"Of Priorities."

((Not told from Astarin's POV but centric to him, so this is where it gets shoved. And as with many of my snippets, this is not fleshed out enough (in my opinion) to warrant posting anywhere else as 'complete'.))




It started with gold, and a simple question.

Gold used to be Merosiel's only motivation in the world; everything else had long since paled in comparison or proved only a disappointment. But with time, and further disappointment, gold, too, had begun to lose its specific luster.

A part of Merosiel recognizes this: he's slowly, with each passing day that adds to his age, losing the will to wake up the next, and not even a salary can help that.

He does not know how Rahmiel has weathered twice the lifespan Merosiel has, but it doesn't matter. The old man has the rotten little fruit to see at the end of each day, and Merosiel has nothing.

The quel'dorei hadn't taken the thousands of little opportunities that had presented themselves when he'd had the chance, and they had dwindled and then slipped through his grey, spidery fingers when Mathadris had waltzed into their lives and just as succinctly taken up residence in his former master's bed.

That boat had sailed, as the humans might say, and Merosiel now spent much of his time mired in regret and bitter loneliness. He had no master, no contract, no salary, and he had no one who really seemed to care if he existed. He was a ghost in the lives of those he came into contact with. Nebulous and distant and just passing through.

Of those he had made brief acquaintance with, some had been kind in their own fashion. But they all had their own lives, their own concerns. Everyone did. Except Merosiel. He had no purpose anymore, no reason to do anything but sit in a gutter and feel sorry for himself. On top of all the rest of the reasons to loathe himself, these feelings of self-pity disgust him, yet he can't find any reason to feel differently.

"Astarin is missing."

He heard this through the usual channels--which in general for Merosiel equated to spying.

Yet, no one seemed particularly concerned over the albino's absence. Not enough to do anything about it, at least. This struck a strangely sympathetic chord within the quel'dorei; it spurred him into getting up each day and spreading himself thin over the contacts he'd accumulated throughout his long life.

He began calling in favors, debts; he'd amassed quite a few at this point, and used more of them up in this single question than he'd done in getting himself set up in Silvermoon, posing as an Emissary--until Sunsear had made it 'legal.'

It was a simple question, with no apparent answer: "Where is he?"


---

Merosiel likes to think that he understands how it would feel to disappear off the face of Azeroth and have no one notice.

There are days it is a comfort to believe he will not be missed nor sought after if he disappears; then there are days like today--when the melancholy and depression hits him so swiftly that he might as well have been sucker-punched in the gut--that Merosiel wishes he has someone who would notice, who would search for him if he vanished and never resurfaced again. It is this second thought that has him shrugging off his apathy and lethargy to search.

And Astarin had always been kind to him when they were forced by circumstance or by design to work together. Or, at least, kind in the paladin's strange, distant sort of way, which for Merosiel, amounts to the same.

He had been the only one who had ever made an effort to learn signs to communicate with Merosiel easier, too. While his 'accent' had been clumsy, and his movements stiff with lack of practice or knowledge, the effort had touched the quel'dorei, made him feel somewhat less of an inconvenience to be around. This made Merosiel feel he had been, regardless of the reasoning in the draenei's head, somehow worth the time spent to learn; and it was that realization that had always warmed a small space within the elf whenever he found himself in Astarin's presence.

He wonders now what prompted Astarin's efforts, and regrets that he never properly thanked the little draenei for this morsel of unrequitted kindness. Perhaps if he finds him, the opportunity to will thus have presented itself.

---

Despite all of his connections, and the tapped well of information he's poured through to find more than hints or old sightings, he's coming up short on answers. So now he finds himself where perhaps he should have begun in the first place: skulking around the albino's room at the Harbinger base, far off the coast of Quel'danas.

When the grey-skinned elf picks the lock and opens the door to the unused, empty living quarters, he's assaulted by scents.

For the boy's apparent spartan arrangements--a bookshelf, a bedside table, and a small trunk at the foot of a neatly-made, human-sized bed--there's an astonishing amount of information about the paladin that lives subtlely in the air that Merosiel sucks in with each breath.

Most of the older smells are faded and useless, of course. It's apparently been at least a month, if not more, since the albino has set hoof in this place. But they're all interesting, and Merosiel spends several minutes simply standing in the doorway, nose lifted as he inhales softly.

He's limited by his lack of tongue, scent and taste irrevocably linked, of course, but he can still detect far more than most, and after a few more seconds of sifting through the scents of candlewax and incense and armor polish--and something distinctly unique that permeates the entire room--he steps inside.

His boots click on the polished and well-worn wooden floorboards, and for a moment the quel'dorei imagines the faint click-clack of those delicate hooves in place of his own boots. He summons up the memory of that sound, eyes closed, and his long grey ears quiver minutely for it.

