Melisande Meadowshine

A Day Off and An Off Day

Melisande welcomed a day off. It'd been a long week - a long month, really. A long year, the changes flying fast and furious. Losing her longtime job, killing her father, falling in love for the first time...it was all so very much.

She had no plan in place. Instead she wandered Silvermoon, speaking to whomever caught her eye. There was a merc with a bundle of swords on his back, a doe-eyed healer with a kind smile that mirrored her own, an elder statesman clad in ranger armor she hadn't seen since she was a young girl.

The young woman purchased a portal to Orgrimmar. An idea that had once been so foreign and terrifying to her had now become simply another opportunity. A Forsaken man chomping on a banana had been her company there at the seedy tavern towards the back of the city. He spoke at length about the family business and how he'd reclaimed it in his undeath. He sold spices, he said, and described how he could still taste them, sort of, only just.

It wasn't until a late lunch back at the Heart of the Raven that she realized just what day it was. Right now she should have been primping, attended to by her favorite women, hair sculpted into something magnificent with the champagne flowing all the while.

She should have been stepping into her dress, touching a hand to her middle in a move of subconscious, secret protectiveness.

By all rights she would be embracing Cat and slowly warming up to his mother, different as they were but hoping to be friendly all the same.

There would be tender vows and tender tears...and the sickening realization that it was all wrong for both of them. They saw the world so differently. Sometimes when he described an event that had passed, she could scarcely recognize it as the same incident she herself had witnessed. Neither of them were wrong, really. But wrong for each other? She could see it was true now, with the clarity of a little distance.

She wanted to lose herself again, dive headfirst into the whiskey and thistle, wander the row or send a missive to Stellan and bury her hurt between someone else's thighs.

No, she decided. That did nothing at all but defer the pain and let it gain interest. She'd simply go on. She'd have to. The date would pass and tomorrow she would be truly free - no more future ghosts lingering in the wings. A new chapter would start.

Meli's meal has gone cold, abandoned for reveries. She poked at the cod filet, slipping a forkful into her mouth despite its lukewarm temperature. A final round of tears fell hot down her cheeks, slithering down her freckled skin and past her lips, salt on her tongue.

She wiped at her face with her sleeve, blinking, briefly numb, as if it that was the last of it. The final purge of pure sorrow. It was really over.

Caehtan, the eldest of their wards, passed by silently, slipping a letter onto the table beside her plate.

She tore open the envelope and squinted at the chicken scratch upon the paper within.

Dear Melisande,

I'm glad the bread was good.

And I'd be happy to go on a picnic to the beach. What should I bring? When?

Ren

She smiled at the thought of a picnic. It was a reasonable start for a new chapter, she reckoned.