Moving Day!
(Trigger Warning: mention of sexual assault)
I am back at the inn, packing up a few personal items to take with me when I permanently move to the Damp. My bedroom is finally complete and I am quite pleased with how it has turned out. Dark woods, deep reds, velvet bedding (for those cold nights because they don’t call it the Damp without reason), it is quite perfect. I collected the décor myself from around Azeroth and feel like it reflects my own sense of comfort and personality much as Autumnvale did before I burned it to the ground.
I regret that now. It was silly that in a fit of pique I burned the estate I spent literal years rebuilding and decorating to my own tastes. Then I think of the nursery. A labor of love, with friends helping to paint murals over the walls, build little toys and even an owl mobile for the crib. Those things can never be replaced. I am still surprised at how I reacted, but done is done. I have contracted to have the buildings restored, but it will never be the same. Perhaps that is the point.
I find myself debating on taking Angeline’s staff. It sits in the corner, collecting dust. Too tall for me, the grip too large for my hands and there is a slight crack in the wood. It is without power and unusable now, yet I cannot seem to let it go. I wonder why that is sometimes. I am slowly surpassing the power I was granted from Angeline, helped along by the Bloodcrest Font. I am enjoying the boost and no longer feel unbalanced from it. So why do I keep the staff?
I know the answer. For memories. It is one of my last links to my past with Drex. I hate him, yet I still love him as I suppose only a widow can. As time passes you begin to remember the happy memories and let the bad ones fall by the wayside. I think of his crooked smile, his lighthearted manner and yes, even his naïveté. Especially his naïveté. How in Light’s name did he survive before he met me? The man was shot numerous times, attacked randomly and not so randomly once he met me. Sheer luck is my only answer. Luck and power. Honestly, he was an incredibly powerful mage. One of the most powerful I have ever seen, even though he rarely used that power.
I cannot forgive him for leaving. I cannot forgive him for taking Emily away, for saying I was a danger to her. Mainly, I cannot forgive him for not believing me about the whispers. I sometimes find myself wondering if he rethought his views once he knew others around Azeroth were also hearing them? Or did he dig in, as he sometimes did, and refuse to believe me? ME, the person who showed him so much about my magic. It enraged me. So much so that I burned down my estate. I am also still uncertain my father didn’t have something to do with Drex’s behavior. But I am digressing.
Thorne will continue to stay in my suite at the inn while I am gone, refusing to consider joining the Sanctum but still willing to stand by my side and work my will in many ways. She has always been loyal, since I helped save her years ago from a brutal assault by a Death Knight. He had been her intended mate and died during the Third War. No one knew he had been raised until he found and tried to r*pe her in the forest.
I happened to be in the area on a job, heard the fight and investigated. Thorne was fighting him but it was just becoming obvious how much power a raised Death Knight had and she needed help. I helped and together we put him down. She was shaken and grateful. I insisted she owed me nothing. She disagreed and has been by my side and done my bidding ever since. However, I know her limits and do not ask her to push herself beyond them. Which is why I do not push her on joining us. She would not do so, and she often cautions me about how enmeshed I am becoming with the Sanctum. Yet I tell her I feel welcome here in ways I have rarely felt welcomed since Aeras and certainly unlike how I felt in the cloister. I never truly felt at home there.
Back to the present, I have decided. The staff will remain here. The past will remain here. I will go to the Damp renewed and refreshed, letting the past rest. It is a hurdle I am finding easier and easier to climb each time it rears its head and that pleases me immensely.