Everyone has a talent; he's heard of this paladin's. He knows about Rahmiel's. His own is less grand, more focused, more finite. Perhaps it will be enough, regardless.

The quel'dorei reopens his silvery eyes to the empty room, and replays in his thoughts what all his senses tell him, and what he's learned from listening to the memories of sound and scent and touch that have lived in these walls and been absorbed.

He follows mutely the path that the albino has paced nightly: from door to chair to table, to chest, to bed. The click of small hooves grows more certain in his hearing, and the scents that have faded so much grow stronger, sharper. Particularly the strange one he cannot place--and then, abruptly, the quel'dorei understands what it is.

Astarin. It's a mixture of the armor and its polish, of soap and the odd musk of a draenei male, and something else that reminds him of mageroyal, of tea.

He lingers at the bed, a pillow somehow finding its way into his gloved hands; the quel'dorei's nose is buried in the soft cloth that confirms his revelation. It smells quite potently of the paladin, and cements in Merosiel's mind what to look for elsewhere.

Sense-memory leads him next from the bed to the chest. It's as human-sized as the bed, but otherwise it looks like any other footlocker.

Distracted for a moment from his primary search, Merosiel stares down at the chest with his mouth pursed lightly and his hip cocked to one side and his hand fisted against it.

Astarin apparently saw little reason in keeping secrets. The careless way the lock is hooked around one of the brass rings--inset on the side of the trunk as a handhold--attests to this. It is practically an open invitation to someone like Merosiel, and the lack of security doesn't immediately disappoint the quel'dorei or lead him to thinking that there might be nothing of interest inside. Not when he takes into account Astarin's personality.

The paladin was not the kind to keep locks on anything at all; if Astarin had wanted people to keep out of his things, his room, his life, he would have used the lock as intended.

Merosiel has seen further proof of this conviction many times and has noticed what many others ignored: the boy could say 'No,' could lock his door, could push back. He just did not want to, and although Merosiel had no idea why and had never had an opportunity to ask, he knew that the albino was quite capable.

He had--once--seen proof of this, although the situation that led up to it had been his own fault, really.

At the time, a kal'dorei had been courting Astarin: Baelyn was the name Astarin gave to the rather annoying druid. Merosiel had wanted to toy with him--pull the tail of the Beast, so to say--and Astarin had been an easy target in the quel'dorei's mind, to get a just-as-easy rise out of this Baelyn who was so protective and jealous over Astarin.

So Merosiel had enacted a simple plan to set things in motion; he buddied up to the bewildered paladin. He offered to help with the task at hand--something about loading cargo and getting fish for the next shipment out to the island--and had timed this offer for when he knew the druid was bound to show.

It had worked flawlessly--at first--until Merosiel took the prank too far and sat down next to Astarin. Merosiel had swiftly become distracted by the arch of his neck as the draenei turned his head, and so Merosiel had scooted closer for a more intimate view before he realized what he was doing. Astarin had glanced up, reeking of anxiety and confusion at the time, with those dull blue eyes flickering up and across Merosiel's face to peer at him while their thighs touched so lightly.

Then, instead of yelling or the punch that Merosiel expected, claws were digging into him and the quel'dorei abruptly found himself tossed onto the dock on his back, staring into the face of an enraged, stag-horned druid.

Baelyn had tried to gut him with claws and teeth and antlers, gouging them into Merosiel's shoulder and abdomen; Merosiel's leather armor had provided little defense for the flurry of attacks. It was Astarin who had been the one to stop the druid's fury, both blocking Merosiel's feeble attempts at retaliation--with such ease--and speaking almost sharply to Baelyn for his own behavior.

Learning just how distinctively two-faced the little draenei truly was to have fooled Merosiel, who was a champion liar and deciever, was both startling and humbling. He had never before glimpsed this side of the albino, and he never did witness it again; but this small peek at Astarin's real abilities had made Merosiel a little more wary after that particular incident.

It was one thing to fear the face of the Beast that Baelyn wore so openly, and another entirely to realize that the calm, placid little albino he'd thought he'd known actually possessed the strength and will to kick another's ass if he truly desired it.

Yet, at the same time he'd taken to keeping his distance, ever after, Merosiel caught himself straining to catch more hints, more glimpses, of what Astarin was really like.

At least, he had, until Rahmiel had left the Dawn to seek out Commander Ashtalon, and Merosiel had been forced to go with. All thoughts of the strange little paladin vanished within days, for Merosiel became so caught up in his disgust and loathing for Mathadris and his budding relationship with Merosiel's master that there had been absolutely no room for any intellectual puzzles such as Astarin.

I should have stayed, Merosiel muses, ears half-tucked. Perhaps I could have avoided the misery of the past few months that way. He runs his gloved palms over the wood, tracing the nicks and dents that have accumulated with the years of use that had gone into this trunk. Fingertips trace the inlays and the seams of the planks, and Merosiel imagines for a minute how much smaller, white fingertips might have followed the exact same paths and touched the same worn places he is.

