Chapter Text
The rest of her day passed just the same as the morning preceding it: She found each classroom, chose a seat as far towards the back as could be managed, and scrambled to note down anything and everything each instructor said. Anything could be important - inflection could change the meaning of an entire sentence, and context just the same. Even one of the instructors said as much, during a brief opening lecture on spoken incantations and the importance of paying attention while studying their execution.
Try as she might to lose herself in her work, she remained angry through the rest of her classes - enough so that no one else approached her, and the glances and whispers of those who couldn't keep their noses out of business not their own no longer bothered her.
Though it did seem, now, that she noticed more of those… or else she was seeing more where there were none. The better part of her whispered that it was probably the latter, but it was only a whisper beneath the spitting, seething ire that consumed everything else. She felt cold straight down to her bones, and her fingers and arms didn't stop trembling with nervous, furious energy until her fourth class ended. Between her thoughts and her notes, there was no room left for gentle, reasonable thinking; maybe it was better, then, that everybody stayed away from her for now.
“How often do they beat you back home?” the elf asked, and her memory made his tone sneering and contemptuous. She lost a good deal of time going over all the many colorful things she wished now that she had stayed around to tell him, chief among them being that her family were not some band of savages who thought slapping or striking a child did more good than soft words and gentle corrections. Least of all her da, whose own father hadn't wanted him and whose mother had been a violent, drunken… well. A violent drunk with more boyfriends than sense or loyalty to kith and kin.
The implication that her da - her sweet, shy, gentle da who scowled hard but wouldn't hurt a fly unless it bit him first - could ever raise his hand to a child or woman, let alone his own blood, made Fay shake with fury all over again as she gathered her things and made ready to leave her last class for the day.
The elf didn't know her da, the best part of her whispered. The rest of her howled at how happily he had made so cruel a comment anyway until the whisper was drowned away to nothing.
“You look tired, girl.”
That wasn't a voice she knew, but it was definitely directed at her. It felt like it had been - sounded like the speaker had been looking straight at her.
Why couldn't people just leave her alone today?
She looked up and matched eyes with the blond boy from earlier that morning, the human with freckles and dark eyes. Up close like this, she thought his eyes looked similar in color to cow pies - not that she was about to say as much to him.
He was smiling this time, instead of sneering - not that the smile was any friendlier. If anything, she hated him more with his toothless, cocky little smirk than she did when he was pulling faces at her. She'd trust a fox with bloody foam about its mouth before she trusted this boy.
“A bit,” she said, biting back as much of her irritation as she could and trying for the bland, demure smile she pasted on for folks back home who traded with or bought from her family's farm. This one hadn't directly done or said anything to her yet, and she couldn't see the benefit of being rude until he gave her a reason to be. Hopefully, playing at friendliness with this boy would let her leave more swiftly - or at least convince him that she was no threat, and could thus be safely left alone.
The boy’s smile grew wider, and behind him another boy rolled his eyes. Two - there were two of them here, she realized only now. The other boy had ruddy skin and dirty blond hair, and stared at her with pale blue eyes that looked just a hair cracked - like a dog in the early stages of dementia. Sharp, aware, but off.
She liked the brown-eyed boy just a bit better than his friend.
“It must be hard,” the brown-eyed boy said, and his sympathetic tone dripped with patronism. “Dalaran is huge; I'd be exhausted, too, coming off a farm like you. You're probably used to sleeping in until noon.”
Oh, here they went.
“Actually, we wake up before dawn back home,” Fay said, maintaining her smile and struggling to do the same with her tone of voice. “There's animals to care for, and crops to tend and harvest, and there's always something to fix or replace—”
“Sounds hard,” the brown-eyed boy said. “Chasing pigs, picking corn, fixing fences - no wonder you never find time to bathe.”
And there it was. Somehow Fay was almost relieved more than offended, to have him finally say a bit of what was on his mind. The honesty there almost made up for how much of a cow’s arse he was.
Fay felt her smile turn frosty and let it happen.
“Well,” she said, all sugar and teeth now as she stared the boy in his shit-brown eyes, “where I'm from, I suppose our priorities are a little straighter than worrying about a little thing like having enough soap.”
