Adulthood

What comforts I found, I found in books, dogs, and discovery. My mother would often say I could read before I could speak and these interests led me to become a Page in the Merchant House's Library at the age of 14. Some of my coworkers considered me "difficult" but the Head Librarian found me to be efficient and diligent so I was raised to Clerk within two years. Yet I was kept in the stacks, managing materials and seldom interacting with patrons. This suited me well enough.

When I was 23, my mother made a final, desperate attempt to see me romantically engaged and arranged a date with a daughter of House Haywood. I did make an effort, if only to appease my mother, but the evening did not go well. The rich dinner my mother had arranged could not remain in my stomach and the resulting social injury involving a more prominent House made it impossible to remain at the Merchant Library. With a good word from the Head Librarian, I was granted a position within the Royal Archive; perhaps the most fortuitous event in my early life.

My initial duties weren't much different from those at the Merchant Library. For the most part, I cataloged acquisitions and collected materials relevant to a patron's request and filed them when they were returned. Eventually, I was given the task of re-scribing works that were at risk of deteriorating. I found it engaging work that could hold my attention for hours, occasionally days, at a time. Without quite ever making the decision to do it, I found myself residing in the Archive itself. It was more efficient than continuing to live with my Mother and gave her the freedom to pursue interests she had been forced to forgo with a young man in her charge.

I'm not sure if I could say it was a "happy" time, but mostly because the term has never been clear to me. It was certainly a stable time and I think of it often when events become unstable.

The Curse

I remember the night clearly, though I never saw the worgen that cursed me. It was the 7th night of Moon's Veil, 620 and I was preparing to return materials to the Crowley Estate Folio. As I carried them through the stacks I heard a scuff and turned. Beyond that moment are months of vague impressions that are too dissolved to consider memories. I have an inkling of my skin itching and ripping; teeth too large to fit my mouth; being too overcome with sensation to hold anything, even rage.

I am told that I was inordinately docile following my transformation. The typical behavior of the newly cursed might be described as a violent frenzy, but I was largely unresponsive to the world around me. This made me easy to capture and useful as a subject in developing Aranas' initial treatment for the curse. The treatment helped to suppress the fugue state, permitting me some semblance of capability in brief episodes.

Yet my memory resumes only after the Kaldorei druids used an artifact linked to the Curse to cleanse me of it, or at least of it's cognitive effects. The ritual restored my mind and gave me some... control isn't the correct word. I have never had control. But with care and intention I can regulate these senses and remain myself. For this, the Kaldorei will always have my gratitude..

It was shortly after the ritual that we were forced to flee our homeland, recently broken by the Cataclysm, to escape the Forsaken army. I would learn later that my mother was not among those who escaped. Neither was my companion, Herod, nor any possessions left in my cell. That includes the original volumes of this journal in which I had written daily entries to record the challenges of my life and the strategies I devised to overcome them. My entire life up to that point was utterly lost to me.

Recovery

In Darnassus I was able to begin processing all that had happened. All Gilneans were struggling with their loss, and I would not compare mine with theirs, but it was my first experience with something entirely alien to me: rage. I had long seen the world in as overlapping systems, everything connected to factors beyond direct observation. When I was treated unfairly, I could attribute it to a cause beyond my sight. That didn't make it right, but perhaps... understandable. Yet rage... It did not reason. It did not care.

In practice, I would go hours or days functioning more or less normally. Then, often without warning, something inside me would snap under a pressure I couldn't sense. Most often I would freeze in place, locking up in whatever position I happened to be in until my mind started moving again. Other times I lashed out at anyone and anything that happened to be nearby. I've never been a violent person and these episodes were more frightening than the curse had ever been. They suggested a damage, or perhaps a defect, more deep than flesh. Worst still, though I never attacked a person the risk of harming another was always pressing down on me. It was one thing to shatter dishware and furniture but I didn't think I could recover from harming the people around me who were just trying to heal themselves or others.

I began to isolate myself in a small, dark den among the roots of a great tree. The confined space and lack of sensation felt as though they helped to hold me together; kept me from cracking into more pieces. At the time, I couldn't say if I was waiting to heal or waiting to cease, only that waiting was all that was possible. Sometimes food and water would appear at the mouth of the den and, in my better moments, I would eat it.

