Helping the Hand

Three days ago, Daari left for Bloodmyst ahead of me.

Of course, the first I heard about this plan was when I found a note she'd left me saying she'd run on ahead, and that I should come up to Bloodmyst and find her. I don't think my friend understands the concept of "travel together."

Anyway, I hurriedly gathered my things, said goodbye to my father again, and started walking north along the road out of the Exodar.

I found Daari at the southern end of Bloodmyst Isle, gathering pears. I caught her attention, and she excitedly bounded over to see me. She was wearing a pair of goggles over her eyes that would probably look silly on most people, but somehow, they looked good for her.

I'd been doing some leatherworking the night before. I was already wearing the armor I'd made for myself, but I'd figured she might like something new to wear as well, so I gave her a little gift. She put them on and seemed happy with them, and offered me some dynamite in exchange, which I politely refused. I don't need any dynamite!

Anyway, we walked back together to turn in the pears to whoever had contracted her to find them; she told me that Kessel, the elekk handler, had something for us to do, and we could talk to him after we turned in the pears.

When we got to Kessel, I quickly realized why Daari was so excited about helping him. He wanted us to deliver some messages to places I'd already been — Stillpine Hold, Azure Watch, and Odesyus' Landing — which, although I'd gladly do it, wasn't particularly exciting. What made it interesting was that he was going to allow us to borrow a couple of his elekks to do it!

Although I've certainly seen plenty of elekks before, I'd never actually ridden one; although I'm not certain, I don't think Daari had either. With some difficulty I managed to get up on top of the elekk (it's quite a different view from way up there!), and I was getting myself balanced, I saw Daari's elekk rush off, Daari giggling.

I held on for dear life and rushed after her!

This is me, chasing after Daari!

My heart was pounding the whole time, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared, but it was fun! Fortunately, I think the elekk was smart enough to realize it had an inexperienced rider, as it seemed to understand my attempts at telling it which way to go, and Daari's seemed similarly under her control.

After delivering our message, we returned to Kessel; Daari seemed very reluctant to give back the Elekk, but she eventually hopped down, and we got our next task.

Apparently, near Kessel's camp, there was a lair of naga — upright-standing serpent-like creatures that I'd heard about, but had never actually seen firsthand. A few days prior to our arrival, they'd attacked Kessel's camp, and he wanted to find a way to convince them not to do it again. That was where we came in — we were to go kill their leader, and put a banner onto his body, to show the naga what they could expect if they bothered us anymore.

Honestly, this seemed kind of mean, but before I could ask if there was another way to do this, Daari ran off toward the naga camp!

Well, I couldn't let her go there alone, so that pretty much made my decision for me. Besides, the naga shouldn't have attacked Kessel, I guess. They did start this, and since they were bad, I suppose it was alright to punish them.

Apparently Kessel's camp attracts attacks; when we returned to him to report our success, he sent us off to thin out the ravagers that had been attacking him. Nothing out of the ordinary happened until we returned once again to Kessel; he rewarded us with swords!

The [Surplus Bastard Sword] we each received was rather large, requiring both hands to use it. My dad had taught me how to use such weapons, but I don't think Daari had much experience; she didn't seem to quite have the arm strength developed for it, and as such, the sword seemed wobbly in her hands. I managed not to laugh, but seeing a girl in goggles who was just a bit smaller than I am struggling to hold up the sword was pretty funny.

"Wow! This is great!" she said.

"You're going to build strong muscles wielding that," I told her, smiling.

"I know!" she replied. "But... um... do you think I should? I mean, I wouldn't want to get too big."

"I think you'll be fine. You can always stop using it if your muscles start getting too big, after all!" Somehow I doubted she'd have the patience to really use the sword enough that that would be an issue, but being strong isn't a bad thing, is it?

"I guess so," she said. She then pulled something out. "Oh! Did you see this thing?"

