Talistory

The high elf held out the towel, impatience on his face, as the night elf continued to lounge in the pool of water outside her home. Other night elves used the pools as mere decoration, the pretty aquatic plants and spiked rushes and shoots appearing as some sort of watery garden. Not so for Tali, who used her pond as a bath. The water around her had already changed from a twinkling clear colour to a murky greeny brown as the grass, plant mulch, twigs and leaves slowly lost their hold on her body. Her skin, if he could have seen it through the murk, would be much darker than his. He had chosen the high elf form voluntarily, sun coloured hair held high in a spiked tail on his head, a slimmer bone structure, higher ears, because his normal form would have frightened all the wintersabers within a mile of her home.

“Mother, do hurry,” he complained, his arms aching from holding the towel up, both as a shield to her privacy and as a welcoming warmth to hasten her bath.

Yet she was in no hurry, instead, seeming confused about her changing shape, stroking her hand beneath the water to cover her growing pregnancy, neither protective nor curious, simply confused at its existence at all.

“Patience, Tari,” her voice was gentle and quiet, as it always was when with him. He pressed his lips together, biting back his response that she continued to treat him as a whelpling rather than as an adult, knowing that she always meant well. Another moment's silence passed, and he began to regret his choice of waiting, when a sloshing water movement alerted him that she had stood, and he moved forwards to wrap the towel around her.

“You didn't need to wait for me, Tari” Her tone rose at the end, as if her statement was a question, and she stepped on bare feet across the snow, one hand shielding her eyes from the low evening sunshine, heading for the warmth of indoors. Tari was pleased he had a fire waiting, as she often forgot such matters. He had even tidied her little house, trying to be a good son for her, but she barely noticed either as she quickly dressed, pulling a white robe over her head.

“I tidied?” he ventured, sounding like a child eager for approval rather than the adult he had become.

“That's good.”  Talithe rather used please, thank you, or other words of etiquette. He knew it was not because of her lack of kindness or honour, but due to her lack of understanding of the minutae and details of modern society. Her age was indefinable, having no need to count the years of an immortal life at first. She looked at him as he didn't reply to her, sensing from his countenance the notion of disquiet from her lack of manners. Misinterpretting, she tried to remedy it with a query she had learned and repeated by rote. “Uh, is your day good?”

“I did not come to discuss my day, as you know. There are important events that worry me and I needed your advice” Tari reached for the hairbrush as he spoke, and turned back towards her, hand raised to attend her long purple locks. Already, though, it would seem his actions were too late, as the tresses were now tangled with leaves, plant stems, and flower buds. She took the wetted hair and bound it, unbrushed, into a messy long plait, the weaving action deft and practiced over the centuries. The male placed the hairbrush back down, unused. As he had grown, he had considered it normal that her shoulders, hair, and sometimes arms and legs were entwined with natural growth, that her white robe was usually dark green with scattered foilage, that her feet were green from grass stains. Now grown, and left home for five years to live with his true kin, he knew his adoptive mother's idiosyncrasies were most unusual, more befitting a tauren druid than an elf of her venerable years.

Tari took a breath and tried again “mother, the trial?” but she didn't hear him, her head lost in random meditations of who knew which source. The life cycle of worms was her current interest, previously it had been such random topics as the reason for trees to consent to becoming books, or the temperature required to create snow rather than ice, or the breeding seasons of the sabers. One never knew which rubbish would come from her mouth next.

“Was I a good foster mother to you?” she enquired, head held cutely at an angle of questioning.

“How could you say that!”  He rushed to take both her hands in his, trying to radiate comfort from his narrow high boned face. He would have hugged her, if he was not worried that the green that already collected on her dress might transfer to his own red and gold robe. “You carried me from Grim Batol, you kept me warm for months, we even fought together when I was just a whelpling and could not control my breath. You are not Alexstrasza, but I will always honour you.”

“Honour? Is that what matters in parenting?” She stroked her hand with curiosity over the tented green fabric at her belly.

Tariastrasz took a quiet breath of impatience and attempted again to divert the subject. “Mother I know you have worries right now, especially with the estrangement from your consort, but my questions cannot wait, I have need of your support.” He all but pleaded with her to concentrate on the current moment, and indeed she now turned her face to regard his, at last some interest and even anxiety playing over her pretty features.

“Has something happened?”

“The trial is tomorrow, and the Pandaren in charge, the fa'shua, has invited neutral parties as well as the horde and alliance, to attend and witness justice. The Life-binder has invited me. Will you come also?”

“What do you mean, come also?”

“As an honourary Red. And to witness what happens”

“I don't understand? Why are alliance and horde both there? What is happening?”  Tali's confusion was deep.

“Mother, they have appointed an accuser, a defender, and the bronze flight are also involved, although I mistrust their motives”

“So you should,” Tali's face grew troubled. “Murozond...” she murmured. “What does he plan?”

“No, mother, the bronze, not the infinite,” his tone was exasperated at her lack of understanding.

“They are the same.” She waved her hand dismissively, settling down at the nearby table to pick up a chunk of Darnassian bleu cheese and bite into it. “What is the trial for, anyway?”

“Garrosh Hellscream, the disgraced Horde Warchief? Ring any bells?”  His tone at reached its pinnacle of frustration with her slowness. He knew Tali kept to herself, but the misdeeds of Garrosh would surely have circulated as gossip throughout Darnassus and the night elven lands.

“Hellscream? I have seen his memorial stone in Ashenvale.”

Tari gave up, she obviously was indeed oblivious to the events throughout Azeroth, the destruction of Theramore, the desecration of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms in Pandaria, the countless deaths, including Cairne Bloodhoof, none of these seemed to have touched her, she was so cut off from the world and its wars and tribulations. He watched his mother eating the rough brown bread and old fashioned cheese for a while before he spoke again.

“I will speak to my Lady of the Reds and ask them to find a foster mother for your child, as you did for me.”

Tali looked up sharply, her food suspended halfway to her mouth in her grasp. “You would do that for me?”

“Yu did everything for me, of course I would. I know the rift with your consort has hit you hard. And don't worry about the event of which I spoke, I will handle that too. Now tell me, mother, do you wish me to shop for some more of that cheese you seem addicted to?”  His features curled into a smile, and an answering smile came to her face too.