dordy with a giggle, splashing through the waves lapping up at the beach to try and beat Dordy to Celeste’s most recent throw. She missed, of course, by a long shot, but it was still fun to watch Dordy kick it into overdrive and really sprint at it to win that race. Yet Dordy, eager to play with Nat as he was with Celeste, brought her the wrench next, and she took it with some wrestling and patting before tossing it back toward Celeste. With her awful aim, it fell short and a good distance to Celeste’s left, and Dordy found himself putting up another cloud of steam as he fetched it from the waves’ edge. Dordy spotted Nosebleed next, chomping lazily at some foliage at the jungle’s edge, and raced to him to drop the wrench under his enormous head. Nosebleed turned slowly to gaze at Dordy, massive bits of leaves dropping from his even more gigantic jaws to gaze at Dordy, upon whom some of the falling debris from his jaws was falling and bursting into flame, then went back for another bite of jungle plant without even looking at the wrench. Celeste and Nat laughed as Dordy fruitlessly tried to get Nosebleed to play, giving up at length to bring the wrench back to Nat, who was able to toss it closer to Celeste this time. The game continued, as did life, and, just like Nat’s life overall, the game was a blast!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Sept 2, 2021 15:57:47 GMT
September the Second In a dark room, lit by a few candles, Nat lay across a bed, her diary open in front of her. The room had the faintest glow of impending daybreak, with a sun that had yet to actually rise above the horizon casting the world in a dark, faint blue-grey color as night turned to very early misty morning. This bed was new, yet identical to the large, cushy, wide, soft bed in Nat’s Darkshire home. Surrounded the bed were several heavy boxes, lining the walls and stacked high. A pair of dressers with the drawers pulled out and stacked beside them were along another wall, on either side of a spacious walk-in closet. Along the wall opposite the bed was a sliding glass door that led out to a balcony, from which one could see westward. Far, far below, a beach stretched from across the bay from a village over the water on stilts, into the distance, lined with jungle and dotted with several small islands covered in jungle trees and foliage. In the new home atop the tallest rock spire in Turtle Bay, Nat was settling in with Celeste as the house neared completion of its construction.
It was good to be out of the tent and into their new home at last!
Nat smiled around, the long chore of unpacking not daunting her as she looked at the boxes stacked high all over the room. The patches sewn onto the down comforter caught her purple eyes next, and she ran her hand over the colorful fishes in dark-blue water at the foot of the bed slowly, happily looking at the collaborative work she and Celeste had done on the midnight-colored comforter with its moon and stars shining on the water design below that brought together things she and Celeste both loved. She sighed happily, straightening out to reach for her ravenfeather quill’s case and opening it up in the silence of the morning.
That silence was immediately broken.
“No, Dordy, no!” came Celeste’s voice from downstairs. “Bring that back! I need that! DORDY!”
Nat giggled, laying her quill down and hopping up off the bed. She hurried out of the room and onto the wrap-around balcony that encompassed the front sitting room, the dining room in the middle, and the kitchen in the back together. She peered carefully over the side – there was no railing yet on the balcony, one of the things needed to finish construction of their beautiful dream home – to see what was going on. Dordy was darting all over the downstairs area, a spatula in his molten jaws, though it didn’t melt due to the fire protection spells cast on the fiery pup. Celeste was chasing him around, waving her arms and trying to herd Dordy into a corner and trap him, though it wasn’t working. Dordy kept zipping past her, eventually making his way into the little nook at the back left where the spiral staircase was hidden behind the wall. Nat grinned, moving to stand at the door, ready to catch him when he emerged. And emerge he did, attempting to jump over the crouching Nat, only to go sailing over the balcony’s edge.
“Gotcha!” exclaimed Celeste downstairs as Nat gasped in horror. She darted to the edge, peering over again. Celeste had the wriggling pup in her arms, and was now attempting to wrestle her spatula back away from him.
“Ohmigosh!” cried Nat. “Good catch, Celeste!”
“Thanks, love,” Celeste grinned up at Nat. “Today’s project is definitely getting a rail on that balcony, though.”
