Chapter Text
Loathe to leave Kul Tiras as any tidesage, Eyla Wavebound yet found herself aboard a ship skimming along the shore of the Eastern Kingdoms, and wondering how and why she was even there.
Well, the how was simple enough. She'd walked over to the docks in the grips of her terrible premonition, and requested to board the first ship that she knew was headed in the right direction. The 'why' was the more complicated part, and it slipped through her fingers like sand with every moment. In her mind, it was not the sand of Kul Tiras' beaches. It was not the fine silt that rose up around her feet when she stepped into the sea. It was finer sand, gleaming like gold, soft as satin. Desert sand, though she had never seen a desert. Hourglass sand. Meant to slip away like water. Sands of time.
Eyla's thoughts hitched, and she couldn't remember what she'd been thinking of a moment before. She knew thinking on it too hard would only make it slip away again, so she looked out to the sea again, and its familiar ebb and flows. The vision was gone, and would return, as inevitable as the come and go of the tides. She did not know what she had come out to seek, but she would seek it nonetheless.
As she stared off towards the horizon, however, Eyla's eyes caught on the jagged outcropping of land, and the vision bubbled up again, like certainty from the depths.
The day was bright and clear-skied, but circumstances conspired to send a chill through the captain of the Swift Fortune anyway. As he had no recourse for doing anything about it, he kept silent, and anxiously rubbed fingers against his receding hairline, taking note of how over the past few years, he had to push his hat further back every time to find hair. He sighed, and let his hand drop, shaking his head.
There was nothing to worry about, if he had to be rational about it. Even with the war against the orcs raging on, the orcs' seafaring skills had proved less than adequate. And the ship had a tidesage on board, to put wind in their sails, and even warn them away from danger. This had been one of the fastest runs Captain Evans had had in his thirty-odd years at sea.
It was just that, well... they had a tidesage on board. And that was irregular, to say the least, for the Swift Fortune, which was a merchant vessel, and not one of the larger ones which had been folded into the war effort to ferry supplies. Like any good sailor, he had a fair dose of respect for tidesages, and had relied on their wisdom often. But they had always been a fixture of the shores for him, and having one always present on his deck was beginning to grind on his nerves. The crew either picked up on this mood, or were plenty disquieted themselves, because they threw their own furtive glances to the tidesage. Wondering why she was there, most like.
Captain Evans was beginning to wonder himself. He was content enough to let her be.
But then she pointed to the shoreline.
"There," she said, not seeming to address anyone in particular, but speaking it out loud with surety that it would be heard, "that is where I must go."
Captain Evans scratched his head, and popped open his spyglass to look towards the shore, thinking of how he might dissuade the tidesage from whatever mad errand she planned, but he knew right away that was not his point to make. They were ahead of schedule, and annoying a tidesage had never struck him as that bright of an idea.
The day was cold, but bright. The sun shone golden, but gave no heat. In the back of Eyla's mind, there was the hiss of sand through an hourglass, running out. The sea was at her back, roiling voices in her head; a forest was ahead, filled with the whispers of wind through the leaves.
Unsure of where she was going, but intent on being there on time, Eyla walked on, and kept walking, until she heard the squalling babe.
The forest echoed strangely, so that she was first confused by the sound, and sooner expected it to be the wail of some animal. If it had been some beast, she would not be defenseless, and so she did not particularly worry on that account. But she did not think it was something of the forest. She unhooked her abyssal beacon from her belt, brandishing it so that it may lead the way. Its light crawled across the speckled shadows of the forest, and licked a winding, luminous path forward.
The air felt portentous; she walked towards the sound, following her beacon's light, knowing it was the path the Tidemother ordained for her.
It was a child, was it not? Who would leave a babe in the woods, she asked herself, and the answer came as she emerged into the clearing, and took in the scene of dead orc bodies littered across the ground.
The scene brought up more questions than answers, but like anyone who scrutinized the abyssal depths, Eyla was comfortable with mysteries. She surveyed the clearing, coming to the conclusion that the orcs had fought each other--never mind for what reason, as Eyla was certain orcs were no more above murdering each other than humans were--and then she raised the hems of her robes as she picked her way through the blood and gore.
The babe was orcish, and its wailing was a deeper sound than human infants would have produced. It was tucked against the side of one more orc body, the shape female, though a gashing wound down her back had nearly rent her in half.
Unable to answer the question of what the orcs had been doing here, Eyla set on questioning what business she herself had. Was this where her visions had been leading her? The orc babe would have surely died or been eaten by animals, but what difference would that make, in the grander scheme of things? What great ripples could this one small life possibly make?
