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Two hours. They had two hours before they needed to return to the portal room and go back to Orgrimmar. Well, they could have gone immediately after their council with blood elven nobility, or what remained of it, had been adjourned. Yet for some infuriating reason that Sylvanas could not fully grasp, Jaina had wanted to stay.
‘It’ll be fun!’ she had beamed, smiling more brightly than Sylvanas had seen in months. ‘We could walk around the city a bit, you could show me some places, maybe buy a snack somewhere…’
Sylvanas had sourly reminded her that she greatly disliked being in Silvermoon. The whole reason of being there was to speak about the restorations and rebuilding of parts of the city, not leisurely strolling through the streets, raking up old, painful memories. Lor’themar had hammered on the importance of the restorations, Jaina had supported them, Thalyssra had opted to prioritize them over trade routes and contacting dwarven blacksmith experts. Sylvanas had opposed, quite vehemently so. With the voting however, she had lost two to seven. Now she was stewing silently, guiding Jaina to a plaza outside of Lor’themar’s residence.
‘Here used to be a market,’ she says, disinterested.
‘It’s beautiful!’ Jaina admires the intricate mosaics that grace the floor. ‘I can only imagine how lively a market would be here.’
The sunlight makes her freckles stand out more. And her smile makes adorable pits in her cheeks, Sylvanas begrudgingly admits. Yet, she remembers skipping over the tiles with her sisters, looking to stir up trouble or running to catch up with their mother’s rangers, who used to march over the plaza in all their ceremonial splendour. Such days are over. Sighing, she prepares to take Jaina to some statue of a Ranger-General from centuries ago. There is a small fountain there, perhaps her wife can do some tricks with the water to amuse the sin’dorei civilians.
Yet she cannot take another step. Something has attached itself to her right calf.
Whirling around and looking at her leg reveals a young blood elf boy. He can’t be older than two summers. With the arm that isn’t wrapped like a strangling vine around her leather greaves, he grabs at her red cape with an amused coo.
‘Let go,’ Sylvanas hisses, shaking her leg.
The toddler grabs her tighter, grasping the armour with both his chubby arms. So the Warchief reaches for his collar to yank him away.
‘Sylvanas, no!’ Jaina shrieks, half a smile on her face as she hurriedly grasps Sylvanas’ underarm.
Some blood elves are already looking at them. Sylvanas doesn’t want to cause a scene.
‘Get him off my leg,’ she grates.
When Jaina kneels down besides the little lad and gently lifts him underneath his armpits, he stays attached to Sylvanas’ armour like a leech.
Jaina giggles. ‘Seems that he likes you. Come on now lil’ guy, the Warchief needs her leg in one piece.’
Still he won’t let go, only squirming and babbling in Thalassian. He cannot even say no properly. Eventually Jaina is able to carefully get his hands off Sylvanas’ greave, but when she lifts him up, he grabs the undead’s cape instead, clenching his little hands in the fabric. There is a small crowd standing around them now, inquisitively gawking at their Warchief.
‘You have to hold him,’ Jaina whispers. She still has an insufferable smile on her face. She seems to be enjoying the situation, much to Sylvanas’ chagrin. On top of that, she pushes the boy into Sylvanas’ arms, guiding him to sit on her elbow. If she lets go, he will fall onto the pavement, and even Sylvanas cannot do that to a child. And so, the Banshee Queen secures the small blood elf in her arms, bristling as he presses closer to her unmoving chest.
‘What, pray tell, is so funny, wife?’ she asks Jaina, who is still laughing.
‘You,’ she says, ‘You and the sheer revulsion that’s absolutely dripping of your face. He’s not some infected goblin!’
‘No. But I do not like children.’ Sylvanas looks down at the boy, who has nestled comfortably in the hollow of her arm and against her side. His little ears twitch and she fears that he will soon fall asleep there.
‘Felethis!’ she hears a voice behind her. A female sin’dorei, most likely the boy’s mother, runs up to them over the plaza. ‘Felethis be careful! The Warchief-’
‘Sylvanas he’s going to bite!’ Jaina warns.
Her rangers’ reflexes are the only thing that saves her ear. Pulling the infernal toddler away from her face and holding him in front of her with outstretched arms, Sylvanas shudders. To her already sizable discomfort, he starts to cry. His wailing would put a banshee to shame.
‘ Shhh, shut up!’ she hisses. ‘ Anar’alah Belore , be quiet!’
It does not help. Jaina is rolling her eyes, the boy’s mother looks anxious to approach them, but Sylvanas sees the fear in her eyes. So, and to avoid an even bigger crowd from gathering around them, she brings the child close to her, pressing a gauntleted hand against his back and hoping that he will stop crying before her ears fall off. And, bless Belore, he does. He also grabs Sylvanas’ left ear with a surprising strength, bending it nearly double and cooing excitedly while pulling quite harshly. To the side, Jaina can barely contain her laughter, bringing a glove to her mouth to stifle herself.
