Tanthelara looked around the room and sighed. Her home was a modest dwelling in Silvermoon that bordered the city’s ruined and mostly-abandoned western half. Perhaps it was a perfect accommodation for a fledgling just leaving their parents’ household for the first time, or an elder to live out their twilight years, but for her it was more of a relic from a life forever put on hold. Outside the chamber walls the sin’dorei capital lay gripped in an intense summer storm that refused to relent, forcing its denizens to remain shuttered in-place until the tempest passed. For today at least, the priestess would be left to her own devices.
“Oh, Fahr…” she whispered in a sigh as she picked up a small portrait of her late fiancee from its place on a bookshelf, “…I miss you, more than you’ll ever know. We should be getting ready to celebrate our tenth year together…”
She returned the portrait to its resting place and paced around the living area of her home. As much as she enjoyed to lounge and relax, having free time dumped upon her like this was unnerving. The weather made it too dangerous to go out and allow her to distract herself from her still aching heart. Ten years was a considerable length of time, even for those whose lifetimes could easily trace into centuries.
Maybe that’s why she adventured as she did, she figured while taking a seat on the plush, cushioned sofa that sat along a wall near the entrance. Maybe it was all to distract herself from experiencing the sorrow of loss. She pondered what his final moments were like, envisioning him bravely standing defiantly against an unending swarm of undead, striking down waves of them with the powers he wielded as a Blood Knight before becoming overwhelmed. He was a fierce fighter in his own right, and made for a formidable paladin even in their people’s weakened state prior to the Sunwell’s miraculous re-ignition. She imagined him putting up an intense enough fight that the Scourge leadership -if they even had such a rank- would just seek to eliminate him rather than torture and reanimate, out of fear of the Light keeping its champion pure -despite the profane rituals once carried out at Liadrin’s behest beneath the streets of Silvermoon.
Allowing herself a little while longer to indulge the fantasy she had built up in her mind, she gradually began to reel herself back to reality. It had gotten dark, and with a slight chill in the air. With some minor incantations, she charged the mana crystals in the lamps adorning the walls and the chandelier hanging from the center of the room, activating them and causing them to bathe the room in their cool glow. She followed up with another quick spell that ignited the wood in the furnace near the galley-style kitchen, the orange hues mixing with the bluish ones from the mana crystals to create a semblance of daylight. There was plenty to do around the house in times like this, though. On the table next to her there was a small pile of contracts that she had promised to review and seemingly could never find time. There were half a dozen crafting projects she had started but never finished for one reason or another, as well, ranging from artwork to magical glyphs to small handheld trinkets the budding adventurer could use on their travels. Of course, she could always prepare a pot of tea and read, having had accrued a decent collection of books over the years - about a quarter of which that had been inadvertently pilfered from Dalaran’s Magus Commerce Exchange due to her forgetfulness and neglect to return borrowed items. Barring that, there was always the option of catching up on missed sleep, but such felt like a waste of even this sort of day. And yet, none of it appealed to her.
Well, there was another option - one so taboo, so beyond the normal for her, that she generally refused to even entertain the notion out of concern of what message it would send to others if word ever got out about her doing it. Even so, it would definitely be a surefire way to fight the boredom and drudgery of this rainy day…
“I suppose I could do some cleaning…” she said, her body immediately shuddering in reaction from the meer utterance of the word. As much as she enjoyed preening herself an upkeeping her physical appearance, and as much as she enjoyed having a clean and well-organized home, the thought of actually doing any house cleaning made her grimace in disgust. Physical labor wasn’t necessarily below her, she felt, but it was most unbecoming of someone such as herself. Elves didn’t clean, they just always were clean.
Still, as she looked across the room again and started taking notice of all the things out of place and the thick layer of dust lying on most surfaces, it became apparent that she had let things become disheveled and cluttered.
Tanthelara rubbed her face and put some fragrant herbs in a small pot of water and set it on the stove over a low flame so that as they released their scent, it would permeate the air and cleanse it. As their bright aroma began to drift from the kitchen area, she put her hair up into a bun and got to work bringing order to the chaos that had made its home in her dwelling.
Hours passed like minutes, and the storm outside eventually subsided, revealing a glorious golden sunset as evening fell over the elven city. The priestess wiped the sweat from her brow as she finished with her work and smiled while she looked over the fruits of her labor. It felt like she had brought new life to her home, and combined with the beautiful sunset, it elated her spirits far more than she would have imagined.
“Perhaps everything is going to be alright…” she said quietly, her heart feeling nowhere near as burdened as it did earlier that day.
((short-ish one here. I’ve been struggling with trying to figure out how to implement the prompt for about a week now. hope you enjoyed!))