The Hibiscus Blossom (Vale)

For once, a self-explanatory story! It covers the workings of Vale's mind at present, as she's had quite a bit of, ah, intrigue in her life recently.

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'The Hibiscus Blossom'

Vale drifted like a a soft-sighing zephyr through the little harbour town of Ratchet. Her footfalls stirred the nighttime dust that had been left by the day's sweating and swearing caravans: the product of the rise and fall of commerce in a goblin port. In full daylight the town was a colourful, stench-ridden blur of activity; but now, in the cold, silver hours before dawn, silence drifted over it like a silken shawl. There was no one to question her steps.

She climbed the hill into the Barrens, and the smells that she had known so well drifted to her from the savanna: the rough, almost acrid scents of grass and red earth, the reek of wandering herds, the heavy hint of rain from somewhere far-distant. The woman breathed in the Barrens as she travelled through the sparse prairie-grass, making her way toward the stand of trees that loomed dark and tangled on the horizon.

It was rare that she returned to Kalimdor; when she had need of thought, of escape, or of solitude, she always went to Duskwood, to the ghostridden echoes and charred timbers of her childhood. But now she sought not so much thought as beauty; to fill up her senses, to shed some of the weight of the days. She had fashioned something for herself in Stormwind; she had her rooms at the Recluse, draped with saffron silks and whispering of mystery and delight; she frequented the Lamb, spinning her webs, smiling, laughing, enticing, observing; she suggested much and revealed little, and was content.

As the oasis rose up before her, lush and dark, she slipped between the palm fronds and the overhanging hibiscus, drinking in the heady perfumes of the nightblooming flora as a breeze murmured past her cheek and stirred the tangle of her hair. She had seen so much to intrigue her in the past weeks; the characters of so many different men – three in particular – each as if chiseled from a different stone; heavy hands and crooked smiles, all as layered as the nearby sandstone cliffs.

Dropping into the shadow of a rock, Vale crawled beneath a fan of soft ferns, resting her head against the gentle, mossy soil. And then there was Eothan. His angry confession of attachment – against his will, against his character, against his liking – was a far cry from the awkward smiles of the men she had entangled in the past only to spring away again, laughing at their folly. Eothan had never been one of her projects. Eothan had been her solace against the foolishness of the city, the one man who was very clear about what he was thinking and about why he spent time in her company.

A nightbird whistled from somewhere above her, and as she closed her eyes, she could hear the trickle of the springs that gave birth to and sustained the oasis. Here, in a moonlit world so distant from the city, it was easy to breathe, to be at ease. And yet she still didn't know what to do with Eothan. Uncertainty had always been a blemish on the fabric of the life that she had carefully woven and maintained, and until now, Eothan had never caused her any.

She sighed softly, lifting a hand and plucking a flutelike hibiscus blossom from a drooping branch. Every moment was so fleeting and fragile... each day, each year, every glass of wine and thoughtless smile. And all that she knew, for certain, was that she wasn't ready for her life to crumble around her, to be tossed again into an arid and hostile landscape. For once, she had something to lose, and she wasn't ready to lose any of it.

My my, vale sure is a busy lady

That was beautiful! Is there any significance to the hibiscus blossom?

Very neat indeed.

Shaelyssa wrote:That was beautiful! Is there any significance to the hibiscus blossom?

Just that a blossom is something fleeting, like Vale's enticing/pretty/slutty lifestyle (depends on how you want to look at it).

Thank you, all three of you, for the comments. Vale is, ah, indeed a busy lady.