Post by 'Norah Farseer on Mar 2, 2007 12:03:57 GMT -5
‘Norah sat, letting her mind absorb the flickering firelight as two healers packed cool compresses around her face and neck. The burns had all but healed now, but the soothing herbs still felt good – her skin was still very tender. Bandages had lead to mottled scarring; now dark, but soon to fade to a pale, mottled silvery blue, lighter than her skin (if past scars were any indication of how this would look). She’d never get her eye back though – they’d finally just sealed her eyelid shut after repeated attempts to heal the damage only made her vision worse. She could make out shapes, light and dark, in bright lights, but nothing more.
Slowly she began to wander, the mesmerizing fire lulling her thoughts into submission until she could see far away. ‘Norah never knew what she’d find in a fire, or if it were the future or the past, or some twisted alternative to the present, but if she sat and let her mind empty, she knew the visions would come. A mountain, breathing fire and smoke. A toppled castle, full of terrible, torturous instruments and chemicals. A watery tomb, the ruins of a building. A graveyard of empty and destroyed graves. Tonight, she saw not one steady image, but flashes.
And then one held before her eyes – great and swirling. A megalith, a portal, filled with dark energies. ‘Norah watched the portal as it pulsed, watched as riders approached it from a land barren and tortured, watched as they dismounted, watched in horror as they stepped through – but were not destroyed? And then she saw them – the other side, in a place she didn’t dare to think she recognized. Nausea.
Clawing the poultice from her face, she tore out of the room and into the cool night air, the startled priestesses clucking about not being finished, where was she going. A few deep breaths and her stomach settled down, no longer reeling in waves of sickness. She had seen it – Draenor – but how? When had those humans gone through the portal, and why? Draenor had been a destroyed and destroying world that they had been lucky to escape. Now people were willingly going there? Perhaps… perhaps there was some hope for even the homeland of The Exiled.
She stepped back inside, gathering her things. Yes, she would be ok – she knew how to care for the burns, and they were nearly healed anyway. Everyone she knew was gone – but she would go on, and not sit here, coddled by priestesses and their soothing, mind numbing herbs. In her mind, she heard the Farseer Nobundo calling for her again. The elements had always been talkative, and now she was seeing them more strongly through her lost eye, and he would like that. She felt at her belt for a little black glass bowl and the small bag of stones. Yes, she would go to Nobundo – for he could see farther and more clearly than she could, and he would teach her to read the elements.
And someday, she would return to Draenor.
Slowly she began to wander, the mesmerizing fire lulling her thoughts into submission until she could see far away. ‘Norah never knew what she’d find in a fire, or if it were the future or the past, or some twisted alternative to the present, but if she sat and let her mind empty, she knew the visions would come. A mountain, breathing fire and smoke. A toppled castle, full of terrible, torturous instruments and chemicals. A watery tomb, the ruins of a building. A graveyard of empty and destroyed graves. Tonight, she saw not one steady image, but flashes.
And then one held before her eyes – great and swirling. A megalith, a portal, filled with dark energies. ‘Norah watched the portal as it pulsed, watched as riders approached it from a land barren and tortured, watched as they dismounted, watched in horror as they stepped through – but were not destroyed? And then she saw them – the other side, in a place she didn’t dare to think she recognized. Nausea.
Clawing the poultice from her face, she tore out of the room and into the cool night air, the startled priestesses clucking about not being finished, where was she going. A few deep breaths and her stomach settled down, no longer reeling in waves of sickness. She had seen it – Draenor – but how? When had those humans gone through the portal, and why? Draenor had been a destroyed and destroying world that they had been lucky to escape. Now people were willingly going there? Perhaps… perhaps there was some hope for even the homeland of The Exiled.
She stepped back inside, gathering her things. Yes, she would be ok – she knew how to care for the burns, and they were nearly healed anyway. Everyone she knew was gone – but she would go on, and not sit here, coddled by priestesses and their soothing, mind numbing herbs. In her mind, she heard the Farseer Nobundo calling for her again. The elements had always been talkative, and now she was seeing them more strongly through her lost eye, and he would like that. She felt at her belt for a little black glass bowl and the small bag of stones. Yes, she would go to Nobundo – for he could see farther and more clearly than she could, and he would teach her to read the elements.
And someday, she would return to Draenor.