Cantique lays her fishing pole down. Looking around to be sure she is alone, she removes her clothing and walks into the water. Bending foward, Cantique ducks her head and swims underwater until she is nearly breathless. Bouncing up and gasping for air, she keeps her eyes closed and stands squishing the mud between her toes. She can feel the barest whisper of air against her exposed shoulders and her skin bumps up against the chill. Suddenly, she hears a faint splash. and ducking to her eyeballs quickly scans the area, turning slowly.

-----------------------

From the corner of my eye, I saw a faint blue-green movement in the water today as I was swimming. I resisted the urge to hurry back to shore -- I knew the movement of my body through the water would be felt by the murloc -- In fact, I was surprised it hadn't already noticed me. I stayed very still and watched as the creature swam in the shallow water across from me using its hands to feel the rocks, mud, and plants. As it turned its head toward me, I tensed, ready to cast my most effective shadow spell. As it continued its turn, I saw its white sightless eyes. How had it managed to live without sight? I watched as it dove, scrabbling quickly and re-emerged stuffing something into its mouth.

I knew that because of its blindness, its sense of temperature changes and movement of water was assuredly heightened along with its sense of hearing -- if it could hear. Of that I was unsure. I continued watching as the creature slowly made its way around the bank. I realized that my fishing pole was laying within reach of the edge of the pondwater and knew that it was only a matter of minutes before it would be discovered by the Murloc which was continuing its feel-search around the edge of the water. I didn't know what to do. I held my breath as the murloc ran its hand up the length of the pole, its finger following the line back up toward the grip. As it did so, it slowly climbed out of the water and onto the shore.

As soon as I could see it was totally free of the surface of the water, I ducked under and made my way as quickly as I dared to the opposite bank working hard to hug the bottom of the pond. Hoping that the creature was still out of the water, I put my hands into the mud and pulled myself into the shallows and out onto the mudbank behind some tall reeds. Nothing happened. I stood up, mud streaming slowly down my body and looked for the murloc. He wasn't on the bank by my fishing pole. I saw movement on top of the water and bent forward, squinting against the setting sun...The bottom corner of my woven creel was sticking up in the water, making small ripplets. It had taken my fresh catch and was swimming across the pond with it. I stood and watched as it left the pond and disappeared over a small rise dragging my fish with it. Well. No fish for lastmeal today.
------------------------------
Cantique carefully pushes the tiny cork into her ink bottle and resharpens the nib of her quill with a small knife. After tucking her paper in the keepbox and setting the writing utensils on top, she turns back to her table. She picks up her dinner dish and carries it outside to set out under a tree at the edge of her clearing for the night creatures to find. She hears the sound of a Murloc warbling happily in the distance as she sets the leftover fin soup on the ground.

I am tired of this place. Stormwind.

Scrounging for food. Hoping for peace. I will not beg. How long will I
torture myself? I need a heart balm. My trees. My fragrant home.

I saw him again. The one I fear. The one I long to hide behind. He
smells of protection and danger. Speaking with him is like speaking with a
tree. Rough bark. Living. Essential. Has he lost his roots? I cannot
know.

I marked him once. He was not ready then. Now, he has been with these
others so long the marking does not matter to him. It matters to me. He
seems to have forgotten the depths of his kind. Forgotten his heart. He
cannot smell me.

I am . . . preparing to leave. This place. Nothing holds me.

I want to lick my fur. Roll on the ground. Have my feral neck bitten by
the one stronger than me to hold me. By the one that smells familiar. I
want to snap and snarl and have it be understood. These smooth skins do not
know. There is no depth in them.

When I leave I will not mark this place. It is not my territory.

This place hates me.

I heard he could be found in the cavernous city of Ironforge. As I rode the
oily smelling transport, I tried to think how to approach him. My muscles
tensed. Why was I wary? Upon arrival, I stealthed and wandered in the
firegut below the ways like a coward. I found him easily enough. He was
sitting on his mount. Just sitting. Alone. I turned and ran out of the mountain and sat panting in the snow.

I don’t know what I wanted. Maybe just to speak with someone. There are no
friends. I am afraid if I stay feral too long from fear or loneliness, I will lose myself again. I wish I knew what happened before. I wish I could remember. Does he know secrets I should know?

