A pencil-written letter, structured more like a diary entry, penned in Common with large childlike handwriting. While finished, it hasn’t been sent yet.
Hello Evelynn,
I write these words by the light of a brazier, at the foot of one of many buildings in a town called Garadar.
After leaving Shattrath my mentor and I spent most of today hiking west into Nagrand, through the fields and over the hills. Nagrand is the most lively place I’ve seen in Outland so far, it’s a bit like Mulgore and Stonetalon. It’s good.
It’s more than good. I don’t remember feeling this much at home since ever. Everything is what I want and how I like it, and there’s none of the things that I dislike. The people, I understand them. The wolves trust me. All the sounds and the smells are just as they should be and it’s weird to think I’ve ever lived any different.
There are maybe as many as two hundred people here, many orcs and sin’dorei and tauren, with gobbos and trolls and forsaken here and there.
A peon and an elf go around offering everyone free food and drinks as much as we want, and some of the tauren gave me some of the mudfish they’d cooked over a fire. They couldn’t eat it with their teeth but I enjoyed it a lot. They also caught a really ugly lobster, green and evil looking, probably not tasty so we put him back instead.
There’s a chieftain who is like a leader, he said the rules at the start, but he’s nothing like an NCO or officer. I actually like him. He let me pet his wolf while he did chieftain things. During the rules part, there was a shaman who said that it’s blood that binds the Horde together. Because even if you’re not bloodbrothers or clanbrothers or oathbrothers, everyone here is willing to bleed for each other.
I think that’s true and it’s what I miss sometimes back home, like in the Seventh. In the Rangers, the sergeant said that he has bled for the Rangers, and killed for the Rangers, and he’ll do it again because the Rangers was a bit like a clan. The closest thing to a clan that you’ll find. Maybe that’s why I enlisted with the 2nd when I did.
The thing I want the most is to be a brother in arms to people like yourself. People who’ve been through the fire and who’ll do it again because the clan, the unit, is the most important. More important than liking or not liking. More important than whether you survive.
Today on the first day we went on a pilgrimage to a place called Oshu’gun. It’s a giant white crystal rock that grows out of a field where there are whispers and patterns in the ground, like warpaint made by nature. Or by shaman. It’s a place where draenei and orcs go to receive wisdom from their ancestors. We gave an offering (the ancestors accepted it) and I was one of the people who wanted to walk up to it. Many did ritual things and said words to pay respect to the fallen.
I touched Oshu’gun with my hands.
I didn’t try to reach out to my ancestors, for obvious reasons. But I could feel that there is something or someone there, so maybe my mentor and I can go back on our own sometime to check it out.
On the way back I made new friends, and then people came and went around the big bonfire where we spent the rest of the evening. Some men and women from the warbands and tribes are interested in getting to know me. Everyone is friendly but not like fake friendly.
We laughed, and sang and told stories and ate together and I can’t describe how much it feels like being among old friends, even though I’ve never met any of these people before, only my mentor.
This festival will last another week or two.
I would make it last forever if I could.
See you at the end of the month.
(Unsigned)
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For part 2 of this letter, click here: [H-RP] Kosh'harg Festival, Spring 2019 - #199 by Hollins-argent-dawn