Yoniana did not kick down the balcony door this time.
Mei Lin came back from the lower market expecting a quiet afternoon and found her kitchen set up for her. The pot was on the brazier. Rice was measured. A map of a mountain bigger than the balcony table was weighted at every corner with small smooth stones. And two gnomes were arguing about chilies.
"Two is enough," Devonmichael said.
"Two is punishment."
"Two is measured."
"Three. And I will write the number in frost on your forehead while you sleep."
"Fine. Three."
"Chili diplomacy," Mei Lin said from the archway. "Highly underrated. Most wars could be settled with a pepper and a grudge."
"We're negotiating."
"You are threatening each other with produce. I'm here for it."
Yoniana lifted a hand without looking up. Devonmichael slid a mug across the railing that was already the right temperature by the time Mei Lin picked it up. He had been watching the door.
"You're early," Yoniana said.
"I live here."
"Then you're right on time."
The map was Mount Hyjal. The version the Caverns of Time kept folded somewhere inside the mountain, with Archimonde at the top and a demon tide pouring up the slopes. The ink on the map was fresh in some places and old in others, like it had been redrawn every year for a long time.
Yoniana walked her through it without ceremony. This is where the undead come from. Here the infernals land. A doom guard called Kaz'rogal hits this line of trees. This is where the bear should stand. She marked positions with chili flakes, which was both efficient and profane, and did not once look up for permission.
Devonmichael chopped in silence. He leaned over her shoulder now and then, tapped a spot with the point of his knife, and made a small noise that meant he disagreed. Yoniana would move the flake.
Mei Lin asked a question about the tree line. Another about the pit lord. Then, because she had been thinking about it since the first balcony night, "What do we do if the cowl isn't there?"
Yoniana stopped moving.
The pot hissed. Devonmichael turned it down a notch without being asked.
"We come back," Yoniana said. The register of her voice dropped somewhere it didn't usually go. "That's what I said the first time. That's what I said the second. I've been coming back for seven years."
"Seven years."
"The dreams started after the first raid I survived. They got worse. I could draw the cowl before I knew what it was called. I have a notebook at home with sixty drawings of a hat I have never held. I know the angle it sits at. I know the knot at the back. I know the colour of the inside when the light hits it. I don't know if it's real."
"It's real," Devonmichael said without looking up. "You've been right every time."
Yoniana breathed out through her nose.
"Alright," Mei Lin said. "Show me the tree line again."
Devonmichael did not say much while they ate. But somewhere between the second bowl and the third, Yoniana mentioned a tower in Dalaran, and Devon put his spoon down and did not pick it up again for a while.
He spoke it anyway. "My mother was a mage there. Before the lich king brought it down around her."
Mei Lin did not say I'm sorry. Grandmother had taught her the weight of those two words and also taught her that sometimes they were the wrong gift. She poured him more rice. He ate it.
"Yoniana found me the week after," he said. A fact. The shape of a debt he wasn't going to explain.
Yoniana did not look at him. She adjusted a flake on the map. "He followed me home. I fed him. He stayed."
Devonmichael smirked around a mouthful of rice. "Cat-like situation, really."
"I am not your cat."
"You absolutely rescued me."
"You are not my cat."
Mei Lin laughed. Both of them looked at her. Neither of them said the obvious next part, which was that they had both needed rescuing, and they were not going to argue in front of company about which direction it had gone.
Late. The mist rolled in. They had eaten everything, including the chilies Yoniana had fought for and then deeply regretted. Devonmichael was cleaning his knife on the hem of his coat with the patience of a man who had cleaned many knives on many coats.
Yoniana folded the map.
"Same time tomorrow?" she asked.
"No," Mei Lin said. "Tomorrow we go."
Yoniana looked at her. The staff at her hip had been hissing faint frost against the stone, which Mei Lin only noticed now. "You're sure?"
"You've been sure for seven years. The least I can do is be sure for a night."
Later, alone, Mei Lin sat on the railing and opened the notebook. Under people I'll walk into fire for she wrote two names. One fast. The other carefully, because it was shorter than his character deserved.
Yoni.
Devon.
— Mist