A Troll, a Goblin, and a Horde of Elves Walk into a Bar
@indy-et-al
UNDER CONSOLIDATION. Pardon the mess. A home for Indraste Darktalon (and family), Rethea Emberfall, Attzi Gearburst, and Iranji. Follows from literalbirdperson. All characters can be found making mistakes on Wyrmrest Accord.
Hiiii, I'm in the middle of consolidating several RP blogs into this one since I tend to use them for writing, aesthetics, and memes rather than Tumblr RP. I think that will make things neater on my end in the long run.
I'm trying to queue so the posts from the retiring blogs only come in a couple times a day. But sometimes I forget to hit queue, so I'm going to also add old content in stages to save your dashes.
The tag for the old posts, FYI, is #blog consolidation for sanity's sake
Pardon the dust! <3
Indy wishes everyone good luck with the latest apocalypse! She's enjoying her convalescence.
(She'll get back in the fight eventually. She always does.)
(I know y'all are fiending about Indy and Blix's reunion. It's coming, I promise!!! That RP is happening tomorrow, and will be written about soon. :') Scheduling is fun.)
read more about the daily writing challenge for this week here @daily-writing-challenge
word count: 1052
content warning: death (former)
summary: Relearning your own life can be an odd thing, especially when your own resurrection isn't fully understood.
mentions: @indy-et-al
It was always an odd thing, to recall the past six thousand years. Even moreso, when Blix considered that such a span of time, in all technicality, shouldn't have been possible at all.
The figments of her life as it was on Azeroth were unclear: details long-forgotten, and yet carefully catalogued by a self she hadn't been in that time. Stashed away, where only she could find them, and left for later discovery.
For the "what if" that hung over her: what if I make it home, after all?
She hadn't expected to, after the first century.
She'd given up all hope, after the first millennium.
She'd forgotten it was an option after the fifth.
And yet, here she stood: human, alive, holding a carefully-preserved journal that - by all accounts - had been written less than two years ago in her own penmanship. One of thirteen, which painstakingly chronicled every memory, every thought, every small gesture, every story in the life of Alexandra Blix Voronin.
It felt impossible for so much to have passed, and yet almost nothing at all. It felt like, in that grand span of how time was perceived in the Shadowlands (she remembered reading a line where she'd written it's known that time passes differently, in that it fails to exist at all in the vacuum of death) that she'd entirely forgotten who she once was.
Maybe, she thought, that was part of the point of it all: for you to let go of your life, of your past, of who you were, in favor of eternal rest. Of transcending your own potential.
She certainly felt as though that had happened, of course… but it didn't make coming back to the present, as if waking from some terribly long dream, any easier. The journal she held, now, was the last of her story: it covered the last of the years she'd spent with Indraste, as well as her life as a musician. All of the details were there - names she knew again, now. Ones she had yet to recognize and associate. Carefully-detailed accounts of appearances, personalities, quirks, anything she could remember that was ascribed to a person named friend.
Most painstakingly of all, she had written a section on Indraste, herself. She'd talked of her wife, of course, throughout most of these journals - but the entry she read and re-read, now, drove a stake through her heart.
Blix,
In the event you ever recover this journal, then you've read far enough to know that Indraste is singlehandedly the most important soul in your life.
I know that it's odd, having to recall all of this: having to piece yourself together, bit by bit, in hopes of fitting into the shape that you once held. But this is, maybe, the most important piece of all.
By now, you know that there's a ring that calls you back to her. Indy is the love of my life - your life. She is everything you ever could have hoped for, and more. She's your peace, your sanctuary, the fire that asks, begs for you to just survive.
We failed her in that, but there's a second chance, now, clearly. I'm praying you take it.
I know that death changes people: you and I have spoken to the souls of the long-departed long enough to understand that on an intrinsic level. It's important that you take each and every piece of this to heart, and remember it, and live it.
