Ji had been flitting about nonstop since she arrived in Azsuna, to the point that she hardly remembered to eat or sleep. Wartime healing was so much different than anything she’d ever done before, but she was starting to almost enjoy it.
Well, save that one tauren girl. She’d only been out here a few months, but her unit was hit hard and fast and she seemed to have suffered enough damage for all of them. The burns on her arms and nasty cut on her cheek were the least of her worries, and Ji made a point of taking time to visit with her in hopes of healing the wounds to the poor woman’s spirit.
“So!” She sat on the edge of the cot, as she always did, smoothing out the blankets and offering the woman a warm smile. “How are you feeling today?”
Bahuurra avoided her gaze, curled up with her knees to her chest with her tangle of hair pulled over one shoulder. The healer was far too perky and it was driving her insane, but she didn’t even have the heart to say so. Ji must have sensed it, though, scooting in a bit closer and making a show of checking the bandages on the huntress’ arms.
“I just wanted to let you know that I’m sending you home. I think the best medicine for you right now would be your baby resting in your arms.”
Hura looked up at that, her brow furrowed as she tried to process what she’d heard. “Home? But am I not still needed here?”
“You’re needed by your family. I don’t really care about anything else. You’ve already done more than enough.”
“Are you close to yours? Your family?”
Ji grimaced and leaned back, shaking her head so furiously that her ponytail swings from side to side. “I would do everything in my power to keep from going back home to Pandaria right now. I’d rather trade places with you.”
“Surely they cannot be that bad,” Hura only seems more confused, absentmindedly rubbing her arms just above the bandages. “Why would you not want to be with those who love you? Some of us do not have that option.”
“Oh, dear. It would take me weeks to explain. Suffice to say that my stuffy old father still insists that I marry a cabbage farmer, I shared a farm with all of my brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles and my ANCIENT grandmother, we ate carrots at literally every meal, my parents never bought any good books, we-”
Hura cut her off by raising her hands and shaking her head, suddenly exhausted without having done anything. “Forget I even asked you…”
"this is all a fucking disaster." and "just don’t fuck it up." One each for Ji and Mathani but you get to pick which for which.
“Just don’t fuck it up.”
Mathani snorts, shaking her head and pushing her sleeves up past her elbows. “It’s nice to know you have so much faith in my success, Master Runewood.” She spits the title with as much insolence as she dares use with Bodiway - which turns out to be quite a bit. She doesn’t want to risk him backing out on giving her lessons, but Earthmother, she really wanted to punch him in the face some days.
This is one of them. Still, she should probably behave. This is significantly more interesting than kneading bread.
~~~~~~~~~
“This is all a fucking disaster.”
Ji-hing hardly even recognizes her sister’s handwriting anymore, and she is beyond impressed that the letter managed to find her in Thunder Totem. She chews on the end of her quill nervously as she tries to think of some sort of explanation and comes up empty, leaning back in the chair with a groan.
She knew her mother had seen her with Akota, of course, and somewhere in the back of her mind she knew it would come back to bite her in the ass someday, but surely her sister was being overdramatic, right?
11. Do they have any special diet requirements? Are they a vegetarian? Vegan? Have any allergies?
Welp, my answer for this is a big, boring no, so how about I just give some basic dietary habits on the main few?Hura will eat pretty much anything. And probably too much of it. Her favorites are dumplings from the little tavern in Halfhill, and chicken wings from the Faire.Ji-hing, in contrast, discovered the meat & taters lifestyle when she came to Kalimdor, and never looked back. But, she does end most days with a few mugs of beer or a pot of tea.Nak’tah is getting a lot better about having food at meals instead of liquor. I’m proud of him.Pay’ashe…well, do you remember those commercials for Hardees or Carl’s Jr or whatever where the lady is eating a cheeseburger, but sexy? That’s Paya.Yurthelle doesn’t eat except in social situations. For obvious reasons.
(Have some Ji-hing, during one of her many fights with @dozyox ‘s Akota))
I can rest when I get to Thunder Totem.
Ji-hing couldn’t believe that she had actually told herself something so ridiculous. Rest is for people who don’t have anything else demanding their attention. Rest is for people who aren’t in the middle of a godsdamned war.
She heaved a sigh as she sat another scroll aside, reaching for the next in the same motion and stealing a glance around the room to see if anyone had snuck in as she read. No one had, of course, but a little nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach had truly hoped for a different story. It was more distracting than anything, and she pushed a stray hair back out of her eyes and began to read the next scroll.
