The villa learned her rhythms as surely as it once learned the hum of the leylines. At three summers old, Lytavis moved through its halls with the confidence of a small sovereign.
In the mornings, she climbed onto her father's lap while he read at his desk. He would attempt a serious annotation, quill scratching neat lines across parchment, while she pressed sticky fingers to the edge of his books. One morning she declared, "Mine," and dragged a heavy tome half her size into her lap. Lucien laughed under his breath, then dutifully read aloud whatever passage she pointed to—even if it was a dry treatise on ley resonance. She nodded solemnly, as though she understood every word.
At midday, Zoya often brought her into the garden. Lytavis chased butterflies until her curls clung damp to her cheeks. She returned triumphant each time with a fistful of flowers—some blossoms rare and carefully cultivated, others weeds dragged up by the root. Zoya never corrected her. She accepted each offering with a kiss to her daughter's brow and wove them into crooked garlands that decorated the stone bench.
Sometimes, when the sun grew too warm, Lytavis curled into Zoya's lap with all the gravity of a child who has conquered the morning. Zoya hummed the same lullaby she had sung on the night of her birth. More often than not, Lytavis fought sleep with stubborn blinks, whispering, "Not tired," until her head dropped against her mother's shoulder and betrayed her.
In the evenings, Lucien tried to teach her letters. He carved them into small wooden tiles, tracing the shapes with her hand. Lytavis, however, preferred to arrange the tiles into towers and topple them with a gleeful shriek. Lucien sighed, but rebuilt them every time, knowing someday she would read his words as easily as she toppled his lessons.
And when night finally wrapped the villa in quiet, Zoya would pause outside her daughter's chamber. Through the cracked door she sometimes heard Lytavis murmuring to herself—soft, invented words that belonged to no language the adults knew. A very slight resonance stirred in the air, almost too faint to notice. Zoya paused, then smiled, dismissing it as fancy, recognizing it instead as the secret tongue her daughter spoke with Tyrande. She closed the door gently, leaving her daughter to dreams.
The Whisperwind home was humbler than the Ariakan villa, but no less filled with love. Its windows opened toward Suramar's moonlit gardens, where the scent of jasmine drifted on the night air, and temple bells rang in the distance like a heartbeat. At three summers old, Tyrande had learned the sound of both—the hush of blossoms, the call of chimes.
Each morning, her father brought her to the balcony to greet the dawn. She pressed her small palms to the stone rail, solemn as a priestess in miniature, and whispered "light" as the sun caught the towers. Her mother would laugh softly at the ritual, but never interrupted it, knowing some things were too earnest to disturb.
By midday, Tyrande's favorite place was the temple steps. She clambered up them with stubborn determination, blue hair wild in the breeze, while acolytes passing by paused to smile at her progress. Sometimes she dropped to her knees to press a flower into the grooves of the stone, as if gifting Elune herself with starlight roses and foxflowers.
Her laughter carried easily, bright and wild. She found joy in chasing shadows across the floor or playing hide-and-seek beneath the hem of her mother's robes. But there was a stillness in her too—a way she sometimes stopped in the middle of play, gaze lifted as though she saw something higher and stranger in the curve of the sky.
At night, her mother sang her to sleep with hymns older than memory. Tyrande hummed along, often in the wrong tune, her small voice chasing the melody until drowsiness pulled her under. More than once, her father lingered by the doorway, listening. He swore the air itself grew gentler when his daughter sang.
The world might one day call her High Priestess, might speak of fate written in stars. But within these walls she was simply Tyrande: a little girl who greeted the sun as if it were her playmate, left flowers for Elune, and curled against her mother's side when shadows grew too long.
Notes in the Margin—Lucien Ariakan
These are the days I once thought might never come. The simple rhythm of her laughter through the halls, her small hands reaching for books she cannot read, the flowers she lays at Zoya's knee—all of it is joy enough to undo me. I spent years chasing stars across parchment, believing that was my life's work. Now I see the greater constellation here, in the curve of her smile and the sound of her voice. Ordinary days, perhaps, but to me they are miracles.