“A shame,” the boy responded. “Your lot wouldn't keep confusing livestock for bedmates if you didn't all smell the same.”
Fay's fingers turned hot - not burning, but alive and tense, seething and tingling and itching with a heat that desperately wanted to be thrown forth. She wanted to hit this boy. She wanted to scratch his stupid eyes and make him bleed and cry and bleat like a scared little lambling led to the slaughter to feed some noble brat.
She turned and stalked away, listening to the laughter behind her and telling herself it was better that they lived to keep laughing. Let them win. Let them keep breathing. She wasn't…
“—A monster,” the man yowled, cradling the burned half of his face in agony as he curled into a ball on the floor and guards came running to arrest her. “She's a monster! A witch, a witch, she's killed me—!”
She was crying, maybe she'd been crying all the time, and people were looking at her and she hardly had the energy to care anymore. She swiped the tears from her eyes and kept walking - running - whatever. She was moving and she needed to be moving and needed to keep moving until she was out of the school again and someplace small and dark and quiet - someplace no one would try to bother her. She had to get away from people before she hurt somebody again. There'd be no mercy the second time around, not that she had ever deserved the mercy she found the first time.
But the grounds were alive with students by the time she finally broke free of the school itself, and all the lovely spots beneath trees and behind convenient shrubs and statues were filled with magi of seemingly every age and race. Far from drawing her awe as it had done the day before, now the sight of so many very different people made Fay feel as though the whole of the Alliance was bearing down around her, suffocating and judging her and finding her unworthy and utterly, horribly insignificant.
She had to get away. If there was no secret place at the school, there must be somewhere in the city proper - and so off she went, down the cobbled pathway and through the gates onto the streets beyond. She wondered briefly if she ought to have left her bag in her rooms and switched out of her robes into some of her regular clothes, but dismissed the thought after only a little deliberation. There had been no rule about keeping school supplies or uniforms within the college grounds, and in any event she didn't want to go back. She didn't want to backtrack, or risk running into anybody else who might stop her for a chat. At least out in the city, she'd be just another face - in uniform and with a schoolbag, but a face and nothing more all the same.
Surely.
Hopefully.
Dalaran blurred around her as she walked, and her refusal to lift her head or look around at all except to check her whereabouts didn't help matters in that regard. All the buildings looked the same, and street signs mattered very little when she had no idea where anything was. She couldn't even take the roads less populated - she knew from having visited her brother that larger cities tended to be split up into districts, and for all she knew, the quieter areas might be housing districts. The last thing she wanted was to stumble into some stranger’s house by mistake.
With her head already a jumbled mess of emotion, the longer she walked the more frustrated she became. She hadn't been in such a large city in all her life, that she could recall; even her brother's new home was smaller than Dalaran, surely - though she'd gotten lost there, too.
Why did people cram themselves all together like this? What was the point of everyone settling down in the exact same place, practically on top of each other? She could understand if Dalaran played host to some massive field of crops, or if it was a center of livestock production - things that demanded a great many hands to help with the workload - but it was just a magic city with lots and lots of people, as far as she could tell. The only thing this place was really known for producing was an excess of powerful mages, and after today it seemed to her that the staff at the College had that well under control.
Maybe busier areas were a good place to start. Those at least would give her the cover of a whole sea of faces, and she could be certain she'd be lost at least somewhere near a quiet place - maybe there was a bookseller nearby, or a seamstress who wouldn't mind letting some strange young woman cower behind the counter for a little while. She only needed a few minutes to sort her breathing out, and then surely she'd be okay enough to make another attempt.
But as she continued on, she began to realize her plan of hiding out in the crowd might be somewhat flawed. Many who lived here wore robes of some sort, though only a handful seemed to wear the deep purple and creamy ivory she had already come to associate with the College and the Archmagi who taught its students… with the Kirin Tor, she supposed. That was the organization to which most - if not all - successful magi belonged, and the one that ruled this city and its people.
But many people wore other colors, notably priestly whites and blues, or earthier, more homely greens and golds. And many more were not dressed as magic-wielders at all, but in normal outfits - dresses and pants and tunics and skirts and other garments that she had no name for, that were alien and lovely all at once.
