Something new. I'll have my WoW back soon, and then all names will be better and more accurate. Until then, I'm bullshitting.

The Traitor

Chapter One

They had been talking for days.

All the time they talked; they pointed at her but never laughed. They only spoke quietly and sometimes stroked her hair. She had been sitting against the cold bars for a while until they moved her to a bed. They fed her and kept her wrapped in blankets, and changed her bandages until the gashes, scrapes and slices in her had faded into bright scars.

She heard them in her dreams, for she spent days, maybe even weeks, in dreams, with intermittent consciousness.

Then Morla woke up.

-

Clef Stronghorn watched the creature sometimes when it was evening. He went hunting often with his two brothers, twins that were nearly warriors. Clef himself was rather too brutish to be a proper hunter and had poor aim; he couldn't be a priest, and he had, up to that point, shown no proficiency in melee weapons of any kind. He was the dud of one of the greatest families, of the most prestigious history, in Bloodhoof. His father trained kodo and his mother sold goods of the hammer. He envied her mining and blacksmithing abilities.

After he came back and when the sun had begun to sink, turning the sky into the most beautiful of purples and oranges, Clef went into the tent where the old medicine woman lived. She would stare ahead and sometimes she would sleep, and she never asked questions. He went over to the great cage that his mother had designed and watched the strange animal, the stranger, the enemy, that had been found and brought back to the village.

It was a human. She had been mauled horribly by a lion before one of the village's scouts came along and managed to tear it away. The bodies of her parents had lain nearby, each carrying packs and little else. Where they had been going or where they had come from was a mystery, but the scout had brought the tiny unconscious thing back to the village, where she had been healed.

Often, admiring her smallness and the soft, patient, calm expression on her face, Clef would sit beside the bars where she lay on her cot and stroked her hair. It was unlike any sort of Tauren hair, smooth and soft, thin and of a dirty gold.

The village knew of Clef's fascination with her and kept her for his benefit. He was a little socially inept, some would say, simply to be kind. He kept within a very sharp bubble and no one dared to approach it. His interactions with others were limited because of his inability to properly communicate. He stuttered often and used faint hand signals, but generally refused to speak. Bloodhoof wondered what would befall the teenager sometimes. Other times, they watched him and waited for something amazing.

Clef stood by the side of the tent, watching the old medicine woman when he heard a noise. The girl often breathed hard in her rough dreams and coughed when she seemed awake, but never had she focused on the world around her for long enough to live in it. Instead her eyes would flutter open and she would smile, or breathe things, and then disappear once more into the dark world.

Today, at the end of a summer of hot days and dry grass, the funny thing opened its bright brown eyes wide and sat up with unexpected ease. Clef watched her and she watched him in return, no emotion present on her round, unmarred face. She reached out a hand to him and then before it reached the bars, she drew it back and held it to her, surprised, as if she had been burned, when she hadn't touched a thing beside air. Then she rose up off the bed and looked at herself, leaving her fur blankets behind, and examined the scars that covered her.

"Awake," Clef said, managing the word easily. He knew that when the time came, he would be able to speak to her. This was a rare occurrence. The creature only stared at him blankly and then sat back down on her cot. She brushed her bare skin and took a deep breath. Clef looked over at the medicine woman, whose eyes had glazed. The little human crawled back beneath her blankets and went to sleep.

The teenage Tauren went out and found his mother, who was nearby at her anvil. He sat down near her, some feet from the great oven, and opened his mouth to speak. After a moment of looking for the words, he said, "The human thing," and his mother paused to look at him.

"What about it?" she asked, and patiently waited for his response.

"It's woken up." They exchanged looks, and his mother set down her great hammer and nodded her head.

"I didn't think it would," she said, "Nobody did." A bit spent, Clef only nodded his head and looked over at the tent. "Why don't you watch her, Clef? She doesn't seem very dangerous. Maybe let her out, if she can walk."

Clef nodded his great head and stood up again, and went back to the tent to see that the medicine woman had finally risen and was watching the human through the bars of the large cage. The human, in turn, was sitting on her bed and looking right back at the old tauren. Clef walked between them and opened the door, not once looking at his elder, and had to kneel down to get any way inside the cage. He thought his big form might frighten the girl, who was certainly fragile, but instead she stood up, with an animal skin draped over her, and was in front of him.

"Come," he commanded, and immediately grabbed her with one great hand. Her mouth opened like she might scream, but no sound came and so Clef proceeded to draw her out and into the open.

