Identity Parade

He’s been broken so long he can’t remember being whole. The pieces get worked on one at a time, a friendship buffing out the scars here, love fitting the edges together there, a purpose holding the rest of the mess together with baling twine, but there’s always something removed that can’t be put back.

He’s never told her about that. Didn’t have the words in common the first time, doesn’t see the point now they’ve both changed so much.

But this holiday kicks him in his useless sacs every year, reminds him of the future he sacrificed trying to buy a place in it with his flesh.

His parents had three children. By the time they died, only one. He’s left their name behind, didn't see the point in keeping hold when no one would carry it on.

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The dragons have an odd sense o’ humour. All that control o’er time, an’ they bring us tah when we woulda been, iff’n we ne’er left. Don’ exactly seem right, but I guess the time was always borrowed, so now we’ve paid it back. Now jus’ gotta decide where tah go.

At the battle fer Light’s Hope, I knelt on dead grass as Mograine saw a vision o’ his past, an’ came tah a revelation tha’ decided his future, an’ mine. Floatin’ over the water then, I saw the same thing happenin’ tah Ko, an’ I let it.

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I didn't lie, exactly. I dissembled. Abandoned one father's name and claimed the other's, put just enough lilt to the first that it almost wasn't my name at all.

Just enough for it to seem like a coincidence.

He never asked. After all, I was "the elf", so why would he? I never had to lie outright, and if I ever slipped up, he didn't seem to notice. I think perhaps he stopped listening when I introduced myself.

I don't know why I did it. Maybe because we are so different now, both our different shades of broken, that it just seemed easier. But nothing is what it seems. I should know better by now.

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Do they not know where we were in the world in the times they send us to? Or are the threads of my lives so tangled even a bronze cannot trace them? Whatever the reason, the result is the same.

“We have tah leave. Now.” He’s out of his seat and on the stairs before the words are finished. As she comes out to clear the tables, he keeps his back to her, though there’s no chance of her recognizing him, wouldn’t be even without the illusion. We haven’t met yet.

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He sees himself in this forlorn place.

I could sense it, in his resistance when I asked him to leave. He is more, alert, in this place. As though he sleepwalks in all others.

He sees himself, as he is now, reflected back at him from scourge-tainted lands, constant fighting, and tenacious clinging to all that is left.

It frightens me, and I cannot say why.

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The pup had said the fightin’ was bad there. I figured it was bad everywhere in the north, so couldn’t be much worse than any other. But it is.

I jus’ had a quick run through a’fore the elf pulled us away fer now, but first impression last, eh? And in this land, I see myself.

These lands ‘re inflected, taken over without their biddin’, turned intah somethin’ else. What’s left of what was is tryin’ tah hang on by any means, or tryin’ tah jus’ give in and give up, in turn.

An’ then there’s the ones come tah “help”. Fightin’ the invaders, fightin’ tah free this place, but not so much tah save ’em, jus’ tah destroy what changed ’em.

That’s why the Horde let us in, ain’ it?

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The taunka swear their blood and strength and life to the Horde, and he wonders if their eyes are as blinded as his were when he first swore the same.

It seems a lifetime ago, was, he supposes, when he tries to put a name to whatever his existence is now. Which isn’t often.

They’re motivated by grief and revenge, and he understands both. Only had the first to take him into yet another war that wasn’t his, but still wanted the second deep within the heart that had given up.

He remembers standing on the zeppelin tower the first time, looking down at the diseased land he had once cursed in that same heart. Remembers seeing the damage done by those who could make such dark dreams a reality. Thinks revenge isn’t always as nice as you’d expect.

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One of these days, I'll learn to think things through before I do them. At least, I hope I will.

But it didn't seem like a big deal. To help the Sage, I had to go do a cleaning ritual. It's not like I haven't tried such things before. They gave my spirit needed peace, but nothing else changed.

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They’re staying in Winterhoof, ignoring the not-wolf glaring daggers from the corner. He can’t really remember what he said to earn the outright death threat, but thinks it might have been his literal interpretation of “fuck you.”

He knows it’s not an offer — wouldn’t accept if it was because the lovesick elf is a pretty decent guy — but it seems to shut her up. From what he’s seen, that’s a difficult task.

The northlands are as cold as she’d said. He’s almost forgotten what warmth is, hadn’t had a good enough grasp before coming here to hold onto it now. He feels a little odd when his grasping mind pulls out a night sharing blankets with friends and says, “there, it’s that.” Seems like he should have something else, something connected to one who really had made an offer, but it’s been too long since he accepted any the memories might as well be fantasy.

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Spent most of the night talking to a bird, in one form or another. A druid under it all, I guess, but she’s got that edge to her when she looks at you.

She’s got this theory, you never leave your clan behind. Be like pulling your skin off. Neither a pleasant thought, nor image.

Wonder if she’s right. Could be. Out in the world and done with them all for how long, and where was the first place I wound up when His hold broke?

Back in the damned village.

Ain’t like there’s many there that remember me now. Nothing and no one to hold me to it, and too much pain to let me stay.

But I still went. Needed the sound of the drums and the smell of the water. Needed to find the familiar under everything that’s changed.

Left again, of course. Makes me wonder, though. Am I doomed to keep going back?

Might wanna try the skin thing, if that’s the case.