▸ Column · Warcraft — the orcish Horde, a clan feast in a Durotar longhouse
GARROSH HELLSCREAM replies.
Replied to by Garrosh Hellscream, with a rebuttal from Thrall.
The letter
My mate and I have been bonded three winters, and at every clan feast his aunt — an elder named Renaka — corners me before the meat is even carved to ask, loud enough for the whole longhouse, whether we've "quickened a youngling yet," with a pointed glance at my belly. Last Midsummer I waved her off with "we are savoring the bonding," and she took it as a yes, spending the feast telling every orc in earshot she "had a feeling." The truth is we have struggled quietly to conceive for over a year, and her questions land like an ambush I must brace for every few moons. I've thought of asking my mate to head her off, but he goes still and silent around her, and I'd rather not lay that on him. Is there a firm but not-bridge-burning answer I can give on the spot that makes her stop — without my baring anything of healers and medicine, or weeping into the cookfire?
Garrosh Hellscream replies
"Brace." You speak as though this aunt were a winter to be endured. She is not weather. She is a challenger, and every feast she takes ground from you because you hand it to her — you "wave her off," you offer soft phrases she chews into confirmation. Stop. The strong do not deflect; a deflection is a bared throat.
Next feast, do not wait for the salad. Meet her the instant she opens her mouth, hold her eyes without blinking, and tell her plainly that the matter of your body is closed to her — today, and every day after. No tremor. No tears into the cookfire; tears are what she feeds on. Make the cost of the question so high she would sooner bite her own tongue.
And your mate, who "goes still"? He is no shield. Do not lean on a reed. This is your ground. Hold it.
I will say this once, low. They measured me my whole life against Grommash — would the son ever bear something worthy of the father's name. I answered by becoming iron, and iron is what I died as: alone, admired by no one. The demand to give the bloodline its next link is an old whip. Take it from her hand. Only — do not become it.
— Garrosh Hellscream
Thrall weighs in
Garrosh tells you to hold the ground alone. Hear where "alone" carried him — he names it himself: ashes, and no one beside him. Do not take your bearings from a map that ends in ruin.
Your mate goes still not because he is a reed, but because no one has stood at his shoulder and said we answer her together, and here are the words. Aggra and I have carried heavier things than a prying aunt by refusing to carry them one at a time. And Renaka is tiresome, not your enemy. "We'll share such news ourselves, auntie, when there is news" — short, kind, immovable — closes the door without burning the longhouse. Strength is not the question. What you restrain is.
— Thrall
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