A/N: this is another story where I break my usual rule and post chapters before the entire thing is complete. Don't worry; my normal posting schedule for my main continuum shall continue as I have at least a year and a half worth of stories on my cloud, hard drive and flash drive. But I felt I needed something a little more light hearted and decided to post this now.

March, year 31

The afternoon was dusty in Sen'jin City. Nothing new there. The breeze was only light, but the landscape of Durotar caused even the slightest wind to disturb the particles of sand to be found near the shoreline and around the rockier landscape to the north. So much of the unsettled areas were made of dry, cracked land but a bit of sand always made its way in from unseen origins.

Not that the locals were bothered. Palm trees dotted the closest landscape to their original homeland, adding an almost subtropical flavor to the otherwise arid climate. Due to an edict made by the local elders, palm trees couldn't be cut down, thus preserving a bit of empty space for the sake of aestheticism and mental comfort in the otherwise crowded and expanding settlement. Very little of the city limits was left undeveloped in the aftermath of the Darkspear Rebellion; a fresh injection of Horde nationalism and industrious fervor mixed in with the natural boost to the postwar economy. A large number of tribespeople returned to Durotar from outer regions such as Northrend and Outland to take part in the revolution, as did copious numbers of tauren who had also taken part in overthrowing Hellscream. Even neighborhoods of orcs who had opposed the late dictator as well as blood elves had formed their own neighborhoods, and there were never any shortages of goblins anywhere; only the undead seemed to be in small number due to the heat.

That meant construction, crowding and noise. The open air lofts and longhouses of the jungle trolls covered almost every inch of the area save the roads and the patches of palm trees. Some of the structures had become grander than anything the Darkspear had known on their island across the ocean, and toward the center of the city the wealthier families built their wooden stilt houses into three tiers, and a few even stood four tiers tall. The longhouses of the tauren complemented the dwellings of the tribe nicely given the affinity of both peoples for longhouses, and the partially underground orc burrows proved a startling contrast near the city walls (orcs always preferred to live near walls and frontiers lest they miss out on repelling invaders). All that led to a great deal of foot traffic, noise pollution and kicked up dust in the busy streets of the city formerly known as a village.

Zulwatha leaned against the frame of the workshop's back door as she peeked down the back alleyway toward the side street. There were only a few feet of visibility from her vantage point, and between the barbecue grill restaurant and seed seller at the end of the alley, she could just barely make out the various colors and garments of the people walking by. Dust wafted up everywhere they walked, creating a slightly red tint to boots, feet and hooves as she stared.

Those breaks were the Darkspear woman's mental refuge whenever she was able to take a break for a few minutes. The rust colored sash and sarong she wore were conveniently colored; dust kicked up when she just stood at the back door and zoned out, but it failed to taint the uniform she had to wear at the pottery shop. Letting a tingling sensation wash over the back of her head, she savored the few minutes when she wouldn't be bothered by customers or potters. The latter weren't so bad; they tended to enjoy their work and only needed Zulwatha to inform them of the exact orders the shop had received, usually from people in the immediate neighborhood - bursting at the seams with a population nearly half that of Orgrimmar, Sen'jin City had three other workshops producing pottery from the abundant clay pits operating outside the city walls. When there weren't specific orders to fulfill, the potters would fill their time by making whatever struck their creative fancy. There were only two of them, a youngblood and an old veteran, but they were surprisingly motivated for troll males and were lucky enough to get paid for indulging in their shared hobby.

Customers, however, were much worse. When Zulwatha wasn't spending her time rearranging pieces that had been haphazardly picked up, carelessly glanced at and then improperly reshelved by flippant potential buyers, she was answering a hundred and one pointless questions by members of the nobility or explaining to deadbeats why they shouldn't be surprised that a clay pot would break when knocked off a table and onto the floor of their home.

A light blue brow with no hair furrowed into a frown as she overheard a few such customers gabbing just outside the shop door. She must have been looking out the back door a little too long; letting customers inspect the merchandise on display out front often led them to deal with it less carefully than they should.

"Look at this. It's so...small," muttered another Darkspear female in crisp, unaccented Zandali, a popular habit ever since the tribe had reasserted itself in the revolution. "Why would a water pot be so small? Who drinks a little bit of water? If I'm going for a drink, you know, I want to drink a gallon."