Nat nodded enthusiastically. That had been entirely too scary! She giggled next, though; Celeste had just gotten the spatula away from Dordy and let him flop back to the floor. Dordy, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, trotted happily after Celeste, keen on continuing play, as Celeste returned to the kitchen through the doorless doorway at the back right of the house, under the balcony, through which was wafting the smell of delicious breakfast sausages. Nat inhaled deeply, smiling as she wondered what all was going with the sausages, before returning to their bedroom on the opposite side of the wrap-around balcony from the spiral staircase. Navigating the box stacks and flopping back across the bed, she took up her ravenfeather quill again, unstoppering her inkwell of purple ink and beginning to write.
Dear diary,
It’s my BIRTHDAY! Well, my birthday WEEK! My birthday was Tuesday. It was a blast, just like the whole week! Plus, last week, I ended the minication before work at Waylight with Mord, Fraldarius, and Tilly, playing a new game Mord made up called Spice Dice, where you gotta roll a one out of a six-sided die, or you have to drink! I ended up pretty tipsy before heading home that evening!
Then, after work, Celeste and I spent the weekend evenings after work packing up some things at our Darkshire and Ironforge homes, as well as – finally – packing up the tent on the beach! WE’RE MOVING INTO THE NEW HOUSE! YAY! There are still lots of boxes in the house to unpack, and some finishing touches to put on the building as well, like a rail around the balconies inside and out, and proper windows to go in all over, and doors for the bedrooms and bathrooms, as well as sliding glass doors for my office downstairs, plus the two bedrooms upstairs, to allow a walk out onto the outside balconies up there.
I love the layout for the house, too! Up the stairs from the landing pad Celeste built outside on the side of the rock spire, one comes to the front door on the north side of the house, which faces across Turtle Bay to Turtle Beach, into the jungle, and beyond up onto the plateau where the Valley of the Four Winds, including Halfhill and all that farmland, sits. Entering, you can see from the front of the house all the way to the back, where there is a wall-to-wall, floor to ceiling window facing south out over the ocean and all the way to the horizon. On either sides are walls leading to different rooms, and it has a vault ceiling that allows you to see up to the doors on the second floor a bit, where there’s a wrap-around balcony around the house. The balcony is a cool spot to look out the huge back window too! The front half is the sitting room, with a black Pandaren couch winged by small end tables and then two high-backed winged armchairs, all arranged facing the fireplace. We made it to look like my sitting room in my Darkshire home, only there’s also a couch now for guests so we don’t have to bring in chairs from the kitchen like we did in my old home. There’s a coffee table in front of the couch. I don’t imagine we’ll use the fireplace nearly as much on this beach as we did in my chilly forest back home in Duskwood, though it still has a fireplace lined with pictures of Celeste and I, along with Dordy, Nosebleed, Ebonhoof, Cloud Dancer, and Onyx, our whole huge family, as well as one at the left end of the Flying Nosebleed sitting on the water on its new pontoons in Turtle Bay.
The back half of the broad, open area down the middle of the half is our dining room! There’s a table by the back of the house that seats six, including the chairs at the end, and a doorway without a door that opens up into the kitchen on the right, which has its own back door at the back right corner, a mostly wrap-around counter that ends in the enchanted icebox on the left-side counter, and the volatile fire-powered stove on the right-side counter. The plumbing opens into a sink in the kitchen in the middle of the right-side counter, which is on the opposite side of the wall of the master bathroom, which is the near-right-side door downstairs as you enter from the front door. Above that bathroom is a smaller bathroom upstairs, so that residents and guests don’t have to go up and down the spiral staircase in the doorless doorways at the back left of the house. The upstairs bedroom on the right side, which faces west, is mine and Celeste’s. It’s huge! There’s a bay window on the left with pillows in the windowsill that overlook the ocean to the south, and, facing west, a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling window with a sliding glass door built into it that opens up into a balcony outside, where a deck extends from that wrap-around outside balcony with room for outside chairs and little tables and a place to hang out. On the left side as you come in the house’s front door, upstairs, there’s a matching guest bedroom with a matching window and sliding glass door arrangement. Sunrises are pretty down here, so, if a guest wants to keep the curtain open and watch it as they rise, they can, or they can go out that sliding glass door to the extended deck in that side of the wrap-around outside balcony. They get a bay window too, and, being on the near side of the house (which puts them nearer the bathroom upstairs too, for convenience), their bay window opens up to view Turtle Bay and Turtle Beach! In the back left corner of the house is the spiral staircase that ascends to the inside wrap-around balcony, as well as descending into the basement/hangar/workshop for Celeste. She’s so funny; her ingenious tinkerer’s mind has the place in chaos already! Half-finished engineering projects that blow my mind with their ingenuity, creativity, and resourcefulness already lie all over the workbenches, awaiting completion as Celeste gets a new idea and jumps into a new project. I still need to get down there and paint that ocean scene where Celeste, when she and her uncle Rugnar excavated the basement for the purpose, carved in the ocean scene on a whim – a coral reef wrapping around the place with sea turtles, different sizes and types of fish, and, in one back corner near the floor, a few eels slithering out of a hole, protrude out from the wall a little bit. Then, on the first floor, the final room is the one on the near left as you come in the front door, underneath the guest bedroom. I like watching sunrises too, so the sliding glass door onto the patio on the west side there, and the window on the left, next to the front door if you’re looking at it from outside, reminds me of the window that I write under at home that overlooks the town square of Darkshire. That room will be my office! I’ll have a writing desk and chair that match the ones I have at home in my front room, plus all those bookshelves all around the walls! I LOVE THIS HOUSE!
