The Tome

Runeclaw stood with her hands on her hips and squinting against An'she's winking rays as The Sun played tag with cottony clouds in the spring field of the brilliant cerulean sky. She was gazing intently across Stonebull Lake at the gnoll encampment up the hill on the other side. Her lower jaw worked thoughtfully in that rolling side-to-side motion that bovines tend to have when chewing. There were telltale smears of chocolate staining her fingers and the short fur around her mouth.

"You think maybe they have some over there?" she mused aloud to the two baby dragons at her feet. They ignored her and continued wrestling across the ground, a tiny azure and emerald bundle that rollicked back and forth as they grappled and tumbled in the budding grass. A sweet spring green scent wafted up from the pair. Druac, the blue whelp, was a weensy bit bigger than his counterpart, now dubbed Malachite, but the green seemed to have the upper hand when they suddenly faced off in wary battle stances. Malachite belched celadon smoke into Druac's face. The blue chuffed and then sneezed repeatedly, stunning it into inaction while the green then pounced its "frenemy" silly. Thus, the battle was reenagaged!

"I'm gonna find out!" she declared suddenly, equally ignoring their antics, and dove right into the lake without warning. She was across the once placid surface in no time at all and emerged from the far side sluicing shivery cool water out of her mane and off her muzzle. It was only as she stood there dripping and her teeth chattering that she realized she could have just flown over the lake and up the hill. Old habits appeared to die hard and she supposed she needed the bath anyway.

She had just spent the morning "helping" everyone in Bloodhoof prepare for the Noble Garden holiday starting in a few days. Most of the banners were crooked and some of the eggs were painted the most ghastly shade of Forsaken green as a consequence of her laborious endeavors. The phrase "I think [Ironhorn, Cloudmane, Roughwound, etc.] needs help instead," was being passed around like ale tankards at a Dwarven tavern as the inhabitants tried to keep foisting the well-intentioned druid off on someone else for a time. Finally, Lalum Darkmane stepped in to intervene by bribing the young woman with some of the chocolate they were putting in the eggs. She may have also surreptitiously suggested that their supply of eggs and chocolate seemed a bit lower than they were before the last gnoll raid.  If Runeclaw going off after gnolls in search of "stolen" eggs would keep her busy while they worked, they could all get a lot more done, and if she happened to cull the encroaching little buggers at the same time, more was the better. Runeclaw, of course, had been more than happy to volunteer to go investigate the gnoll communities in Mulgore in search of the missing bounty.

Stealthily, Runeclaw crept her way toward the gnolls with her feline belly slung low to the ground. This was her second favorite part of being a druid, the first being able to fly at what felt like mach 2 through the skies. Behind her in a single file like ducklings trailing their mama crept the two whelps in a mimicry of her posture. Anyone watching the trio might have rolled their eyes at the ridiculous posturing, but the cat and two dragons seemed to be taking their mission quite seriously as they circled behind some trees to the opening of the gnolls' cave. Inside they crept, sneakity-sneak; tippy-tap went their claws on the stone, whisper-shoosh their tails through the pine needles carpeting the interior.

"BOO!" Runeclaw shouted as she jumped into the middle of grotto, only it came out more like "RAWWWWWWWRRRRRRR!" due to her current form. Debris rained from the ceiling as the pummeling percussive sound ricocheted off the walls. Two gnolls just fainted dead away right where they stood, and the rest scattered like water before a drop of oil, shrieking like agitated hyenas as they burst from the mouth of the cave. The dragons hopped after the stragglers hissing for all they were worth and nipping at the gnolls' ankles like some kind of rabid cattle dogs.

The Tauren now stood where the cat had once and she paused to look around slowly. "I don't see any eggs here, do you?" She walked over to poke her nose into a few crates and discovered a few moldy stores of bread, some overripe apples, and a pile of shabby linen cloth along with assorted broken or rusted weapons of very low quality. "They might be more successful if they'd stop using junk like this," she muttered as she tossed aside an axe blade that looked like Alterac Swiss. She suddenly paused in her rifling and pulled out a book, of all things.

"Who knew they could read," she grinned as she swiped a shred of tattered leather jerkin off the cover. The tome itself was in surprisingly excellent condition with a supple cover of brightly dyed turquoise leather. Intricate patterning that fluxed between runes and knotwork was tooled along the border in a sumptuous lemony yellow. No title was upon the cover and so she opened it curiously to peruse the thickly papered interior. Before her eyes, writing was appearing across the page. "A story that tells itself?" she queried the whelps as she tilted it so they could watch the words spill across the pages. "Seems to be a conversation of some sort. I wonder what the story is about?"

