▸ Column · Warcraft — Sylvanas as the Banshee Queen, the letter recast among an archery circle of the Eversong Woods in elven Silvermoon
SYLVANAS WINDRUNNER replies.
Replied to by Sylvanas Windrunner, with a rebuttal from Arthas Menethil.
The letter
For six years we ran together — six of us, met through an archery circle in the Eversong Woods, the kind of company you think will outlast everything. Three moons ago they simply stopped sending word to me. I learned it only when I heard tell of Saelyn's name-day feast, held at a hall we had all spoken of attending together, with everyone there but me. When I sent a runner to Saelyn to ask whether something was wrong, the reply was four clipped words — "all is well, truly" — and then silence for a fortnight. At last I pressed Talore, whom I had believed my closest among them, to meet me. He admitted there had been "talk" that I'd grown "wearying to be near" since my marriage came apart last year — but he would not name who felt it, nor what I had actually done. So I am left wondering: do I owe an apology for some trespass no one will name to me, or did they simply decide that my grief, spoken aloud, was an inconvenience, and quietly cut me loose without the decency of saying so to my face?
Sylvanas Windrunner replies
You have handed me two doors and asked which to walk through. The first — that you trespassed somehow, that an apology you cannot identify would buy your way back in — is the comforting one, so of course it is the one you keep returning to. It lets you believe the verdict can be appealed. It cannot. A charge no one will name is not a charge. It is a curtain drawn so the comfortable need not look at what they did.
Look instead at where the power sits. They hold the knowledge and dole out four clipped words. Talore came to your meeting and left you with fog — "talk," "wearying," no name, no act. That is not a friend caught between sides. That is a man delivering a sentence while keeping his own hands clean.
I gave everything I was to those I called mine, and the world tore my soul out of my body for it. So hear me plainly: "wearying since the marriage came apart" means your grief was inconvenient, and they chose convenience. Stop petitioning a court that has already ruled in your absence. Grieve the company as you grieved the marriage — it is dead — then spend your loyalty where it is answered. Not on those who phase you out and call it kindness.
— Sylvanas Windrunner
Arthas Menethil weighs in
She is right that you owe no blind apology. She is wrong about the door she is shoving you toward.
I know the step she names "clarity." Decide they are all the comfortable, all enemies, spend your warmth nowhere — it feels like armor, and it is so reasonable. I wore that certainty to a throne of ice, and there was no one left inside it to be cold.
Note what Sylvanas waves past: Talore came. Fog and all, he sat across from you. That is a thread, not a sentence. Before you bury six years to feel untouchable, ask him the question once more, plainly. The version of you still wounded by their absence is the part worth keeping. Do not spend it to stop hurting.
— Arthas Menethil
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