Dear Grandmother,
Everything here is made of stone. Even the people, I think.
They put cheese on everything. I need you to understand that I am not exaggerating. Fish? Cheese. Bread? Cheese. I ordered something called a pasty and it arrived with cheese on top, and when I cracked it open, it had cheese on the inside too. I found cheese on cheese, grandmother. On. Cheese. I think it's a religion. I am trying to be respectful. They really take things for granite here, and I suppose that applies to dairy too.
The stone, though. I wanted to write to you about the stone.
Dawn's Blossom was bamboo and jade and that soft green that only grew where the mist settled. Here, everything is carved out of a mountain the builders couldn't be bothered to move, so they carved the city into it instead. Towers. Bridges. Walls tall enough that I have to tilt my head back to find the top, and a canal that smells like copper coins and old boots and three generations of people who have forgotten to look up.
I found a rooftop. You knew I would. I find rooftops the way you find herbs, without thinking. I planted a water totem in the tiles and the spirits here took a long time to answer. They sounded tired, grandmother. Like they had been listening to nothing but stone for so long they had forgotten that anyone wanted to listen back. I stayed. They got braver. By morning I had six of them leaning toward the wood and a pigeon had tried to steal my lunch. I counted that as a successful evening.
But this is the part I want to tell you about.
There is a gnome.
Her name is Maxiona. She is small, which I suppose is true of most gnomes, but she is also loud in a way that doesn't come from the lungs. The air around her is loud. She has green hair and a demon floating over her shoulder that looks like a giant floating eyeball and it judges. Grandmother, I have never been judged by a demon before. It has opinions about my totems. Professional opinions.
She found me on a bench by the harbour. I was watching the gulls argue about fish heads, and she sat down next to me without asking, and she said, "What are you listening for?"
I told her. Spirits. The water ones. The ones that had been so quiet when I arrived and were finally talking again.
She nodded. Like it was a perfectly normal answer. Like a green-haired gnome with a floating eyeball demon heard that kind of thing on a Tuesday.
Then she slid a folded tabard across the bench between us. Purple and white. A muppet on it, though I do not fully understand why. And she said, "Muppets Inc. We're loud. We're weird. We kill things bigger than us. You'll fit right in."
She found me, grandmother, because a Pandaren planting totems on rooftops is apparently news that travels in this city. She asked around. She came looking. I don't know what to do with that yet.
She's loud, grandmother. Louder than thunder. But she means every word.
The tabard is folded in my pack. I haven't put it on yet. I'm not sure why. I think because putting it on means deciding, and I've been deciding so many things since I left the mists that one more feels like too much weight on a line that's already bending. But I keep taking it out. Unfolding it. Running my thumb along the edge. I think I'll wear it. I think I already have, in the small quiet part of me that decides things before the rest of me catches up.
I have been lonely, grandmother. I'll say it to you because I wouldn't say it to anyone else. Not the kind of lonely that breaks things. The kind that just sits, like a tea cup you forgot to finish. I kept walking because walking made it quieter. The gnome on the bench made it quieter too. Different, but quieter.
P.S. The rain here falls straight down. Like it's in a hurry. Your rain knew how to take its time.
P.P.S. I set a meat pie on fire because I thought the fire would improve it. It did not. I think the pie was already in mourning.
Missing you like the mist misses the mountain,
— Mist