Her boyfriend sounded just as pretentious, and the way he spoke through his nose sounded as if it were permanently upturned. "I know, right? Maybe this is some sort of a baby cup." He picked up the intricately carved piece of pottery far more quickly than he should have, almost losing it in his big fingers.

"It's a flower pot. They come in multiple sizes."

Putting on her best smile, Zulwatha had already moved from the back door out the front and among the racks of smaller pieces on display beneath the centaurskin awning generating a bit of shade in front of the workshop. The two customers, both wielding spears despite the fact that they wore the earrings of upper class people, looked surprised to find the shop attendant standing before them, her arms folded pleasantly before her. As if already sensing the arrogant front, Zulwatha preemptively gave them her best fake smile.

Spoiled as any privileged young lady, the green haired female tried to turn up her sharp, triangular nose in a way she probably thought of as subtle. "Shopkeep, why does this drinking kettle have a hole in it?" the young woman asked without so much as an introduction. Although the term 'drinking kettle' didn't make any sense, she pointed toward the spout of the flower pot as she spoke, making her complete lack of knowing what on Azeroth she was talking about very clear.

"That's the spout. That's used to pour water onto the flowers." Zulwatha kept her winning smile even as she stated the obvious in a way that grated at the back of her ear canal, though the fact that the young lady was so clearly taken aback by her own cluelessness being revealed was a consolation.

"What? Spout?" she asked at first, before looking up to her boyfriend who actually did seem to understand what a flower pot was used for. "Oh...the spout! I'm sorry, it's just so...so small, that I wasn't sure what it's supposed to do. I mean...why is the flower kettle so small?"

Gritting her molar teeth slightly, Zulwatha bit back on the verbal slap fighting its way up from her throat and forced herself to provide service with a smile. "They come in multiple sizes," she repeated, remaining cool and telling herself she'd daydream of breaking the pot over the lady's head later.

Without so much as a thanks or no thanks, the green haired young lady promptly turned to her boyfriend whose mane had been combed to look like it hadn't been combed. "Let's go to that other place. The one that had bigger drinking kettles," she said as if Zulwatha wasn't even there, completely ignoring what she'd literally just been told.

"Yes, let's!" Strutting his lack of stuff, the young man led the way around the corner, in the completely opposite direction of where all the other pottery shops were but at least far away from the one where Zulwatha worked.

Huffing thankfully once he annoyance was gone, she quickly reshelved the flower pot before any bypassers who didn't plan on buying anything anyway tried to ask her questions about the merchandise and walked back inside. The management consisted of three investors - two goblins and an orc - and a local tribesman who just put the shop under his name for tax purposes and had nothing to do with the actual running of the store. The investors would have been irate that she'd let a potential buyer go without making a sales pitch, but they were all in the capitol. On the ground, she only had to deal with the local (and legal) owner who would have flipped the snooty young couple his outer finger, so she had nothing to worry about if such people didn't purchase anything.

Inside, the younger of the two potters was busy working on one of the more recent orders that wouldn't be due for another day. Looking up from his work station, he noticed the irritated look in Zulwatha's face as she swept off the counter opposite the front door. "They didn't like anything?" he asked a bit cheekily, much to his colleague's disapproval.

"Focus on what you're doing."

Sighing and speaking to nobody in general, Zulwatha pulled out a weathered stack of papers on a clipboard and began preparing to sign out of work for the day. Another shop assistant would be coming to fill in for her soon and she'd need to have everything ready to leave as soon as possible. "Typical stuck up nobles," she huffed while going through the motions of filling out her name and hours worked in Orcish. "I wish they'd stay in their own part of town."

A faded grey goatee wiggled as the older of the two potters wrinkled his long nose. Though he didn't even look up from his work, his attention was with the conversation, ever shifting as he multitasked rather easily. "We work for the best collective in town, and we don't even deal with these types that often. Just forget about the undesirable types and be happy that we're receiving so many orders," he lectured to the room in general. His tone was never condescending and she knew the old man was right, but that didn't make hearing it any easier.

Before Zulwatha even had the chance to nod or at least sigh in approval, she turned around in front of the counter and almost knocked over a small, thin figure that had been standing far too close.

