She is quiet today. Shy, Krastos thinks, a little confused. She sits next to him on the soft grass under the large tree in Stonetalon where they often meet to spend time together. But she doesn’t reach for him, as she normally would. He briefly wonders, tipping his head at her and gently gathering her into his lap, offering his water skin.
Glyllena peers up at him, taking the skin and sipping from it. She knows he’s not sure what to do with this. Her heart is heavy today. For all the forgetting she’s done, all the work she’s done to try to erase the painful history of her people from her memory, her own past… she has started remembering. To the public, she claims to not remember much beyond the past few centuries. And most of the other races of Azeroth take that at face value. But she sees the curious stares from the other draenei, knowing that she cannot fool them forever.
In truth, what she has had to do for her people sickens her. She would rather forget, leave it all behind.
She shivers, the cool air of the sea seeping through her dress, which doesn’t cover much, and she leans against his broad chest, cradling the water skin to her chest. He wraps his arms around her after pulling out a blanket from his bag and bundling her into it. She curls up in his lap, trying to get warm. She hates feeling this way around him, but has to admit that his concern is satisfying on some level. For centuries now, she has been letting herself get close to him, becoming his partner, his lover, his companion. While many of their travels and tasks take them to the opposite ends of their known worlds and back, they always make time for each other.
She tips her head back and looks up at him, and with surprising softness, he smiles down at her and kisses her forehead. She closes her eyes and relaxes some, a faint smile crossing her features. His mate, she thinks, and for the first time truly feels that she is his mate.
Suddenly shy, she pulls the blanket up over her head and hides for a bit while his hands stroke her back and he talks quietly to her. Eventually, she peeps out from the edge and looks up at him again, seemingly to suddenly notice the scars on his still-handsome face. We are old in this world, she thinks. Her brows furrow as her fingers trace those scars, feeling every bump and hollow in his cheek. Older scars web their way along his neck and shoulders, and she follows them, trailing fingers along them until she runs into the armor he still wears. We have survived so much. She pauses for a moment, features darkening as she visits the present, thinking of the Sha’nash and heart sinking as she thinks of the current campaigns, the alliances with the humans. Does it ever end?
Wrapping the blanket tighter around herself she moves to take off his pauldrons and the heavy mail chest piece of her shaman. She frowns at the damage that has been done to his body over the millennia. He has spent his life learning to channel and manipulate the elements, but they, like the rest of the multitude of worlds their people have been to, have not always been kind to him in return. His skin is pale and weathered, and she places her palms on his chest, looking up at him. What’s wrong, pet? He seems to ask. She shakes her head slightly and continues inspecting him, taking inventory of how his muscles bunch under his skin and feeling his chest rise and fall with his breath, pushing at her hands.
In her head, Lena tries to be tough, roughened by her years on the run, sometimes fleeing with her people, but mostly alone. In reality, her heart feels as if it is trying to escape her throat, and she wraps her right arm around her bare midriff, pressing her hand against the old wound. Her body curls around itself and she presses her forehead against the shaman’s chest. Suddenly the image of Groz fills her mind and she tenses, rocking anxiously. The vision of him, what he once was and what he had become, mingled and intermixed behind her eyelids and she let out a whimper.
Krastos tightens his arms around her, his heavy limbs grounding her, his hand following hers and feeling the unnatural dent in the tissue on her side. He’s seen it before, and has known that even now, it causes her pain. He does what he can to ease whatever pain it gives her today. She sighs and burrows into his body, curling around herself. She still hasn’t told him how the wound came to be, and what she had to do, how she had to survive it. He lifts her chin with a finger and kisses her cheeks, “Little Lena,” he whispers, using one of her pet names.
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