Nat dipped her quill into the inkwell for more ink, wishing her office were already unpacked and ready to write in right now. She shrugged next. The bed was also a perfectly comfy place to write, and so soft, too! She smiled as a soft glow approached the currently doorless bedroom door. Dordy was coming! Sure enough, apparently bored of Celeste just cooking in the kitchen, he’d come up to have himself a nap. He hopped up onto the bed, curling up on the fish patches at the foot of the bed, sighing a puppy sigh at Nat, then shut his eyes for a bit of a doze. Nat giggled, giving the molten corgi a few pats on the head, thankful for all the fire protection spells on him, before picking up her quill again as she inhaled the scents of blueberry pancakes downstairs. Her stomach growling like Dordy, she went back to her writing.
Anyway, the birthday week! So fun! Besides all the packing and moving and work on the house, Sunday, I went to Stormwind after work to hang out with friends. Maya and Cari were there at their usual table on the Recluse porch, and they were talking about Maya dying her hair again. Maya’s gone from black to black with blue highlights to blonde already in the last month or two, and now she was talking about going redhead! I figured, why wait? Let’s just go to Sharpshears’ barber shop over in the Trade District and see how it looks right now! They agreed, and off we went! Then, while we were there, Gommaan strolled in too! So we all got to hang out while Maya got her hair done! Catching up with Gommaan was good, because we hadn’t seen him in a good while. He’s been off a lot, doing his professional fighting and wrestling gigs. I’m glad he’s still healthy after all that! Eventually, Maya’s hair was done, and I gotta say, though she went with a really dark red instead of the bright orange one, she still looked great! Then Cari and I convinced her to try on one of my dresses and put her hair up in a bun! I gotta say, fancy Maya is nearly unrecognizable… yet she looks terrific! It was a fun night!
Monday, I mostly stayed home with Celeste and got all those boxes we packed up moved into the big house. Furniture first, so we could get it through the door and put it all in place without the boxes being in the way of where we needed to go and put it all. Good thing Shen and Marzai were there to help; those two Pandaren are really strong, and that furniture was heavy! It was easy enough to move through portals from Darkshire and Ironforge into the Shrine of the Seven Stars, and easy to fly back and forth from there to Turtle Bay with Celeste’s flying goblin shredder (which we still need to name!), but getting it inside the door, not to mention actually lifting it up and carrying it through the portals from town and city to Shrine, we definitely needed Shen and Marzai’s help! Once we got done, we had dinner for the four of us in our box-crowded dining room! That was a good end to a hard workday! Then Celeste wanted to go have some fun with some of her engineering projects in her workshop, and I was wanting to catch friends in Stormwind, as it was their usual time to trickle on I, so I headed that way! I found Cari there, and we hung out at our usual table on the Recluse porch, and then we spotted Mags standing at her usual spot across the Mage Quarter courtyard, so we made our way that way to hang out with her! Mags seemed to be in pretty good spirits; she’s really stoked about the upcoming monthly market at the end of this month, seeing as how the last couple didn’t happen due to one of the two people running it retiring. But now they’re back on! Mags was in full flow of her plans for the seasonal switch from her summer scents (besides all her usual year-round ones) to the fall scents. Apple cinnamon and campfire and hardwood and fir and pumpkin spice and all kinds of sorts of things and stuff! I am definitely going to that market! I went ahead and ordered the usual monthly stuff while I was there, two bottles apiece of the lavender/goldthorn-scented shampoos, liquid soaps, lotions, and, this time, Mags’ new line of hair serums! These serums work to liven up hair and make it healthier and shimmery and more full! Mags was also excited about the new scents she has in beard oils for the guys and some of the dwarf women! Cari and I had a good time hanging out with her, and Cari was talking about ordering stuff too, and then, eventually, it got late, and we each headed back home. Cari left while reassuring me that my BIRTHDAY the following day was going to be amazing, even if she had to do something dire and drastic, like a Running of the Yeti! HAH!