"Hey!" she snapped instinctively, spinning around and then biting her tongue when she realized it was a tiny blood elf who was one of their most consistent customers. Despite the fact that Orcish was the official language of the Horde, both of them knew Common better and Zulwatha easily code switched out of Zandali. "Crystal! Sorry, I didn' see ya there."

Swaying on her feet in a way unlike the younger and more nimble elves, Crystal actually had to hold on to Zulwatha's wrist to avoid losing her balance. Old enough to remember the wars between forest trolls and the Sindorei, Crystal was ancient, visibly aged by elven standards and surprisingly non-racist toward the jungle trolls of the Horde. Blinking slowly as her old eyes adjusted to the lower light indoors, the blonde blood elf stared up at the much larger woman blankly in the closest expression to a smile she ever gave. "That's alright dearie, I guess I snuck up on you there," came back a soft, unweathered voice. "The family just wanted me to check on how the order is coming along."

She was referring, of course, to the shipping company her family ran out of Silvermoon; even after the cost of the voyage across the ocean, imported pottery from Durotar was still cheaper than the stuff made directly in the blood elf capitol and Crystal lived in Sen'jin City to handle procurement. Orders were always intact and on time but that didn't stop the small woman from coming to the store twice a day every single day to task about the order. Zulwatha suspected that Crystal was just bored but at least she was polite, and tolerated the excessive questions and desire for handholding the best she could.

"Tha order is fine, as ya can see right over here," she replied while sweeping her hand toward the two potters hard at work.

Before she had a chance to say anything else, Crystal had already fallen into her hundred and one questions routine. "So there are six tall water carrier jugs?" she asked while sucking on the handheld vapor machine producing some fel green smoke that sated the Sindorei magic addiction.

"Yep, those are already finished and stored back against tha wall, right behind there."

"And the handles are good and thick, right?"

"An inch in diameter each, yeah."

"And have they started on the eight medium sized pots for storing grain?"

"They're workin on those right now, ya can see-"

"Oh, that's wonderful! So have the twelve small flower pots been made?"

"Yeah, they're done." Zulwatha couldn't help but let out a little laugh at the laundry list Crystal had to go through every time. "See, they're already on tha shelf over there."

"And, and, about those medium sized pots. Those are for storing grain. It's very important that there aren't any cracks in them."

"Of course, there ain't never any cracks in our handiwork."

"Are you sure about that, dearie?"

"Yeah, of course, ya can come take a look over-"

"Oh no, that won't be necessary, I just had to be sure." The younger of the two potter's bit his tongue to avoid laughing out loud but was quickly silenced when the older one stepped on his foot. Unaware, Crystal continued going through her mental list. "So does that mean that the medium sized pots for storing grain aren't finished?"

"Yeah, they're workin on those right now."

"Oh, this store is a godsend, thank you all so much," Crystal cooed in a way far too enthusiastic for a conversation about clay pots. Out of nowhere, she switched the conversation to something much more personal for both her culture and that of the Darkspear. "Thawa, how are your kids? Does your son still have the problem with biting his nails?"

Glaring at the younger potter to make sure he wouldn't try to crack a joke, Zulwatha did her best to diffuse the topic. "Uh, yeah, but we're tryin ta get him ta stop that now-"

"When I was a little girl we used to put lemon juice on the fingernails of kids who bit their nails. It worked like a charm unless it was a kid who liked lemons."

"Yeah, well, I guess I might give that a-"

"Say Thawa, my nephew back in Silvermoon is still single."

At that, the younger potter intelligently held back as Zulwatha did her best to force another smile. She didn't know much about elven customs regarding divorce, but she surmised that they couldn't be too different from trollish ones - it wasn't a topic for casual conversation. "Best of luck ta him, Crystal," Zulwatha huffed in the most cordial voice she could muster when having her privacy invaded out in the open like that.

"He's very tall for our kind. He's almost this big!" Crystal held her hand about a foot above her own head, which was still about a foot and a half below Zulwatha's head, even when she slouched a bit in an attempt to relax. "Sometimes it's good to be open minded. After all, nobody wants to be alone, right?"

