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.