A Second Meeting

There was little point in trying to contend with uncooperative guards, Brialla thought. While she’d received a little martial training, mostly to make her parents feel safe, her tricks largely started and stopped with kicking someone in the groin and running. Even soldiers, even Kaldorei, were **** to this time-honored tactic, but it seemed a poor choice if her goal was to then make it into a room to which they also had access. A quick way to get tossed in whatever passed for a dungeon in night elven lands. No, rather than stew endlessly, she resolved to put the fiasco behind her, and look for new opportunities.

And, as luck would have it, she found one. The first sentinel, Kerendra, just finished with her meal, sat on what looked to be a woven, and struggling and aged, wicker chair. Stretching without concern. Showing off her densely muscled core. Why did sentinels not cover themselves on guard duty? Was it a ploy to distract would-be enemies with their physique.

It was working.

Brialla noted only then that her lips were dry, and so she ran her tongue over them. The sea-salt breeze, she lied to herself, the jittery and anxious warmth settled beneath her ribs, forming a lump at the back of her throat making it clear that the breeze was only a passing thought. That same warmth rose to her cheeks. Prickled, made it feel as if pinheads pushed against her skin in a hundred places.

She didn’t know the sentinel, but she also didn’t care. She would be leaving the fishing village, town, in not too long. Who cared? When would she get another opportunity like this? Her parents had long guarded her, back in Quel’thalas. Not that she hadn’t managed to sneak out a few times, but when she did, she never met night elves. Sentinels. Especially not sentinels that didn’t like her, and might take it out on her. She took a breath. The warmth flared in her cheeks, but in her nethers, too. Her thighs.

Without giving herself further opportunity to romanticize the Kaldorei, or to delay herself, she stepped forward. Waited for Kerendra to finish wiping her mouth with a linen cloth, and, when the sentinel examined her own fingernails, Brialla moved up. Stood a few paces from the large elf, who spared her a look only after several seconds. A disinterested look, at that.

“You again,” she said, returning to her examination, just on the left hand instead. “I’m off-duty. There is no one behind me for you to talk to. No reason for you to shout at me.”

“I’m not here to scream at you,” Brialla said. Before she could bite her lip, before she could rationalize why it was a bad idea and too corny and stupid, she followed with: “At least not like that.”

To her surprise, and satisfaction, Kerendra actually smiled. A grin that turned into a lopsided smile, the pale blue eyes seeming to twinkle. She seemed content to let Brialla’s cheeks burn for a second or two before replying. “How, then?”

“I think you get the idea already,” Brialla said. “You just want me to stand around here, embarrassed, some more.”

“Your cheeks could set a whole building on fire,” Kerendra said. “But you look terribly attractive, standing there, embarrassed.”

“Great. You’re interested in my embarrassment. Great for me.”

“Come now. I’m just enjoying myself. And so are you, aren’t you?”

“You can call me Brialla.”

“You can call me Stag.”

Struggling to keep a self-satisfied and yet approving smirk contained, Brialla raised one eyebrow. “Fanciful, but no. Room for one more?”

“I have to get back to my post,” Kerendra said, her enthusiasm dimming as she spoke. As if Brialla had reminded her, as if she hadn’t known already. Some of the spark, the warmth, drained from their conversation, as if the mere thought of that post made the night elf less inclined towards any sort of dalliance with a sin’dorei.

“Back to your terrible companion.”

“She’s not so bad. Better than you think, and know, really. She’s just doing her duty.”

“Let’s not dwell on her,” Brialla said.

“I can’t dwell at all,” Kerendra said, standing. There was a breath, a lingering look, a sigh. A hand that reached towards Brialla, purple, smooth fingertips that trailed over her crimson cheek in an unbidden, but welcome caress. “Take real good care of yourself, ‘call me Brialla.’ Find me again, some time.”

“I will,” was all Brialla could reply, the sentinel already leaving. Her mind resisted producing something more engaging, something more suggestive, and, the Kaldorei gone, she instead slumped into the recently vacated seat. Pushed the emptied plate aside, and looked up to find a night elven man approaching, clearing the table, and casting her a look that mixed hospitality with a feeling that he wouldn’t care terribly much if she choked on a fish bone.