Chryseth Keenblaze

Tas'kelu was by now accustomed to Cloudfoot and his periodic enthusiasms. The elf was such a child of the spring, blowing in like a thunderstorm. Sometimes by the time he left she felt so refreshed, and sometimes she felt like a tree who had been uprooted by the gale.

She rather looked forward to his visits.

When he came to her on that day, she wasn't entirely certain what to make of his mood. It wasn't bright and burning delight

Tas! Tas! I found the most a-ma-zing stuff in the Barrens, I think it's old tauren water wells? But I'm pretty sure those have a lot to do with ley lines most of the time, come have a look with me?

and it wasn't cautious concern

Tas, uh, I think I found a little teenytiny problem with the way we wanted to do the root cellar. See, there's a sithilid hive a bit to the south and I'm worried about -- well, just worried. That's all. Maybe we should do some poking around. And I should work on making the wards under the house better?

and it wasn't just a casual visit. That much was apparent in the cast of his ears, the tension in his shoulders, and the tight anxious smile he offered as he approached. On foot, at that.

"Cloudfoot," Tas'kelu murmured in greeting. She reached out to touch him, gentle and reassuring as she would have been for one of her brother's calves. "Is all well?"

"Tas," he said, and settled in to lean against her as was his wont. "I have a new project. You can help me with it. If you want."

He was not, she noted, stammering. But it seemed unwise to bring it to notice, so: "This is not what has brought you distress."

New projects had only ever left him excited and vibrant. At least, as far as Tas'kelu knew.

From the look on the boy's face, he was considering denying everything. For a long moment he hesitated and then finally he let out a soft sigh and wilted against her. "It's not," he agreed. "Not precisely anyway. It's not the doing or the methods. It's the why of it -- but it's nothing sinister, Tas. Just personal stuff. You know."

"I wouldn't have thought it was sinister," she said. There was a mild rebuke in her voice. Don't think so little of me to believe I think so little of you. "Would you like to tell me about it?"

That was deliberately ambiguous. She'd let him answer as he chose -- the problems or the task. Though she cared for him, sometimes fussing over him as though he were her nephew and then at other times spoke to him as if he were a particularly promising student, she knew he was neither of those things.

Elves. So strange, that he could be older than her by far in years but so much younger in thought and deed.

Cloudfoot broke her out of her thoughts by at last letting out a sigh. "Well. I would like to," he said. "You know I've been staying with a fellow in Ratchet for a while. He's been very kind to me, letting me share his space and all, but I'm worried there's not enough of it. He's got just the one room, you see. Not elf sized at all, and it's a bit like -- like if you tried to sleep in a bed made for an orc, I guess."

Tas nodded understanding, though thankfully she had never been subjected to such a thing. Even in Orgrimmar, there were accommodations for Tauren. She wasn't one, but for finding an inn to stay at she was close enough. "So you wish to make him a new bed?" she asked, though she was pretty sure this was an incorrect guess.

"No. Well, yes, but also somewhere to put it. I want to make him a house." He moved away just enough to pull out his everpresent sketchbook.

"Make him a house," she echoed, amused. "I trust that wording is not a mistake."

"After all the trouble of working out how to deploy a house from a box in my own way, I'd be insane to not actually implement it, Tas." He flipped past drawings of birds, pages covered in rune-scrawl, scribbled-over sketches of what she suspected were naked men, pages and pages of arcane and mathematical calculations -- and then stopped at plans for a modest dwelling. "Mostly I need you to tell me if I have the load-bearing worked out right, though if there's anything you see -- trouble I missed, things I could do better, whatever jumps out at you..."

She took her time over the plans, though her own calculations were done in her gut and her head. "What are you building it from?" she asked finally. "I see your notation on the specifications of the material, but what is it? Where is it from?"

"Oh," he said. "I'm blowing up a hill and re-assembling it like that, with some alchemical modifications. I can show you the, uh, models I've done already. And the samples of the material, based on the soil composition and so on in the area. It's fascinating, really, what you can do with some fireworks components and sand and proper amounts of heat."

"How does it cure?" she asked. "Any adobe or concrete will have some shrinkage as it cures, and you don't want cracks creating instability for your structure. You might want to give it some more time to test properly, or if you must have it built right now you could choose a more traditional method."

He rolled his eyes and grinned up at her. "Traditional methods. Sometimes I swear you taunka are as bad as magisters, you know that, right? No, it cures fine -- I've tested it, just don't ask me how--"

"Your friends in Tanaris again?"

"I said don't ask!" he said, but there was still that laughter in his voice. "Yeah, my friends in Tanaris again. And yeah, I went for a variety of climate conditions. Never know if, I dunno, some further disasters happen, suddenly the Barrens is like Sholazar. Or Icecrown, though I don't imagine Alevh'd want to stick around if it were."

They were both silent for a bit, the boy snuggling against her again, as they thought that over. Having to move house because the world changed wasn't an academic matter for Tas'kelu.

"Ah, Cloudfoot, you try to plan for everything. But let me have a longer look at these for your load-bearing questions and to see what holes I can poke in your dreams. I don't know why you come back to me for thatt time and time again, isn't it unpleasant?"

"No, not at all," he said. "You only do it to make them better in the end, Tas."