‘Now you’re quiet. Good,’ Sylvanas murmurs. ‘Will you release my ear now? Ow, ow!’
Now Felethis, as the boy is apparently called, seems to be actively trying to rip it off her head, attempting to succeed at something even the Lich King himself wasn’t capable of.
‘No, don’t grab it more tightly! It can only bend so far!’
Sylvanas reaches up and wraps her own hand around his, trying to make him relax his fingers. Just when she is about to accept her fate that she will have to make do with only one ear, he loses interest and goes for her eyebrow instead, squirming and trying to stand up on her bent elbow. Babbling and being too adorable for her undead mind, he only barely misses the eyebrow as she jerks her head to the side. To prevent the lad from either flailing out of her arms or grabbing hold of another important facial feature, Sylvanas waves one finger in front of her face.
‘I’ll give you this one, now stop trying to disfigure me,’ she tuts.
Felethis stops moving so wildly. Instead his eyes, only slightly glazed over with green, focus on Sylvanas’ index finger as she holds it in front of his face.
‘ Guh!, ’ he sputters, grabbing it with both of his tiny hands, tracing the silvery swirls on the burgundy leather of her glove. One corner of her mouth twitches into a smile of sorts.
‘- sure she wouldn’t actually harm him,’ Jaina says, walking up to the Warchief, leading the boy’s mother, who still seems frightened.
When the woman has bowed deeply, she cautiously looks at her son, who is about to put the claw-tipped finger of the gauntlet into his mouth. Reaching out hesitatingly, she removes his chubby fingers from the sharp appendage, with a soft kind of grace. Finally somewhat freed, Sylvanas nods at her in greeting.
Her peace does not last long. With a weh , the boy lunges forward to grab her ear again, giggling at how it twitches when he bends it in a way that cannot be good, even for Sylvanas’ undead body.
‘What a grip he has,’ she murmurs. ‘He would make for a fine spellbreaker, in a few years.’
Nervously smiling, his mother raises her hands, prompting Sylvanas to slowly unwind her arm from around the boy’s waist, allowing her to take over her son.
‘Felethis,’ the woman says softly. ‘My little sun, please release the Warchief now… Lady Windrunner would - ehm…’
‘Lady Windrunner would like to keep both of her ears, I think,’ Jaina says, standing next to Sylvanas and assisting the mother, calmly helping with dislodging the little lad. Sylvanas lets them.
It takes two women to free her ear. But when all is said and done, the mother is relieved, Jaina is still laughing and the crowd around them is dispersing, Sylvanas sighs. She never expected to feel a slight twinge in her chest when the boy reaches for her cape with his chubby fists as they part ways. Then she unclasps it from her shoulders, taking off her pauldrons briefly. Jaina takes them from her, and she folds the cape in half and offers it to the mother.
Felethis coos as he is swaddled into the Warchief’s dark red garment, thumbing at the edges and trying to suckle on one of the points of the fabric before his mother pulls it out of his mouth. She unsuccessfully tries to tuck the folded point into the rest of the swaddle before Sylvanas, with another deep sigh, offers her the clasp as well. Her Forsaken half mask glints on the enamel.
‘We must depart now, I think,’ she says.
Jaina nods. ‘Yes, the portal should be ready.’
‘I might return in a few weeks,’ Sylvanas offers to the mother. ‘If you wish to speak about… indeed making a little spellbreaker, arcanist, or something of the like, out of Felethis.’
‘I would be honored, my Warchief,’ the woman says, bowing and blushing.
‘Then I shall send a messenger in advance. Where may they find you?’
‘In the temple of Belore, my Lady. The one in the western section of the city… I work there, as priestess and healer, while it is being renovated.’
How appropriate . The very temple where I was sworn in as Ranger-General.
‘Well, I will be sure to let you know when I am visiting Silvermoon again.’ Sylvanas turns to Felethis, now comfortably seated on his mother’s arm. ‘And you-’
You awful little troublemaker. He reminds her a lot of how she and her sisters used to be, far too long ago.
‘- do not tear off any ears, eyebrows, or attach yourself to another Forsaken emissary. Not before I have returned.’
Cheerily babbling and spluttering in barely developed Thalassian, he stretches his little arms out towards her. Sylvanas strokes him over his flaxy blonde hair once, hastily pulling away before he can grab her arm.
Jaina laughs at her when they walk to the portal room. No, she is not getting attached to a child, Sylvanas replies. She is only ensuring the future of her people is safe. Jaina’s eyebrows shoot up and she bursts out in a laugh, turning herself red-faced and breathless before shaking her head and stepping through the portal.