Year 2: Words

[corpseknight]

He's getting sick of words.

More letters have shown up for him at the Shadow Vault in the last two months than he'd received in life, or so he likes to think when he's being unkind about his correspondents. He's begun to stuff his bank with the things, making awkward nests for the moths out of letters after he's had someone read them. There is this advantage to letters at least; they're memories that can't be eaten or rot away or be lost--at least, not quite so easily as the rest of his memories, not with how easy it is to preserve them in the face of the kinds of rot that threaten mere parchment.

But then everyone wants him to write back, and he TRIES, but the exercise is getting increasingly frustrating and shameful as time goes on. (And unlike other frustrating, shameful exercises in self-abuse he can think of, this one isn't in the least relieving because once one letter's sent off, there's bound to be another in return and he has to start all over again. Jacking off at least cuts the other person out of the equation.)

If he still had the energy for annoyance he'd think it fucking uncivil of them, expecting him to find a way to communicate with the written word when they know very well he's blind. But he doesn't, and time he could spend simmering in his own despite is time better spent killing Scourge and picking icethorn and mending armor.

It's only when the difficult letters start showing up does he finally hit on the realization (late as ever, Dawnherald) that he doesn't have to use words, even if he hasn't got the spare moments in the day to hunt them all down individually and sit for an hour or two in companionable silence.

That's when the packages start showing up.

---

 

To: J. Mornherald
From: L. Plagueheart

[Inside a small folded-paper box is an unusual bouquet: stalks of yarrow and cardamine, purple-flowered columbine and mourning bride(*) act as a backdrop for a fistful of mountain ash twigs and a single large sweetbay(**) flower. Bloodspore stems have been twisted into a makeshift tie to hold it all together.]

To: Tisho
From: Larkspur

[A small crate arrives, filled to the brim with yellow things: Wild steelbloom, sungrass, goldclover, dreaming glory, a single thornless Talandra's rose bred of a golden variety. Nestled in among all the vegetation is a moth with splendid green-and-red wings. The included piece of parchment has two words on the back of it:]

Penny asked.

[The front has a complex set of drawings that could have been rendered by a quill pen--or a raptor claw.]

To: L.A. Embersong
From: L. Dawnherald

[Apparently someone with one of those newfangled goblin devices managed to capture a picture of Lark and his runed umbrella. It and a fistful of dragonspine have been shoved into an envelope and mailed to Embersong.]


To: M. Riversung
From: L. Plagueheart

[A book-sized package wrapped in paper proves to be a book--old, rare, and brittle-spined--on the Nerubian language and the speaking thereof. Written in Thalassian, it appears to have been authored by someone with unusual insight into the culture of the spider-people, though said author did not deign to give his name. Pressed between several sheets of tissue paper, then stuck between the front cover and the frontis page, are leaves of bloodspore, goldclover, and mountain ash.]


To: Haken
From: The Lich King (yes, it actually says that on the box)

[It's a clove orange.]


To: P. Moonwinged
From: L. Plagueheart

[Another small crate hosts a sort of travelogue of Icecrown as told through a collection of unusual objects: A thick swatch of jormungar fur to line the box, a strip of penguin skin with the aromatic lard still attached, a fragment of unmelting ice with lichfire trapped in it, several fingers harvested from vrykul and vargul alike, lichbloom and icethorn crushed to release the scent, frostwyrm and protodrake scales. Also included is a paper with a dusting of scales from the wings of one of Lark's moths.]

To: Krenyn
From: Larkspur

[This bouquet doesn't have that far to travel, and doesn't need a box, just a strip of silk ribbon rubbed with crushed blindweed wrapped around it. An effusion of mageroyal and mana thistle, dethorned, mix with firebloom and the first apple blossoms of the season. Stems of black bryony and the last of Lark's bloodspore finish the bundle, left on a pillow where the other death knight is sure to find it.]

---
"Ground (Acoustic)" -- Assemblage 23; "The Man Upstairs" -- Voltaire; "Clear the Area" -- Imogen Heap

(*) - Check "scabius". (**) - Synonym for swamp magnolia.