Grappling with questions came easier to Eyla than handling babies, which she had not done unless for reasons of healing, and always with the parents nearby for the babe to be handed back as soon as possible. She realized she was stalling.
She leaned down, reached for the babe. It had kicked off the blue swaddling cloth, and was likely cold, so Eyla pulled the cloth over the tiny orc, and its cries momentarily stopped, and hitched to wet whimpers as it opened its eyes and looked up.
The babe had clear blue eyes, bright and shiny as it looked up with curiosity. It burbled at Eyla.
Despite herself, Eyla was endeared, the way she would be by a tiny pup, or an ugly little baby bird. It was only for a moment, however, because in the next, the orcish female took in a sudden, pained gasp, and moved with unexpected swiftness to grab Eyla's wrist.
Eyla emitted a high-pitched shriek of panic, which echoed through the woods around her with mocking reverb. The female orc released Eyla's wrist, though that was probably because she was too near death to do much else, and not because she'd been impressed by Eyla's heroic scream of fear. The orc lapsed into weak coughs.
'I'm never having a vision ever again,' Eyla thought to herself furiously, though she knew that was more the Tidemother's decision than her own. She reached to her belt--laden with pouches and bottles--and unclipped a small flask of rejuvenating sea water. It would do little more than delay the inevitable at this point, but at least falling back on her healer's instincts gave her something to do.
She splashed the female orc with it. The horrendous wound on her back did not close, though the water pooled into it and sank deep, trying to heal her from the inside. It disappeared so quickly, that Eyla knew there was too much to her for the orc to survive. Still, Eyla called on magic, and weaved a healing spell into the sea water. The orc's body took to the magic hungrily, but it was too broken to be much improved by it.
Yet it strengthened the orc, and she began moving, pushing herself from lying face-down to lying on her side, facing her infant. Eyla noticed then that the wound on the orc's back was not the only one she had, only the deepest. Had someone attacked her from behind? Had she been cradling the child, and turned around to take a wound on the back so the babe would not be hit?
The orc began talking slowly, in their own rough language.
Eyla reached for another bottle on her belt. This one was not water, but for tidesages, the wind was as familiar as the sea. When she uncapped the bottle, the essence of air inside escaped, and released all the languages it had gathered on the winds. For a time, there would be understanding.
"...my son..." the orc said slowly, her face in agony, "...my son..."
The orc babe, who'd been quiet for a short time, made a sound that foretold another fit of crying. The orc female reached for the infant, her large hand curling around one of the babe's tiny fists.
The female's face twisted into an expression that told of more than just physical pain. Strange, how swallowing one's pride looked the same even on the rough-hewn features of an orc.
"Please," she asked, before her body convulsed in soundless coughs.
Eyla understood what was being asked, as the orc was gripped by maternal desperation, but she still would have quailed at the prospect under different circumstances. More merciful to kill them both quickly, and have a neat end to it all. But Eyla cast her thoughts to the sea which had brought her there in more senses than one, and to the Tidemother's whispers, and understood that she had come too far to refuse now.
"What is your name?" Eyla asked the orc.
"Draka," she answered slowly, carefully, with fragile hope in her eyes.
Eyla nodded and leaned down to gather the orc babe in her arms. She picked him up a bit awkwardly, being larger than a human infant, but she figured the same technique applied as with human babes, and she made sure to support his head. The babe made burbling infant sounds in response, though there was one confused hitch of the breath that indicated he was near another wailing fit.
"And what is your son's name?" Eyla asked next, looking to Draka.
The orc's eyes were already going hazy, her expression slack with the approach of death.
"He was to be named Go'el," she said, all yearning and regret for things that would not come to pass. For a childhood not witnessed. For mother's love denied. For the first time, Eyla felt something other than trepidation during this entire encounter. Perhaps it was pity.
"Go'el," Eyla repeated, and realized Draka had already slipped away. "Go'el," Eyla repeated, looking to the orc babe's face, as if teaching him his name.
Go'el looked up at Eyla for a moment, with those startlingly blue eyes, and then promptly began crying.
Eyla sighed. What a fine mess to get herself into.
The sailors reacted with varying levels of bemusement. Captain Evans, looking down to the ground as though beseeching the sea to drown him before he had to actually deal with this, scratched his head for a long time before stepping aside and letting Eyla pass with her squalling infant.
Eyla felt the eyes follow her as she disappeared below deck and found the ship cook.
"I don't suppose you have any milk?" she asked.
The cook, a skinny hunched man with one eye perpetually squinting, gave Eyla quite the withering once-over in response.
