Travel Diary of the Crazy Cat Girl

Day One
I laugh and laugh and laugh. Just for the sheer joy of being young and free and silly. I kick my feet up and down in the lake's edge, sending water and river weed flying. My brothers and sisters would be soaked if they weren't already swimming. Aydith and Jenny are mock wrestling at the lakeside, wearing lake-sodden underclothes, they throw each other squealing into the glistening water alternately, clambering out pulling each other in, and all the while pretending not to see the local boy with blond hair stood watching them. I already know who will win the squeaking splashing competition. The witch child always wins. if not through guile, she uses her other charms. Helpless boy, he is as doomed as the others.

I caught her once in "flagrante", her peasant skirt hitched around her waist, bobbing up and down on the butcher's second son. Poor boy. Her wicked eyes caught mine for a moment and gleamed with spiteful triumph. I ran away, red faced, but that evening she caught me and pinched my arm so my eyes watered and hissed 'you're jealous'. To my shame, I was, and that night after we had been all put to bed in our cramped cottage, I pulled on my shawl and ran down past the kobold den, near the lake's edge, and masturbated in the woods, my eyes on the moon's traitorous face in the black lake.

Water holds a fascination for me. I'm a firey person and can't even swim, so I approach it with a mix of fascination and fear.

I come out of my daydream and look about me. This happens to me constantly, these dreams or visions. Half of them are true memories my parched mind has forgotten, and half are just dreams of a fanciful teenager who has seen to much in her life.

The cats don't like the water here, they are asleep, further up the beach in the shade of a palm tree. Enormous turtles live here, peaceful proud creatures they only attack when provoked. They remind me of someone. Elizabetha. But whilst I know the name, no matching face comes to mind.

I strain to remember why I'm here. Steamwheedle Port is hot, devoid of boats, and home to masses of goblins. Their green skins maybe protect them from the sun, for they don't burn like I do.

I dream of sunburn, of lying on a Durotar beach wearing nothing but my little chemise and undershorts. I am with a man who isn't my husband, and when I see this, I shake off the dream. These mixed thoughts plague me. It takes me another few seconds to remember where I am. I remember landing by gryphon at a walled desert town, seeking answers to a question I forget, from a goblin who wasn't there. The long ship voyage, the tiring flight gripping tight to a falcon faced beast, a crowd in the mage district, a man with a beard and glittering soft eyes urgently pumping Light into the body of a dead baby.

The dream memories wash over me like the restless black waves wearing away at the evening beach. The sand is growing cold under my bare feet, and my heated brain lets the present trickle through its grasp. This time, I imagine paying for a night's board at a goblin run inn. It stinks of fish and machinery. A horrible combination. I dream of marrying a beautiful dangerous man in the north homelands, yet he turns into a leather winged night demon. Heather's little body pumps blood over the floor, through my fingers, and down my chest, staining my uniform forever scarlet.

I sleep badly. I wake in the night, with conflicting feelings. My full hard breasts cry out to feed my little baby. My heart is a hug solid stone waiting for her soft pink mouth to feed and lull me to sleepy stupor. At the same time, the rest of me, my soft weak muscles scream in pain from riding gryphon and battle horse. It has been too long since I had any kind of warrior training and it shows in my untoned body. Weak weak.

If I had trained harder, could I have saved her? And who did it? Ah yes, that's why I'm here. I've remembered. I'm looking for the killer.

Day Two
Tanaris sun wakes me early and I haul myself to the stables to check my mount. Rumbosa has been fed and rubbed down and is eager to leave the fish and machinery behind. Hejin had a horse like this. What a strange thing to remember. The man who was once my husband. Divorced now, arrested for Heather's death, named murderer by me. Then freed by me. It only took shouting and a Louise-special tantrum and he was free. Free because of that conversation in the cell. A conversation that has slipped my mind like most of my memories. I only remember his eyes. Eyes of a devestated father. It wasn't him, I would find the real killer myself, maybe later today. In the meantime, I hoped he laid low.

I scoop up the cats into their traveling basket and set off back to Gadgetzan, to meet that cunning goblin who first used his bizarre machine to confirm my pregnancy with Heather.

Day Four part one
Two eventful days. "The fires, why does no-one put them out?" At first I thought he was as crazy as me, but then he explained. Perhaps I'm not as mad as I feared. Stratholme. The answer is in Stratholme. Could Aydith have anything to do with this? She held me in that Light forsaken place for weeks. Would she be evil enough to coldly slaughter her own baby niece? I'm scared to find the answer. If it was her, where is she now?

My question had to wait to be answered. A desperate father found me and begged my help for his baby son. The poor man's wife had been killed by coastal pirates and so I was pressed into use as a wet nurse. I promised to stand in until he could find a permanent nurse, so today I can get back to my journey. It felt so good to feed the poor hungry child, such a physical relief, but I still cried, remembering a softer sweeter girl, little fists, eyes closed in happy concentration.

