Rain. It damn near always seemed to rain in Tanaan now. The evening was loud with the sound of it pattering on the leaves and stones, frogs and other amphibians singing their praises. It just made Olliver pull his cloak lower over his brow and scoot closer to the fire. The coals spat and hissed in protest, but stubbornly refused to be extinguished.
Absently cracking his knuckles, Ollie reached out to turn the stick of skewered meat propped over the low flame. Axebeak. The birds were crafty and cunning, but well worth the effort. Not only did they serve as a hearty sized meal, but the hunter had found that the feathers were strong and sturdy – serving as superior fletching. Their namesake beaks could be wrought into handy (if not simple) hatchets in a pinch, too.
The past dozen months had been more productive, more formative than Olliver could ever remember a single year of his life having been – and he could not say that he was sorry for it. Hindsight offered him excellent perspective. He had spent a great deal of his recovery under Niandrian’s expert care regretting his decision to ever come to Draenor, but now he sat in the company of Rangari scouts and rangers having explored a great deal of Talador, Nagrand and Tanaan alongside them. An accomplishment that the hunter would never have dared even dream he might one day claim as his own.
A gust of wind brought the scent of sulphur sweeping up to their camp, silencing what quiet chatter there’d been around the fire. The smell of Felblight was nothing new – sadly the jungle itself had been corrupted within weeks of their arrival and now almost every corner of Tanaan was affected by it. It still brought a sense of unease, though.
“I tire of tarrying here.” One of the males uttered, just loud enough for the group to hear. The Draenei as a whole were exquisitely patient, but their idle hands grew itchy. Ollie had grown to empathise with that. “I tire of the stench of blight. Of sitting by while the blood of our kin has been shed once again by Demonic claw…” There were murmurs of assent. Ollie withdrew his meal from the fire and gently blew on it so as not to scald his tongue.
Ollie hadn’t really been listening to them. It wasn’t that this didn’t concern him, it just wasn’t really his place to comment. The hunter looked up mid-bite to find Xaavan, one of the point scouts, looking at him. Xaavan had become something of a friend (or at least Ollie considered him one), after having taken the most interest in training Ollie since he’d joined their group.
“Uh… I dunno. Go with you?” The question seemed a little redundant, given that he’d followed along and contributed to whatever their squad had been tasked with at the time. Cartography wasn’t exactly his strong suit, but his existing tracking skills had served them well. Xaavan had improved upon his scouting and sniping skills tremendously.
“This is no longer your fight. You cannot hide forever.”
“Excuse me?” Ollie reached for his waterskin. Xaavan made his head hurt sometimes. “I’m not hiding from anything.”
The Draenei blinked. “You did not come into being by arriving in this world, Olliver. You left another life to come here. Perhaps this is the time you returned to it.”
Now it was Ollie’s turn to blink. There’d been occasional chit-chat about his previous life, but on the whole the Rangari were focussed on their tasks. That had suited Ollie, it made for a good distraction at the start. He shifted and set the skin down beside him again without having taken a drink.
“You want me to leave.” Not a question.
Xaavan was irritatingly and sometimes unnervingly serious. His gaze never left Ollie, and his bulk barely moved apart from gentle inspiration and exhalation. “I do not think that is what I said.”
“‘Perhaps it’s time you returned to your ‘real’ life’ sounds kinda dismissive to me.”
Xaavan smirked. A slow, subtle thing that was as much just the vague baring of fangs as anything else. “So you agree it is your real life.”
Friggin’ Draenei and their mind game, word play fuckery.
“I.. Look, okay, yeah. So I had a life before I came to Draenor. So? Pretty much everyone did, right? And it’s not like I had anything going for me there. Just knocked around with no purpose. This?” He gestures to the camp. “This is purpose. This is.. This is direction, and learning, and --”
“And it is time for you to take all this purpose and direction, and find another cause to fuel it into.” Xaavan interrupted. “There is nothing more for you to learn, Olliver. Not here. You have grown exponentially in your time with us, but the truth remains. You are not Rangari. You are not Draenei.”
Olliver snapped his cooking stick in half and threw it into the fire. Petulant. “I have nothing else.” No one else.
“I do not believe that to be true. And if it were? Then now is the time for you to seek out - carve out a path.” Xaavan clapped a heavy blue hand on Ollie’s shoulder, using the hunter as leverage to get to his feet. “I have faith that you will do great things, Olliver Middleton. But you must do them in your own lands, amongst your own people.” With that, Xaavan left the hunter to his thoughts.
The quiet chatter amongst the others continued long into the night. Ollie felt he would never sleep, his mind too busy turning over the things Xaavan had said. Yet it was almost dawn when consciousness found him again, and the hunter found only the embers of the campfire had stayed to keep him company. A note was tucked under his waterskin, though.
Dioniss aca, Olliver Middleton. May your days be long and your hardships few.
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