She needs you, just as much as you need her. Don't you dare hurt her again, not the way you already have by giving yourself this death sentence. I don't care if it means bending yourself into a shape you don't even remember, you don't hurt her. If you can't remember how to be me? Stay the fuck away from my wife.
If you know what's good for you, then you will. Don't think I don't have a plan for that, too. I'm you, remember?
And I know this world better than you think I do.
So get off your ass, close this book, and go fucking fight already. Go remember why the hell you cared enough to write these journals to begin with, and don't you dare ever pick up that bone blade again, cursed thing it is.
Fuck dying. You have life to live.
- Your past self
Blix took in a breath, closing her eyes as she ran her thumb over the spots on the page where she knew that tears had marked the parchment. Of course she remembered Indy. Of course she remembered every part of that beautiful point in her life.
It'd been the first thing she'd properly remembered, after all: violet hair, feathers, and quiet nights spent hunched over maps and enchanting materials as she and Indy worked in perfect synchronization. It'd been music played, when Indy was brave enough to do so. It'd been days in Nagrand, pissing off Bertram (much to Blix's own chagrin) and reflecting over raw steaks and broad horizons. It'd been a flowered wedding, and a promise made just before Blix's death had come for her cloaked in crimson and with all the songs of a place she had yet to truly know:
No matter what it takes, if I have the chance to come back to you, I'll take it.
She hadn't realized just how much that had meant.
The rest of her life, of course, remained blurred at the edges. It was becoming clearer, the cracks in the glass slowly being mended to form the mosaic that had formed thirty years out of nearly seven-thousand in a place that, truly, spanned eternity.
True resurrection was, very much, confusing. It was difficult to manage, being pulled from one's grave with none of the touch of a death knight to counter the flood of emotion. It was steadily remapping the paths of one's own life, and stumbling day after day into new information that - in some manner - had already been known for your entire life.
It was remembering the love of your life.
Tomorrow, Blix promised herself.
I'll see her tomorrow.
And she continued her path through the woods from her homestead, steadily making her way across that last, small distance towards the answer she'd sought since the moment she first reopened her eyes.
read more about the daily writing challenge for this week here @daily-writing-challenge
word count: 746
content warning: none
summary: Blix is back, after a complicated series of events. She wishes she could just get the hardest part over with, already.
mentions: @indy-et-al, @ranekvilmas
when it's lovely, i believe in anything
what does love mean, when the end is rolling in?
let it go, let it stay, can we love one another
cold, is it safe to be warm in the summer?
who knows?
i said who knows?
As Blix sat on the cliffside at the edge of her homestead, looking out at the distant, clouded water of the river that divided her patch of land from the brighter boughs of Elwynn, a strange heartache settled upon her. Something she couldn't quite describe.
She knew, in the time that she had been… gone, that circumstances had changed. It had been well over a year - the world had pushed forward, new endeavors had begun, and her memory had faded to some. Some had remembered. She knew the look in Ranek's eye when he spoke to her, knew the weighted distance that laid between herself and Indraste, who she still hadn't had the courage to approach despite the call of the wedding ring on her finger saying here, here, come home, she's here.
A whisper at the back of her mind - one of those three spirits who'd found it fit to linger after this… odd resurrection she'd been subjected to - reminded her that perhaps, there was a good reason for it. Perhaps it was better this way, allowing the distance and time rather than ripping the wound open anew.
She knew otherwise. Knew that Indraste would feel the pulse in her ring, too, and knew that she would know. Knew that the time she could reasonably stay away without calling it avoidance was running drastically short, and eventually… well, she'd just have to suck it up and do something.
But she knew other things, too. Knew that the small ways she'd found to at least get an idea of Indy's wellbeing revealed things that indicated, to Blix at least, that Indy may not even want Blix in her life anymore. Present circumstances dictated an abundance of caution, more than likely, and Blix knew that she was - truly - a wrecking ball that would decimate every bit of the quiet peace that the former healer had fought so hard to achieve for herself.