Stop. Tears do no good. So, I went back. I paced. I shifted and made myself speak to him. He stayed on his mount. Scent of what? Not fear. Perhaps anticipation? I asked about his brother. He had no real news. Something about tasks somewhere. I told him I ran from his brother because I did not want to hurt the innocent. He said,

“Do you know about his past? He was an assassin.”

I did not mean he was innocent of blood. I meant he was innocent of heart.

I asked about his lovers, again nothing. Are all druids alone in their
mind?

I trembled as I spoke with him.

This is a dark place. This hard mountain.

I hate this place. Stormwind.

I lay stealthed, cat behind a bush. Enjoying the dappled sunlight on my fur. Warm. I fell asleep. Someone stepped on the tip of my tail. I made no noise. Stone still. Squinting my eyes against a ray of light, I looked to see who was standing on me. A tiny male. He had on a blue tabard. That ’s all. He walked around the bush and I poked my head through the low branches to watch him.

He walked toward a group. Strutted. The others began laughing. One of them threw up her hands and shook her head. The tiny man said,

“I am dressed like Nana.”

I looked to my right. The short woman I met on my journey was there, mouth
open. Sputtering. Red faced. More laughter. It sounded nice. I grinned. It was a game…this dressing thing. I watched as several of them changed garments. Nana (is that her name?) came behind the bush and I watched as
she put on some very colorful items. When she went back to the others, I
heard groans…I saw the smile on her face as she turned around, letting the
others see all of her.

Then. The fun ended. A woman sat twirling her knives behind the group. A
dark man pulled a knife. People began yelling. The tiny man called his mount and left, leaving the throng of loud, knife wielding people behind him. Smart. No scent of fear. Nana left too. Scent of confusion.

Posturing. Stomping. Screaming. Scent of anger, scent of fear. I watched
in horror as a male was stabbed in the throat. More rattling weapons and
voices. I left.

So. Others find it hard to survive this city as well. Strangely I am reassured by that. Comforted. This haven of nature is suffering. It seems the verbal and physical clashes among the denizens of this place are escalating.

I hate this place.
Honorless.

_____________________________

Eliment

Nanaive. She stands there knowing. In this city I hate. She advised me to leave. I trusted her. Now I have no friends. Here. Or there.

I know her because she walked with me during the journey. My long walk which began when the male druid said to me, “Go”.

I was stumbling from weariness as the moon rose on my third night of walking. A short dark-haired female was standing just at the edge of the trees which lined the path. She waved. I almost shifted. I wasn’t sure what she was. Almost as wide as she was tall with a soft smile, she nodded and yelled greetings. I looked around. She was speaking at me.

“Whut are ye doin’ oot here? This time o’ tha night?”

She had a staff in one hand and a small lamp held high in the other. The flame of the clay lamp flickered as her breath brushed it. I did not speak. I stood in a slight crouch hoping she would turn and go. She did not.

Time stretched. The moonlight flickered with passing clouds and soon disappeared completely. I could smell snow. The only light was that tiny flame. I watched the flame descend and settle onto the earth. I smelled her. Wildflowers and meat. Smoke. I heard twigs snapping and watched as the tiny candleflame moved, disappeared, and then blossomed into a small
campfire.

The short woman unrolled a wolfhide onto the ground and sat. I waited. Snow began to waft down caressing the skin of my bare arms. I shivered. The woman added a larger piece of wood to the flame.

“Coom over here. Ye are welcome ta sit and warm yurself”.

She indicated the fire and the warm hide. I cautiously sidled toward the fire and sat on the very edge of the hide, making sure to keep my feet off the fur. I didn’t shift into my heavy form and lumber off because I was more afraid of that than of her. I did not.

There in the wilderness, she quietly shared her food with me. Later she led as I followed with the wolf hide across my shoulders, holding it closed against the chill. For the first time I could remember, I slept in a cottage. I lay on the floor in front of her fireplace. I watched the flames and listened to her snore. So I met Nanaive.

I hate this place.
Stormwind.

I walked into one of those dimly lit places in the park. I stood quietly, waiting for my twolegs eyesight to adjust. A woman stomped up to me and pointed at my feet and legs. She smelled of indignation.
“Get out! You cannot come in here without shoes and you must have something on your legs as well.”