Gritting her teeth once more, Zulwatha reminded herself that Crystal was technically one of their kindest customers, and certainly didn't mean anything by the intrusion. "Some people are happy standing on their own without asking for help..." Zulwatha froze when she realized that by responding, she'd signaled to Crystal that the topic was open for discussion, a deathknell considering how nosy the old blood elf was. "I wish ya nephew all tha best," she mumbled, hoping that whatever Loa was observing the discussion would choose that moment to spark a fire or cause one of the shelves to fall loose, anything to distract Crystal from poking any further.

Such was not her luck. "So what's your mailing address? I can have him write you a letter!"

Just as the younger potter's badly dyed neon yellow mane started to bob as if he would laugh out loud, the young tauren female who was set to take over the shift from Zulwatha entered. Not only did her entrance signal that clocking out was imminent, but her greeting also diffused the barrage of laughter that Zulwatha would inevitably have had to diffuse in order to avoid offending the finicky customer.

"Good afternoon, miss Brightstar," the tauren said while moving over toward a closet in the back room used for changing.

"Oh, how nice to see you, dearie!" Crystal replied, and then immediately started following the tauren right into the back room as if it were normal for customers to go back there.

Although the younger potter was technically free to gut laugh as much as he wanted, he remained silent. Focused on clocking out of work and hastily escaping before Crystal could try to force some long distance pen pal relationship with a nephew who was probably as uninterested as Zulwatha was, the Darkspear female focused on her escape and forgot to watch the door. By the time she'd signed out, collected her hut keys and handbag and adjusted her outfit, another figure had stood behind her, though facing the other way, giving her pause since the tauren hadn't officially clocked in yet.

"Good afternoon!" came a raspy voice in Zandali that sounded kind of familiar but not really.

Sighing and shutting her eyes for a moment in preparation for another possible series of questions leading nowhere, Zulwatha turned and found a local man who also looked familiar but not really. Wearing a cotton shirt and pants, he looked rather out of place in a part of town occupied mostly by traditional craftsworkers. His head was shaved and he had a pencil protector in his shirt pocket, and looked a bit like a nerd. He was kind of handsome and looked like he'd be more so if he lifted weights (not that she cared, no, not at all) and had big eyes and a face as close as a troll could be to being described as 'pleasant.' She'd seen him around, but then again, Zulwatha had seen most locals around - she'd watched the village grow into a town and then a city.

Oh, and he was wearing shoes. Some of the Darkspear women wore sandals, herself included, but few of the women and none of the men wore shoes. The tribe usually made fun of people who wore shoes. She had no idea what to make of the oddball scanning the shop from the doorway.

"Can I help ya..." At first, she continued talking in Common, but realizing that she was speaking to another jungle troll, she switched back to Zandali. "Can I help you, sir?"

His ears twitched at the sound of her voice, but he didn't make eye contact. "Well, yes. Um." He tapped his lower lip with a finger as he browsed. Normally, Zulwatha quite enjoyed her job helping people find pieces of pottery that would best fit their houses, but after dealing with two snooty nobles and Crystal's unwelcome intrusion, she found herself tapping her foot as she wondered where the hell the tauren girl was. "I need to look at...decorative pottery." He sounded entirely unsure of what he wanted, which was the most frustrating kind of customer to deal with.

No longer patient enough when her shift was over, Zulwatha fought the urge to check on the back room and shouldered her handbag. "We have a rather large array of decorative pieces, sir. Perhaps a brief look around will help you have a better idea of what it is you need to complete your home decor," she practically droned, towing the management's slogans without her usual motivation.

Finally, the strange man turned toward her but looked at the counter instead of directly at her. "Well...yes, that might work. Where are-"

"But really, are you sure that the medium sized pots for storing grain don't have any cracks?"

Crystal's usually pleasant voice echoed in an unpleasant way as she followed the tauren girl out of the back room, speaking rather loudly for an elf and following the poor attendant all the way to the counter before the young lady had even clocked in to work. The area between the front door became rather crowded as three large persons and a waifish elf vaping up a storm all tried to go about their business and engage in two forced conversations, all to the soundtrack of the two craftsmen at the other end of the workshop busy at their foot powered potter's wheels.

"So, um...ack," the shoe wearing man hacked while trying to both talk and blow away Crystal's fel vapor at the same time. "On which shelves can I find the decorative pieces?"

"I just arrived here, Crystal. You've been with me since I got to work. I don't know any more about the condition of the pots than you."

