The following is the in-character journal of Idella, my warlock in WoW: Retail. For the purpose of plot hooks to get into her story, if your character is aboard the Scarlet Dirge (a ship captained by Thraeda’s Kul Tiran, Morlen, Idella often steals herself away for journal writing late at night in the tide sage study area below deck. When interrupted, she’s quick to stash it away on the side satchel that never leaves her person.
I was scared to look scared for him.
That seems so silly when I write it, but I thought about it for a good while. After I talked to Moon, who is the sweetest little bird, I realized I did everything to hold back and not get too worked about about seeing Ryo hurt.
It’s stupid, isn’t it? I keep reminding myself that if all this isn’t real, then the worst thing I could do is just indulge myself in some kind of romantic… thing. It’d all be just fantasy, wouldn’t it? And it wouldn’t be the first time. All the other times I woke up and lived another one of Claret’s lives, it’s not like there wasn’t love, either. There was. It felt so real… the meet, the wonder, the chase, the excitement when it first starts. I went further in any of those relationships than I ever did with Ryo.
We didn’t even really do anything, we were both just so new to it all. But that’s what was so sweet about him — he tried to be polite but didn’t know how to do it in the right way. Not that there’s only one right way — what’s polite for a kaldorei maybe isn’t polite for a human and maybe the other way around — but it’s like no one taught him any polite way at all, so he kind of just made his own. And it was sweet and kind of charming. Sometimes the best he could do was just say out loud what he was doing or wanted to do — “I’m going to kiss you right now” and “can I put my arms around you?” kind of stuff. Maybe others would think it was awkward but I always found it kind of fun. I think maybe because it settled my own nerves about all those things. It’s not like I had that much experience dating, either.
Well, back then, at least. I can’t look at all of it the same now. Am I the Idella he knew or am I just some kind of copy that experienced her life, just like I experienced Claret’s when I went under? I remember beginning of what it was like under her thrall, it took me days, maybe weeks to first break control. I woke up in what felt like a coffin. It was so dark and my chest felt so heavy. I couldn’t summon any strength or even magic to break the stone slab above me open. Then I remember her voice asking me whether I was awake. She seemed almost proud. Then I was under again. I couldn’t get out of it all the way, though I tried. She told me she had to resort to “different measures” to keep me under. It sounded like she was having fun. But then again, that’s always what she sounded like. With me, at least.
Then the dreams came. Well, at first, I thought they were dreams. But then they started to feel so real. And unlike the dreams I used to have before the thrall, all of these made sense. I lived, I grew, I loved, I fought, I died — then it would start all over again. Or maybe I didn’t die, I never saw those moments. It always cut off right before, and then I was someone new again. But I was never born, it was like I cut into a life midway through. And I’d live the whole thing, days and more days. Is that what’s happening now? I’m in another life, living its days, and I’m not really Idella, but everyone thinks that’s who I am? And it took me a while, but I remembered how to be like her again, and stop coming off like I was someone else. That’s when everyone stopped talking about putting me in a cell again. Good. I didn’t like the coffin or cell or whatever that was when I was in the thrall, I wasn’t going to start another life in another cell.
Maybe she actually died that day when she went into the thrall. Then it would be even less right to be with Ryo. He loved her, not the person who came out. Maybe I didn’t even come out, maybe I’m still there. That this whole journey to Naz’jatar is just the last journey this person I am right now takes until they’re gone, and I’ll start some other life somewhere else. I didn’t even recognize Ryo or anyone else at first, so what’s to say I’m really her — or here — at all? I know it was years and years and years since I last saw them, but it’s evidence that that wasn’t me, right?
Am I thinking this through the right way?
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