On one such occasion, I found a mastiff eating my food. She was missing her left fore-leg and her ribs were slightly more prominent than was healthy for an adult dog. A stiff, worn collar around her neck read "EDITH". I sat and watched her eat and, when she'd licked the bowl clean twice, she hobbled to me and lay in my lap. Edith was my salvation. When I locked up, insensate and immobile, she would patiently lean or lay against me until I came back to myself. With her help, I was able to leave my den and rejoin the world. I could stop waiting and start living again.

Druidism

With Edith's assistance I was able to learn to focus on one sense to the exclusion of others. I could hear a moth flap its wings by being, in effect, unaware of everything else. This wasn't particularly practical but it gave me another tool to regulate my senses; something I desperately needed no matter which form I was in. In the process of practicing this technique in my worgen form, I found myself in the form of a wolf. I was taken to Denatharion as he had experience with such matters and this was how I was introduced to the druidic arts.

I never had a strong connection to the Emerald Dream and was a middling student of magic. I learned the techniques quickly but struggled with the praxis (as Denatharion said I lacked the "heart" of it). Yet I very adept at shapeshifting. My tendency to perceive things as systems helped me interpret the natural world and could connect me to megafauna in a fundamental way. Perceiving the factors and priors that informed the crow's behavior helped me to see the world as a crow, and my physical form would follow this perception.

I discovered that each form had its own balance of sensations. Bears possessed a blisteringly keen sense of smell but sound and touch were muffled. The wolf has several sharp senses but blends them together into a medley that creates a profound understanding of one's immediate surroundings. The stag is similar but the awareness is duller and spread over a larger area. The crow's eyesight is superb but it possesses almost no sense of smell.

This discovery gave me a way to match my senses to the situation. When a crowd pressed in too close or there were too many overlapping conversations, the bear could tolerate that. If the sun was too bright or the pressure to speak too heavy, the wolf offered refuge. And if nothing else, the crow could always escape.

And Edith did so enjoy riding a bear through Teldrassil's branches (though not as much as the nap afterwards).

Travels

I studied with Denatharion for over a year. While the rest of the world was focused on the discovery of Pandaria, I was learning how to live in society again. At first I tried to be of service to the libraries of Darnassus, but the bibliographic procedures were too different from those in Gilneas and my efforts were not very helpful. It is difficult to catalog acorns.

I considered staying with the druids and formally joining their Circle, but while they tolerated my "oddities" it was always clear that I was not one of them. Still, I reasoned I would not belong anywhere. At least with the druids I knew where I stood and that Edith and I could survive. I began making patrols of the Darkshore on their behalf, roaming the coast in various forms with Edith as my only company for weeks at a time. I observed the world as I travelled, seeing the connections between the elements and organisms around me.

This put me in contact with numerous adventurers as they passed through northern Kalimdor. Sometimes I would aid them, occasionally I had reason to hinder them (poaching), but for the most part I left them be. That was, until a series of incidents around Hallows Eve concluded with my joining a troupe of adventurers, the Kitehawks. I journeyed with them for two years; foiling plots, healing wounds, and discovering wonders, largely in Kalimdor. Along the way, I was captured and held prisoner for 47 days, but the worst part of it was losing Edith. Shortly after I escaped, I was informed by the leader of the Kitehawks that my company was no longer welcome. Apparently I had been "difficult" for much of the time we had been together. Another lesson that was neither necessary, novel, nor useful.

I returned to Teldrassil with the expectation that my travels had reached their end.

The Wild

I tried to settle back among the druids of Teldrassil but too much had changed. I had begun to see the potential for a better life, a better world, only to have it snatched away. And Edith's presence was crushing in its absence. Try as I might, I couldn't slip back into the old routines and I could not move forward because there were more pressing matters than my psyche.

The world had not been stagnant during my travels and war had made its way to Darkshore. Working to slow the advance of the Horde helped to distract me from my own troubles. At least, they did until western horizon went up in flames. I could feel the heat from the blaze but I was frozen on that beach, incapable of sensing anything but the burning World Tree. It seemed as though everything; people, beasts, plants; all the systems of the world, would burn with it. It seemed inevitable. It was only a matter of time.

