Identity Parade

Tarista stood on the docks, looked out over the ocean, and wondered if she was insane for moving to another costal town. This one was even an island, though it was close to the mainland, and the docks were far more extensive than the small one in Ratchet. Of course, she could just do as she had in Ratchet, and try to stay away from the water as much as possible.

Turning around, she took in the tall towers of the city around her sighed. Far bigger then Ratchet, though smaller than Stormwind, and despite its distance from the Eastern Kingdoms, most definitely a city of the Alliance. She wasn’t any more comfortable with that here than she had been in Stormwind, but she was going to have to deal with it. After all, the promise of a University outweighed a little discomfort. And really, Theramore was a pleasant enough place as long as she stayed away from the docks and the gloomy marsh across the bridge.

Tarista sat at a corner table of the Inn, staring at the delicate glass vial on the table.  The Night Elf who had given it to her called it the Tear of Grief.  Having heard his story, she could well believe he’d have such a thing.  Now all she had to do was find out why she needed it.

She had made no progress on the book.  Even bribing the goblins here in Ratchet had proved fruitless.  At least as far as her goal was concerned.  For a simple exercise in gaining knowledge and resources it would have been remarkably successful, which only made it all the more frustrating.  She was beginning to think the book was guarded less by an unknown language and more by an enchantment, but she couldn’t bear to think of what would be required to find the key to that.

I do not know what to do with the book I have found. How does one learn to read something when you cannot even identify the language it was written in?

Perhaps it is foolish to think that this contains even a clue to the answers I seek, much less the entirety of them. For all I know, this could be some unknown mage's journal, much like the one I write in now. I highly doubt something of that nature will be of any use to me.

Unless...

I cannot have been the only one to be looking for answers such as these.

Can I?

It seems strange that few talk about it. I suppose death is never a comfortable subject, regardless of the angle taken on approaching it.

When I began this journal, I imagined that I would update it frequently. Previously, there has always been time for such things. I suppose I imagined that my life would not change much in the transition from Northshire to Stormwind. After all, my life changed very little when moving from place to place as a child, though I suppose we owed that to Brother Marcus.

Things here are far different. I feel somewhat foolish claiming that they are more complicated, but that is exactly how they seem. I had not considered myself "sheltered" prior to leaving, but I do consider myself so now.

Though my health and my own shyness have prevented me from meeting many people, I have met some. It is interesting the different people who all share this city. What interactions I have had have provoked a lot of thought. They have also prevented me from updating this journal as I intended, both in occupying my time, and in occupying my thoughts so that I do not know what to write.

Tarista sighed as she looked around at the books that she had collected over the past few hours. So many volumes, so much history and philosophy, and yet there was nothing on what she sought. Stories of epic battles and fallen heroes she could find, but a single sentence on what happened to those heroes after they fell? Not one word. She could not imagine that those stories had been left out deliberately, but she now wondered if perhaps the writers of these histories simply assumed that such things were common knowledge.

She did not consider that knowledge very common at all. And in a world so focused on the losses of war, surely someone had attempted to discover why some people could not be called back by Paladins and Priests, and why others heeded that call time and again. They must have attempted to find the reason why Spirit Healers granted some the choice to return, but not so many others. They must have sought to discover why those with strong will could force back death itself, and others were pulled away without even the opportunity to try.

Tarista woke with a start, eyes shifting around the room with confusion. It wasn’t until she noticed the librarian kneeling to pick up the stack of fallen books that she remembered where she was and figured out what had woken her.

'I fell asleep in the library,' she thought, feeling herself blushing as she added one more item to her ever-growing list of embarrassing actions. At least her head had been resting on the table and not the book she had been reading before nodding off. She had been side-tracked from her search by a story about the Dalaran mages. While the book had been interesting, she could hardly count it useful. Closing it with a sigh, leaned back in her seat, and then bent to pick up the scrap of paper that fell from her pocket as she did so.