Daughter of Azeroth

49 | FROM OUT OF THE NIGHT

Without Logan at the farm, Idira had more work to do, but she welcomed it, it kept her busy, leaving her little time to dwell on the dark thoughts that had returned and begun to plague her. In less time than she'd anticipated they resumed their old routine, with Margle once more coming up every morning with his gifts from the sea, carrying them into the kitchen to Idira, his little webbed feet slapping, soft against the floorboards.

Every night before going to sleep, she kept track of the days using the bar and gate method Nin had taught her, marking the blank endpapers of her least favourite book. The months passed. As the count approached a year, she found herself glancing towards the eastern horizon more frequently, imagining Logan arriving on his horse, gleaming in his armour. But he didn't come. More months passed, then another year, swallowed up by the daily routine of living and tending the farm.

Once more, just like when she was little, no one ever came. The farm was too far away, too isolated. No roads led to their farm, not even a path, and since Logan had told Stoutmantle's messenger his intention of joining the military, no one from The Westfall Brigade had ever had any reason to make the trip back, either. They were utterly alone. At times she fancied they might be the only living beings in all of Azeroth.

Two more years drifted away, marked by the careful notations her book. The unchanging seasons and the endless, monotonous days punctuated only by the memory of two severe storms, though the damage they did was nowhere near as serious as the day the dragon arrived. They cleared up the yard, replanted the gardens, repaired the damage to the buildings, and moved on. Her twenty-sixth birthday came and went, unremarked. She never dreamed of Khadgar, nor would she even allow herself to think of him anymore. It hurt too much. The books she had about him she stashed at the bottom of the book chest, where she would never see them.

Since her birthday, she had begun to despair in her belief that her Light—even if it was of no benefit to her—had a purpose. Not since those first days thirteen long years ago, right after they had arrived, had anything happened.

After the day the dragon arrived, when she couldn't help the chickens, she'd never tried to call on her Light again. It had let Blackie die when she could have protected her. She simply wanted no part of it anymore, it was easier to close herself off from it than to be continually disappointed.

She gazed at the dozens of numbered gates filling the endpapers of her book. Four long years had rolled by, each one blurring into the next, identical and unchanging since Logan left. Idira found herself beginning to believe she would live on the farm until she died, alone and unloved, until she became an old woman, never touched by a man, destined to be buried beside her cat. Even Logan had never come back. She suspected he had moved on, found a woman, had children and long forgotten about her. She understood, he would be almost thirty years old, long past time to be settling down. But still, it hurt so much when she thought about it, her heart becoming so consumed with envy she felt like she couldn't breathe. What had she ever done to deserve such an empty, meaningless existence? But as always, for her, there were never any answers—only a deafening wall of silence.

ত

In the dead of the night, Idira woke. The sound of approaching footfalls came from the cliff path. She sat up, straining to listen, her heart pounding. Silence. She exhaled, slow. Perhaps she had dreamt it, though it had sounded real enough. She waited. Still nothing. She lay back again, reassured. A dream, nothing more.

The footfalls came again, shuffling, hesitant, jagged against the distant familiar susurration of the ocean's waves against the shore. She slipped from the bed and went to the sitting room, thinking to wake Unambi but he was already strapping on his belt, and sheathing his daggers.