The healing techniques of the Highmountain were fascinating; information that any other time she would have consumed like water after a week in the desert. She tried to force herself to try harder, to be excited about learning, but overall she just felt like...well, like shit.
No motivation, no focus, a soreness in her feet that was entirely new to her. She wanted nothing more than to cuddle up in her big old bed back in Orgrimmar with a cup of tea and…
Part of her, of course, knew that was why she was so distracted. The rest of her was refusing to speak to the enlightened part, but at this point it was screaming so loudly that she would have to address it. She had so quickly been scooped up into the work of learning new herbs and speaking to new healers that she hadn’t even seen Akota, her last glimpse of him far from memorable as they approached the tunnel leading into the lower level of the city.
Glare, she corrected herself. I glared at him.
That only served to further sour her mood, and she shook her head as she rolled the scroll back up between her paws. She had been unreasonable. And snippy. And as stubborn as...what had he said? A kodo with a toothache? He wasn’t far off, was he?
She had been so tired, so sore, so absolutely finished with that journey that she had let her temper run away with her mouth. And to what cause? Getting him to say that he loved her? What kind of a shallow bitch would risk everything for some fucking words? If he acts like he loves you, then surely he loves you.
But...does he act like it?
Of course he could be flirty, and cuddly, and at times the words that dripped from his lips were sweeter than all the honey in the world, but to how many women had he spoken those same words? He was probably so practiced at flattery and saying just the right thing that he didn’t even have to pay attention, anymore. But, then again, how often did he say the wrong thing? How often had he offended her or hurt her feelings and not known how to react? Surely that was genuine.
Or maybe he just doesn’t care enough to try…
She sighed aloud and pursed her lips, angry with herself for even thinking such a thing. Of course, she’d wondered for a while, but allowing it to creep its way into conscious thought was a different beast. If he didn’t care, why had he stayed with her so long? She had made herself far too easy of a target for him, so it definitely wasn’t any sense of accomplishment. He could be lazy, she supposed, but staying with someone because it was more simple than finding someone else didn’t at all seem like the type of thing he would do. He lived for compliments and winks and any other boosts to his ego. It couldn’t be that.
He thought her so weak, so helpless. He treated her like his grandmother’s porcelain tea set, setting her down so gently and making sure she was never touched. He’d gotten so upset when she stayed to fight that awful thing in Val’sharah, and she’d wondered at the time if it hurt his pride that she was able to harm it more than he. So much of his personality was hidden by that damn bravado, but the look on his face…
He had been genuinely worried. There was no questioning that. He had to care about her on some level, at least. What level that was, perhaps she would never know.
And that hurt. How hard is it to tell someone that you care about them? If she could scream her love for him to the heavens every night, she would, but she’d only uttered the phrase to his conscious body once, and even then she hadn’t managed to say it in a language that he speaks. So many times she had expressed feelings for him only to see him shy away, to shut down. She had read books on psychology, she knew that he wasn’t avoiding the topic to hurt her.
So, why can’t I stop thinking about it?
Even if he didn’t love her, she just wanted to hear him say it. His big goofy face with that lazy drawl telling her that she really was just an extra long stop between his typical conquests. For some reason, even that thought didn’t sting as badly as the reality of ignorance. The guessing games regarding the longevity of their relationship. She could probably handle him actually leaving significantly better than the fear that he could, and her psychology books weren’t helping her at all with interpreting that.
What would she do if she confronted him about it and he did react that way? If he did leave her, or say that he would get bored soon enough? She had mentioned going back home in the context of being too late to save him in battle, but she couldn’t exactly “tip some dirt over him” if he wasn’t dead. Would her apartment ever feel the same without the bull lounging in the bed as she worked or read? Could she ever sleep tucked into someone else’s arms?
Gods, that was another issue altogether. It took her thirty five fucking years to find this one...would another take just as long? Would they tease her, and tweak her tail, and know just how to get under her skin in the most perfectly infuriating way?
She didn’t want to be with anyone else. She’d let herself fall head over heels for Akota, of all people. The exact opposite of that damned cabbage farmer, yes, but still not necessarily the best choice for her. Stability could be boring, but Akota was a whole different sort of nonsense. Really, if he did leave and she found herself even slightly surprised, she was an idiot and had been all along. It wasn’t even something that could be waved off as being “a hopeless romantic, tee hee.”
So she would confront him about it. That much was settled. She gave a nod to no one in particular, mostly to make herself feel better about the second most terrifying decision she had made in her life. She would just ask him, straightforward, if he loved her or had any intention of staying with her. She was going to do it, right now.
