▸ Column · Post-Third War Warcraft; Horde frontier settlement of Durotar, where message-stones carry personal missives and anniversary feasts replace candlelit dinners
THRALL replies.
Replied to by Thrall, with a rebuttal from Garrosh Hellscream.
The letter
Roderick and his ex Aveline split nearly three years ago, but you'd never know it from the messages. She gets dawn greetings, a full account of every quarrel with his battalion commander, even sketches of his pet wolf before I've even seen them. I found out the hard way at our anniversary feast. Her name lit up his message-stone three times during the dessert course, and he actually stepped outside to "calm her down" about her broken mount. When I bring it up he says I'm being insecure — that Aveline is "practically a sister to him now." But sisters don't get a warmth-rune sent back in four heartbeats at the eleventh bell. We've been together a year and a half and I'm starting to feel like a guest at my own hearth. Am I overreacting, or is messaging your ex forty times a day actually a bond I'm not part of?
— Uncertain in Durotar
Thrall replies
You call it insecurity because he called it that. Stop.
You have watched forty messages go to another woman in a single day, watched her name interrupt your anniversary feast, watched him step outside at the eleventh bell to soothe her — and you are wondering if your own eyes are lying. They are not. What you have named is not insecurity. It is clear sight, and clear sight is not a thing to apologize for.
I know what it sounds like when a person tells the story he needs to hear. "Practically a sister now." I said something like that once — told myself I had given a great trust to someone ready to carry it, because admitting he was not ready would have cost me more than the comfortable telling. It cost me more in the end, and good people paid the difference.
The one you love has divided his real confidences — the morning hour, the private frustrations, the first glimpse of the thing he cherishes — and given them to another while handing you the title. That is not a small thing. Name it plainly to him, not as accusation but as what you have come to know: this bond between them asks you to be less than the partner he called you. Watch what he does with that truth.
What endures over the long years is not whoever holds the name. It is whoever holds the trust.
— Thrall
Garrosh Hellscream weighs in
He counseled patience. He counseled me, in fact — believed in me, gave me the Horde and his blessing both, watched what I made of them, and called it a failure of his own trust. Study that lesson before you take his advice.
You asked if you are overreacting. That question is its own answer. You sit in second place at your own feast, counting warmth-runes sent to another, and you call the man who put you there your partner. The strong do not negotiate for space they should already own. Walk off the field, or stop pretending it is yours. I walked off from everything and stood alone at the end. That is what strength cost me. I am still certain it was worth it.
— Garrosh Hellscream
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