Quarantine

The walls of the citadel were layered in ages of ice and snow, and the cold penetrated her armor far deeper than ever she had known. Luisette took hold of her helmet and gently eased it off her head. Strands of her fine, blonde hair had frozen to the inside of the plate, and they broke off with a barely-perceivable snap.

Her long, uncovered ears twitched in the cold air, and she leaned forward even closer to the small campfire the shaman in her group had generously built. She gingerly removed a plate gauntlet from her right hand and took in the sight. She wore hastily knitted gloves, a small protection, and they had been riddled with holes and exposed the tips of her fingers. Bruises covered her pale wrist and extended under the glove, where they lay hidden and out of sight.

“Even the smallest injury can go unnoticed, sometimes,” said the large tauren sitting next to her. He took her hand in his and covered it with his other, whispering a healing spell. His ears twitched as he inspected his handiwork; the bruises were starting to fade, and her hand felt not quite as cold as it had been.

Luisette looked up and met the tauren’s gaze, smiling. “Thank you, Ashmole.”

Ashmole returned the smile and patted her hand before returning to his modest meal: Northrend cod and a small side of vegetables. Fish were the easiest to transport, especially frozen, and over a small fire they could be spiced and cooked the same as easily as if they had not been in a dark, frozen hallway of the Citadel.

The wing of the citadel they huddled in had been closed off in a rushed quarantine. The abominations, Festergut and Rotface, had been struck down, but not without much effort. Their monstrous creator, the “Professor” Putricide, had also been slain, and his body still lay on the floor of his laboratory, pools of his own slime gathering and coagulating around his body. Everything—and, considerably, everyone—had been exposed to noxious gases and substances during the onslaught. And so, until the quarantine lifted, there the members of the Horde and Alliance were to stay.

The members of the Northrend Exploration and Research Foundation had been chosen to take part in this assault, and luckily, they had suffered no losses. They celebrated quietly with mostly smiles and relieved glances to their comrades as they clustered around the campfire, warming their tired bodies and spirits.

A blood elf with hair as red as flame came up behind Luisette and leaned down, kissing her cheek, before settling on the floor to her left. Luisette smiled at her childhood friend and greeted her warmly. “Sinu a’.”

Saeil hooked her arm through Luisette’s and rested her head on her shoulder. The thick hood of the cloak she wore gave small comfort against her friend’s plate armor, but she paid no mind. “Thank you for letting me fight alongside you,” she whispered.

Luisette kissed her friend’s temple in return. “It would be a great loss if you had not come with. The strength of our ranks is in part due to you.”

Saeil smirked and squeezed her friend’s arm with her own. “Flatterer.”

Luisette grinned back. “I know.”

A young tauren soldier approached the two with folded parchments in his hand. “Letters from home, Misses Redhawk and Dawnrise.”

“Letters?” repeated Saeil, eyebrows furrowed. “I thought we were under quarantine.”

The tauren nodded. “So we are, but these arrived before the quarantine was put into place. We were just given permission to sort and pass the mail.”

Saeil scoffed. “Permission, huh? Did you have to read through them, first?”

A wry smile passed across the tauren’s features. “Even if we did, ma’am, I couldn’t read that fancy elvish script, anyway.” He handed the letters to the two elves and promptly left them.

Saeil and Luisette looked at the front of their letters and then swapped them with smiles; they each had the other’s. “Apparently,” Luisette began in a fake condescending air as she broke open the seal, “we look the same to them as they to us.” The letter itself had nothing save her name on the front, and for a moment she had hoped it might have been from—

She pulled out the parchment and nearly dropped it. Saeil looked from her friend’s face to the letter. “What’s wr—” She recognized the perfect script as soon as Luisette had, and said no more. After a moment, she said softly, almost apologetically, “I didn’t think she would have sent you anything.”

Luisette shook her head. “It’s not like the location of our battalion is a secret within the military itself,” she said dryly as she stuffed the letter back into the envelope.

“You’re not going to even read what she has to say?” Judging her silence to be a refusal, Saeil took the letter from Luisette’s hand and reopened it herself. She glanced at her friend from the corner of her eye. “If you don’t mind,” she added, but the question was merely out of courtesy.

Saeil looked over the letter, two pages in length, eyes flicking across the words. Luisette leaned against the wall behind her and stretched out her feet. She tried to feign disinterest, but a twitch of her ear with the turning of a page betrayed her.

“Well,” Saeil started, a bit unsure of which information to disclose, “she’s still at home.”

“Your home.”

“Well, yes…” Saeil shifted a bit uneasily. “She does pay for a third of living expenses.”

Luisette scoffed, but said nothing further.

“She wants to begin anew, Luis.”

The blonde waved her hand dismissively.

“Damn it, Luis, I’m tired of playing messenger between you two,” snapped Saeil. “She’s trying, at least.” She pushed back stray red hairs from around her face to behind her ears. “You don’t live with her. You haven’t seen how she’s changed. Hell, she-- she’s almost back to normal—or as close to ‘normal’ as she can return.”

Luisette looked at the other elf sideways, finding it hard to keep her anger from dissipating. She broke her eyes away and stared hard at her hands in her lap. “I can never forgive something so… so perverse. So against all that we were taught to fight for. Something in league with what we’re fighting now.”

Saeil quietly placed the letter next to the other elf’s thigh as she stood up—a gentle suggestion. “I should probably go find where my mutt’s gone off to,” she murmured, if only to give an excuse to leave Luisette alone for the time being. She lightly caressed the back of her friend’s head, the only consolation she could give at the moment.

Luisette leaned back into the hand and sighed.