It was that fear that kept Blix away, and that same fear that caused this ache in her chest, now. She knew, of course, that the only way to truly find out was to go, to just… talk to her. Make herself known, again. Accept the fear of being known, of the possibility of hearing you aren't the same person I knew, and finding her way through life again, regardless. She knew.
So why was it so difficult?
One hand came up, woven of the vine that Indraste had so, so carefully grown, and pressed at the space on her chest over her heart as she took a deep, shaking breath. She'd missed being alive, she realized - she'd gotten lucky to get another shot at it. To be able to try this, again. Eternity in death was just that, and she had no interest in sprinting back towards it right now. Towards the same door in the afterlife that she'd taken to begin with, towards whatever cacophony would wait behind it. No. This was a reprieve: a true returning, and she had the chance to love life, to cherish it, to cherish Indy again.
The idea of being able to run her hands through violet hair and pull out feather after feather made her ache for the want of it. Time in her afterlife had passed so strangely - despite its passage (what had appeared, at least to her, to be thousands of years) she still found herself so desperately enamored that it drove every instinct of herself to cling on to the memory. She'd promised Indraste, all that time ago, in a soft whisper and with tears lining mismatched eyes, that if she found a way, she'd take it.
And here she was, afraid to even go home.
Afraid that she'd be rejected.
Afraid of what she would find.
Afraid of tearing the wound open again.
Through all of it, still hoping, hoping, hoping that maybe she stood a chance. She'd take as many hits as it required: she'd endure a storm of punches and feathers and rage just for a glimmer of it. She'd prostrate herself, she'd do damned-near anything.
Blix's head had turned, however slowly, towards the direction she knew her ring was leading, and she only just realized it as she stared off towards a coastline in the distance.
So close, and yet with what felt like a universe between them.
Softly, so softly that it could barely be heard in the shadows between the tree branches, Blix whispered.
Title: Heartbeat
Word Count: 1404
Summary: Indy sends an invitation for Blix to visit. Sort of.
Note: I've been horrible about posting character writing here, so I'll be backlogging a few Indy stories so people know what she got up to while Blix was dead.
Indy was nearing 900 years old, and this was the first time feeling the pulse of someone she cared about broke her heart. The last few months of her life had been full of survivor's guilt, and anger, and grief so deep that her death knight brother had to haul her out of it.
She loved her family. And she was glad she'd found them again. But she was also acutely aware that she was alive, and they were not, and that meant that there were things about one another they'd never be able to fully get. She'd met Blix at a time when she was struggling very hard with feeling like she'd abandoned her family, and wondering if her parents were alive, and seeing Teldrassil's corpse in nightmare after nightmare—
Indy took a deep breath. Her anger at Elune was the last thing she needed to dwell on.
She had punished herself physically in ways that made her ashamed, now.
Coming back to the world, getting a job, meeting people and making new friends, settling down in one place and forcing herself to stop sleeping in trees (mostly), all of it had helped remind her that she could be a survivor and not be unworthy of care by default.
Blix had been struggling with similar demons when they'd met. Over the decade and change they were together, they had held one another up when life felt like it was dragging them down. They had been good for one another.
They'd convinced one another to go to therapy, for fuck's sake.
Blix had watched Indy come to terms with finding her parents, not alive, but also not gone. She'd watched old wounds tear open as Indy and the family she'd missed so much all struggled with what had changed (and struggled to recognize that old flaws were among all the other traits that had fallen by the wayside).
She'd watched Indy struggle with guilt over being her only living blood family. She'd watched the moments when Indy couldn't hide that she was painfully aware that in the grand scheme of things, she would be mourning Blix, too.
Indy had trusted that Blix understood the one weak point in her armor that she had not been able to improve. No. Indy knew Blix understood. Indy had never been able to stop feeling like she had failed her brother and her parents by not being there when they died. She felt like she had abandoned them, even though she hadn't even known they were in danger on each of their last days alive.
Indy knew Blix understood this. And she had still forced Indy to stand aside and watched her intentionally destroy herself. She had told Indy before it happened that she was going to die, and forced her not to try to intervene.