She made it to the door before she panicked, which was pretty impressive for her. Curling back up with the scroll seemed a far more suitable way to spend the afternoon, after all. And besides, she didn’t even know where he had wandered off to, so how could she confront him?
🐉 - Mythical Creature ⚡️ - Weather and 🌼 - Flower for Ji, Mathani and Nak'tah (Because I'm greediest~)
I’m cheating and looking up flower symbolism, just FYI. PS THIS WAS HARD.
Ji-hing:
-Mythical Creature: Not to go with stereotypes, but I’m pretty sure her short temper and book hoarding would qualify Ji as a dragon by most definitions.
-Weather: One of those summer storms that suddenly appear in a blue sky, with thunder and lightning galore, but gone just as quickly as it arrived.
-Flower: An amaryllis, both because of the legend/myth behind it and its actual meaning of determination and love. I won’t bore you with a copy/paste of the story, but just know that it’s almost as dramatic as she is.
Nak’tah:
-Mythical Creature: All right, I know this is ironic because he’s a Tauren, but for real, a minotaur. They can be symbolic of internal conflict and the struggle with one’s animal nature, which I think is a great parallel to Nak’s struggle with his life as a warrior and nothing more.
-Weather: April showers. It may eventually give way to May flowers, but we’ll just have to see. As of right now, it’s mostly rain and an annoying variation in temperatures from day to day.
-Flower: A foxtail lily, for endurance. He’s just kept on trucking through all of the shit life has thrown at him (despite some close calls), and he’ll continue to do so. It has to get better at some point, right?
Mathani:
-Mythical Creature: A Will-o’-the-wisp. She’s hardly more than a ghost, and seems harmless at a glance, but if followed she’ll lead you far from safe paths. OR, BECAUSE I’M INDECISIVE, a wraith, a mere shadow or ghost of who she once was, clinging to this world by a thread.
-Weather: The eerie calm during a tornado warning, when the air is a bit too still and your hair is standing on end.
-Flower: Bellwort. It symbolizes hopelessness. Enough said.
1. A memory that leaves them laughing. ~ I think this would be the way she met Akota. She certainly didn’t expect anyone to notice that she was reading a raunchy romance novel, much less comment on the shirtless tauren on the front. It was probably the most embarrassing moment of her life, at the time, but looking back she finds it hilarious.
2. A memory that makes them cry. ~ When she very nearly lost Akota. Flipping through every book on herbs and healing she had, her hair falling in her face because she couldn’t be bothered to take the seconds away from her efforts to tie it up again, the knot in her stomach that at least kept her from needing to eat during the whole mess. It frightened her more than anything else in her life ever had, and it still hurts her to think about.
3. A memory that leaves them feeling lonely. ~ After a year or two of that only child life, Ji quickly found herself sharing a room with, oh, half a dozen sisters and cousins. Of course they fought constantly, favorite blankets and hair ties would go missing, but every now and then they would have a night of peace and get along well with one another. The night before Ji left for training was one of those, with all of the girls talking of silly things like the sorts of boys (or girls) she might meet, insisting that she do something nicer with her hair just in case, and mostly getting in some quality time before they lost the eldest of their lot. She really can’t handle sleeping in a room alone, now.
Nak'tah -
1. A memory that gets their heart pounding. ~ His first kiss, without a doubt. The guy is long gone, and he can barely even remember where they were or how it came about, but he certainly remembers the butterflies and soft lips and feeling kind of dizzy? And being entirely overwhelmed in the best of ways.
2. Wildcard!!! A memory that leaves them feeling lonely. ~ The first time that he realized that his family wasn’t coming to save him. The entire trip with the slavers, he was certain that they would be there at any moment to bring him back home, but after the first day he was handed an axe and thrown into the arena, reality began to sink in. He curled up in a ball and cried and cried, but it became quickly apparent that it wasn’t going to do a damn thing to help him. I suppose you could say he has some issues trusting people, now.
Mathani -
1. A memory that made them feel special. ~ You know, I let this one in particular stew in my brain overnight. I thought about writing something from far in her past to put here, but at this point in her life she’s blocked all of that out. So, I’m going to take the easy but accurate route, here, and say that there isn’t one.
2. A memory that makes them feel guilty. ~ That would easily be the loss of her family. It was one of the few times that they weren’t making a family day of taking their produce to trade, so she mounted their kodo alone and ended up being the only one spared in the Cataclysm. That final goodbye, insisting to the kids that they stay with their father and do their chores instead of coming along with her, just this once…