Not one of these people wore the robes of a student of the College of Dalaran… but more and more of them were beginning to notice that Fay did. And more and more of them stopped and watched her curiously as she ducked through the throng in search of anywhere that she could hide.
Her throat tightened. Her heart hammered frantically within the cage of her rib bones. She hated this city, she hated these staring eyes and these nosy people and these stupid fucking robes and the too-bright glitter of gold along the ears of people like that overfed privileged stupid fucking elf prince—
She ran hard into a squishy, stout body, and for the second time that day staggered and nearly fell on her arse before the person she'd run into caught and steadied her.
“Easy, lass,” a gruff voice said. A meaty, thick-fingered hand patted her solidly on the arm.
“I'm sorry,” Fay mumbled, dragging her free hand over her face. Her first day here, and already she was far too tired of apologizing and looking stupid to inject any life into her words. “I was—”
“Ye don't have ter explain it ter me,” her companion said.
That same big hand grabbed her by the arm, and Fay yelped as she was towed under the overhang of a small, plain building.
The person she'd run into was a dwarven man - shorter than she only by a few inches, and at least twice as round. He had thick red hair and a thick red beard to match, and much to Fay's relief he wore plain, normal work clothes - baker’s clothes, even, and not bakermancer’s robes or whatever idiot thing the magi might call such an outfit.
“Are ye hungry, lass?” the dwarf asked, pausing just before the door to the little building to look up at her with sharp blue eyes.
“I - I don't have much money,” Fay confessed.
It was the truth, or most of it at least. Though her room was free, and her education and supplies would be covered by the City of Dalaran unless and until she could afford to manage the cost on her own coin, Fay couldn't see the sense in spending her own money if she didn't need to. What little her family could afford to send was supposed to be for emergencies and essentials that the city wouldn't cover - not for spending all over town, even at cafés.
She'd mostly resolved to survive on whatever food was offered for free at the College - she'd already discovered a basket full of fruit and baked goods by her bedside that morning, so there might be the chance that such a thing was routine. It might mean going hungry, but that wasn't anything she couldn't handle. She'd lived through thinner times as a child, and even once or twice in her adulthood; lean winters were sometimes an uncomfortable part of life for the common folk that worked the fields. Skipping a meal or two each week here in Dalaran wouldn't compare to the watery soups and dense stonecakes she remembered having to ration out as a little girl.
The dwarf narrowed his eyes and looked her over from head to toe, as though he thought she might be playing some trick on him. Fay could only look back and try not to fidget under his gaze.
“Yer no noble lassie,” he finally said. “The face is right fer it, but yer too hard. Worn down and built back up like an old stone building.”
He took her hand and flipped it over to look at her palm.
“Calluses and chicken scars,” he grunted. “Tha’s not ter say noblefolk never work hard, mind - but noble mage-folk tend ter have softer hands than this. Altogether an’ yer too coarse to be finely bred,” he added, raising his voice and flapping a hand in the mockery of a well-to-do woman.
Fay giggled, hiding her grin behind the back of her free hand. The dwarf grinned back, and Fay noticed he had one tooth missing up top - and another on the bottom seemed to be made from silver.
“Now, come inside, lass,” he said, waving her forward as he pushed the door open. “Ye look like ye could do wae a hot meal.”
Warm air blew from the open door, and with it came the smells of cooked meat and baked bread, hot jams and something that might be ale, but that smelled miles better than the stale pisswater she knew from the hamlet.
Fay's stomach snarled in response, and the dwarf chuckled as he towed her inside.
“I really don't have much money,” Fay said again, though her eyes wandered all around the inside of the little café. It looked… well, it looked a lot like the inside of her own house. Everything was stone and wood, and the walls were decorated with the same tools and bits of equipment that she'd spent a lifetime learning how to use around the family farm. “My parents can only send a bit each month, and—”
“If yer that bad off and here anyway, yer gettin’ yer education paid up by the City o’ Dalaran,” the dwarf said, because apparently Fay wasn't the first person to come here from a lowly upbringing. “Ye get free meals twice daily at the campus and a discount at the shops while yer learnin’ here, same as any other student. Ye don't need tae penny pinch.”