She had convinced herself that this was in Indy's best interests. She had told Indy she was about to be killed, asked her to enchant their wedding rings so that they would echo the heartbeat of the wearer so that Indy would know when it happened, and then she had left.
Indy had literally felt her wife die, and she hadn't been there to try and stop it. It was the same thing that had happened with her brother, and her parents, only worse; she'd been forced to know it was going to happen, to feel Blix's heart cease beating, and then be left to try not to tear herself apart because she was too tired to face the aftermath.
In the first few weeks after Blix's death, Indy hated her. But the rage was only tearing her wounds wider, and in the end she asked her friends and family to help her remember how to take care of herself on the days where she was too guilty to get out of bed.
It had been a difficult year. The world was falling apart, because of course it was. At first Indy had tried to throw herself into the fray in an effort to find a focus, but her heart wasn't in healing. She'd been a healer for long enough to know that was a sign to stop before she did more harm than good to those in her care.
She was tired. Her brother and parents were tired. And for the first time in three centuries, the Darktalons collectively decided to take care of themselves and each other. The world hadn't ended yet; if it was finally going to, they were going to be together at its brink.
They had moved out into the quieter areas of Alliance territory. Indy agreed to run an inn her brother's ridiculously rich girlfriend purchased on a whim (said with love, as Reth was also one of her favorite people). She dropped off the map in terms of her old work and her friends, but she was too fragile to spend time in places that made her heartsick.
Indy would need to resurface, reconnect, and apologize, but first she needed to have firm ground to stand on. She had a quiet place and quiet work, and that seemed like a good starting point to try to get her life together. She kept the ring on her finger, and she kept including Blix's last name when she introduced herself. There were still days that felt like the emotional equivalent of being pulled apart by lasher vines, but Indy knew grief took time. Blix might have hurt her in the worst way possible in the end, but she let the good memories stay good, because Indy wouldn't be where she was if she hadn't met her wife.
Then the ring had resumed tracking Blix's heartbeat. When Indy realized what she was feeling and connected what that meant, she punched a hole in the kitchen cabinet and had to go cry herself sick in her bedroom.
Blix had promised if she could find a way back from death that she would, but Indy had been told there would be no body to bury at her funeral. Someone who has been healing for as long as she had knew what that meant. Indy had grown Blix a living hand when hers had been amputated at the wrist, but she could not create a body for someone who was absent.
Apparently, there was someone out there who could. Every wound Blix had inflicted by the way she chose to die tore open when Indy realized she'd been put through a year of grief for—
It didn't matter. On a personal level or a cosmic level, apparently. Indy continued to lean on the lift she was building for support, and braced herself for what was bound to be a very painful and confusing reunion.
A few days passed. The ring kept beating steadily, but Blix didn't appear. Indy knew that she wasn't hard to find; on the other hand, Blix could be anywhere.
It didn't take long for news to travel to her inn and inform her that Blix was in the same region, which left zero chance that she didn't know where to find Indy. She considered that Blix might not be interested in reconnecting, but if so… why hadn't she taken off the ring? Indy hadn't been the one to abandon Blix, so she didn't feel particularly motivated to go find her.
Blix chose to walk out of her life. Indy felt it was only fair that Blix would be the one who chose to ask if she could come back.
Time passed. The steady beating of the ring tapped into the angry streak her family was known for, and eventually Indy decided that she'd had enough of waiting. She stood in front of her jewelry box and took her wedding band off of her finger for the first time since Blix had proposed to her. It wasn't an easy thing to remove, especially not from fingers that were now more talon than anything else; a few scales went with it, but with soap and cursing all things are possible.