She thumbed back a couple of pages and had just started to read when the entire camp of mangy gnolls clogged the exit and blotted out the sunlight. "Uh oh…guess they were going for reinforcements, who knew?" As the horde swarmed forward with a riotous yipping laugh, Runeclaw tucked the book into her belt. She patted herself down for a few precious moments and then "aha'd" softly as she plucked something from one of a myriad of pouches adorning her person. "No time like the present to test out that Moonbrook Riot Taffy Bomb that Nitahu made!"

She lobbed the explosive at the crowd and charged forward as it exploded with a WHOOMP! Gooey pink and blue taffy slung fore and aft in great gobby ribbons that wrapped like mutinous tentacles around the gnolls and mired them in place as effectively as any spider's web. Puddles of the gunky stickiness oozed around their feet as Runeclaw hippity-hopped nimbly through the ensuing tacky, tenacious mess just like a Noble Garden bunny through the fields. Even still, she didn't emerge unscathed as more than a few syrupy strands of taffy clung to her person and, unfortunately, her new book.

When Runeclaw returned to the village with taffy strung like a cat's cradle between her horns as well as dangling from her braids and armor, it was much to the relief of everyone in Bloodhoof that she announced she had found no eggs and was returning to Thunder Bluff to clean up. It was some hours later when she was finally finished divesting herself of the aftermath of the explosion and settled down with her book and a quill. Experimentally, she turned to a blank page and penned, "Holy suncatchers! I found a new book (I was going to use it for scribing once I cleaned all the taffy off of it) but it writes in itself!"

She squinted and pressed her nose closer to the page as conversations seemed to continue flowing around what she had written. She had thought that perhaps she could write herself into the story. "Maybe I'm using the wrong kind of quill or ink." She was so used to speaking to her draconic charges that she didn't even notice they weren't in company and had wandered off in search of free food. Everyone in the Bluff was so used to her oddities though that nobody batted an eye at the Wildmane talking to herself next to the pond. Suddenly, she had an idea and jumped to her feet to run over to the Spirit Rise. She pulled up short when she reached Poshken Hardbinder, a Forsaken scribe who hung around the Pools of Vision. Although the man was blinded by twin straps crisscrossing his face (Runeclaw speculated this was to keep his skull from cracking in half and sliding off his neck), he greeted her by name as soon as she came to a halt in front of him.

"Ahhh, Pathia Wildmane, what can I do for you today? Are you finally ready to learn something new?" He knew that many found her to be a pest at best and a colossal nuisance at worst, but he secretly enjoyed the mayhem she always seemed to unintentionally leave in her wake. He also happened to think she was a rather talented scribe with unusually precise penmanship and attention to detail that belied her chaotic mode of living.

"Not today, Poshy. I'm still discovering some things on my own. I found this book though," she tucked it into his gnarled hands. She didn't bother explaining more than that to him. Poshken knew his books, and if there was something to be gleaned from this one, he didn't need her to explain it to him.

His fingers traced the lines of the cover and then moved to stroke the yellow border as if he were setting ley lines and coaxing them to magical melody.  For a brief moment that lasted less time than it takes to blink, the lines glowed with a soft lavender light. "This is a very special tome indeed, Pathia. It is not a simple fairytale of dragons and orcs," he remarked pointedly since he knew she favored that fictional claptrap over Azeroth's rich history which also happened to contain both dragons and orcs. "This book will allow you to speak with others who have a book similar to this one, anywhere in the world…even beyond the world."

Runeclaw gave the old man a consternated look. At least, she assumed he was old; it was often hard to tell with the Undead. "So I don't write in it. I talk to it? Because I tried writing in it and nothing happened. Does it need a magic quill?" She wasn't too keen on the idea of ransacking the gnolls again if the book was missing its special quill.

A rattling wet sigh wheezed up from Poshken's chest. It frustrated him to no end that someone as smart as this Tauren could be the most thick-headed creature he had ever encountered. "No, you don't talk to it. It's not a Goblin communicator, girl. This won't explode on you either," he interrupted when she drew breath to interject. "You can use your own quills and ink. Write in it again…and again…and keep writing until they start to hear you. It might take a few times for the books to sense each other. Magic is an imprecise science." He handed the book back to her.

"Huh, how about that. I wonder where the gnolls found it in the first place," she mumbled to herself after thanking Poshken and wandering back outside. Poshken watched her leave with a slow shake of his head. He held his hand up and sniffed suspiciously at it before suddenly shoving his palm in front of Mertle's face. "Is this TAFFY?!" he exclaimed.