Five of the six bunks were unoccupied in the large, square room of the bed and breakfast joint that morning. The curtains had been nailed to the wall in order to prevent any light from coming in, and they had remained in place for quite some time. A single blanket on the second largest of the bunks rose up and down slowly, though any observer would have known that the occupant was awake. A long, scarlet mane poked out from underneath the covers along with two long azure ears, and a massive, three-fingered hand reached out to scratch an itch on the man's temple. All the others had gone off to work that morning, and only the large Shadow Hunter with faintly glowing red eyes lingered for so long in bed.

Rising after much internal debate, the man stretched in his fur jacket and pants that he hadn't even bothered to take off the night before. Though he was well-rested, he appeared disheveled and disoriented as he finally rose from the bed and ambled over to the calendar on the wall.

It hung over a dresser with some writing utensils on top, and even with the curtain nailed to the wall, the red Xs in the day boxes were clear. With much hesitation, the big blue man picked up a red pencil and held it up to an empty box in the last week. There were twenty-seven red Xs in total. After what seemed like an eternity, the man drew the twenty-eighth, lingering for a moment as he leaned his forehead onto the wall and stared sideways at all the red marks before opening the door.

He paused before exiting, and simply stared at the floor in front of him. "What a fool I've been," he sighed heavily. It was only another minute before he was down the stairs and out into the morning sun.

It was another breezeless day in the settlement at Thunder Pass. The streets were busy that late morning as laborers and merchants went about their business, a few carts pulled by frostwolves carrying vegetables through the main square that never seemed large enough for the amount of traffic it saw. The flight master on the very far west edge of town - the original settler, the real founder of the town - had just received passengers hauling sacks of mail over their shoulders. The two riders appeared to be natives of Draenor yet were wearing crimson red Horde tabards with black trims in addition to their wrapped fur boots. How the orcs could deal with the extreme cold in Frostfire Ridge was something Khujand would never understand.

He sat on a rocking chair on the porch of what had now become the new mail sorting center of the town, his right leg propped up across his left knee. His fel glaive was lain across his thighs as he sharpened the blades at each end with a detached grinding wheel that looked quite small in his large, powerful hands. There was a small footstool in front of him with a half-eaten apple and half-drinken glass of milk from an animal whose identity he was better off not knowing. The jungle troll was wrapped in the same light-brown fur outfit he had bought three extra pairs of, everything covered save his head, hands and part of his neck. His eye-catchingly scarlet mohawk was combed up carefully, rising about half a foot from the top of his scalp. The very back of his hair had been chopped like his tusks, the scarlet braid that was once his now braided into the long, dark azure hair of the woman who had a talent for sweeping into his life just as quickly as she swept back out again. The thick necklace lined with ten thousand years worth of claws and teeth of hunted game clinked around his neck as he worked.

Leaning against the leg of the chair was a packed travel bag containing changes of clothes, bars of soap, stacks of napkins and plenty of hard rations. A waterskin was attached to the side. Every day, every single morning since he had returned to Thunder Pass, he would go through the ritual again, carefully collecting what he would need in the event that he would have to leave suddenly.

"Yeah, just a minute," said one of the orcs to the flight master as he ascended the steps of the porch. He carried a burlap sack of letters over his shoulder, the bulge insinuating that there was quite an increase in the amount of correspondence going on.

Khujand had dutifully handed over the instructions Vegnus had written to the Thunder Pass post master; it was written in Orcish and was intelligently devoid of the Alliance seal or any names associated with Alliance races, bearing instead the neutral seal of the shipping consortium. He'd like to think that he had played a small part in connecting people on this alternate version of Draenor during the campaign. Every little bit counted, and everybody had to do their part.

"Right, just across the table here," the unusually energetic Forsaken post master bellowed from inside the office. He began rummaging through letters along with the native orcish attendant, that familiar sound of paper sliding across wood helping to soothe Khujand's self-inflicted stress and tension.

The post master often complained of the burly troll's presence on the porch every morning, depriving people who had actually received mail of a place to sit. He complained, but he never set his foot down. In a way, he sort of pitied the lonely, short-tusked man who asked with such concern about anything received with the initials "C.C." written on it in Thalassian. As a non-native speaker of Darnassian, its sister language Thalassian was mostly unintelligible to Khujand though he had borrowed a book on its script from the local mage's quarter and could pronounce the sounds. It was a clever means of concealing the origin of the sender, just as they had planned during that last dinner at Beastwatch.

It had been just shy of a month since they parted ways. He remembered the certainty he saw reflected in her eyes as they made their plans - it was perhaps the only emotion that they didn't share, as he was still his old, pessimistic self when thinking of how things could possibly work out. His work was his refuge; when he and Toruk weren't tracking down wild game for the cooks in the back of the inn, Khujand actually took to assisting Javilla and the hired men with cleaning and maintaining the building and facilities. He needed something to take his mind off things and beat back the sense of emptiness that had returned, that sense that he had foolishly become attached to someone he would never be able to see again.