Then, the next day, Tuesday… MY BIRTHDAY! I woke up late with Celeste, who cooked me my favorite breakfast after we finally made it out of bed… A huge omelet with bacon, cheddar, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, and mushrooms, doused in salsa, a heap of hash browns, also doused in salsa, a stack of buttered white toast, orange juice, and hazelnut coffee! It was so incredibly delicious! Then we took a break from housework, fishing along the creeks and little ponds and lakes around the Krasarang Wilds just inland from Turtle Beach, and caught a number of different things to sell at Halfhill and Angler’s Wharf, as well as saving a few dainties for dinners that we put in the icebox. Then we played with Dordy on the beach for a while, and some friends from Angler’s Wharf and Halfhill hung out, as well as Celeste’s Pandaren friend Suyin! Even Nosebleed got just a bit excited, beating the sand on the beach a few times with his tail and snorting in response to Dordy’s attempts to play with him… though I dunno if Nosebleed was trying to play too, or if he was just throwing a fit over all the noise… Anywho, he seemed pretty lively that afternoon! Ebonhoof gracefully accepted ridings of all sizes for horseback rides on the beach. What a strong steed! Then, as evening approached, they all revealed that they had gifts for us! They were all presents that were part housewarming gifts and part birthday presents (food, mostly, though a few little knickknacks, more amazing tea from Suyin, and, from Shen and Marzai, black-out curtains for all the windows and sliding glass doors for the inevitable bright days from being that high in the air with no trees)! Celeste, after everyone left, gave me her gift… News that we were going to do one of my favorite things… A trip to someplace in the world, to do… something. She’s being so cryptic! Yet, every time she comes out with a surprise adventure, be it archaeology in Winterspring, shark fishing, volatile fire fishing, camping in Grizzly Hills, it’s always an amazing surprise, so that was a really exciting and amazing gift! I can’t wait to see what it is!
Celeste, still not quite up to returning to chaotic, noisy, bustling cities and being around huge crowds (aside from the peaceful, slow-paced Pandaren friends we have down here), stayed home as I went from that birthday party to the next. I don’t blame her, as much as she’s been put through up there. She was getting something ready for my return from Stormwind that evening, though I had no idea what until after. She was also going to wait on a present to arrive via remote-piloted gyrocopter that Maya and Cari had been hinting would be a really blushworthy present, not to be opened in front of others. I had no idea what she and the gift had in store for me when I arrived home, and I blushed to even imagine what!
Nat blushed just writing that, blushing at what she’d have to write a bit later in the entry as well. A soft, quiet, embarrassed giggle drew a sleepy sigh in response from Dordy, still half-dozing at the foot of the bed as he waited on breakfast to be complete so he could snag a few scraps, even though he’d already feasted on his Dordy noms that morning. Nat looked over at the gift that had arrived via gyrocopter, now lying assembled atop her dresser in a heap of heavy, dark purple, silky-smooth ribbon, short, broad leather straps, and carabina clips, as well as eyehook woodscrews to hold up the loops at one end of some of the straps. Nat’s blush deepened as she looked at it, remembering its arrival, the moment she and Celeste realized what it was, Celeste’s response, and its use, late on her birthday night before bed. She turned away, grinning and barely suppressing giggles at the ridiculous yet fun swing, burying her face in the dark down comforter for a long moment before returning to her writing. Maya and Cari and their shenanigans… Still and all, it had turned out to be a great gift! She picked her quill out of the inkwell once more.