“Still, it's not a bad habit,” Fay countered. “Maybe I might see something really nice next week.”
“An’ what? Go buyin’ yerself a fancy silk dress?” the dwarf asked, leading her to a high table with a pair of high stools to match. His eyes twinkled with good humor. “Ye’d wear it well, mind, but ye don't strike me as the type.”
“I meant sommat for my family,” Fay grumbled. “Some new boots for Da, maybe, or a necklace for Ma.”
“Awww.” The dwarf patted her on the hand. “Good lass. But tell me what yer havin’ so we can get the color back in ye.”
“My color…?” Fay put a hand to her cheek, and was startled to feel her fingertips shaking against it. “What's wrong with my color?”
“Yer sheet white, is what.” The dwarf planted his hands on his hips. “A little hot food isnae gonna kill ye, in any case. We got sweets, savories, plenty tae drink—”
“Any sweet teas, maybe?” Fay asked. She pulled her hand away from her face and turned it at the wrist, frowning as the shaking intensified. “Damn. And maybe something with spinach in it. Ma makes spinach and pine nut pastries for me when I get shaky like this. I don't know why, but they always make the shaking stop.”
The dwarf rumbled, but didn't answer right away. When Fay looked up, he was eyeing her again, almost seeming to stare straight through her.
“Spinach pastries, sure. But maybe ye shouldn't have tea right yet,” he said. “We've got ale, though, if ye’d like. Or milk and water, if ye want something a little lighter instead.”
“Not ale,” Fay said, shaking her head. “Do you have any juice?”
“Got a bit o’ berry juice, chilled,” the dwarf answered. “You set here and relax, I'll have it out in no time.”
He turned and loped away before she could answer, shaking his head and grumbling under his breath. Fay caught the words “not ale,” but nothing more.
Fay climbed up onto one of the high stools and settled in, resting her arms atop the table - though minding that her elbows stayed clear of it, even as she leaned forward. At home she'd have no worry about table manners; her family were tight-knit like a coyote pack, and they ate like one, too. But she was out in public now, and whatever everybody else seemed to think of her didn't change the lessons Ma had managed to drill into her thick skull.
The little café was quiet just at the moment, enough so that Fay could hear the dwarf and someone else talking through the swinging door behind the counter that seemed to lead to the kitchen. Looking around again, she realized she was the only person inside at the moment, though there were four other tables and nine other chairs besides the ones she occupied.
It was a bit spooky - as though maybe she'd been brought in after hours - but Fay was more relieved than uncomfortable with the silence just at the moment. Now that she was someplace she could stop and hide from everyone, she felt raw and wrung, like a piece of rope that had rubbed so much against a stone that any more strain would snap it in two. Her ears fairly rang in this space, though surely the crowds outside hadn't been that noisy…
The dwarf returned another few minutes later, carrying a plate of small, steaming hot pastries in one hand and balancing a tray with a pitcher and a tall, crystal glass on the other.
“There y’are,” he said, setting plate and tray down without so much as jostling anything on them. “Eat, drink…”
He stopped, looking thoughtfully at Fay.
“I'd say, ‘be merry’,” he added, “except that ye came in lookin’ like half the city guard were chasin’ ye. It's jes’ a joke, lass,” he said, waving her off as she opened her mouth to protest. “Ye look like ye’d cry if ye so much as looked funny at someone. Hard tae imagine you're in any trouble. But enjoy the food, in any case. I'll leave ye be.”
He wandered back into the kitchen, leaving Fay blissfully alone just in time for her stomach to drop somewhere between her feet. It was all she could do to pick up one of the pastries and nibble at it - but her appetite had fled entirely, and she only got a few bites in before she finally had to give up or risk making herself sick.
She tried the juice next, setting the glass down in front of herself and carefully hefting the pitcher in both hands. She was shaking again, and the pitcher was crockery and the cup really was clear, unblemished glass and she didn't want to shatter anything or spill juice everywhere just because she was…
She set the pitcher down, closed her eyes, and made herself breathe. Made herself stop - like a grindstone rolling smoothly to a halt, all noise and chaos ending in blissful, silent nothingness.
She stopped.
She breathed.