"Only one month," he muttered to himself scornfully. Some people were separated from those close to them for much longer than that without receiving letters, and they still made their relationships work. There he was, moping around and it hadn't even quite been thirty days. Khujand really didn't know how he was going to survive this emotionally.

"These bags never seem to get any lighter," laughed the mail carrier inside. "People have started sending boxes, too."

So there the melancholy troll sat on the porch as he had for the past three weeks, his travel bag packed and ready in case, by some strange stroke of luck, a letter would arrive beckoning him to drop everything and run to her. He felt so sappy, and so awkward to be twenty-seven years old and experiencing such feelings for the first time. Both of his marriages had been loveless from beginning to end, and his two relationships outside of that had been brief and forgettable.

Was he being devoted, he asked himself inside, or was he behaving like an infatuated idiot? Was it normal to act like this? As people passed in front of the post office, he followed a few of them with his eyes and wondered how ridiculous they might find his situation and how they would tell him to forget about somebody so far away and move on with his life.

Khujand shut his eyes tight as he felt a lump in his throat. He had become so good at this whole optimism thing Zorena taught him about. There was no reason to screw things up now. Kuma's breathing exercises were quick and effective, and he managed to relax the muscles in his temples and figuratively massage the lump out of his throat quickly. Admitting that he believed in fate was supposed to bring him solace, but his want of another person stung him. Yes, he was hypersensitive and a drama queen, but he wanted to feel like he was her hypersensitive drama queen. She would write. She promised she would.

"Hey, Tiny!" the post master shouted as the postman exited and followed his travel companion to the tavern. It was only then that Khujand noticed the postman was wearing one of the hinged masked specific to the Laughing Skull clan of Gorgrond.

Khujand turned in time to see a thick envelope fly out of the open window of the office and onto his lap. The door swung open and the post master stepped out, leaning his elbows on the railing of the porch as he looked off to the left and watched the busy traffic of the main square.

"Don't say I never did anything good for you!" His light brown shirt and pants and dark brown shoes matched surprisingly well with his white apron. Why a post office worker needed to wear an apron was something Khujand had always wondered but never taken the time to ask.

Grinding stone in hand, he slowly gazed down into the beige envelope which sat on his lap. It was tied with a similarly colored piece of rope around the four corners. He stared numbly for what seemed like ages before placing the grinding stone down next to the footstool while leaving his glaive lying across his thighs. He had dreamed of this moment sometimes, and now that it had finally come he didn't even know how he felt.

Holding it up, he could sense that there were several sheets of paper inside. His fingers trembled as he felt the crease on the surface. Oh no...had it been bent or folded? The contents would most likely still be readable, but the thought of something so precious being tossed carelessly angered him.

He flipped the letter around slowly, his heart fluttering the way it did when he heard her speak his name. The writing on the front was in Thalassian script.

Khujand's hand trembled slightly as memories of those four nights swept over him. Closing his eyes for a moment, he could almost feel her scratching his scalp at the base of his mane, her other hand affectionately tugging at the leather strap of his pack. She wrote. Just like she said she would.

Before he could even open his eyes, something incredible wafted up to his nostrils. Was that...wait, what was that smell? Without opening his eyes, he held the envelope even closer and inhaled deeply.

"Sandalwood..." he whispered to himself sentimentally as he remembered holding her close that first moonlit night when they danced in the water.

The post master's stiff, black-grey wavy hairdo and handlebar mustache waggled back and forth as he spoke about what could have literally been the most interesting topic in the universe, and Khujand literally couldn't care any less. Opening his eyes, he carefully untied the knots of the rope and smelled it as well before tying it around his wrist. Sticking a finger underneath the opening, he unsealed the envelope with all the care of a surgeon before sliding the sheets out.

Thirteen sheets of paper! Twelve of them covered on both sides and the front of another, all written in Darnassian script. The past few days had mostly been spent reading whatever he could get his hands on from Zorena's library of druidic works; he knew he would need the practice so he could understand every word she might use.

His heart was racing as he read each paragraph and then reread it two more times before moving on to the next. By God...she had practically written a book! There was so much there, about how difficult the flight back to Highpass had been knowing that they would be so far apart, about how she worried so much that they wouldn't be able to contact each other again even when she had claimed that she didn't, about how she was even more worried that it wasn't normal to feel so attached. His vision almost blurred as he felt as though he were reading his own feelings there on the page.

