Notes1: This is inspired by the dialogue line you can click on as an Alliance hunter that allows you to ask Ulfar about the wicker beasts...only for him to call you out on it for not being subtle enough that you really want to tame one.

I don't know if it'll ever be possible for hunters to tame wicker beasts. On the other hand, there are exotic animals and spirit beasts Beast Mastery Hunters can search for and tame as one of their own. There's also Hati's return as well, which, from my understanding (unless I failed reading comprehension), shouldn't be physically possible due to him being bonded to your hunter's soul as well as the Thunderspark, but anything's possible. (If anything, that connection should've outright killed the Hunter PC in the Legion epilogue, something which I pointed out in the video on YouTube that depicted the sacrifice of the Legion artifacts. Eh, but what would I know?)

Notes2: This story kind of makes Ulfar out to be a bit of a dick, and I did wonder if maybe it was making him somewhat OOC. But honestly, with the situation he's in who could blame him?

"No," Ulfar tells her, and it doesn't even sound final. His tone doesn't give them the impression he's saying 'we're done with this discussion, no means no and I'm sticking to it, end of story'. It's a simple, flat 'no'.

"No?" Mishka repeats.

"No," the old bear reiterates. "You are not going to tame a wicker beast."

Her eyes blow open. "Who said I was going to do that?"

"I saw the way you looked at them when you came here. I've seen it on many other faces, and each and every one of them had the same, wide-eyed look of childish joy you had. Except the goblins." He snorts. "Greedy little upstarts. They never seem to realize - nor seem to care - what forces they are dealing with."

"But I—!"

"No," he says again, and flops down on his side with a hollow thunk of thorns and wood. "I told you before, girl, and I will say it again: this place is steeped in so much magic it has come to inhabit its creatures. They are powerful manifestations of nature." He opens a pale yellow eye that pins her down through the half-closed lid. "They are to be respected."

Bellonir watches her mouth work, searching for words that won't come. She glances around at the ivy on the cave's walls, the plump red and purple flowers that grow from the crannies of its dark corners and whose roots sprout from underneath wet, grey rocks. Her hands grasp the air, as if conjuring the answers from immateriality to reality will ease her discomfort.

No such magic comes.

(Then again, he surmises, if Mishka was actually capable of any magic at all it'd be nothing short of a miracle. Now whether or not it'd be for good or for ill...well, pot calling kettle black, he's a demon hunter. What would he know about good intentions?)

The sight of her spinning on her heels draws his attention away long enough to see her gesture, quite wildly and very desperately, at the quilen next to her. The same quilen, he notes with a measure of uncanny valley, that wears the same expression nearly ninety-nine percent of the time he's out and about with his master. This same quilen who doesn't show a hint of surprise—or anything at all, really; no hint of shifting stone could change the drab, angry moue that may as well be his default face—when she presents him to the High Thornspeaker like a goblin showboat would in his bid to pitch the hottest commodities on the auction block. "My quilen had his soul stuffed into a stone construct thousands of years ago!" she stammers. "He's—"

"An aberration," Ulfar says, made almost largely incoherent with a large yawn. "No different than Gorak Tul's constructs. The fact that it has been under your control this long and is not causing mayhem is a very notable exception, I will admit that. I respect that you have trained it well, but make no mistake, girl, it is still a manifestation that bastardizes the natural balance."

"What difference does it make between a quilen and a wicker beast? Both are animated by different kinds of death magic!"

"True. But neither have consented to it." He raises one thick, front paw larger than her head to rub at his snout. "You may care about these creatures, but this is one aspect you do not truly understand. Aberrations though they may be, they are still bound to the cycle. They will fall someday, like it or not. And for the last time, girl, they are not pets. No creature is. You know this. You're a smart, young woman; don't let your heart get in the way of reason."

"But—!"

"I always tell them this," he grumbles. "Every new initiate that hears the call of the wilds and leaves the bustle of the cities always thinks having a domesticated wicker beast is grounds for bragging rights. Hmph. Children today! Old enough to know better but certainly not old enough to keep it that way!" He nuzzles the ground with his nose, heaves a sigh that raises his entire body, and blows it out. He's about to close his eyes when he stops. "Hmm? You're still here? I already told you. I'm going to take a nap now. It's been a long day."

Mishka stares at him, long and forlorn and clearly out of options. It's the kind of face Bellonir's seen at Dalaran over at the Legerdemain Lounge around the time Lord Illidan used the Sargerite Keystone to rip open a portal between Azeroth and Argus. They were the kind of patrons that, on a normal night, would order the strongest brews, catch their mugs that slid across the counter, and simply peer into its dark, foamy depths, contemplating their life's choices, all the things they could've done and probably will never be able to do now that the end of the world was upon them. They are still the same kind of patrons now, trading in one looming threat to all Azeroth for another a little more down to earth, a little more lustful for the blue-gold mineral that's driving everyone and their grandmother a little topsy-turvy.

Mishka looks like she's watching her choice of brew go swirling down the sink before she's even had the first drop.

Suddenly, a glint. A small one, and not a very bright one, but it brings just a touch more color to her cheeks, perks her ears up from their downcast turn. With the wave of an arm, Mishka gestures behind her at the second animal they have in their company, smaller than Banchou but made of flesh and quickly growing in size over time: "...I have a baby felstalker—"

"Nooooooo," Ulfar says, and opens his jaws as wide as they can go, flashing a pink tongue and sharp, glass-pointed incisors that look out of place on a bramble-clad, shapeshifted bear. He closes his mouth with a bony clap, licks his lips, and stretches all four legs out. "We are done with this discussion. No means no and I am sticking to it. End of story. Have a pleasant day."

