News hit the island like a knife wound as lives remembered well of the late Sunsworn’s work. To hear the last Sunsworn had finally died off the face of Azeroth brought grief from the good, and joy from the evil. It was during these times where humanity truly is shown their faces….revealing the masks to their facade.
All had a mask…all had a part to the play….including the little princess Sil’vii.
She had no emotion to share, none like the other whelps of the manor….none like the wisps who wailed like banshees while blaming themselves for her father’s death….none like the icy grief and heartbreak that her mother Khalagos had when she saw him return from his outing. When he found out…she did not care to ask….she did not dare make herself seen.
Only one went after for her comfort. As she was about to leave through the window a familiar gurgle from a particular the proto-drake was made behind her. Turning her golden head, she gazed her eyes into his beady button-like eyes. The whelp was a funny one…always speaking in Murloc instead of Dragonic. Buttons were confused more than weeping. ‘Good, fewer tears, fewer things to undo.’ she thought to herself before she glided down to him.
“Where is our papa?” gurgled the boy.
“…He’s sleeping.” the princess replied.
“But people say-” the proto-drake was ushered back away from her as she swung her tail at him. He knew he was annoying her. She lowers her head in forgiveness.
“..You remember why I was made…yes brother?” she inquired to him slowly…waiting for his small mind to remember.
“…You are going to wake papa up?” he finally responded…the tone of his question implied that he understood. In the beginning of her birth…she would never get to live like he would.
“Indeed…be the older sibling in my departure yes?” she asked to him. She had little time left…she had to leave now or else…or else…
“Okay….hey Sil’vii?”
The Soul whelp hisses in irritation as she was halted ones more.
“What now?” she snapped at him.
“…I’ll miss you.” was all the boy to gurgle.
The whelp was taken back for a moment…a long silence between the two was held before she nods to him.
“I’ll be in your dreams.” promised the princess.
And then…there was just the boy….and the island’s cry for help.
The blue dragon arrived at night when everyone was sleeping and all other mourners had gone. It was easier for him that way. Asleep, no one could see how heavily grief hung on him and weighed down his shoulders. They couldn’t hear how hoarse his voice was when he spoke or see the tear tracks that marked his otherwise expressionless but perfectly shaped face. His movements that were usually meant to capture and hold the attention of others were subdued, stilled in the heaviness of sorrow.
He could hear the heavy, labored breathing of the injured but healing as they lay in restless and nightmare fueled sleep in silent agony. How many had been injured, how many had been killed he could not say, but the burst of magic that had emanated from the center of the Dawnspire had been hard to ignore even from where he sat within the Ivory Spire. The magic had pulled him mind and body out of the sanctuary that was the great library, but it was the hushed words of the great still form of the dragon that had drawn him here to this place of pain and healing.
He pushed open the doors of the infirmary. His footsteps were ghostly silent, the sound of his moving robes a passing whisper in the night. Here and there as he passed a cot, those laying in them would shiver as the cold chill that always followed the dragon passed over them. It would be gone come the morrow but for the moment the chill of winter settled through the building, provided some relief for the few that felt the stifling heat of so many bodies pressed together. With pure intent and purpose he passed over the bodies of others and made his way towards the golden mane of hair that could only belong to Felo’thore.
Felo’thore. Flamboyant and lovely, an icon of fashion and good taste. Now the scar that stretched across his face and marred it was gruesome and unbecoming on the magi turned druid. Where his jaw had broken and lips split the skin had swelled and bruised in a way that made him almost unrecognizable. At his side and curled around him with hands clinging to the lithe and limber body was a much larger man with a face dusted in freckles and hair as curly and wild as a lions mane. His husband surely, for no one that was merely a friend could look so awake with grief even while asleep.
‘ You at twenty-five hundred years old, you will be cranky. But you will be stronger and far wiser. You will see ancient trees grow from seed to root and maturity and watch the titans of forests grow old and die. You will know the hearts of all wild places, and the wolves will pass your names down to their descendants where you will be nothing more than myth.’
Now the man lay trapped in dreams and a magic that not even a child of the Spellweaver could pull him from. The future the dragon had so lightly spoken of may never come to pass.
He knelt down beside the cot and with the barest brush of fingers pushed back blood stained hair from Felo’thores face to deliver a cool kiss to the burning skin of his forehead. The dragon stood, turned, and moved on. Where his feet stepped unnatural fog formed and spread across the floor as that which remained hidden could reveal itself. It followed him outside where now he could see the huge and still form that was the red dragon laying on its side.
Reynllinstraz. Nine thousand years old. Ancient. Beautiful. Charming and charismatic. A good friend. Companion.
Dead.
The snow had already begun to fall in earnest where it rarely snowed in Quel’thalas, and the ground soon frosted over wherever the thick white flakes fell. Sounds of footsteps of the already fallen snow echoed behind him. Although the figure was not close…the warmth of the sun was undoubtedly intense. Where she stepped the snow and frost melted from the heat only to quickly form again as she moved on.
“Mother….go back to bed. Father will be home soon.” Her voice was a whisper he could still hear clearly. She appeared to be an adult now where she had been a child before. Time was short now. Too short.
“Sil’vii. You should know better than to think that I will leave.” He turned back to face the woman, his brows knit slightly as he took her in. In her mortal form she was the perfect mix of Reynllin and himself. Pale skin, delicate features, golden of hair, and nothing like himself save for how she looked. “What are you doing out here, child?”
“….I came to say my goodbyes.” was all she could manage to tell him. Her cheeks were wet…it seems as though she had been here all day telling people the same she had been telling him. “..Mother I…I won’t be coming home. I’m bringing father back..we…we talked about this day..before you came along.” Her hands were starting to glow, but in a failed effort she hides them quickly in her robes sleeves. “I’m sorry we never got to tell you sooner….”
‘Mother’. It as a word even in his other self that he was unfamiliar with and it put an ache into his chest to hear the soul of the red dragon say it so genuinely. “Don’t be.” He stepped towards her and ran both hands down the length of her golden hair, trying to comfort her as much as he could. “You are still so young. Is there no other way, Sil’vii?”
The young woman peered down and sighs. “I’ve already changed….I’m already an adult…as beautiful as it is…I wasn’t meant to live like you. I came from father on the evening Deathwing died…when the Soul was shattered I was born. It was meant to be…but…” slowly she walks over, reaching out her hands to feel Khal’s touch one last time. “I’m happy for the years I was given under father’s wing.”
He squeezed her hands and forced himself to voice his question. “Do you want me to leave?”
She hesitated before answering him. “…..Please?…I don’t want anyone to see…he’ll be back in the morning.” Her hands were growing uncomfortably warmer now. “Promise to keep him happy?”
“I’ll do everything I can, Sil’vii.” He cupped her chin and gently pulled her face up to look at his and, as with the druid, planted a kiss on her forehead. He squeezed her hands one last time and then dropped them as he turned back towards the infirmary. Perhaps it was cold to not even spare her a goodbye but he had no time for useless words. She had her part to play.
So too did he.
In the same silence as he had arrived the dragon departed, leaving nothing behind but the chill mist that settled on the sleepers inside the building, the frost covered ground and the snow. It would be the only signs that had ever been there, and they would be gone come the morning. Some might have heard the sounds of enormous beating wings that flew quickly overhead, but none would see the form in flight they belonged to.
He would mourn in his own way, and there were still demons that lingered in the land left to kill.
me reclining in diamonds and a black velvet dress with a slit up the side on a red velvet couch covered in silk handkerchiefs with a crystal glass full of the finest liquor in one hand and the other thrown over my eyes in elegant anguish:
Tyleril Silversword 
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