She went into the details of the property in Ratchet she and Irien had put the downpayment on, describing it based on the several times they had viewed it during construction and scribbling some diagrams as well. She had so many plans for decoration...why was she telling him all this? Her description was so detailed that he felt as though he were in the house right at that moment. He fought back his foolish hope that she was somehow trying to hint at something and read on.

She described some of the dreams she had been having in vivid detail, described the latest exploits she and Irien had engaged in while patroling the postal roads in eastern Gorgrond, and the latest jokes they had made poor Anushka the butt of. Everything was there; it was like a thirteen sheet log of her life since they had gone their separate ways, and he loved every last word of it.

At the end, there was a long yet clinical explanation of the shipping routes in the province and how cross-factional mail could be sent from Beastwatch to Highpass through an officially neutral carrier. Apparently, some of the Azerothians had raised issue with mail being accepted from an Alliance settlement. Mail...seriously? The reason it had taken her almost a month to reach him was that they were trying to settle down local opposition to the idea until Sandash, their Azerothian friend who had run off with the native Laughing Skull, emerged from the wilderness and intervened on behalf of the Steamwheedle Cartel. After one month of separation, the mail would go through.

Wait...Vegnus had already discussed the presence of members of the Horde with the commander of Highpass. While some opposition occurred, mail carriers from Beastwatch had been allowed to stay the night within the defensive walls of the town but outside of the main residential district.

By the time you receive this, we will likely have received our third member of the Horde delivering mail and packages. The last two were able to stay without being harassed, and obviously for someone who had a hand in opening the mail route into Frostfire, negotiating the stay of a certain jungle troll with clipped tusks shouldn't be so difficult.

I don't know what your schedule is like with the inn, but Vegnus is already asking about when I'll receive my first letter from you letting us all know how you're doing. And...well...as fun as solo dances are in those clear Gorgrond springs underneath the night sky, it just doesn't compare to having a partner to embarrass myself with. It would be great if you could

Screw it, I'll be honest. I miss you so, so much and I can't wait to see you. Maybe that sounds too forward this early on or like some childhood infatuation, maybe people would think it's too soon, but it's the truth and I told myself I would stop being afraid. Come see me now, my big, brawny, overly sensitive man!

C.C.

The sheets were shoved back into the envelope so fast - and the envelope itself shoved into the travel pack so fast - that the violet-blue lipstick from where she had kissed the paper next to her signature was smudged inside.

"So that's the story of how I once delivered mail to Lady Sylvanas Windrunner and King Varian Wrynn both within the span of only thirty-two hours," prattled the post master as he felt a rumble on the porch. He had been so enraptured with his own story that he didn't even notice the 500 pounds of troll dashing by him. Looking to the left side of the porch, all he could see was a grinding stone lying on the floor next to a footstool with an empty glass.

"Hey!" the vegetable delivery kid cried out as he hit the snow with a thud. Potatoes, carrots and cucumbers had spilled out of his two bags and were strewn all over the ground in front of the post office.

The post master leapt down the steps just in time to see the flight master stumbling over a ripped bag of silver coins and hanging on to the reins of two insectoid flying mounts, trying in vain to calm them down as a rylak screeched in pain overhead. While it was disappearing fast, he could vaguely make out the figure of a large, redheaded man wrapped in furs, a travel bag strapped to his back, fel glaive in his hand and a half-eaten apple in his mouth.

A/N: Almost nine years on, and my two main characters who only knew each other from an unrequited bond in a oneshot are finally reunited. Originally, they were never supposed to see each other again nor have happy endings of their own; thanks to all who made it this far into their tale!

For those interested, there are some more stories coming up in this continuum before I move on to other groups of characters. Aside from the last one, all of these stories are complete, edited and just lying around in my online file storage as well as my cloud.

Before Summer Ends and Escape From Ashran are three and five chapters respectively, set six months and then one year on from this one, mostly of couple fluff as these two try to navigate the difficulties of a relationship like theirs.

Be By My Side will be roughly ten chapters of how Cecilia's sister Unelia met Johan.

You, Me & Us, the 45 chapter epic of this continuum, tells of Cecilia and Khujand's attempt to reach out to people from their old lives once the two of them return to Azeroth; not all threads in the continuum have a happy ending, I'll warn of that up front. There is character death, issues never resolved and broken hearts.

Lightning Crashes is a 15 chapter story and the final one featuring Cici and Khuj as the main characters, dealing with natural childbirth, the raising of biracial children and pregnancy late in life. That's the only one not entirely finished as of right now.

After that, there are other things such as the three volume Taming the Beast, in which you see Cecilia and Khujand's direct involvement in the continuum reach its happy ending as a new generation takes the stage but that is all in the future. Whether you read on or not, I truly hope that Four Nights in Gorgrond brought a smile to your faces when reading it. Thank you for your time. I love you all. :)