The cats hate the ship. They skulk below deck, huddling together and silently cursing the woman who brought them here. I don't mind, I laugh at them. When we reach Menethil Harbour, I'll let them loose for the night. The toms will come back strutting, the females shy and full of knowing looks.

I will miss feeding that boy. I'm glad I helped him survive.

The creak of the ships ropes sound like human cries. I vomit over the side.

Day Four part two
You will not beleive the luck I've had! The innkeeper, or more specifically his son, not only knows Aydith but has seen her! She passed through heading north, leaving a trail of destruction so obviously her. The hearthbroken innkeeper's son tells me of an elegantly mannered girl and her pet snake. He confides in me his hopes of marrying her. Actually I think he tells me a few times, because I drift off into nightmares whilst he speaks. My mind fills with holding precious Heather's broken body. I don't think she felt a thing, the single stab wound was clever and neat. My poor baby girl, so much blood, so much blood.

The innkeeper's son has started flirting with me. Scared, I feign madness. It's so much easier to pretend to be mad when you really are insane. The startled boy turns down my offer of cat burgers for the inn and bids me a good night. I gather my cats and head for the rented room. I'll be sharing with a dwarfess. Hope she likes being woken by humping cats and teenage girls having scarlet nightmares. Sometimes I feel like an old war veteran instead of a teenage girl. I'll bring my sword to bed with me tonight.

Do I still have a sword?

Day Five
I lay awake last night listening to the insects chirping. I don't know their name, and frankly I'm amazed I remembered the word 'insect' but whatever their name the buzzy chirp of Wetland insect kept me awake. At least that's my excuse. Really I was trying to think of a better plan to catch Aydith other than 'chase her'. This wasn't easy for a girl who has lost her mind yet still has to share her flea-infested room with a dwarf and a group of seasick cats.

I knew it was her. I knew she had been in my room in Stormwind City, put the blade to my sleeping baby. I knew it as surely as I knew that we were both infected by the family madness. How many times have I sen the disbelief, look of horror, on a customer's face when they realise the cats I sell are for meat. I see it, and I know it. I know I am crazy. I know they call my mother the crazy cat lady in the village. I know what they call me in the city. It's Aydith who has lost her sanity. Lost it when she started conjuring demons, betwitching the local boys and terrorising the neighbours.

She used to brag. I was at the same time her victim and her confidente. The power growing inside her made her as dizzy as a farm girl watching her first fireworks. She killed my daughter and I remember glimpses of myself walking around Stormwind crying in fear of the expectation. I had always known it would be her. But my muddled crazy mind had named the wrong person. And now as I try and remember, I dream again and I see a darkhaired mad woman crying out to strangers, telling them that Aydith would come and kill Heather. I see a mad woman frightening children with her crazy shrieking. My stupid mind had bent and broken by her torture and fear, and the murder I had feared happening had come to pass as surely as if I had wished it and conjured Aydith herself from the Nether.

Heather's murder was my fault.

Chasing Aydith was simply chasing my own death. Only the Alliance army or Stormwind guards had enough power to stop her.

Mercilessly the weight and worry snapped my head again. All I could think or see was the vast flat Wetlands around me, all I could hear was the Wetland birds calling to each other, heralding danger of crocolisks. I couldn't remember where I was going or what I was doing, so I let the horse plod on beneath me, and I wept for a while for my daughter.

Some time later, I felt lips on mine, and my tears had stopped. Then I blushed to find they were not my husband's, ex-husband's, but belonged to a girl with red hair and gentle eyes. My heart lept but then my ragged memory moved on further and my loss overcame me again. I had no husband now. The man I had helped in Stormwind had not killed Heather, but I knew he had killed before. I remember the ache of regret in his eyes when he had told me about it. I was relieved the divorce was complete, for he had not protected Heather at the vital time, and I could never see him again without thinking of her. My little family was gone, as far gone as my Scarlet family the holy crusade. The only task left was to bring Aydith to justice and to try and bring my mind through the Wetlands to sanity.

The day wears on. Oh light I miss Heather, the weight of her warm soft little body. I hear the crackle of the Stratholme fires. Why does no one put them out? The cats in their carrier mew for freedom, and I am bound again, at the feet of a demon and my soul is drained to exhaustion by my warlock sister.

My gelding sidesteps under me with nervese, he feels my fear from my unconscious pull on the reins. It's dark now. If we can get through these stone mountain tunnels, we can maybe make it to the dwarven town of Thelsamar in time for some supper and ale. My legs and arse ache from the ride, and my breasts and heart both threaten to explode for Heather.