The birthday pool party at the waterfall behind the Stormwind Keep turned out to be AWEsome! First, I met Maya and Cari in Stormwind, who had one of two presents they’d been hinting at for a couple weeks that would make me blush. It wasn’t wrapped, and it turned out to just be a hundred yards of some sort of smooth, strong, purple ribbon on a spool. They were snickering at me, and saying I’d know what it was for when my other present arrived at home via gyrocopter. Oh, no… But, then we headed off to the waterfall and pool for my birthday pool party! My bestie Nah, Maya, Cari, Zarshal, Mags and her girlfriend Elsa, Mordale, Skylie, Starlear, and his girlfriend Tinian all came! Eleven people in all, including myself! Nah and Mordale had somewhat fashionably late entrances, as did Starlear and Tinian, and Nah’s entrance was, of course, as mischievous as ever. She’d somehow stealthed right into the party, got into the water, and snuck up on me in the water to poke and tickle at me, and I thought there was some kind of huge creature in the water! Mags NOPED right out of the pool, saying she was leaving me to be eaten, but then, it turned out to be Miss Troublemaker herself, popping up out of the water in her skimpiest bikini ever, snickering at me in that signature snicker she has! What a mischievous bestie I have! And then, once they were all there, it was cliffdiving time! The cliffdiving competition turned out to be just random cliffdiving fun instead, as everyone was in too happy a mood to really have things like winners and losers going on, myself included. Gommaan, athletic and fearless, turned out to be a real pro at it. Graceful flips and corkscrew twists and mental stuff… It was really cool to watch! Everyone jumped and had some really cool moves, except Mags, who called us all a bunch of crazy daredevils and just hung out at the beach to watch. I jumped three times myself. The first two were just me trying to do something cool but then flailing around in the air as I fell like a spaz, including falling into the pool head-first and splashing so huge that I caught Mags as I resurfaced shaking poor Elsa and yelling, “SHE DIED!” I hurried over to reassure her that I was just fine, and not, in fact, dead. The third time I jumped, ALL of us but Mags went up at once to do it, and it was just raining cliffdivers like a storm! I even managed to curl up for a cannonball while the falling with the rest, who did their crazy tricks. It was really cool! Mags also did eventually swim a bit, being coaxed into the water by Elsa, who was walking backward slowly into the water and holding Mags’ hands. Then Mags slipped in the mud, and splashed right into the pool! It was funny, as soon as we realized she was alright, and was laughing. Swim time for all!
After that, people were tired and needing a break, plus hungry for dinner. Maya had spent all Monday cooking and stuff in preparation to cater the party (which is why it was just Cari and I hanging out with Mags in Stormwind), and she had everything! Potato salad, chicken salad, regular salad, a heaping platter of jumbo shrimp with dipping sauces, sandwiches of all kinds, burgers and hot dogs, ale and mead and ciders and other, stronger liquors, as well as teas for the non-drinkers. It was a really incredible spread! Maya really outdid herself this time!