And when her hands stopped shaking, she picked up the pitcher again and poured a glass of deep, wine-purple juice and spilled not a single drop of it. She did not drop the pitcher when she set it back on its tray, nor the glass when she brought it to her lips for a drink, and in the instant before the juice touched her tongue she breathed in again and out again and was fine.
She was fine.
She was.
-
She stayed at the little café as long as she was allowed, though when the afternoon began to darken into early evening and patrons started to file in for their evening meals the dwarf kindly but firmly sent her on her way back to the college, pressing the parcel wrap with her one remaining pastry into her hands and urging her off to get at least some sleep before the morrow.
Dalaran wasn't quite as busy in the early evening, though it still bustled with activity as Fay slowly made her way back towards the school. Most of the activity centered around restaurants and pubs; Fay had to pass by one pub in particular that rang with raucous laughter and raised voices, and it was all she could do not to trip over her own feet as she hurried away.
Several of the folk she passed were her fellow students, though it seemed they had all had the presence of mind to swap their school robes for more casual wear. She recognized several from her morning classes, including the little red-headed girl whose father was an enchanter - Rosie? Lily? She could swear the girl had some sort of flower for a name.
Even without remembering the younger girl's name, Fay very nearly called out to her - it wouldn't be so bad to try to befriend another human student, would it? But jus as she started forward, Fay realized the girl was surrounded by a knot of other students that included the boy with the shit-brown eyes and his half-mad friend. Neither boy seemed likely to leave any time soon, and the redhaired girl didn't seem any likelier to chase them away.
None of the group had noticed her approaching yet, and so Fay ducked quickly back into the crowd on the street and continued onwards. She didn't stop again until she passed one of the big arching gateways at the edges of the campus.
It was much quieter here, and also significantly darker than the well-lit city streets. Here only the occasional floating lamp kept the pathways from being pitch-black, instead casting dim, gentle violet and gold lights across the cobbles. One or two others still roamed about; she could see them walking carefully along, following close behind much brighter witch-lights and training their eyes firmly on the paths ahead of them.
City folk. Couldn't even make their way about in this much lighting - and yet they still figured themselves superior to honest farm stock.
Fay had picked her way through forest and pasture in greater darkness and worse weather than this; even as new as the campus still was to her, it was a piece of cake to make her way along to the student wing of the college. A small, petty part of her hoped one of those with witch-lights to guide them might see her and be impressed by how easily she navigated the darkness. Then again, if they couldn't see the cobbles without that extra light, she doubted they would see her darkling shape moving in the distance.
The student wing was warmly lit with honest candle light, even though a good many were set in extravagant braziers that shone like new metal. Still better than witch-lights, and in any case they cast the warm, yellow-orange light Fay loved best.
The halls here were next to empty; most of the other students were probably either out in the city or bent over their schoolwork in their rooms. It left the big bookcases and most of the alcoves completely abandoned, which suited Fay perfectly. She could grab down any book she liked, curl up amongst the pillows of one of the big window seats, and read the whole night away. Maybe she would fall asleep there; maybe in the morning she wouldn't still feel so raw and ragged.
She was halfway through scouring the nearest shelf for interesting titles when she finally remembered that three of her instructors had assigned research homework - “light, easy work,” one had called it.
Fay closed her eyes and grimaced, narrowly fighting down the urge to groan. Right - her off time wasn't really her own, here. Just like when her Gramma had taught her letters and numbers and good penmanship, Fay still had practice work to do to prepare for her next class. Extra work, so she could learn more swiftly.
Fay never really had much enjoyed homework. And she doubted any of her instructors would reward completed homework with homemade cookies and muffins like Gramma sometimes did.
No use in putting it off; with a sigh, Fay turned away from the big bookshelf and started towards the stairs… only to realize several steps in that she still had her school bag with her. After the day she'd had, somehow she'd completely forgotten she was still carrying it around with her.
She frowned. She did that at home, too. Usually it was ropes or tools she forgot, though, not bags laden with books and parchment and pens. She should probably try not to make a habit of that.
