The Bindings of the Windseeker lived at the bottom of her pack for weeks.
Mei Lin had wrapped them in a square of old Pandaren silk the evening she got back from Blackrock, and she had tucked them under her spare socks and her second tea tin and a half-eaten bag of dried lotus seeds. Ordinary things on top. The legendary at the bottom. She had known, even as she wrapped them, that she was being a coward about it.
She could feel the wind spirits inside if she held the pack wrong. A small cold prickle at the back of her neck whenever the pack leaned against her chair. Nothing loud. Just a presence.
One evening on the balcony, after her third cup of tea had gone cold and a lantern below had hissed out, she unwrapped them.
She laid the silk flat on the railing and set the Bindings on top. Two slender curved pieces, pale bronze, inscribed with markings she did not read because the markings were not for her. The metal was warm. It had been cold in the pack five breaths ago. It was warm now.
The balcony wind, which had been a polite evening wind up until that moment, sat up. That is the only word for it. The wind went from a loose drape across the balcony to an alert posture, the way a dog at a table sits up when the bowl comes down from the cupboard. The wind spirits inside the Bindings had just heard a whistle nobody else on this balcony could hear, and they were leaning forward.
"Hello," she said, carefully.
One of the Bindings shivered on the silk. Physically. Metallically.
She understood immediately. They wanted the other half. They wanted Thunderfury reassembled, the whole blade, the wind given an edge to ride along. They had been waiting a long time for this evening.
She pressed her paw flat on the silk beside them.
"I know," she said. "I know. The other half is gone."
They did not believe her.
The wind around the balcony tightened half a notch. Her empty teacup on the railing slid about a thumb's width to the left. She watched it slide. She did not move. The teacup kept going. It went over the edge and she heard the small flat smash of it on the stone of the courtyard below, and a Shrine attendant's startled voice rose up on the evening air.
Mei Lin leaned over the railing.
"Sorry!" she called down, cheerfully. "My mistake! Wind!"
She turned back to the Bindings and put her paws on her hips.
"Oh," she said, "so we're being dramatic now."
One of the bindings shivered again. Smaller this time. The spirits inside, if not embarrassed, were at least reminded that there were manners.
She sat cross-legged with the silk between her knees. She did not pick the Bindings up. Picking them up felt like agreeing to something. She spoke to them the way grandmother had once spoken to a riled-up tea kettle whistling off-key. Calm. No promises.
"I am not chasing a sea serpent for you. Not this year. Maybe not ever. I cannot wield you. I might never wield you. You are going to live in my pack, and sometimes on my balcony, and I will talk to you because you deserve to be talked to. That is what I have. If it is not enough I understand."
The wind listened. The Bindings did not shiver. They had heard her.
She folded the silk around them again. Slowly. She laid them back in the pack. Not at the bottom this time. Higher up, between the spare socks and the second tea tin, where her paw could find them quickly.
The wind spirits were quiet for a few days after. But they were with her.
She would get them a new teacup.
— Mist