Then, as we were all piling up our plates (Gommaan had a mountain of meat, just like his own nickname), all my friends, despite my written invitations to them specifically stating that I desired their presence, not their presents, wanted to each give me, of course, presents. Didn’t listen at all! Yet, I suppose from friends as great as these, even this newest friend Tinian, what else could I expect? First was Skylie, whose gift, when I unwrapped it, turned out to be a flask! I’d never had my own before! Then Skylie told me that, just like the note it came with said (the note said that it was a bottomless flask, and that Skylie thought I needed one!), it wasn’t just any flask; it was enchanted to be a bottomless flask, just like hers! Basically I choose what I want to have in it of an evening, put it in there, and it never runs out, until I change it to something else! Awesome! I immediately got some of the Dwarven mead Maya brought and filled it up! Zarshal, who finds it entertaining how I get when I’ve been drinking, loved it as well, citing it as a reason for me to get even more drunk. Hah! And then next up was Maya. She got me a really handy gift… a F.A.D., or Fall Avoidance Device. It looks like a belt clip, only with a smidgen of gnomish tech on it. Apparently, if the wearer falls down, it slows their fall, thus protecting them from injury. That’s perfect for me, for when people get me to run or dance or attempt to spar, and all I do is trip over my two left feet and fall down a whole bunch. This is gonna save me a lot of scraped-up knees and palms! It’s great! Maya said she thought of it because of how much they all wanted me to dance at Lex and Eli’s (who couldn’t make it due to being in Northrend at the time on vacation) Midsummer Gala, when I fell down a whole bunch trying to dance and even accidentally slapped myself in the face… twice. Cari went next. Hers turned out to be a camera that was techno-magically paired somehow with an old Kaldorei memory mirror; a wooden hand mirror with a cloudy, opaque glass and Darnassian runes inscribed into the woodwork around the frame. I’d heard of these; memories recorded by Kaldorei spells could be replayed in the glass in the mirror. Not being Kaldorei myself, I don’t quite have their peculiar brand of magic, but Cari was able to rig up the gnomish camera that came with it to project images into the mirror. She suggested I try it out on the beautiful waterfall that surrounded half the pool in a crescent, but, instead, I photobombed her with it! Hah! Then she laughed and had me look into the mirror. Sure enough, a short, moving picture of me swinging the camera across the scene with all my friends in it and coming to stop at Cari, who was mid-gasp, eyes and mouth wide at what I’d just done, was captured forever! I love it! What a great gift! Next was Nah, who had stowed her gift, where else, but in her bikini top… Gosh! She pulled it out, opened up my hand, deposited it into my palm, and curled up my fingers around it, smirking at me slyly the way she does. I held it up and looked at it. It was a curious little trinket, a beautiful Kaldorei crescent moon, symbolic of their people and, especially, of Elune. She explained to me how it worked – evoke the magic within the trinket, and small to moderate injuries could be healed by Kaldorei healing magic! I gave it a shot, and the weariness and slight soreness from cliffdiving was instantly gone! There was also an additional surprise she didn’t warn me about… She’d put in, just for me, her signature snicker that I’ve always found so oddly comforting. I gotta say, that one really drew a tear from my eye. I’d been hugging all the gift-givers thus far, but Nah, poor ol’ Nah-face, she got really squished for that one! I don’t know how she got the trinket to magically record her snicker and make that sound when the trinket’s used, but it’s already one of my top favorite gifts of all time! Zarshal went next. He brought me a Gilnean lantern, complete with silver frames that really reflect the lantern light even more. Closer inspection of the silver frames show elegant purple designs. It’s so beautiful! I usually just hook a normal lantern up to the lantern rig on the back of Ebonhoof’s saddle, my horse that Father got me for my eighteenth birthday with the lantern rig for riding through Duskwood, or at night anywhere else. From now on, though, it’ll be Zarshal’s Gilnean lantern! Mags said she’d mailed hers and Elsa’s, which made me think she’d hidden it in with the soap order, as Elsa works with her in her Lakeshire Soap Company store.. I got it yesterday! Along with my soap order I made Monday with Cari, she sent me a painting of a sunset over Halfhill, all purple and orange and beautiful. It’s so pretty! I still have yet to decide whether to hang it in the new house, or to hang it over the fireplace back in Darkshire, so I can take a little of Pandaria with me when I’m staying with family and friends there. Decisions, decisions! Either way, I love this painting! Mordale was next. Mord, who is a fancy jewelcrafter, had put together a whole jeweled crown! VERY extravagant! Mister Richie Rich Fancypants’ gift was very heavy on my head, and I felt like I was in a VERY bright spotlight with it on. I have no clue what sort of functions I might wear it for, but it was sure to come in handy at some point! I got used to it from then until our next swim time as I wore it through presents and dinner. Nah, of course, had to make a comment. “All hail Tasha, Queen of the Noodle!” It made me laugh, her spin on my “Lady of the Noodle” title I won while pool-noodle jousting at Lex and Eli’s beach bash early on in the summer. Starlear and Tinian went last, and at the same time. Starlear had brought me the prettiest and most tasty cupcake ever, and it was kind of big, too! It was an exquisite blackberry currant cupcake, with elaborate mirror-glazed icing, speckled throughout with purple sprinkles and bits of the mixed berries that made up the cupcake. It was SO SO SO GOOD! Tinian’s gift was this really cool enchanted ghostly quill that floats around me. Purely decorative, it seems, and really big, as though a Vrykul used to use it. It puts me in mind of the ghost of the Vrykul witch I once met in Stormheim. This will be fun to use to freak people out, though mostly, I think it will look really cool in my new OFFICE in the NEW HOUSE! YAY! Gommaan got me free tickets to Azeroth Championship Wrestling, which is his pro circuit, so that’ll be lots of fun and really exciting to go and see! I LOVE LOVE LOVE every single one of these, as I called them jokingly due to the words in my invitations, “illegal presents,” and I LOVE LOVE LOVE all my really amazing friends! What a great bunch of people!