The innkeeper has a wife who had lost children herself, and after the cats and I have shared a strange dwarven stew, she sells me a vial of pungeant herbal syrup. It's to dry me up, and I take it. Even this nasty dwarf potion couldn't possibly hurt me more than I hurt now. I sleep in a great wooden chair by the fire and the cats sleep by the hearth. I sell one to the innkeeper to keep the mice out his cellars.

Tomorrow, if it not snowing too hard I can make it to Ironforge and through the Deeprun tram to Stormwind. But tonight I dream of soul-deep tortures, my head thick with dwarven elixir, ale, and insanity.

Day Six
It did snow, but I got myself a thick woolen cloak and pulled my leather hat down hard and plodded on to the heat and stink of toast metal in Ironforge. A busy place, full of mercenaries and traders. I ignored them all. No one knew me. One or two raised an eyebrow at my small army of cats or wrinkled their nose at my travelling clothes. I suppose I smell. I haven't washed since Heather died.

I go to the tram. None of this would have happened if I had thrown myself under it that time. The coward's solution. No, it would be worse, for there would be no one to stop Aydith.

I knew I would have to be the one to stop her. I knew it as a child, and I knew it now as a mad woman. I had travelled halfway across Azeroth and Kalimdor to discover the very thing I had dreaded from the awful time little Heather was born. Innocent Heather. Made with love in Theramore when I was still a Scarlet. At least it had been quick, and would never know these times of conflict and war.

I shared the tram carriage with a chatty little gnome and an elf. The elf had his pet with him and held it back firmly as it drooled hungrily at my following little army. I'm ashamed to say that I had another of my funny turns and fell out the carriage in Stormwind screaming the tree rat had been sent by Aydith to kill Heather. I earned the curses he muttered at me and the dirty looks the gnome gave me. I hate being crazy.

Tonight I will sleep on a bench in the tram station. I never want to stay in a Stormwind inn again. The cats have plenty of mice and rats to eat. They are happy. Sitting here in a daze, I forget whey I am here, what am I doing? My mind feels so odd and cold and horrible that I throw myself to the lurching thrashing platform and hold on to it as it tilts, screaming in fear. A man in rogue's leather steps over me, laughing and throws a coin at me. I quieten in shame and pray to the Light to help me tomorrow. People will come and say they know me, but I won't know them. There is only one face and one name that is permanent in my boiling mind and I will never see her again.

Will they recognise me? I'm as brown as that man who leads 'Starlight'. I forget his name. Hadn't I enquired into his guild? I could remember no replies in the mail. That man would know, the one with the shoulders and the shield. Kien, that was his name. Light, I fancied him, but he'd never look twice at me. Besides I was married. Then I remembered my divorce papers, tucked into my saddlebags. They leaned against the bench, guarded by furry bundles of snoozing cats. How strange to thinik that my time for love had already gone by the age of nineteen.

I should look to the future but how can I do that when I don't know my past? When my present is just a muddle of nightmares? Tonight, at least I can hide my travel- weary body on a bench in the tram. Tomorrow I will sell some cats.

What is the point of justice for Heather? Arresting Aydith will not bring her back. Aydith's beautiful face raises an elegant eyebrow in my uncontrolled daydream.

I am so lonely. I scoop up one of the fuzziest cats and stroke him. He purrs loudly, easily happy. He knows his future, he's seen enough cats sold for food, but tonight he's happy enough to be stroked and loved and I envy his easy peace. I envy his foreknowledge and I even envy the hand that strokes him.

The crackle of Stratholme fires lulls me to sleep, and I fall from waking nightmares into night time ones.

A gnome
A travelling gnome, peddling engineering parts arrived on the Stormwind tram platform from Tinkertown. His heavy work cases clattered gently as he set them on the ground. His sharp green moustaches twitched in amusement, then in disgust at the smell, as he noticed the filthy peasant girl sprawled across the metal benches. Cats of all shapes, sizes and colours surrounded her. He sneezed briskly, picked up his work boxes and walked to find an inn for the night.

Dear Hejin
Sir, you must know that my mind is not complete. I don't remember you and anything I do know is broken like a dream I can't hold. I will be speaking to the authorities regarding your arrest for the crime I don't want to write. Light willing, they will arrest my sister for the crime.

However, sir, a Scarlet Emissary told me about other crimes, and a connection to an outlawed cult. This, together with my lack of memory of you, is the reason I sought the divorce. It is final now. I could never be married to a criminal I didn't know. Sir, perhaps for the love of our daughter I can persaude you to hand yourself in to the authorities and pay the proper price for your past.

Forgive the formality, however I just don't know you. I have enough left of myself to know that I'm truly crazy, and thought it shames me admit it, you would be best without me anyway.

Light guild you, sincerely, Miss Louise Cook.