Mei Lin took her armor to a smith in the Valley of the Four Winds because a grummle at the noodle cart told her her chestplate was sad.
"I am not asking my chestplate anything," she said.
"Then ask the smith up the river," he said. "He asks it for you."
She went up the river.
The yard was a low stone square with a fence of carved totems and an ancient Pandaren sitting cross-legged on a mat with a cup of tea. Bald on top. Grey everywhere else. Hands like he'd spent a long time losing arguments with metal. No hammer anywhere.
"You are the chestplate," he said.
"I'm a Pandaren. The chestplate is a separate thing. Very important distinction."
"Set it down. Biggest to smallest."
She laid out the helm, the shoulders, the chestplate, the bracers, the belt, the gloves. The smith walked the row without touching anything, leaned over the chestplate, and clicked his tongue at it.
"This one has never been asked its name," he said.
"It's a chestplate."
"You've been wearing a polite stranger. That's why it sits wrong on your shoulders. You've been asking a stranger to catch axes for you."
"So I introduce myself?" Mei Lin said. "Hi, chestplate, I'm Mei Lin, I like lightning and long walks through exploding villages?"
"Close enough. I'll talk. You listen. And no jokes about introducing yourself to the boots. They can hear you, and they have feelings about it."
"I was going to make that joke."
"I know."
He put both hands flat on the chestplate and talked to it in a sideways mutter she couldn't follow. At some point he said her name out loud. A thin blue shiver ran along the edge of the plates where they overlapped, and the metal settled into a shape it hadn't quite sat in before.
She did not say thank you to her armor. She had her limits.
He did the shoulders, the helm, the bracers, the belt, the gloves. Did not rush. When he was done he looked tired the way a man looks tired after a long afternoon of fishing a river he knows well.
"There," he said. "The chestplate knows its name."
"What's its name?"
"That's between you."
"That's a deeply unhelpful answer."
"You're welcome."
She pulled the armor back on. It sat differently. Not lighter or heavier. Present. Like it had agreed to be there.
"What do I owe you?"
He nodded at her air totem, which had planted itself in the corner of the yard without her putting it down, and which had been humming at his fence of totems since she'd walked in.
"Leave the totem an hour. Mine haven't had company in a while."
"My totem has been gossiping with yours."
"Since the moment you arrived."
"I'd like them to finish their conversation."
"So would I."
She left it for two.
When she picked it back up it was warmer than when she'd set it down. She did not ask him what they'd talked about. She had a reasonably strong feeling it had been her.
"Tell me they said nice things."
"I don't lie to paying customers."
"We are very close now, you and I."
He almost smiled. That was enough. She walked back down the river road wearing armor that had been introduced to her, and her totem spent the walk humming to itself, apparently pleased with its new friends.
— Mist