"Gotch'erself a pet?" he asked with a slur that Eyla suspected came more from repeated concussions than daydrinking, though in this case she suspected a bit of both.
"Cow milk? Goat milk? Whale milk?" Eyla tried again, rocking Go'el as he continued shrieking.
"Got some grog, that'll put yer pet to sleep," the cook offered.
"Permanently, given the quality of it. I've had your grog. No," Eyla shook her head.
The cook chortled wetly, in a way that made Eyla lean more towards him being drunk. But he turned around at leisure, and took out a bottle, opening by flicking the cork out with a thumb. He proffered the bottle to Eyla, who took it, but sniffed the contents suspiciously.
"It's goat's milk, yeah," the cook groused.
"Ah." She looked uncertainly down to Go'el. "Do I... just...?"
"Should probably mix it with blood or summat," the cook remarked.
He watched Eyla very carefully tip the bottle over the infant's mouth, a few drops splattering against his lips and dripping down his chin instead of into his mouth.
"'Course, it might starve 'fore you choke up the courage to feed the blasted thing," the cook continued.
Eyla was flustered, and rocked Go'el, shushing him. He proved heavy to hold with only one arm, though, and she wasn't sure how to tip the bottle so as not to spill it all over him. It did not have a nipple, as such.
"'Ere, you're useless," the cook said bluntly, and took the bottle back. He produced from one of his cabinets a clean, white linen, perhaps a bandage of sort. He folded it in quarters and wrapped it around the mouth of the bottle, tying it in place with string. He was creating a rudimentary bottle for nursing, and Eyla was relieved at least someone here seemed to know what they were doing.
"We should probably heat up the milk, as well," she suggested.
The cook snorted, and gave Eyla a forbidding look.
"Ain't running a fancy restaurant here," he said, and gestured for her to sit down on one of the long benches in the galley.
Eyla did so, and sitting down she could place the baby down in her lap, his little feet against her abdomen, and his head cradled against her knees. He proved easier to feed this way, and when she put the bottle to his mouth and allowed the milk to drip out, he latched onto it, and stopped crying.
She was overwhelmingly relieved by this, and even felt a small measure of triumph that she knew would evaporate the next time Go'el did something inexplicably baby-ish that she would not know how to handle. She needed to find someone who knew children.
The cook wandered over as the child nursed, his gnarled face screwed in something like curiosity.
"Do you have any little ones?" Eyla asked, deciding to trade on the cook's improving mood. It appeared as though he was far more endeared by the infant once it was not crying.
"Oh, aye, three o' the little demonspawn back home," the cook nodded. "We take care of them in six month jags, the wife and I. Six months she goes to sea, six months I go. Meanwhile the other gets stuck watching the damn hellions." He gave Eyla a shrewd look. "You don't know what'cher in for, I can see."
Eyla stiffened, indignant.
"I don't really think--"
"Yer keeping it?" the cook interrupted.
Eyla looked down at the child--at Go'el--who'd gotten his fill and pushed the bottle away with a little green fist. He looked up at her with those blue eyes again, and hiccuped a little.
"I'm afraid I am," she said.
"Don't know what'cher getting into," the cook repeated, this time with malicious glee.
Eyla Wavebound had always found a dose of forbearance granted to her, whenever she wandered back to Stormsong Monastery after some tide-ordained jaunt. She listened to deeper voices than most, and was, accordingly, allowed a greater margin for eccentricity.
But Eyla rather thought everyone had decided she'd finally cracked when she showed up with an orc babe in her arms.
Her sister Yvia, who perhaps was the first to hear whispers of Eyla's return from the tides, was waiting on the docks as Eyla debarked the Swift Fortune.
Yvia, who'd always been more inclined to the precision of arcane works than the more--as she called it--wishy-washy pursuits of a spiritualist, took one look at Eyla, one at the orc, and then set her face into a look of such mighty disapproval, that one might have thought Eyla was a child bringing home a shark pup in a bowl and asking to keep it as a pet.
Ah, but an orc was probably much worse of a thing to bring home. Still, Eyla cradled Go'el closer, and set her own face in a look of such implacability that even the tides might be turned.
Yvia sighed, and reached out to tug a corner of the swaddling cloth over Go'el's face.
"Come to the Monastery," she said. "This must be brought to Lord Stormsong."
Eyla nodded, because though she was well prepared to stare down her sister, Lord Stormsong had more of a standing to forbid her from this course of action, and, for that matter, more of a right to question it, even if she thought he might be persuadable.
"His name is Go'el," Eyla said, feeling she ought to at least make introductions.
Yvia looked phenomenally unhappy about knowing this.