“...Say, you remember when we were younger?”
Trying to make some small, perhaps pleasant conversation, Aster spoke softly, as if someone might hear him; the possibility was unlikely, but it was better to be safe then sorry, if not to assuage Nyra’s own paranoia. On the other side of the makeshift campfire between them, Nyra skulked about just on the edge of the light, in cat form, the limp form of a large brown rabbit dangling from between her jaws.
Nyra rolled her eyes, gingerly setting down by the fire the rabbit she’d been carrying. She sure had gotten stranger, over the last few months— rarely shifting out of cat form, unless she was in extremely private company, disappearing on hunting trips alone for hours at a time; though he supposed she'd always been... different. Which was saying something about a night elf. Maybe that was a druid thing, though. She was always connected to the earth, to the Dream and to Azeroth, and despite everything that had transpired up until this point that connection was still a source of comfort to her. Aster knew this well, and not just through the power of sheer inference: the two were close enough, obviously, and so Nyra had taught him much about druidism, at least orally. He wasn’t always quite sure he understood, not like she did, but he tried; so maybe that was worth something.
“Why wouldn't I?,” she answered swiftly, nipping in the bud Aster’s own train of thought. “But there is no use living in the past, you cannot go back to it. ...Except when it is convenient, I suppose,” she continued, recalling the multitude of adventures and missions she’d been on and been sent on, too, throughout space and time— from timehopping with Chromie to just straight up going “back” to an alternate version of the planet Draenor before it got torn apart by chaotic nether energies. You know, the usual. She sunk her teeth into the hare's supple flesh.
“Well, it’s a good thing I’m not asking you to live there,” Aster joked, staring right into her eyes as she sat directly across from him, staring back, bathed in orange glow. “I’m just asking if you remember, that’s all.”
“Of course.” Blood dripped from her jaws.
This time Aster rolled his eyes, beckoning her over with a gesture of his right arm. She was hesitant, though for what reason he didn’t know— it was like her to be distant, usually, but now that they were alone all he wanted for was some sense of normalcy and closeness between them. In due time, though, she picked up her rabbit, taking great care not to abandon nor waste fresh prey in her sudden haste, and prowled over in a feral, twisting fashion, like a wild animal still afraid of human contact. She hoisted herself up on the fallen tree on which he was currently seated and sat beside him, then dropped into a casual laying position, paws together and dangling over its round edge. Nyra once again gently set her prey down, tucked up against the old bark.
Not so subtly, she began to close her eyes, her prior exhaustion only compounded by her long hunt tonight, then moved to rest her head in his lap while still trying to look like she wasn’t doing just that. To rest now would be wasteful.
“You’re not very subtle,” he teased.
“Shut up. I am resting.”
He laughed.
They sat there like that for awhile, with the blood elf almost instinctively moving to smooth her fur as if she were any other large animal… you know, your typical woman-turned-giant-cat. Nyra said little, and though initially she was surprised at the sudden contact she quickly leaned into it. After some time, they began to chat amongst themselves, of nothing quite world-endingly important in particular for once; a nice, sweet, casual (and, personally, intimate) conversation of which the details of are best left to interpretation.
Once she settled down, which she rarely got to do nowadays, it was like someone flipped a switch— her usual-unusual refusal to shorten any set of words with contractions melted away and her method of conversation went from cold to slightly more casual and open. It was times like this Aster admired most, rare as they were now; the times when they could go from their strict, public-facing and performative “leader-and-commander-totally-not-dating-power-couple” dynamic in Sanctuary to the far more comfortable “two-bozos-totally-dating-power-couple” dynamic.
“You know, if you've ever thought about it — it’s at least a little strange when the giant cat in your lap is also your wife,” he laughed.
“Your not-quite-wife,” Elinarha corrected, batting playfully-yet-gently at his face with one oversized paw. “Don’t go getting ahead of yourself.”