He closes his eyes. His breathing slows.

A low, soft snore whistles from his nostrils.

A paw twitches.

Mishka watches, mouth flapping open and closed.

She keeps it shut, ears drooping so low she appears more Kaldorei than Quel'dorei.

She turns around and walks out of the cave, into the sunlight, feet dragging behind her. Doubled over like that, a snail could outrun her...but Bellonir's seen that kind of pace before, too. It's the kind prisoners in Boralus walk with when they're going to the gallows and everyone's turned up to watch with bags of popcorn in hand. No sympathy, only a dark, sardonic joy to watch the puppet dance his last jig.

The Thornspeakers aren't wearing gleefully murderous faces, but there's not much commiseration to be found among them, either. He can relate to that. He felt—still feels—the same way with most demons who are on their own now, with or without Sargeras before and after the Argus campaign. The little felstalker hound, who's turning out to be not so little anymore after only a few months, is just an exception (the only exception, Bellonir mentally reiterates; Xandor is lucky to be alive at all by looking cute and imprinting on him over the other demon hunters that have such a hard-on for systematic slaughter). They watch her mosey on up to him, and then return to whatever they were doing prior to them—well, her, actually—barging up the path to their little slice of cyclical paradise, looking for all the world like a child that's about to tear open all her long-awaited presents under the Winter Veil tree.

He hasn't seen someone's mood plummet this quickly since Khadgar watched Argus appear in the sky above Azsuna and nearly dropped dead on the spot. Yet Mishka's was a gradual decline, gaining speed the more everything started tumbling down: hopes and dreams, aspirations, the number of potential names she came up with, a list he found one day that was clearly magical nutritional value, clippers and shears for leaves and twigs that might grow on the beast….

Bellonir resists the urge to sigh. Real, living beasts of the wild he could understand. But spirit beasts and demons and wicker worgs? What use did calories and carbohydrates have with beings made of ectoplasm, entropy, and death magic, anyway?

Mishka stops in front of him. Neither her expression nor her posture has changed.

Banchou and Xandor appraise her. The former huffs; Bellonir would say he's concerned if it didn't seem so apparent that maybe Lei Shen's former prized hound didn't give a damn at all. Or looking like an aristocrat who's just run his gloved finger over the varnish of a mahogany mantle. It's hard to tell.

Xandor, on the other hand, trundles up to her with a throaty gurgle and bumps his bony snout against one of her legs. He tilts his head to one side and wags his tail when she stirs—a single sniffle and a jut in her lower lip.

Against his will, his ears shoot forward with alarm.

He knows that look.

Better yet, he knows that sound.

In the next ten seconds—no, any second now, Mishka is going to cry.

He swallows thickly. "Mishka. Are you okay?"

She nods.

"Do you want to go somewhere quiet?"

She nods.

"Anywhere in particular? A cafe? A tea shop? Maybe," he twirls his hand around, "Maybe a petting zoo?"

Mishka shrugs.

That doesn't help. At all. But at least she's not crying. Anything is better than tears and a dream unrealized.

(No one outside the Ilidari has to know that it does something funny to his chest when he sees her like that. At least, hopefully no one else besides the Illidari; and if they do, he knows exactly where he'll find his second in command. And if he can't find him, then, well, maybe Kor'vas will spill the beans. Somebody. He's the goddamned Slayer, and when the Slayer says to spill it they're going to damn well spill it.)

He nods. "Okay," he says. "Okay. Let's go hitch a gryphon to, uh, Hatherford or Bridgeport and do, uh, something." He rolls his shoulders back, thinking. "How does fishing off the coast sound? We can hunt the krolusks and crabs and roast them over the campfire."

Nothing. Mishka stares at the ground between their feet, still with that glassy-eyed, far away look.

She gives him a very small, almost imperceptibly bare nod. "That would be lovely," she mumbles, and sniffs again. Her face twists, crumples on itself.

He's not sure what which body part would fly off of his body first: his ears or his chest. One's pounding way too hard for it to be deemed medically healthy and the others stand so fast they slap against the backs of his horns.

None of that overrides the single, pervasive thought barging down the walls of his brain like a battering ram: THINK, FOOL, THINK!

"Well! Come on!" Bellonir says hastily, and just as Mishka's about to keel over and have the third biggest existential crisis in her life (the second being providing a healthy balance for game hunters and fanatical peaceniks like D.E.H.T.A, and the first being Hati—but nothing can top Hati) he puts his hands on her shoulders, spins her around, and marches them down the path in the direction of Arom's Stand. "The fish aren't going to catch themselves, you know!"

"I had a dream," Mishka stammers with increasing volume and shaky, watery dismay, "and it died with them!"

"There's always room for new dreams," he adds, and looks very pointedly at Banchou and Xandor. "Right, boys?"

Banchou harrumphs (like that does any good), and Xandor barks and opens his mouth to let his long, green tongue loll and flop over the side. His dreadlocks shake, emitting a faint cloud of contaminating spores that makes the flowers off the path they're on turn black and wilt. Some collapse into piles of sulfuric ash, to which the Thornspeakers in the vicinity balk and glare at him.

Bellonir grimaces; the last thing he wants is for Mishka to be depressed and have to be bedridden a week because a felstalker's love was, quite literally, infectious. "...R-Right. Let's, uh, wait 'til we get before we start enacting the circle of life with weapons of mass destruction. Okay?"

Xandor barks again, and for the rest of the trip (and the rest of the day, because without Banchou around to keep an eye him a good chunk of the coastline would be a radioactive wasteland that would ruin the better part of Tiragarde's ecosystem and their water supply) he listens and helps with the hunting and the fishing.