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| - ((Title shamelessly stolen from an Enya song. I decided I needed to develop Kruss as a character a bit. Like anything I do, I intend to write more of it, but hells, I really want to continue this one. I think it has potential.)) All that could be heard, and almost all that could be seen, was the falling, the constant falling, of the rain. Kruss grunted, and it was only with her keen ears that she could hear her own frustrated vocals. She had spent about two hours in Un’goro Crater, the tropical rainforest between two vast, dry, and uncompromising deserts, and she wasn’t too sure where it was she preferred to be. It was certainly true that there was an annoying shortage of water in Tanaris, and in Silithus, but it was similarly correct to say that the water here was far too much. A rule she had made for herself many months ago came up in her memory like a bad joke: If Irritant is my guide in any place we visit, get out of there as soon as possible. His red shell, much wider than it was when she had first met him, was making slow progress on the ground in front of her. She trailed him the best she could, and she supposed that he was at a snail’s pace because of her. Irritant could be sensible when he knew he had to be. The gigantic trees above her were being treated to as much water as they could possibly want. In the lush haze that made the sky look green, they were being bathed in a most exquisite rainfall. On the ground, ponds were merged together, animals huddled to cover, adventurers found tents utterly useless to keep the incessant dampness out, and one orc huntress swore in Orcish. Perhaps it was Water getting back at everyone for celebrating Midsummer. Kruss wasn’t a shaman, but like most orcs she knew a lot about the elements. She knew, for example, that she owed them a rather robust debt. Both her Warchief and her Chieftain were allowed to call upon Fire, Air, Earth and Water when they needed to. So although she hated her present predicament, and although her mane of brown hair felt like a lead weight, she wasn’t resentful of either Water, or her Chieftain. He had been the one to send her here. It was hard sometimes, for her to keep true to another rule she had made for herself, one more serious than the last: Be happy. It was a general rule at face value, but it was why she had this rule that revealed where Kruss’s feelings lay. As she trudged through the rainforest, her eye still perpetually focused on Irritant, she remembered Internment. She knew quite clearly that those camps had not been the darkest hour for the orcs, not at all, but she hadn’t been alive to when Outland was still Draenor, when up went the Hand of Gul’dan, when the Path of Glory was paved with the bones of Draenei. But she was there when, as a pup, she had been punched six times in the face by a guard wearing heavy mail. She was there when the rowdiest, the young orcs with heart, were executed as an example which the older orcs turned their faces so as not to see. She was there when her fellow kin were as pathetic as drunken, tired peons. “Me hungry…” she remembered that phrase most of all. She herself had said it, on occasion. “Me hungry…” ‘Me wet,’ she said to herself, with a nasty grin. Irritant didn’t seem to hear, as he kept leading. It occurred to her that she hadn’t told him where it was he was supposed to go. It also occurred to her that she had only begun following when it was he that seemed to be leading the way. It was strange that it should happen like that, she thought. It was almost unconscious. Her skin tingled. If there was any benefit from this unrelenting downpour of rain, it was that it cooled her green form, which, otherwise, would have just been flustered with the tropical heat – a heat that seemed worse because it was so far from home. This wasn’t her heat. This wasn’t Durotar’s heat. Her red homeland had no influence on this green one. She was an outsider. Alone. Be happy. She continued to struggle further into unknown lands, as that rule came back to her. Be happy. Yes, Internment had been horrible, and cruel to a race whose crimes were caused by another set of villains entirely. But the chains had disappeared. The locks had shattered, and a Warchief had risen. From a fate none of them had wanted came a second chance. Years later, this second chance would bring with it a new home, the heat of which would be compared to misplaced tropical paradises. But Kruss’s heart had never beaten so joyously quickly as it had when she had gained freedom. She and her race. It hadn’t ended with a whimper, but rather one young orc had come to a rescue that wasn’t foreseen but would never be forgotten. That something like that could happen, along with the disbelieving cheers and the joyous expressions that didn’t diminish for days, sometimes weeks later… this was what Kruss didn’t want to forget. She had tried so hard, for many years, never to let hers go. Never to lose that gleeful relief. The important things, she felt, had passed. If the Orcish race died out today, there would be no regrets for her. She raised a wet hand to wet hair, and pushed at least some of it out of her eyes. It was the kind of downpour which made it irrelevant if you were with someone or not, because you wouldn’t be able to speak to them anyway. Still, seeing Irritant’s slow gait was of some comfort. The crab never seemed to tense up in situations like this. He was always in a state of either enjoyment or boredom. By the way he was waving his pincer in opportune moments, he seemed quite content. Their trek went past a small family of raptors. Normally vicious to anyone they saw, these creatures, their orange skin glistening with wetness, were too busy alternating their eyes from snapped shut to wide open. Oppression and surprise. Kruss took a certain amount of pride in seeing these creatures become so disrupted by the same explosion of the skies she was stubbornly refusing to be swayed by. Alright, she thought, I’m not exactly guaranteed a safe spot, but come on… The raptors, of course, had their own view on things. Their reptilian minds, whilst not capable of much in the way of snide comments, were certainly entertained by the sight of an orc following a crab. Not that they’d ever seen a crab.
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