[P] This 'grace' thing... (Tien/Whist/Aska/Janine)

[shibrogane]

He offered her his arm once they were both on their feet, and led her out of the room and down a rather intimidating cramped set of spiraling stairs. More than once, the two of them had to stand aside for someone else in a green jacket, or someone in gray or white, to pass. It still didn't take them long to reach the undercroft kitchen.

It was a spacious room, but the ceiling was low enough that Aska had to duck his head a little under every cross-beam; he couldn't imagine how uncomfortable it would be for Whisteria. Unfortunately, this was the only place he knew of that wasn't assiduously watched by people who weren't also tributes or servants. He'd earned a certain amount of respect from his fellows, and trusted they wouldn't give him away.

Aska collected some fruit from the nearest pantry, and then gestured to one of the long, low tables. "So, high priestess? How did that come about, darling?"  

[mistalina13]

Whisteria at least was used to ducking, many other cities on Azeroth had not been designed for someone her height. "No worse than Stormwind or Ironforge in some places." Those two were probably the worst culprits of all of them. The human masons and carpenters seemed to only know how to build doors in one size...and dwarves, with few exceptions, seemed to like very small doors.

And while it was probably more polite to sit across from him in a setting like this she decided against it. If anyone tried to give Aska s**t for it then she would deal with it promptly. "Partly because Xun didn't want me to die...or go insane." The latter required explanation, though he would have some context of where it was coming from. An important point during the return to Azeroth meant facing one of the sources of her nightmares and he likely would not have forgotten how she was after waking up from one of those. Thanks to Xun those memories had faded and no longer weighed down her thoughts.

Her manner had even changed, overall she would seem more relaxed and genuinely happy. The underlying sadness in her expressions was gone.  

[shibrogane]

"Die," Aska repeated, something in him lurching unpleasantly at the thought. "Whisteria, how were you--what were you doing?" He remembered hte names, Stormwind, Ironforge... he'd hoped once to see her world, to actually put images to these places, but it had never panned out. Not before he'd left, like hte piece of s**t he was.

He picked up one of the pear-analogues--they were far too brown to actually be pears, but that was what they tasted like to him--and put it down in front of her. "You should try them. They're good," he said, instead of the endless litany of self-recrimination he wanted to unleash. "If you don't mind talking about it, I'd like to know. But if you do, please don't feel pressured on my account. The last thing I deserve is to demand answers from you."  

[mistalina13]

"I'm not young, Aska, even by the standards of my own kind." Especially after the near death of their world trees, whose power greatly extended their lives. The world trees had been healed and reblessed, but that was no guarantee of anything. "Besides that, living on a world that was forever at war has its own risks." Between the many gods that had gone there it had been more or less put under control for the time being. Most of the other threats had been quelled as well, by mortal or divine hands. It was a kind of peace that Azeroth had not seen since before the Sundering. "It is eerily peaceful now, but such things always come with a cost." Unfortunately the cost of war was always lives.

She nodded, picking up the pseudo-pear and biting into it. It certainly wasn't bad at all. Once she had chewed and swallowed the bite, she continued. "We cleansed the corruption from Azeroth and there were things deep in that world that could only be truly destroyed by the gods." Extremely capable mortals were able to weaken them, but that only delayed things. "It is a risky thing for anything less than a god, if it ensnares you..well, you can literally loose your mind." No use in sugar coating it really. "And I came rather close to it." She had faced Yogg Saron once and it had remembered how to get into her head when she returned for the second time.