Mei Lin stopped in Shattrath on her way out of Outland.
Not because she needed to. A Kirin Tor mage at the Shrine had offered her a portal straight back to Stormwind for the onward trip to Blackrock, and Mei Lin had politely turned him down. Some cities you walked into, even for an hour, so the cobbles knew you'd been there. Shattrath Lower City was one of them. It smelled like spice and wet stone and whatever a draenei cooked on a grill that had not been cleaned since the first invasion, and Mei Lin wanted to spend at least one full lungful on it before going home.
The bazaar was louder than she'd expected. A blood elf was arguing with a naaru acolyte about stall rent, and losing on principle. An arakkoa in a cloak too heavy for the weather was stacking melons with aggressive precision. Two ogres were sharing a single very small pastry, each one taking bites so careful it looked like a religious ceremony. A child ran past her wearing shoes that were not hers.
Mei Lin grinned at all of it. Rude city. Kind bread smells.
Then she saw the fruit stall.
The sign was handwritten, in Common, in a draenei script that was very proud of itself. PROTOBERRIES. FRESH FROM NORTHREND. TODAY ONLY.
The fruit was blue. Very blue. The sort of blue that had been applied by someone who had not met a real berry but had met a real paintbrush. Mei Lin walked closer. She had not been to Northrend. Grandmother's letters had mentioned it a few times, usually in the same sentence as cold and do not. She did not know what a protoberry was supposed to look like.
She did, however, know what an apple looked like. An apple in a dress was still an apple. These apples were in dresses.
The vendor was a draenei. Short for a draenei, which still made him taller than her. His leather apron was older than the stall it hung over. There was flour on one cheek and on one horn. He was looking at Mei Lin with the specific kind of hope that a man looks at a customer with when his rent is due tomorrow.
Behind his stall, inside a crate padded with a folded blanket, a very small draenei child was asleep. A girl. Maybe. It was hard to tell at that age and with draenei in general. Her hooves twitched in her sleep the way a puppy's paws twitch. Her little horns were just starting to come through.
"Good morning," Mei Lin said.
"Good morning, friend." His Common was careful. Practised. He gestured at the pile. "Protoberries. From the ice. Very rare. Very good for travellers. Two silver for three."
"Two silver."
"Two silver." He nodded vigorously. A small flake of blue paint came off his thumb and landed on the top berry.
Neither of them acknowledged the flake.
Mei Lin counted out the two silver. Set them on the wood. Picked up three.
The first one she bit into slowly. Apple. Obviously apple. A perfectly good apple, actually. Slightly underripe, firm, faintly sweet in the way a Pandaria winter apple is sweet. She chewed thoughtfully. The vendor watched her the way a man watches a kettle he is not sure is going to boil or explode.
"Sir," she said, after swallowing. "Your Northrend is delicious."
"It is?"
"It is."
"I mean, yes. It is. Of course it is. That is what I said."
Mei Lin ate the second one. Slower than the first, this time, because she was enjoying watching him try to look casual. He kept glancing at the blanket-crate. The child slept on. A little stream of drool was working its way out of one corner of her mouth.
"Your daughter?" Mei Lin asked, tilting her head.
His face changed.
It was a thing that happened all at once, the face of a vendor replaced by the face of a father, and Mei Lin watched it happen and decided that was the face she was going to remember about Shattrath.
"Yes. Yes, she is mine. Her name is Aleeya." He said it the way people say the names of the things they are scared of losing. "She is nearly two. Her mother, she..." He stopped. Waved a hand. Didn't finish.
Mei Lin did not push. She ate the third apple.
"Aleeya is a good name."
"It means 'held close.' In my tongue."
"Then you chose well."
He nodded. Looked at the coins on the wood. Looked at her. Looked at the blue berries. Looked back at her. Not quite able to ask what he wanted to ask.
Mei Lin took out another two silver and set them on top of the first two. Then a third silver on top of that. Generous. Excessive, frankly, for three painted apples.
"Tip," she said. "For the story."
"The story?"
"The one about Northrend. Very vivid. I could see the glaciers."
His ears went pink. Draenei ears did that, apparently. She filed it away. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"You knew."
"Sir, I am from a land of apples. I know an apple when I meet one."
"I... am sorry."
"Don't be. She'll be hungry when she wakes up." Mei Lin glanced at the sleeping child. The drool had reached the blanket now. "Buy her something with fewer opinions painted onto it."
He pressed his hand to his chest the way draenei do when words get stuck. "Thank you, friend."
"You are a terrible liar." She smiled. "Work on it. Or don't. Honestly, don't."
She walked on with apple juice on her chin and a warmth in her chest that had nothing to do with the Outland sun.
A block later she passed an actual Northrend trader, a tauren with a stall full of preserved fish and something that might genuinely have been a protoberry. Mei Lin did not stop. She had a story now, and buying a real one would ruin the one she already had.
Grandmother used to say the point of a market was not the goods.
The point was the people trying.
— Mist