"The decorative pieces-"

"Thawa, are you sure that there aren't any cracks in the medium sized pots that will be used for storing grain?"

"Taia wani wang...yeah Crystal, I'm sure there ain't."

"Come on, miss Crystal, let's go take a look at the pots together."

"Thank you dearie, I love to see how this is done!"

"Should I come back at another time?"

Zulwatha's head was spinning from the rapid exchange and she had to blink and look around to figure out that the tauren and blood elf had sauntered over to the potters' wheels and were no longer talking to her. The Darkspear customer was, however, and his time he was looking right at her. Despite his unassuming demeanor, she felt the pressure to help a potential buyer right when she was trying to escape for the day. His question, however, provided a bit of respite at least.

"I'm sorry, sir?" she asked him, trying to get her bearings at least, if not her patience.

"Your shop seems a little busy is all. Oh! Not that I'm not interested in the pots. Because I am."

His indecision and mincing of words wasn't helping her to escape any quicker, and Zulwatha did her best to deflect the questions. "I'm an employee of the shop, sir, not the owner; my associate here is multilingual and as capable of assisting you as I." She motioned to her tauren colleague, shamelessly passing the responsibility away from herself.

"Ah, you're going home for the day, I take it?"

"Huh?"

Not a hint of ill intentions or deviousness appeared in the strange man's voice or face, but the question was as nosy as Crystal's, and unlike the small elf, Zulwatha didn't actually know the gangley tribesman before her. Long ago, she'd learned that even within the tribe strangers couldn't be trusted. Despite intuition giving her no inkling that the man was anyone to worry about, she still couldn't discuss personal matters with a stranger, and a customer no less. Her work hours were her business.

"My associate is as capable of assisting you as I," she repeated dryly.

As Crystal chattered in the background, the oddball by the front door looked at the counter again. Though his expression stayed the same his posture shifted somewhat, like he was embarrassed about something. "Right, of course. Well, don't let me keep you then," he mumbled, and promptly stepped out the front door and began looking through the shelves outside by himself. Whether he bought anything or not was the problem of the tauren girl now - Lily, or Lorelei, or Lilac was possibly her name - and not Zulwatha's.

Before she could make yet another attempted escaped, the badly dyed neon yellow mohawk shifted as the younger of the two potters looked her way. "I think you have an admirer!" he snickered in Zandali. His voice was low enough not to be heard by the man outside but loud enough that his bemusement was apparent.

"Shut it, you," Zulwatha snapped at him in Zandali before then code switching into Common again. "Crystal, I'll be seeyin ya later."

"Oh Thawa, I didn't get your mailing address yet! You know, my nephew can write in six different alphabets." This time even the older of the two potters chuckled a bit, only adding to Zulwatha's irritation at her private life becoming a topic of public debate.

"Aw, ya know Crystal, I just changed my box number at tha post office. Lemme get back ta ya on that," Zulwatha lied through her teeth, feeling absolutely no guilt about it at all.

Much to her chagrin, the blood elf began trying to walk back toward the counter as if to hold Zulwatha a little bit longer for another round of questioning. As if a Loa had indeed responded to her call, Crystal had ended up positioned between the tauren girl, the older potter's potter's wheel and a shelf of generic clay bowls that all coalesced to form a prison for chatterboxes. Seizing the moment, Zulwatha bolted out the door, past the Darkspear man browsing out front and into the dirt road full of people shopping for handmade arts and crafts in the 'old' section of the city. Crystal began talking loudly from inside the shop, possibly at Zulwatha or possibly at someone else, but she didn't care; her shift was over and it wasn't her fault if, after a slow day, everybody decided to show up in her last fifteen minutes of work.

Out on the main road, the sun began to shine a little less heat onto the cracked soil around the palm trees, and people became a bit more active as the day cooled off. Zulwatha, however, had other things on her mind. With two children to pick up from her sister's house and scorpid meat she'd promised to cook for them that night, her day hadn't ended yet. Shaking a single bead of sweat from her brow as she hurried across town, she shouldered her handbag again and tried to ignore the mild fatigue. All things considered, she had a job that wasn't physically demanding and two children who were shockingly unrowdy for trolls of any type. She breathed deep and reminded herself to slow down just a little bit; plenty of people could try to keep her at work, but nobody could rush her in life except herself.