She looked at the ring in her hand, well aware that the second she dropped it into the box in front of her that Blix's would stop beating. If that didn't make her show up and face the woman she'd left a widow, then nothing would.
read more about the daily writing challenge for this week here @daily-writing-challenge
word count: 746
content warning: none
summary: Blix is back, after a complicated series of events. She wishes she could just get the hardest part over with, already.
mentions: @indy-et-al, @ranekvilmas
when it's lovely, i believe in anything
what does love mean, when the end is rolling in?
let it go, let it stay, can we love one another
cold, is it safe to be warm in the summer?
who knows?
i said who knows?
As Blix sat on the cliffside at the edge of her homestead, looking out at the distant, clouded water of the river that divided her patch of land from the brighter boughs of Elwynn, a strange heartache settled upon her. Something she couldn't quite describe.
She knew, in the time that she had been… gone, that circumstances had changed. It had been well over a year - the world had pushed forward, new endeavors had begun, and her memory had faded to some. Some had remembered. She knew the look in Ranek's eye when he spoke to her, knew the weighted distance that laid between herself and Indraste, who she still hadn't had the courage to approach despite the call of the wedding ring on her finger saying here, here, come home, she's here.
A whisper at the back of her mind - one of those three spirits who'd found it fit to linger after this… odd resurrection she'd been subjected to - reminded her that perhaps, there was a good reason for it. Perhaps it was better this way, allowing the distance and time rather than ripping the wound open anew.
She knew otherwise. Knew that Indraste would feel the pulse in her ring, too, and knew that she would know. Knew that the time she could reasonably stay away without calling it avoidance was running drastically short, and eventually… well, she'd just have to suck it up and do something.
But she knew other things, too. Knew that the small ways she'd found to at least get an idea of Indy's wellbeing revealed things that indicated, to Blix at least, that Indy may not even want Blix in her life anymore. Present circumstances dictated an abundance of caution, more than likely, and Blix knew that she was - truly - a wrecking ball that would decimate every bit of the quiet peace that the former healer had fought so hard to achieve for herself.
It was that fear that kept Blix away, and that same fear that caused this ache in her chest, now. She knew, of course, that the only way to truly find out was to go, to just… talk to her. Make herself known, again. Accept the fear of being known, of the possibility of hearing you aren't the same person I knew, and finding her way through life again, regardless. She knew.
So why was it so difficult?
One hand came up, woven of the vine that Indraste had so, so carefully grown, and pressed at the space on her chest over her heart as she took a deep, shaking breath. She'd missed being alive, she realized - she'd gotten lucky to get another shot at it. To be able to try this, again. Eternity in death was just that, and she had no interest in sprinting back towards it right now. Towards the same door in the afterlife that she'd taken to begin with, towards whatever cacophony would wait behind it. No. This was a reprieve: a true returning, and she had the chance to love life, to cherish it, to cherish Indy again.
The idea of being able to run her hands through violet hair and pull out feather after feather made her ache for the want of it. Time in her afterlife had passed so strangely - despite its passage (what had appeared, at least to her, to be thousands of years) she still found herself so desperately enamored that it drove every instinct of herself to cling on to the memory. She'd promised Indraste, all that time ago, in a soft whisper and with tears lining mismatched eyes, that if she found a way, she'd take it.
And here she was, afraid to even go home.
Afraid that she'd be rejected.
Afraid of what she would find.
Afraid of tearing the wound open again.
Through all of it, still hoping, hoping, hoping that maybe she stood a chance. She'd take as many hits as it required: she'd endure a storm of punches and feathers and rage just for a glimmer of it. She'd prostrate herself, she'd do damned-near anything.
Blix's head had turned, however slowly, towards the direction she knew her ring was leading, and she only just realized it as she stared off towards a coastline in the distance.
So close, and yet with what felt like a universe between them.
Softly, so softly that it could barely be heard in the shadows between the tree branches, Blix whispered.
Look at how gorgeous! Look at how soft! On the left we have Sam with honeysuckle, and on the right we have Rethea with jasmine. I think I rant about how perfectly bigmeandragonlady does hair, and now I get to rant about flora, too.
Have a vgen link. You know. In case you want to check out the commission options for yourself. :D