There was a big, cushioned chair right next to the bookshelf, with a beautifully wrought wooden end table right next to it. Fay climbed up into the chair and only just remembered to kick her shoes off before swinging her legs up underneath her, feeling giddy and distinctly wrong to be sitting in a chair this nice. Both pieces of furniture looked newer and nicer than anything Fay's family could afford these days; maybe her Grampa’s old armchair had been this nice and this brightly colored when he first bought it, decades and decades ago, but it certainly wasn't anymore.
Fay set her bag down on the floor next to her boots, easily leaning over her own knees as she fished out a pen and the first batch of parchment she'd rolled up for her homework. Best to start with the most boring stuff, first - in this case, a three-page written report briefly summarizing the origins of magic and its practice by mortals, as told by the instructor who had assigned it, going off whatever notes they had taken during the lecture and their own memory. The man had claimed knowing the roots of the craft would help them better understand and respect the rules and traditions that were in place in the modern day.
As with most mages, Fay suspected he was an idiot, but she had to admit he might be on to something this time.
She stretched her back and arms and set to work. With no outside noises, no staring eyes, and no bodies crammed too close around her, she fell even more easily into her writing, lulled into an almost sleepy calm by the sound of her own pen scritching across the parchment. She thought about what she was writing - of course she did - but she didn't feel as though she was absorbing any of it. Night elves found a great well of magic and wove powerful and dangerous magicks from it, and their recklessness flung the world into chaos for a time and lead to the continents breaking apart into the shapes they were today, and the orcs were a product of that ancient chaos, and…
She watched her stack of parchments dwindle - was dimly aware that she surpassed the three-page limit several times - but didn't register the amount of writing she was doing. She had more to say, and parchment enough to say it. That was what mattered. She ignored the growing stack and lost herself again.
By the time she ran out of words and finally set her quill aside, her hand was cramped and sore, and the candles burning nearest her had been swapped out for new, taller ones - or maybe they had magically reset themselves.
Fay stretched again, groaning happily as her shoulders and back popped with the sudden movement. Her hand and legs were trickier - her hand twitched and ached even well after she was done coaxing her fingers loose again, and both legs had fallen asleep and sang with pins and needles so bad that Fay was left clawing at the arms of the chair and breathing like a woman in labor until the sensation finally passed. Even then, her knees ached from the odd position they'd lain in - especially the bad one, the right one that she figured never had really healed proper, no matter what the old horse doctor Hallins had told her those years ago.
She felt good, though, sore joints and all. Accomplished, even. She doubted her report was the most eloquent, but her lines were straight and her writing clear and legible, and she'd done more than the three-page minimum to boot. Surely she'd at least get a kind word for the effort.
She picked up her papers and started sorting them, making sure they were all faced the same way and stacked in order. It was only doing this that she started to realize she'd somehow managed ten pages, with nine of them double-sided.
Pride turned to panic in the space of a heartbeat, and Fay quickly read through her own essay, combing it for any repeated words, any paragraphs or sections that had been restated different ways a dozen times, any bits of personal opinion in an essay that was only supposed to be a detached retelling of the stuff she'd heard and noted down that day. She couldn't turn in something that childish and stupid to a man who had already demonstrated the ability to shoot actual fire from his fingertips during the lecture.
The words swam in front of her, dizzying and stupid. Nothing made sense, nothing registered as a coherent thought - not because of how it was written (she hoped), but because her mind caught and held none of it, understood none of the words it had come up with in the first place.
“Fay?”
Fay flung her papers down onto her lap and let loose a four-letter word meaner than any curse these mages could come up with, loud enough that her voice echoed once in the big hallway.
Somebody snorted nearby.
Fay growled and looked up to see who the hell was bothering her when she was clearly busy doing important idiot mage work… and immediately felt her face grow hot when she found herself staring up at Caesan.
The elf had drawn back slightly, ears pinned against his head and eyes wide with surprise. His mouth twitched at the corners, though, so that rather than looking offended Caesan instead looked as though he were fighting a losing battle against the urge to start laughing at her.
“If this is a bad time, we can always catch up with you tomorrow,” he said after a moment. His voice wavered dangerously, but his eyes grew serious as he added, “We only wanted to speak with you about… earlier, but we wouldn't want to interrupt your work.”
