Chapter Text
Years ago, sometime before the Orcs first came to Azeroth, a Quel'dorei priest known as Rialius Sunbrand resided in the city of Stormwind. Rialius came from a long line of priests and engaged in academic studies of the Light throughout different cultures. During his time in the Human lands, a human priestess grew to fancy the handsome elven man. Tall, lithe, and dignified, Rialius had a strong jaw line, an aquiline nose, and had long white silken hair. The priestess was an older human woman, an average blonde human woman, not bad looking, though Rialius didn't quite understand what humans considered beauty, either. While Rialius wasn't terribly interested he did consider her persistence in pursuit of him.
Rialius considered for a moment the woman's life, a priestess, came from poverty, aging and alone. To an elf, humans were short-lived creatures, what would be her lifetime would only be a blink of an eye, and this woman was past her prime and in decline. Rialius decided to sacrifice a few years of his life to make this woman very happy for the remainder of hers. He indulged her in the companionship and the love she so desperately wanted and needed in her life. She became his wife, and despite the assumption of her being beyond the childbearing age, she bore Rialius a child, a son whom they named "Danil."
Poor unfortunate Danil was born with the cruel fate of being a half-elf. Scorned other elves for their impurity and by humans for being different, Danil spent most of his young life alone studying the family career—priesthood, as an outcast. The other young people teased and bullied him terribly. They called him every cruel name in the book, mocked him, and made him feel alone. All he had was his human mother and his elven father.
Danil very much resembled his father, he grew with the same height and physique as his dad, but his shoulders were broader, his face was a little rounder, and his ears were not quite as long as that of a normal elf, but were wider and had more of a curve to them. His hair was a yellow blonde and grew to chin length. From the looks of the young man, he was very clearly neither human nor elf. He pursued his destiny as clergy and tried to ignore the bullying.
His mother told Danil stories about his grandfather on his mother's side, an adventurer and explorer who traveled the world and supposedly even a secret agent sneak of some organization in Stormwind Danil could never quire recall the name of. The young half-elf dreamed of being like his grandfather, perhaps if no one liked him because of what he was, people might like him for what he could make of himself.
It was not until Danil entered his teenage years that he made his first real friend, a young human squire by the name of Cavil McCeary who noticed the half-breed priest enduring bullying and placed himself between Danil and the other children. Cavil quickly became Danil's best friend and his defender, the champion Paladin for the fragile vulnerable priest. Cavil treated him with compassion, kindness, and not like some sort of freak, but as a normal person.
Cavil was a nice young man, younger than Danil, the second son of a vinter who had immigrated to Elwynn from Arathor. He had very broad shoulders, auburn hair, and a kind-looking round face. He listened to Danil's hopes and dreams and while Rialius discouraged Danil from leaving the path of the clergy, Cavil encouraged it, and offered to travel with him.
When the Orcs came and war broke out, a group of people from Stormwind sought temporary refuge in Lordaeron, and both Cavil and Danil, and their families were among them. The two boys got their first taste of adventure. Eventually they returned to Stormwind to help rebuild after the ordeal with the Orc invasion ended and Danil spent time helping repair Cavil's family vineyard.
Cavil and Danil now both approached adulthood, when elves would stop aging and humans would continue. The two made plans to run away together after Cavil finished his training. Unfortunately a few weeks before their great escape, tragedy struck. Danil's aging mother, now silver haired old woman, passed away. Her heart gave out and she passed peacefully in her sleep. Rialius mourned the woman but also was happy that he was able to help her live out the last of her years in joy and happiness. He no longer had any reason to stay in Stormwind.
Rialius packed up, prepared to leave Danil behind in Stormwind with the priests, but as he was leaving the human priests told him he should take his son with him. They even insisted upon it, so Rialius took the sobbing Danil back to Quel'thalas, away from his only friend, shattering the hopes and dreams Danil had secretly planned. He did not even get to say goodbye to his friend.
After a long journey, they arrived at modest home with a fenced in yard in the northern half of the Blackened Woods of Quel'thalas, west of a place called Suncrown Village, the Sunbrand House. The Sunbrands set Rialius' room up with a loft bed, so both Danil and his father had somewhere to sleep. Danil locked himself in the bedroom and refused to come out unless he needed to do business or bathe.
Surrounded by elves now, he feared they would see him as a freak, so he began to starve himself and stole a knife from the kitchen one night when no one was awake. He mutilated his ears so that when people looked at him, they didn't see malformed half-elf ears, but mutilated normal elf ears so revolting that no one would stare long enough to realize they weren't quite normal. He healed them that way. Danil lost much of his body mass and wound up looking like a big, broad shouldered, lanky, weird elf and oh, how Danil hated himself.
One day an elven man entered Danil's room with a plate of food, unannounced and unwelcome, his name was Miastal Sunbrand and he was Danil's youngest uncle. He spoke but Danil couldn't understand him at all. His father never taught him Thalassian, he only learned common. Miastal looked like Rialius but wearing red-tinted glasses and with blonde hair like Danil's own, spoke to him in a soft voice. He wore robes typical of a priest and sat down on the bed, and spoke again, this time the half-elf heard his name among his uncle's blathering.
Danil peered at the High Elf from the cocoon of blankets he had wrapped himself in, hesitated, then spoke in common, "I don't speak Thalassian. I'm sorry."
"Oh. That's okay. My name is Miastal. Your name is Danil, right? Why do you never come out and spend time with us? We've got a little library with lot of books to read, and board games, and a fireplace. Of course the books are in Thalassian but I'd be happy to help you learn," The chipper priest replied.
Danil frowned and averted his eyes from his uncle's glances, "I don't belong here. I don't belong anywhere. I'm a freak."
Miastal laughed at that, "I bet you're not. You're just a person, you're just as the Light intended for you to be. Come on, let's see you."
Hesitant, Danil lowered the blankets and revealed his scruffy neglected hair, his stubbly face, and his mangled ears. He looked at Miastal, waiting for the look of disgust upon his uncle's face.
Miatal's face twisted in horror and then of profound sadness, not at Danil's scruffy hair, or stubbly face, but at Danil's ears and what they symbolized, a profound lack of self-love. "What happened to your ears? I bet I can heal them for you." The uncle reached for Danil's malformed and mutilated ears.
Danil jerked away, "Don't touch them!"
Miastal yanked his hand away, "O-okay."
"And leave me alone!" Danil pulled his blankets back over him.
"Why?" Miastal asked.
Danil growled, "Because you think I'm a freak just like everyone else!"
"No. I don't," his uncle replied, in a soft, soothing, calm voice.
"Then why?" Danil asked, "Why did you look at me like I was a freak just now."
Miastal frowned, "Because I can't even begin to imagine how much pain you are in, and how much pain you've been in for so long that you were driven to do that to yourself. My brother says you keep declining food and you've lost a lot of weight, and that you keep hiding in your blankets. We're your family, you have no need to fear us. We're not going to judge you. I accept you, your uncle and your grandma and your grandpa, they'll accept you too. We don't care that you're a little different. You're perfect just the way you are and anyone who thinks otherwise is not worth your time."
Danil buried his face in his hands and began to sob.