Half-breed Huntress

[Tamsinela]

"Blahs like humie. Hab gizmos like stuntees. No clomp like orc."

"Skah, dat nub orc. Sum tall big'noz datz green, mebbe."

She had come to expect as much. For all their accomplishments beyond the tainted blood, her people - if she could even call them that - remained so nearsighted, so prejudiced, it confounded her. Or sent her fleeing from their blades and nets. Even the mighty Thrall could not impose upon them his understanding, his sense. Many were entrenched in old hatreds with walls about their hearts taller than what any dwarf could ever build.

"I don't give freebies and I don't keep tabs, so pay up!" snapped the barkeep, his shrill voice the cry of coins in a till. The conversations about her lowered to an unintelligible rumbling.

"Another. And don't thin it out," she cut back with a sneer, gloved hand depositing six tarnished silver pieces onto the bar. The goblin immediately eyed them with keen interest. Quicker were his fingers to snatch them up.

"You'd think with the water crisis, they wouldn't be so.. ah.. liberal with it," thundered a tauren two stools down from her. No doubt a derisive remark colored the barkeep's quiet mumblings that followed. The bull had a point, but that didn't stop Gadgetzan from stretching their supply of Rumsey Rum.

She scoffed, which was about all the laughter she could muster. Maybe the hint of a grin, too. It was true, and humorously ironic.

"You look out of place here, huntress. Just visiting?"

Bring on the banter. This is the way it always starts, and she could almost spit. Males. Those that didn't berate her outright would abuse her in other ways, take an hour's worth of pleasure, and then move on. She had half a mind to confront the bull and ask him, straight out, if he'd rather go behind the inn or outside the city walls. Her reply surprised even herself.

"Visiting."

"Ah. You're lucky. Wait until a sandstorm comes and you're stuck here for a week, or longer. Raiders hit the caravans and you can't get back to Freewind, and nobody's going through Un'goro." His laugh was like a landslide, all these boulders banging about inside his chest. "Ships don't run out of Steamweedle either."

Again, against her better judgment, she turned to regard him directly. She could have ignored him. Here was a tauren almost like any other, but weathered by wind and sand and showing a shirt of scars. A once healthy coat of ebon had lost its luster, and streaks of gray were prominent. The tauren, in turn, sized her up. There was a power and kindness in his eyes, something she often saw in his kind and never in orcs.

"Tamsinela." She nodded, politely.

The tauren's thick lips quirked into a grin, and he bowed his horned head. The tip of one horn was missing, the cut clean, shorn off by a blade and just recently too. "Longtail."

A glass of Black Label arrived before her, as ordered. It was enough to draw her attention from the tauren, though she replied while staring into the murky spirits. "'s a pleasure." For the first time in a long time, this wasn't a total lie.

[Tamsinela]

"Longtail, eh?" She looked up from her drink to glance at the tauren's tail, finding it neither particularly long, nor notably short.

"Compared to my father, yes," he answered heartily. Said tail swayed freely behind him, of its own accord. The tufted tip came just shy of dusting the sandy floor beneath him.

"Bloodhoof tribe?" His dark coloration labeled him more of a Grimtotem than anything, but he seemed far too good-natured to be of their ilk. The tauren nodded, silent, then took up his shotglass in two oversized fingers. His ability to direct the amber liquid within expertly into his gasping muzzle was surprising. A refill came quickly.

Tamsinela nodded in turn and took purchase of her rum. It more agreeable than her first serving. "What's a tauren doing here? Ain't it a bit too dry for you?"

Longtail shrugged his great shoulders. "I go where the wind takes me. I've made some coin thinning the Wastewander population."

Mention of the bandits made Tamsinela grimace. Not one hour out of the Shimmering Flats and she was already set upon by two of their members. Neither proved much a challenge, but they did break one of her better bows. Her gaze drifted to the empty waterskin at her side, a spoil taken from one highwayman.

Longtail smiled, which was a peculiar expression for one with a muzzle. "I see you've heard of them."

"They jumped me coming down the mountain," she confirmed, grim. "Hurt my cat, too."

Having turned back to the bar for his drink, Longtail shifted on his stool to again face Tamsinela. The mirthful gleam in his eyes was replaced more by inquisitiveness now. "That so. Truly a huntress then, with an animal companion?"

Tamsinela nodded. "From the Barrens. One of the lions." Longtail's curiosity was piercing. To satisfy it, she continued. "I named him Dreamless."

The tauren smiled again, kindly. "What a fate, to sleep without dreams. I do not envy this beast."

Tamsinela smiled too, the tauren's creative command of the common language oddly soothing. Perhaps it was the richness of his voice. It eased the fatigue of a day's travels, and she was thankful for such. "I bet he dreams. He sleeps enough." Typical of a feline.

"I travel alone. Less to worry about, eh?" spoke Longtail, his demeanor blithe. Funny how he remain so upbeat on such a dreary subject. His people valued companionship, and those that died alone made the angriest of spirits.

A sip of rum later and she replied. "No one?" She stopped herself there. Was she concerned? Tamsinela, the huntress whose only friend and companion was a pride-lord of the plains, concerned for another's loneliness? She lived a solitary life herself, and by her choice. No doubt the grizled tauren too had to travel fast when times called for it, and no one place could ever be called home. No other person could be trusted.

And lonely was his answer. "No one." A shot of whiskey then caressed his lips, burned his throat, and he grunted. Tamsinela turned back to look at the bar, its surface rough and worn, not unlike the green-skinned palm that then gripped her glass. Tightly too, a tense reaction to the rising clamor from the nearby table of orcs.

[Rhoach]

Very well done so far. I like the vivid but still brief descriptions.

[Martok]

Uglutz slammed his mug of grog down on the table in appreciation. Then noticing the wooden mug had split, and all the grog was now all over the table; he turned his attention to lapping it up with his tongue.