The thing turned out to be a [Cold Iron Pick]. "Just like you," I said. "Where did you find this?"

"Um... I didn't exactly find it..." She trailed off, blushing.

"Then where'd you get it?"

"I kind of... got a really good deal on it... someone was selling it, and... well, I needed a mining pick, so I figured I should get a good one. And this is a really good one!"

I chuckled. Really, it was just like her to just go out and buy a mining pick because someone was offering it for a good price. I didn't even think she knew how to use it!

Anyway, by that time, it was starting to get dark out. Despite her protests that she wasn't ready to sleep yet, I managed to convince her to press on to Blood Watch and see if we could find an inn.

The next morning, I woke up before Daari; I'm fairly certain that she was too excited to sleep immediately, so she was probably up rather late. I took the opportunity to take care of a few of the assignments that she'd already done before I'd arrived the day before.

Being without her again, even for a little while, was odd. It was certainly more relaxing; I had time to think and do things at my own pace, rather than just constantly running after her. She's a great girl, but she does take a lot of my attention!

And yet, I absolutely did not regret asking her to come along with me. The little break from her early that morning was nice, but I already found myself missing having her there after a couple of hours. She'd probably be waking up soon, if she wasn't already awake; with that in mind, I headed back to Blood Watch to pick up my friend.

She was already up and about. I caught up with her, and we continued with fulfilling various tasks around the island.

One thing that had been on my name for the past few days, of course, was the name for my cat. I couldn't just keep calling a friend "my cat," but actually getting to pick out the name myself was turning out to be harder than I thought! It seemed that it might be good to pick a name that had some sort of significance, but I just couldn't think of something that would fit my cat without being boringly descriptive. So that left me with names that didn't have any inherent meaning, but just sounded nice. I started playing with syllables in my mouth, feeling how I said them to see if I found them pleasant.

I came up with a few that seemed okay, but I eventually asked Daari what she thought of "Kari."

"I dunno," she said. "I think it sounds like my name."

I suppose it did sound a bit like her name, and she seemed noncommittal as to whether that was a bad thing or not. The cat didn't react to the potential name one way or the other, either. Well, that was okay. I could come up with something new.

My next suggestion was "Kisha." Daari thought the name was okay, but she didn't seem excited about it. I pushed her, trying to find out what she liked or didn't like about the name, but she just... withdrew.

The cat seemed to like the name, though, and I liked it too, so I made the decision that Kisha was my cat's new name.

But now Daari seemed to be bothered by something; she was much quieter than usual. When she did speak, it wasn't with her usual enthusiasm. I can only guess that I did something wrong; as she was fine before I tried to engage her in helping decide my cat's name. I'm not sure what I said wrong, though, and I somehow couldn't bring myself to ask her.

The best I could do was wait and hope her excitement returned.

Well, a few tasks and a message run round trip to the Exodar later, she'd perked up slightly, but even so, she was still quieter than usual. We went to bed at the Blood Watch inn, with me hoping that whatever I'd done to depress her would be forgiven or forgotten about by the next day.

The next morning, I again woke up before Daari. I didn't have any specific tasks to do without her, but with the hippogryphs making the trip to the Exodar take minutes instead of hours, I decided to go to the city and stock up on leatherworking supplies, and perhaps get some practice in.

It was early, and the city was still rather quiet, so I was surprised when my effort at putting together some leather was interrupted by someone approaching me from behind; I was even more surprised when they tapped my shoulder just as I was about to turn around to see who was there.

My visitor turned out to be an elf! As had been the case with the humans a week or so ago, I'd seen elves before in my city, but not often, and I'd not yet had the opportunity to talk with any personally.

My first impression of her was her ears; I had trouble keeping my eyes off them. I'd known they were long, but up close, they seemed... well, they were really unlike anything I'd ever seen.

When she spoke to me, she spoke common, so I tried my best to speak Common well; she seemed to understand me well enough, so I guess I did a good job. I introduced myself, she told me that her name was Fiera, and showed off her bow to me, claiming that she recognized me as a fellow hunter.

