When the mists parted, everything changed. The elements beyond Pandaria were calling. Ancient storms no one had listened to. Spirits with stories no one had heard. Her grandmother held her face in both hands and said, "You were never meant for one village, little storm."
It was Trader Feng who led her to the Wandering Isle. "I know someone you should meet," he said. And there she found Aysa Cloudsinger and the Tushui. Pandaren who believed in patience, principle, and doing what was right even when it was hard. Mei Lin had never been patient. But principle? Protection? Standing between the helpless and the harm? That she understood. She walked the Tushui path to the Alliance. Not because she was gentle, but because she believed the strong should shield the weak. Preferably with lightning.
The Alliance soldiers didn't know what to make of her at first. A five-foot-seven Pandaren with her hair wound into a flowered roll at the back of her head and a fresh blossom tucked into it, small hoops in her ears, a river-stone staff in her hand and no armor at all when she stepped off the boat. The quartermaster took one look, sighed, and put her in the smallest set of mail they had. It fit the way mail fits a Pandaren the first time, which is to say badly, and she wore it anyway because grandmother had taught her to wear what the elders gave you even when it pinched. The helm, though, she carried on her belt. Said it felt like wearing a bucket to a conversation. The quartermaster gave up on her after the third polite argument about it, and she never did wear one again, not so anyone could see.
They pinned a Tushui crest on her shoulder. She made a joke about the shoulderpads that nobody laughed at, and then they watched her drive an air totem into the ground and send chain lightning ripping through the ranks, white arcs leaping from enemy to enemy until nothing was left standing. And then, before the dust settled, she'd kneel beside the wounded, hands glowing soft blue, and mend every last one of them before moving on.
They started calling her "Sykepleier," some old battlefield word for a healer. She had no idea what it meant. She just liked that it sounded like "sick player." It stuck almost as fast as "Mist" did. The name her closest companions use when the jokes stop and the healing starts.