9/14/2018
Inexplicable Miracle
Rhoelyn paused outside the shop, tilting her head and clutching a hand to her chest. Another fit was coming. She realized it with a fearful grimace, her gaze darting around the little side street of Boralus, her palms growing sweaty. Even as she dashed for the back alley around the side of the next shop over, her trembling hand fumbled in the pouch at her waist.
“F-ferathal,” she whimpered, pulling forth the frond carefully nestled within and tossing it to the ground at her feet. “I need my m-medicine.”
The plant creature that unfolded from the bud danced by her slippers, darting after her as she rushed away and squeaking in a high-pitched voice, “Medimedimedi!”
It reached up to its own head and plucked free a petal as they ducked into the alley, and the night elf staggered against the wall, curling forward.
“Medi! Medi?” Ferathal gibbered even though he stilled, offering her the herb. The priestess snatched it from him, stuffing it under her tongue and pressing herself against the rough-hewn bricks. Her luminous blue eyes closed, and she breathed slowly through her nose, trying to buy time. Trying to relax.
Trying to stave off the inevitable.
The herb did its work quickly, dulling her senses and blanketing her thoughts with a necessary lethargy. It slipped her farther from her magic, farther from what strained towards her. It eased… everything.
Maybe she’d been able to catch it in time…
Just as Rhoelyn started to relax, it all constricted in the instant between one breath and the next. Suddenly, the power was everywhere. Light like fire and blinding sun. Light like everything living at once in her head. Light that surged outward from her heart and filled her with awareness. Too much awareness. The future in nonsense flashes and possibilities, in infinite variations. The horrors and joys of the past. The Tree. The warmth of Life and Light and Love. The cold of Death and Decay and Demise. She filled with it, overflowed with it.
And she hurt with it. She couldn’t keep it.
Rhoelyn, in her panic, didn’t know what to do with it, and so she did what she always did: she healed, throwing it all outward, away.
For two square blocks around that dirty little alley, Kul’Tirans and visitors alike raised their heads in confusion. They suddenly felt… better. Energized. Headaches gone. Sniffles cured. Wounds healed. An inexplicable miracle.
At the epicenter of it all, the priestess slid down the wall with a wretched, muffled cry and leaned against a fish-smelling barrel as her heart raced and her breath rasped and her head swam. It was the third fit in two weeks, and it was only getting worse.
She wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret from Nysse’s parents or her brother and sister for much longer, at this rate.