Whew… After all the food and presents came more water games! Mags was talking about me using frost spells to make ice floats to float on the pool with, which, unbeknownst to her, and thanks to Celeste, I can do! Icebergs! We did some more swimming and hanging out, people got tipsy, and more fun was had. The comedic pirate skit I was hoping to do didn’t happen due to not finding anyone that would like to be actors or actresses in it, but that was okay. We were having such a great time just swimming and hanging out and chatting and stuff, or else diving and dunking each other and stuff, that we still had the best time I’ve had in quite some time, outside of Celeste adventures! And then, it was getting later and later, and people started trickling off. Starlear and Tinian were eventually the final two left, and we’d been talking about Deathrolls, which Starlear has only ever played once, during a Winter Veil morning on Celeste’s front porch in Ironforge, and Tinian hadn’t ever played. They were interested in coming to our Wednesday games sometimes, so I pulled out my picnic blanket from my pack and spread it out in that rowboat that sits on the shore there, and we played for a short time until they, too, got sleepy and went to bed.
After that, I headed back to Celeste. Shortly after I arrived, the gift from Maya and Cari that I was supposed to open in private arrived by gyrocopter as well. It was confusing when I first opened it, as it turned out to just be a big ol’ heap of the same sort of strong, silky-smooth purple ribbon that Maya and Cari had given me before the party. Then we were pulling out short, broad, black leather straps, carabina clips, and other hardware, sorting it all out on the bed and trying to discern what it could be. Then, at the bottom, once we uncovered it, I found the instruction manual for assembly and use. It was called Sparkles’ Sensual S*x Swing! Gosh! I should have known; Sparkles the nickname of a gnomish inventor in Maya and Cari’s guild they work for, the Voyagers. Lex’s crew. She’s always inventing things that make me blush, like the electrified panties that so interested my bestie Nah once. Goodness gracious… anyway… Celeste and I rooted through the parts to the new “swing.” It turned out to be a sort of elaborate set of ribbons and stuff, with the broad leather straps being for sitting on with rump or thighs or slinging behind knees or under feet or behind the back, made to dangle from rafters or other stuff on the ceiling or a wall, and was supposed to be used for… gosh… adult stuff… Maya and Cari, I will get you for this, if it’s the last thing I ever do! Yet… With the ideas Celeste kept coming up with during and after assembly, I confess I can’t complain TOO much… Anyway… Celeste and I, after all that, and after all the partying, after all the playing on the beach and in the pool, after all the amazing food we’d had that day, were utterly wiped out, and we flopped over onto our box-crowded bed upstairs and fell asleep pretty much right away. What a great birthday! And Celeste’s gift she gave news of is still to come! I’m so excited!