Well, I suppose I did hunt, if I fully understood the meaning of the Common word, and I agreed that I was a hunter. (As the conversation went on, I realized that she was specifically referring to those skilled with ranged weapons — she must have noticed my crossbow, so fortunately I hadn't answered her incorrectly — although it also seemed like she had quite a disdain for those who used guns. I can understand a little, I guess; Daari's gun is pretty loud, and with ears that big it must have been even more irritating for her! But it seemed that her dislike for guns and those who used them went beyond mere annoyance. I hoped to find out why she felt that way, but it didn't really seem proper to ask.)

She first gave me some tips I never would have thought of on my own about wearing mail armor, in case I ever decided to do so. I'd never really considered wearing any more than my leather, and I really hope I don't end up having to fight anything that would require me to wear mail to protect myself! But I listened anyway, because it never hurts to learn.

Then, she tried to teach me how to pretend to be dead. I suddenly realized that between the mail and that skill, she must be fighting very dangerous things! If she'd done so and survived, then she must be very good at what she does, and although I was already trusting her as a teacher of new things, my respect for her abilities skyrocketed at that point. This was someone I needed to learn from.

Her mock death was very convincing, and I had a hard time duplicating it. I was either making too much noise, or too little noise; I was either falling too dramatically, or not falling at all; I couldn't get it right. I ended up bruising myself a few times.

I guess I improved a little, but I knew my performance was nowhere near satisfactory when she had to take leave. She hinted that she might try to teach me again, and I hope so... but she didn't leave any way to contact her, either.

After she left, I went back to finishing the leather piece I'd been working on when she interrupted me. When I was finished with that, I decided to fly back up to Blood Watch to meet up with Daari again. My father was still asleep when I left the Exodar — it was still rather early — but I left him a quick note saying that I was okay.

Daari did seem to be back to her normal self; whatever I did that bothered her yesterday was apparently no longer an issue. We spent all day going around, doing tasks for the Hand of Argus and anyone else who needed something done; although it's still bothersome, it's no longer surprising to me that most of these tasks involved killing something. But there was one highlight!

At one point, Exarch Admetius needed the two of us to question a blood elf that was being held prisoner at Blood Watch. There were two problems with this: first, there was no way the elf would voluntarily tell us anything, and second, even if she would, we didn't understand her language! But the Exarch had a solution to that: he cast something on us that temporarily turned us into blood elves!

The weird thing is that while Daari was changed into a female blood elf, I was turned into a boy!

So it was a really weird feeling to be in this body, and Daari felt the same way. She thought it was fun being smaller, but had complaints about their soft feet; I had to agree with her on that. It did hurt to stand, and they stuck too far forward for my tastes; it was hard to walk without digging the front of the feet into the dirt. I also felt like I was going to fall forward; without my tail, my center of gravity was very different, and I felt almost like I needed to lean back a bit to compensate. I guess that's why their feet stick forward, to prevent such toppling, but not being used to it, I had a bit of difficulty! Just as with Daari, I was smaller, although my arms were decidedly thicker... and when they changed my form into a boy, well... they changed everything appropriately for that. *chuckles* So that was a little strange.

This is Daari, disguised as a blood elf. My disguise had already worn off by then.

We were successful with our questioning, though. I was happy to change back from my awkward temporary body to my much more familiar natural form (though I did give myself a quick glance over and feel, just to be sure everything was right!), it was a very fun experience. I think Daari really enjoyed it, too.

We finished out the day with some tasks to the northeast on Wyrmscar Island; it was very late by the time we finished, and we had to head back to Blood Watch in the dark.

And that was last night! It's been a long few days up here so far — and I think we'll stay for at least a few more — but despite the fact that it's hard work, I'm having a good time being out on my own with my best friend. I hope she feels the same way!