Opening the top of the chest is done with little fanfare, a few flicks of thumb and forefinger and the lid rises almost on its own. There is little inside worth seeing: neatly folded sets of clothes, tightly rolled up bundles of cloth in just as neat lines, and underneath, several aging books.

The rolled up bundles prove to be multiple spares of his masks, in various hues and made of the same usual linen. The clothes themselves, however, prove to be of a style Merosiel is completely unfamiliar with, done in silks quite unlike the usual linen that the albino seems to prefer.

However, the books underneath the clothes are far more entertaining. As ancient as the books seem to be, each is well-tended to. Inspection of the first, a palm-sized little affair with gilded edges, proves to be a ledger of personal expenses. No purchase was apparently too small for Astarin to record.

The second and third books prove to be large, heavy librams. They appear--based off the several examples of handwriting in margins and the various notes left throughout the holy texts--to be passed down from at least three other generations of paladins. Merosiel wonders absently how these made it into Astarin's small hands when it is clear they are not draenic in origin.

Two others are handwritten notes and schematics bound together from loose parchments, ranging from blacksmithing to metallurgy to rune scripting.

It is not until Merosiel reaches the last book in the stack that upon realizing what it is, that he pauses to read more than a few pages.

The parchment in this one crackles, too, like the rest, and many of the pages are yellowing from age. The page that Merosiel first opens to is a hint at the writer's personality through script. It takes him longer to realize that he is reading Astarin's handwriting, that this his journal. Heart suddenly thudding in his chest, the quel'dorei sets it aside a moment to pick up the tiny ledger. He compares the handwriting--they are a definite match.

These are his thoughts. Merosiel is hit with sudden understanding far quicker than guilt or shame might have appeared. The journal is half-full with dry, concise, fragmented sentences that are as heavily structured and confined and rigid as what he gives to the outside world. Even in his neat, cramped writing, Astarin appears to have been unable to relax, to feel welcome with his own thoughts.

Each time Merosiel might skip to a new page, the tiny, precise handwriting is there to greet him: thousands of words, hundreds of entries.

They all carry the same flavor: "I do not understand. I am lost. I am alone. I feel strange. I wish I could sleep. I need a purpose. I wish I was normal."

Merosiel's hands tremble as silvery eyes flick back and forth, scanning entries at random. After several minutes, he has to force himself to close the journal, leaving it unfinished, unread in entirety. Even he is starting to feel discomfort for prying into something so unequivocally private. He tucks the book back in with the others, packs the belongings back the way they were.

"You're trespassing."

The whisper of the throwing knife that appears at Merosiel's fingertips and is released in the same breath is swift and resolute; the sound of metal sinking into flesh and scraping bone tells his ears that he's struck his target, yet when the quel'dorei turns to see who had dared to sneak up on him, his jaw drops a little.

The man in the doorway is an elf like him, certainly; he is broad-shouldered and grey-skinned like Merosiel, too, but with sleek white hair that curls against his high cheekbones and those muscled shoulders like a cloud.

Turning his head, the intruder's dull, amber eyes flick over the silvered surface of the dagger protruding from his palm; he had used his hand to block Merosiel's attack. Blood trickles down his sinewy arm, but the other elf only smirks, sharp teeth shown in a glimmer as his lip curls up.

"Cute. You've got a bite to you, little woman," the white-haired elf says lowly, in a drawl that the quel'dorei is unable to place at first.

Merosiel bristles when he registers the kal'dorei's words. Another throwing knife slips into his fingertips, held lightly as he steadies his body into a more fluid stance and takes the moment given to further study his opponent.

Dressed as strangely as he speaks, the stranger wears only a simple pair of leather pants and a ragged cloak that drapes over the entire left side of his body; it hangs down toward linen-wrapped ankles, and the tattered edges flutter lightly in the current stirred from the man's shift in weight.

"No fear? How appealing. You smell of interesting things, little bird, but--" here one of the stranger's ears rotates, pivots back to fold against his head, "--you aren't interesting enough for me to ask you to stay. This isn't your room."

He watches the stranger flick his wrist in a smooth downward motion that dislodges the dagger. It hits the floor with the thunk of metal glancing against wood. Blood follows again, spattering at the bigger man's bare, taloned feet, yet he ignores it, amber eyes sliding back to stare directly at Merosiel again.

"Get. Out." Both words are bitten off as soon as they're snapped, showing more of his teeth.

The anger bubbling under the calm words is as startling as his presence is for Merosiel. Who is this that he is incensed more by my being in this particular room than simply being pissed at my breaking and entering?

"Are you deaf, woman?"

Merosiel grimaces, ears flattening to his scalp as he jerks his mask down over his face. Rude barbarian, he thinks, and then draws in the shadows around him.