Fay rolled her lips in between her teeth, stopping herself from responding until she'd seriously thought about his request. She'd almost forgotten the argument earlier (though… she supposed snarling at one of the elves and storming away didn't really count as an argument), but now everything that had set her so on edge that afternoon came rushing back to the forefront of her mind. What the brunet elf had said still infuriated her, still left her cold and shivery even here and now… but then, he couldn't really have known what he was saying.
It… couldn't hurt to hear Caesan out, anyway.
“...Okay,” she said at last.
She set her parchments on the arm of the chair, then shifted so that she sat facing Caesan more directly. As she moved, she glanced past Caesan and realized his brunet friend had also decided to show up; the man stood a few paces away, eyeing Fay as though she might start screaming at him if he so much as moved too sharply.
The idea was tempting. She'd be a liar not to admit as much.
“Thank you,” Caesan said. He stepped to one side and waved the brunet over with a sharp - almost impatient, Fay thought - wave of his hand as he added, “Inazhen has been a wet rag all evening. Ina’thaes and Vy’daras are about ready to beat him to death.”
Inazhen. The brunet was Inazhen.
Inazhen certainly looked like a kicked dog as he stepped forward. Even his ears seemed to be drooping slightly, and although he kept his head up there was a distinctly tense set to his shoulders that put Fay in mind of a baby deer caught out on its own and getting ready to bolt back into the safety of the forest.
A high elf looked scared to talk to her. Fay decided not to think about that too much for the moment.
“I need to apologize,” Inazhen said. “I only spoke in jest this afternoon, but instead I very clearly crossed a line.”
“My father is a good man,” Fay said when he paused. Her voice wavered with nerves. “A good, kind, gentle man. He was raised by abusive folk, but he's spent my and my brother's whole lives fighting to break that cycle.”
Inazhen’s ears twitched, and now his chin did dip ever so slightly as he winced and said, “...And I made light of that, unknowing though I was at the time.”
“Pretty much,” Fay said. At Inazhen's flinch, she closed her eyes and added more gently, “I would die defending my family, if I had to. My father especially - nobody else ever fought for him until he married Ma and had my brother and me.”
“No wonder you were angry with me,” Inazhen said with a rueful little half-smile. “With loyalty like that, I'm surprised you didn't lunge for my throat.”
“I thought about it,” Fay said with a smile.
Both elves stared at her in stunned silence - and then Caesan chuckled awkwardly.
“Human humor,” he told Inazhen.
“Sure,” Fay agreed. She didn't stop smiling, and didn't look away until Inazhen himself broke eye contact.
“So… Is this…” Inazhen seemed to struggle for the right word; Fay thought she saw him mouth something to himself, but it was swift and not anything she recognized if he did. “Are we… alright? Can we put this behind us, and start again?”
He extended a hand - long-fingered and gorgeously manicured, with rings on two of his fingers - and gave her a hopeful smile.
“I would hate to have made an enemy so soon after arriving here,” he said earnestly. “Let alone for that enemy to be someone like you.”
Fay hesitated, but ultimately reached out and shook the elf's hand, feeling dazed as she did. Why would any elf even care that she was upset with them, let alone go so far out of their way to make amends with her? She was nobody - just a silly little girl from a backwater farm who happened to be cursed with fire magic. Surely any other mage in Dalaran would make for a far more entertaining friend. At the very least, surely anyone else wouldn't scream at them over what really had been an honest misunderstanding.
Then again, the lady-elf had mentioned Fay smelled of magic. But she couldn't have that much in her, though, could she? Not from just drinking magic-tainted water and eating food grown in magic-tainted soil. Maybe a little bit, but not enough to have a bunch of elves wanting to play nice with her just on that alone.
Right?
“Thank you,” Inazhen said, breaking into a wide, genuinely happy smile for the first time that evening.Then he brought his other hand up to capture hers and added, “In the future, please - simply tell me if I've said something wrong or offensive. I promise I won't get upset with you in turn. I don't know a great deal about humans, let alone humans from more rural areas like you.”
“None of us do,” Caesan put in. “We might be a few decades older than you, Fay, but we're little better than children ourselves, still, by the reckoning of our own people. This is the first time any of us have set foot outside of our homeland; we're all floundering a bit.”
