The Dead of Winter

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The stories relate to Winter, and were written as an exercise for myself, on the character's thoughts and background. It is not IC information, except for the parts mentioned in the character profile - the cat's name, for example, is not. Text copyrighted to Auburn, plagiarists will be keelhauled and fed to rabid weasels.

The Lady and the Drunk

 * “There must be some kind of way out of here,”
 * said the Joker to the Thief
 * “There's too much confusion,
 * I can't get no relief”
 * Jimi Hendrix: All Along the Watchtower
 * Jimi Hendrix: All Along the Watchtower

The Kaldorei woman approaches me in the Mage’s District, shaky and wild-eyed. I know my business; before she speaks, I’ve observed her dilated pupils, the tremor of her hands, off-colour whites and half a dozen smaller tells of the substances she’s been abusing. She says she was sent to me: she demands something that will help her sleep, because the old stuff isn’t working anymore.

I take a while to make up my mind. “Come to me in an hour,” I tell her, ignoring Andruil’s claws digging into my shoulder in protest. “I will have what you need.”

She is early, as addicts are wont to be when desperate, and Andruil likes her no more for it. Truthfully I keep sedatives to match the horse tranquilizers she’s been using at hand for both protection and utility – but simply giving her what she wants would tell me nothing of her character. Instead I make her wait, while I go through the motions of preparing a draught to match her specifications.

She is impatient, but she attempts to sit, does not attempt to ransack my laboratory, and she asks nothing except what my services will cost her. When I tell her to worry about that later, she gives a bleak, humorless smile. “Sure,” she says. “You’re a drug dealer. First taste is always free.”

I let that pass, trade the real draught for the one I’ve made a show of preparing with a little sleight of hand, and watch her down it without a moment’s hesitation. I leave her to sleep in the corner of my laboratory, with Andruil watching over her, tail lashing and muscles bunched. He will alert me if the drug fails to keep her unconscious.

Over the next months, I test her. I’ve long had need of a bodyguard, for more risky expeditions – but such services tend to cost money, and come with a variety of inconvenient questions about exactly why I have need of the things I collect. I am cautious, with good reason. The Argent Dawn and the Church of the Holy Light support my studies – insofar as they are privy to them. Some details are best kept to myself, for their peace of mind and mine alike.

Sarama does not care, past the token explanations I sometimes offer her. I tell her I am an alchemist, which is true. I tell her I am engaged in research of the Plague, possibly a cure – this is also true. If I sometimes omit or obscure the precise usefulness of some reagent or scrap of intelligence I tell her we are to obtain, she does not care. Her interest in my business begins and ends with my willingness to supply her with the drugs that keep her nights quiet, and gold that keeps her drunk through the hours she spends awake. She complains what I give her is less narcotic than she’d like: I point out she’s less sober than I’d like, and we both must suffer such small disappointments gracefully.

But addled and congenitally amused as she is, I cannot fault her ability with the fine daggers that caught my eye that first day I met her. That she’d still have such weapons, when most addicts would have sold them long ago for another dose, told me she still had some control the moment we met. It makes me wonder just how capable she would be without the drugs numbing her. It makes me wonder why she needs them. She will not tell me: only that when she is sober, people die.

I have some experience with such claims; I will not defy hers on a ehim. For now, it is enough that she is willing to serve as my guard when I need her. A drunk and an old woman; a fine figure we are.

Andruil does not warm to her, though I could not say if it is due to her species, her habits, or both. She is sharp enough to realize that, and makes a spectacle of herself regularly, threatening a dainty, staring Siamese with words or daggers. I dare no chances: I tell her it is simply a familiar’s concern for its master, a reflection of my own ambivalent feelings regarding her addictions and secrets. I do not know if she believes me. Andruil sulks for days either way, hurt in spite of himself at being shown off as some creature of mine, no more than a pet.

He forgives me eventually, once we settle into new quarters in Shattrath, and he can watch me return to my work again. I am an alchemist, that much is true. I am a drug dealer, insofar as Sarama is concerned. I am, in fact a great many things – a magus, an adventurer, a mother, an old woman, and other things far less flattering – I have no fear of labels. If life has taught me anything, it is to judge sparingly, for there is no telling where necessity may lead.

I have lived a good life. I have honoured my parents, healed the sick, raised four children, and seen a husband to his grave as content as can be expected. I have paid my dues by anyone’s reckoning. If, in these last years, I slip and fall into an old woman’s hubris, it is for the Light alone to judge me.