Peace

Biara smiled as she settled down into the grass, feeling the soft earth beneath her as she looked out over the water. In the distance the sun was beginning to set, casting rays of golden and pink light across the rippling waves and the trees around her. This part of Sunstrider Isle was beautiful at sunset, and Biara breathed deeply as the forever-warm air rustled through her hair.

She was clad in a sheer black slip; the same one she had worn earlier when practice dueling with Archmage Wyrmcurse. Beside her, stacked in a neat pile was all of her battle armor, trinkets, rings, wands, and other implements of war. Propped against a nearby magically-altered tree leaned her battlestaff. Sitting there with the grass tickling her bare feet, Biara looked much less like the regal Magistrix and noble she was, and more like the young blood elf she had once been, before the weight of responsibility was placed on her like a mantle of power that she could never shed.

She sighed and closed her eyes, letting her senses reach out and feel the ever-present magic in the air all around her. Her home, the forests, rivers and even the ocean, all had their own flavor, their own distinct touch of magic that echoed back to her in a thousand different ways. She sat quietly for a time, simply being.

"Is this the dream that you dreamed for our people, father?" she said softly to the wind. "Is this the peace that you envisioned for all of them, commoner and noble alike, before everything that came to pass later?"

She sat quiet for a time, thinking about how lovely it would be to simply walk away. To live in the forests of her home and roam them in safety, as she had done with her friend and now sister Kyliska. The gravity of the years that had passed since those times and the tragedy that had befallen everything she knew eventually weighed the thought down. Returning to that time would be impossible until the world itself changed once more.

Knowing that she was alone on this deserted part of the Isle, Biara softly began to sing. Her voice, so accustomed to shouting out battle spells, took on a soft tone as she gently sang the words of a lullaby her father had sung to her over one hundred years before. Her thoughts moved backwards in time, remembering the happiness and peace she'd had. As she went over the events of the past decades, her song changed and took on the familiar tone and cadence of the Lament of the Highborne. The ancient song, modified countless times over thousands of years, poured from her and echoed through the magical trees all around her, speaking of her grief and worry for her people and the burden that she would continue to carry for them, despite the sudden desire to put it down.

When the song ended, Biara fell silent, simply staring out over the ocean. She stayed there until the sun sank beneath the horizon, seemingly swallowed by the ocean. As the last light of day faded, she rose and gathered up her things, donning her battle armor once more, returning to the Magistrix that she was. Seconds later she was gone through a swirling portal of magic, and the small grassy knoll she'd been on was silent once more.

Peace was an elusive thing, had for only a few moments, and so easily lost.