Thursday, March 29, 2012

A New Dawn

 Written while listening to Sunset by Kate Bush.

. . . . . With a jaw-cracking yawn, Kresmira stretched out in the bunk provided for her at Mardenholde Keep in Hearthglen. Or tried to. If she laid on her back, her hooves hung off the bottom of the bunk all the way to her knees, rather feeling a lot like she'd sat on the end of the bunk and fallen backwards. It was tremendously uncomfortable. A soft growl came from the bunk above her, and she started - realizing seconds later that it was only a dwarven snoring noise. The tiny woman who'd climbed up there not fifteen minutes ago could wake a clefthoof with that sound. Kresmira tried to roll onto her side, the way she usually slept, but discovered quickly that the position put an awkward strain on her knees, since her hooves still hung out. Even if she curled her knees up - which made them stick off the side of the bunk instead - she couldn't get comfortable. As with many things she was learning about on Azeroth, Hearthglen just wasn't built to her scale.
. . . . . She didn't want to wake the tiny woman above her, so pulling the mattress off the bunk was out. Instead, she took just the pillow and blanket, trying to be as quiet as possible on adamantite-shod hooves, and snuck out of the Keep. Outside, it was still early spring and her thin linen shorts and sleeveless linen shirt were not adequate for the damp chill of somewhere past midnight in the northern part of Eastern Kingdoms. That was what the blanket was for, however, and she draped it around her shoulders - to fall somewhere just past her knees - and carried the pillow as she walked around to the back of the Keep and sought out a suitable tree.
. . . . . There. Some several yards from the back left corner of the Keep was a tall tree with a thick trunk. It would do. She set her pillow down in the grass - which had just begun to gather a coating of dew - and stretched out parallel to the tree, pressing her shoulders against the trunk as she curled up on her side under the blanket. The grass tickled her arm and she wished she still had a small herd for warmth, but the ground was tolerable enough until she could cobble together larger arrangements inside. Surprisingly exhausted after a whirlwind day of introductions and meetings and explanations, she dropped off to sleep almost immediately.