I blinked at her. She frowned and pointed at the door. I shifted to feral, clothed in fur. She screamed.

“No ANIMALS in here either!”

I stealthed, feeling an emotion I did not really recognize. It was an awful, self defeating feeling. Totally useless. I surely do not need to fight with my OWN heart or head! So I shrugged it off never to look at it again.

I went away and dug through what little I had in my packs. I had a vivid pink dress that someone had cast aside in a bush. The material was good. No sense in letting it rot on the ground. I also found a scarf of similar color. This covered my hair completely. I put my boots on. Gloves on.Bracers on.I went back to the dark room.

She was standing there near the entryway. She laughed derisively and said to a woman standing nearby,“Could you get any MORE pink?”They laughed and pointed. I turned around. No one else was there. They were laughing at me. Because I put on boots and covered my legs as requested?

Rules. Unwritten rules.

She let me in.I sat down. Others were there. The odor of sweat mingled with blood, the scent of flowers (odd, I didn’t see any flowers) and an overpowering smell of rotten fruit. I watched as a man was pouring this smelly thinned out rotten fruit juice into a woman. She let him! He saw me watching. He raised the mug over his head and winked. Then he drank. So. Not poison.

I arose from my seat. As I walked toward the counter built along the back of the room, I had to step around a person who was half on his chair and half on the floor. Thinking he was ill, I leaned in to look more closely at his face. Vacant eyes. He was short like Nanaive. He belched and I felt the wind of it on my face. Sweet and sour scent. One of his eyes found mine and he grinned.“Ach! Oolmost as good tha second time in me mouf, ‘twas!”His voice was like listening to a saw against a rock.

I flinched. HE GRABBED ME! (Later, as he was wrapping his shredded hand in bandages I heard him tell someone he slipped while playing with his blade.)I went outside where the smell and noise is diluted by, well, by other noises and other smells. I just stood there against a tree. I caressed the bark and pressed my face against it glad to be out. What would those tears accomplish? I stopped.I hate this place.Unkindness.(Eliment)

- - - - - - -I hate this place called Stormwind. It smells of too many hard things.Metal, stone, and smooth skinned men.

Men.The place called the park is a bit better if I stay out of the dimly lit gathering rooms. At least there is grass underfoot, trees for shade, and a nice well. But again, smoothskins. They argue. They whisper to one another. They stand too close to one another and yell as if the other cannot hear. Can they hear? They rattle when they walk. They stomp. I want to put my head in the water of the moonwell to muffle the noise.They leer.They laugh and point if I relieve myself at the base of a tree.

They laugh! While they stand there in the dung of their mounts. What are they laughing at? At my cat form?

The women I watch are only better in that they seem to have a plan, a goal. I smell them too. Women’s sweat. It is easier on my nose. I can smell their disdain too. Even those of my kind seem to have been hardened by this place. This uneasy place of metal, stone, and strutting males.

I had a friend, no, two I think. I do think. Now. There was a time that I did not have to do this sorting, this thinking all the time. Some days I long for the unthinking time to be upon me again. NO! I cannot allow that!I have to think to survive. To survive this place.Not so long ago a person (I know his scent) helped me regain this twolegged, speaking dimension which I now find so disconcerting. I still don't remember why I was feral without memory of speaking form. It is the hardest thing I have done, to remain cognizant of this fraction of myself.

I’m no longer sure I want to be here. Being in this form, I feel like I have to follow certain rules which are not written down. Anywhere.I was lost, naked, insane. I did not know it. He was quiet, strong and angry. Why did he show me myself? I remember a day. He pointed to the clear meadow outside the comfort of my forest and said one word. “Go.” I hesitated. He handed me a small pack, put his hands on my shoulders,frowned down at my questioning face, turned me around and pushed me toward the sunlight. I took a few stumbling steps and turned back. Gone. Only his scent lingered. It smelled like a frown.

Now I am here. Struggling to remain upright. I want to run on four paws and never look back. He’s not here, though at times in the back of my nose I think I smell that frown.There was another. A similar scent. A brother to the first. He did not leer. He did not laugh. He did not. Circumstances caused a distance, now he too is gone. He is gone because I ran away. He did not pursue. He did not hunt and hold. He’s too good. I never find his smell anywhere.