In that moment, I considered helping those metaphorical flames spread, speeding up the inevitable to minimize suffering, but even that thought felt like a repugnant, poisonous violation. Still, I'd lost my home for the second time, and to the same force no less. Against that, I could not see a way forward. Whatever other options I may have considered, the course I took was to remove myself from the system. I became a beast, albeit one with many forms, and shunned the world of people. I lived as wolf, bear, and crow and avoided anything that might connect me to the world beyond.

Days passed, but I did not track them, a beast has no use for a calendar, and I did not remain in Darkshore. The charred remains of Teldrassil were too much a reminder. I travelled east into the mountains with no destination but away from the past. I moved slowly, lingering in valleys and slumbering in caves. If I saw any sign of habitation; a footpath, a broken cup, a discarded hat; I turned and left. My mind, or at least my internal experience of myself, sank beneath the cover of a beast and slept. My body survived but I would not describe that period as "living".

Awakening

The day my life began again started slow; rousing from torpor to shake the frost from my fur. The season had turned cold and a thick mist clung to stones slick with rime. It should only be a few more days before the snow began falling and, following the ways of a bear, I needed to fill my stomach before the next torpor.

I followed the scent of blood, sharp and metallic as it slid through the gentle morning vapors. I expected to find the carcass of a goat or some other prey left by a nightsaber. Instead, I found a fox. It was a charcoal grey that melded among the mottled stones though it's eyes were a bright silver. I might have missed it save for the fluids pooling from its wound contrasting splashing color against the grey. I saw no sign of what had injured her but it was clear that her life would soon be expended and I had no power (and questionable right) to alter that.

As a rule, I do not eat canids so I began to turn to let nature continue its course. That's when I caught another pair of silver eyes watching from the shadows beneath a mound of rocks, a kit, and the situation made more sense. A parent fox would stand its ground to defend its offspring, even against an unnatural threat that would not see it as prey. I knew that without its mother, the kit would die anyway. It was far too small to hunt on its own, possibly not even old enough to be weened. From the back of my mind I could hear a whisper in Denatharion's voice telling me to abandon the kit and let nature find its course, but my mind began to rouse from its own hibernation to resist. I remembered that my druidic mentor was likely dead himself and, even if he wasn't, in that moment the only course I would follow was my own.

I was still for some time, sharing the gaze of two creatures a fraction of my own size, until my mind roused enough to determine what my own course would be. I returned to the form of my birth for the first time in years. I moved awkwardly and slow, less accustomed to two legs, but managed to pick up the kit. It bit at my fingers in panic, or perhaps protest, but I wouldn't even notice that until I saw the scabs the following morning. Then I sat next to the mother and set the kit in my lap where it would be sheltered from a still hostile world. I slowly stroked the mother's charcoal fur until after she had passed. I was not awake enough to reason yet, but it felt like the right thing to do.

A Decision

In the days that followed, I often felt the need to speak with the kit and remained in my human form to do so. The kit was also female and still small enough to ride in my human hand. Foxes are often vocal creatures but she never spoke to me, never made a sound. Before long, I was thinking of her as "Mist" for she was as quiet as the fog I had found her in.

With Mist in my charge, I left the scarcity of the mountains and moved south again. With winter approaching I had more need for alacrity and travelled as a stag or wolf with Mist in a pouch carried in my teeth or on an antler. For her part, Mist seemed content with my company. She ate what I put before her, avoided what I warned her from (mostly), and, after a few unpleasant mishaps, learned to relieve herself outside of the pouch.

I reached a realization before I arrived at a road. I had needed time to heal and I had taken it. I could take more time, that was an option, but I did not need to. Another option was to return to the world. To find ways to solve problems and make a better world for the people living in it, and those that would follow after them. It was my choice to make. My decision. Before I'd put foot on the paving stones I knew which path I would take. It was not a decision unburdened by concern, but such is true of all choices. As ever, I could only choose the path that seemed best at the time.

And that brings me to today. Mist and I are in Everlook and I am told it is the seventh day of the second month of the year 635 by the King's Calendar (though the goblin who sold me this book is unfamiliar with that calendar and there may be a mistake with the conversion). I have fashioned a better pouch for Mist to ride in, one that will allow me to carry her while I am in flight. She's already growing and soon I will need to fashion her a harness... or perhaps some form of saddle. In either case, I have enjoyed watching her play in the snow.

I find I'd like to show Mist more of the world than a region of frozen mountains, and I think I'd like to see the state of the world for myself.  However this turns out, it is good to have some sense of purpose again.