“You hide it well,” Fay said, looking suspiciously up at the redhead.
Caesan only smiled and shrugged.
Inazhen squeezed her hand gently, as though wordlessly coaxing her into giving him a response.
Fay sighed and shook her head, gently pulling her hand away as she told them, “I can't promise not to get mad if you say something stupid. I'd like to be that patient, but I'm not, and I never have been. But,” she added, before either of the elves could argue, “I can promise to try. And to try to talk to you about it, instead of shouting and storming off again. I don't know that I will, every time, but I'll try.”
“I suppose it's better than nothing.” Inazhen’s smile widened as he stepped away again. “I'm going to see if I can't find Vy and Ina. Caesan,” he added, looking to his friend, “are you coming along?”
Caesan tilted his head and stared thoughtfully between Inazhen and Fay.
“Actually,” he said slowly, “if you don't mind, Fay - perhaps I could join you here? We could get a bit of studying in together, you and I. I might even be able to help you with some of your assignments - you're largely in introductory courses at the moment, right?”
“Uh…” Fay nearly told him no, if only to spare herself from the embarrassment of potentially floundering in front of an elf - but then her gaze traveled back to the haphazard stack of papers beside her, and she was struck with inspiration.
“Actually, that would be… extremely helpful,” she said. She brought her papers back into her lap and added, “I was trying to go through this mess when you showed up - I'm way past the three-page minimum requirement on it, and I'm worried that I maybe blathered a bit while I was writing. Could you maybe go through it? A second set of eyes might catch something I missed.”
Caesan responded by sitting down on the arm of her chair and taking the stack from her hands with an obliging smile.
“I think I can manage that,” he said, either ignoring or failing to notice the way Fay flinched and flushed bright red at the sudden proximity. “Proofreading isn't so hard. I'll be done…”
He had started leafing through the pages by now, and his smile dropped and his eyes widened as he seemed to finally take note of how much there was for him to read.
“Fay?” Caesan asked after a moment.
“Mm-hmm?” Fay responded, still leaning back a little from him.
“You have written a novel.” Caesan looked up and grinned, though Fay noticed he still looked distinctly startled. “It's even double-sided. Inazhen, look at this,” he said, handing the stack to the brunet. “She's gone and penned a full thesis! On the Well of Eternity, of all things!”
“I just wrote down what was in my notes,” Fay protested.
“This was for our last class together, wasn't it?” Inazhen asked, taking her essay from Caesan and flipping through it for himself. “With Instructor Malvereth?”
“Uh…” Fay frowned and thought back to the class. Was that his name? “It was the old fella. With the bald patch up top and the one blind eye.”
“Fella?” Inazhen asked.
“Common slang term for a male person,” Caesan supplied helpfully. Then he grinned at Fay and added, “You forgot his sideburns.”
“No, I was trying to repress the memory of them,” Fay quipped without thinking.
“Oh, why?” Caesan asked. “They're so gloriously bushy!”
“I think he keeps small animals in them,” Inazhen put in helpfully, leaping in and apparently forgetting all about his earlier plans to catch up with the other elves.
In fact, both Caesan and Inazhen seemed perfectly at ease as they settled in, as though this was all perfectly normal for a Monday evening: chatting with a human woman about an old man's glorious ham hocks over a stack of parchments that apparently rivaled most published works. Yet again, Fay found herself having to ignore the absurdity of the situation in favor of being able to pay attention to and keep up with the conversation at hand. There would be plenty of time to have a nervous breakdown over it later.
Probably.
The trio worked on into the night, swiftly finishing with Fay's essay (after deciding she should indeed cut three sentences and reword a fourth) and moving on to the rest of the homework they each had left to complete. Other students wandered past the group now and again, some on their way to their own apartments and others seeking a quiet place of their own to study or read or just relax. Nobody tried to bother them, and they in turn ignored the infrequent flow of traffic around them until at last their work was finished.
They chatted a while longer after that - Fay couldn't remember afterwards exactly what they talked about, but it was a bright, engaging conversation. She was sure the elves were still going merrily on when she finally tipped her head back and closed her eyes to give herself a moment's rest.