Yesterday was more housework, getting the last of the boxes moved in. It’s all here now! YAY! Celeste and I enjoyed an early dinner after we finished moving in, and then I went to the weekly DEATHROLLS game! WOO! The night’s venue, as I decided to give the group somewhat of a break from the Summer Picnic Theme, was still a beach, though it was a tavern ON the beach. It was a tavern in Stormsong Valley that we’ve played at before in the past. The game was me, Nah, Maya, Cari, Zarshal, Mordale, Tilly, and, returning out of nowhere by surprise, my old friend Rionac Altan! I hadn’t seen Rio in ages, not since Lex and Eli’s beach bash early in the summer! It was a huge and chaotic game last night, with Rio and Zarshal, due to a Whisper Dare I gave them after Zarshal had to join on in Rio’s Dare (from rolling a one during Truth or Dare rolls), pretending to be plagued by midges! Zarshal had to get a burning log out of the fireplace and was yelling like crazy as he swung fire at imaginary midges, while Rio was up on a table flailing around fending them off herself. Hah! We had some spicy Truths, including some embarrassing moments and a bit of Screw, Marry, Kill. Mord and Nah both had to eat flowers, roots and all, which was gross! A platter of sausages on a nearby table came into play, including Rio having to blindfold herself and throw one, which got Tilly right in the face, and Tilly and I swordfighting with sausages. Tilly, who hates coffee, had to chug some from Mord’s signature cute coffee thermos with the Pandaren face on the side. That coffee ended up being sprayed all over the table! Maya had a Whisper Dare to me to eventually go over to Mord and surprise him by frantically complimenting him on his amazing, elaborate orange mustache, and begging him to share with me how to grow one myself just like it. I ended up hamming it up a bit more, grabbing his orange sideburns and shaking his head as I pretending to panic as I asked, and he was all, “Beard oil and styling cream! RELEASE MY ‘STACHE!” Hah! And, at one point, we all even had this long streak of just rolling nines, one right after the other, right around the table. Weird! Cari had to spend a few rounds randomly squishing up her nose and snorting like a pig. All in all, it was a great birthday week game of Deathrolls, complete with Nah making the usual mischievous entry when she arrived, using illusion magic to pretend a Naga Siren had made its way up onto the beach and right into the tavern! I almost got her with a frostbolt! HAH! Gosh, I love my amazing friends!
And now, it’s the morning of my final day of the minication before the “workend,” as my bestie Nah calls it. I smell breakfast downstairs. Sausages, blueberry pancakes, scrambled eggs, salsa, coffee. Celeste has been cooking up a storm for me this week, and I and totally going to cook for her birthday week too, when it comes! In the meantime, we’ll tackle the noms, then we’ll tackle the railing so badly needed along the inner and outer wrap-around balconies. The bedroom and bathroom doors, the front and back doors, and the proper windows and sliding glass doors (currently everything is just transparent arcane barriers that are mostly invisible, but give everything the faintest violet haze, if you look closely enough to notice), should all be arriving today or tomorrow. We’ll install those when they do, and the house should be completely built over the coming week! Unpacking and settling in will happen after, and then our house will truly be our home! It’s been a really fun adventure building and moving, and yet, I can’t wait to be done and have a true homestead with my love, Celeste! YAY! What a great birthday present THAT will be!
Nat finished up, smiling joyfully. She tapped off the excess ink from her quill into her inkwell, which awakened the lightly-snoozing Dordy. Knowing this was Nat’s usual move when about to rise, he sat up on the bed, watching her closely as she replaced her quill into its cherrywood case and restoppered her inkwell of purple ink. She got up off the bed, and Dordy jumped down with her. She changed from her sleepwear, throwing on a purple sundress, and returned to her diary. The ink on the pages now dry, she closed it up, returning it to her pack, smiling as she thought of how she’d once again be returning it to a bookshelf next to a proper writing desk, as she used to back in her other home in Darkshire. Her inkwell and quill case followed the diary into the pack, and she placed her pack next to the wall on her side of the bed. Padding downstairs barefoot, Dordy on her heels, she arrived in time to help carry the now-completed breakfast out of the kitchen and into the dining room, sitting next to the table with the view of the ocean, already a favored dining spot for her and Celeste. Nat tried and failed utterly to get more of a hint out of Celeste as to what the trip was supposed to be for, and Celeste laughed as she kept every detail of it close to the vest. The conversation eventually flowed into house plans and then, somehow, into sharing old childhood memories. Dordy had his fill of scraps, his molten belly somehow able to keep him from getting sick or fat from all the people food he always ate. Outside, Cloud Dancer was living up to his name, the serpent-like dragon flying in and out of the cumulous clouds, watched idly by Nat and Celeste as they ate. Onyx was flying much lower, skimming the wavetops for his own breakfast. Neither dragon frightened anyone from nearby Angler’s Wharf, who had enjoyed their own rides with Nat on Onyx from time to time. Nosebleed and Ebonhoof were likely off grazing along Turtle Beach’s foliage. All in all, it was a happy family that was moving into the new construction atop Turtle Bay’s tallest rock spire, with plenty more happy times surely ahead!
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