--

Morla was quite fascinated. The great black beast, with its incredible black, ridged horns, led her by the arm around the quaint little village. There was a lake that partially surrounded it and plains that spread out like a fan, with only a bit of it rimmed by mountains. These were behemoth teeth, jutting upward, with caverns and gashes pockmarking their surface. She stared up with lips parted in a faint 'O.' When she lingered too long, her captor jerked on her arm and she stumbled forward to follow.

At last they rested, having seen most of the village with the ox-creature pointing and talking in cut and stuttered phrases. Others of his race were all around, gathering to watch, muttering to one another and looking at her with great big curious eyes. They didn't seem hostile, at least, but Morla still hung back from them as the big black furry one stood over her. One of the monsters stepped forward, a brown one with curled horns and intricate robes, and leaned down. It spoke to her and she held up her hands, and touched it on the nose. There the fur was fine and soft, and then, the memories came to her, and she hugged it tightly.

--

The story of the strange human girl stopping the chief of Bloodhoof mid-sentence was a popular one, until she learned to understand them, and then the tauren didn't speak of it while she could hear.

Morla was dumb as a kodo; she couldn't utter a word, or even a sound. She was eight years old, she told Clef, when the scout saved her from the lion.

"Well," said Clef, sitting with her by the lake, holding an enormous radish soaked in sauce. He chewed it thoughtfully and swung it around by the stalk, and took another bite, his big square teeth crushing it to invisible pieces. "You can't stay here forever," he told her.

Morla drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She was ten years old now. When she remembered her birthday, she remembered her mother's screams as the woman was torn and eaten. She cried, and the next day Clef brought her a little doll his younger sister had made. Loulo was simply queenly.

"What about other people?" asked Clef. Morla looked at him, a bit with sadness, a bit with confusion. "I don't want you to leave," he clarified, and spoke especially slowly, for he had become nervous. "What I mean is that..."

Morla shook her head and stood up, and began the game of charades that Clef knew so well. "Well, yes, humans are enemies," he agreed, drawing up his shoulders. "But they are your kind." The girl sighed and sat down again. Clef rested a hand on her head and ruffled her hair. "I guess, not now."

Morla lived with the old medicine woman, still in the cot, but without the iron bars. The woman spoke to her sometimes and showed her how to cure mushrooms and mix herbs. Together they had developed a primitive sort of sign language, and Morla used it sometimes when Clef was in one of his moods.

Once, the girl had been out walking, when a scout found her and nearly killed her on sight. This one was from Thunder Bluff and had not known better; another scout came along and found her, and brought her home.

Clef's brother, one of the twins named Maine—the other being Paine—went to Clef and said, "Look, she's your charge," and stomped one hoof. "You've got to watch her, unless you want her eaten like a dog." Maine walked around his younger brother and told him, "Don't fall down on the job, if you want to keep her."

Clef held Morla's wrist so tightly in his hand during this short lecture that it began to hurt, and the little girl began to breathe harder, and began to try to take her arm back. But Clef squeezed harder and tried to reply to his offending brother, only managing: "D-d-don't t-tell me wha-what to do!" He squeezed so hard that he lifted Morla inches up off the ground, so her feet dangled and her toes sought floor. "D-d-don't tell me anything!" He was shouting, his words slow, difficult, difficult to speak and difficult to understand. Clef began to tremble all over and Loulo was telling her brother, "Let her down, now, let her down."

Clef would not listen, and he shook Morla like a doll, and she rattled like a doll. His voice was hysterical, and he began to lash with one great big arm, inside the tent, and became more aggravated while his brother and sister tried in vain to calm him.

The coal-black Tauren roared when Morla bit her teeth into his hand, and he threw her. She harmlessly fell but she did lie for a moment in a ball, crumpled in much the way paper would be. Clef had raged for a moment longer until Loulo going to the little human's aid distracted him, and then he became normal once more. He walked over to the two and stood for a moment, silent, with Maine looking behind him.

Now when Clef was in a mood, Morla would touch his hand and sign to him. "Be calm," she would say, "Be one with the Earth Mother. She wants your calm." He would usually take her hand in his and his fury would melt away. There was certain ability in her fragility.

While they were standing on the beach, Clef picked up his human girl, for that's what they called her, and put her on his shoulders where she took hold of his horns for support. They walked around in circles and when Clef told her, "They're training me to be a warrior," Morla raised her arms and cried, "Halloo! Halloo!"

Clef had asked her, "What is your name?" She had not understood then; but he heard her name on the wind and spoke it to her, and she smiled. It was one of the only Morla smiles anyone had ever seen.