The Morning Comes

Zaadji lazily batted at the flies that buzzed around her nose. The sun was just beginning to stream through the window, her eyes closed, but she could feel it on her face. The morning was still early, but the air was already hot and dry. She couldn’t remember if she had ever been to Durotar before, but if she had, she knew she would have missed it.

The air in Lordaeron was rarely warm, and never dry. The sickly sweet smell of decay and disease that hung in the air was one of the many reasons it was simply called “The Plaguelands” these days.

She rocked gently in her hammock, letting the warmth grow over her. She could hear the bustle of Orgrimmar starting. Vendors setting wares on hastily constructed tables, animals protesting to their fate as the day’s meals, grunts kicking vagrants and drunks from the gutter, peons groaning under their burden…a normal day for the capital city of the Horde.

But to Zaadji, it was the sound of paradise. Today was the first day she awoke under her own desire. Today she could do as she chose. She could lay in the hammock all day, or ride through the dusty plains of the Barrens, or whatever else she chose.

Today, was the first day where the dawn was hers.

No longer a slave to the will of Arthas. No longer an agent of the Scourge.

Today would be the first day of her new life. Her new birthday. She smiled. A rebirthday. Her life before today was hazy at best, a series of painful incomplete fleeting images that made no sense and only hurt to dwell on. But this dawn, this sunrise, this morn, was the first day of her new life.

A time would come, where vengeance would be had. A day where her place as a member of the Ebon Blade would matter and the undead would feel her full unmitigated wrath.

But today, her first day, her rebirthday…she wanted a slab of hog and a papaya. And no force on Azeroth would keep her from it.