Dear Friend,
It has been a few weeks since I wrote to you, and for this I
apologize. There are things that have transpired, great and small, since I last
put ink to parchment. Unfortunately tonight, I must avoid letting ruby and
sapphire droplets both from staining the page.
I sit here alone again, with wounds that make writing
difficult. I have not suffered injuries this great in several years, and it
will take me weeks to recover fully, for I must bear this pain and let it teach
me. I was foolish, and arrogant; I was shortsighted and too confident. I did
not take in fully the magnitude of what I faced, and I will let my wounds be
the punishment for this pride. A heavy sorrow grips my heart as well, and a
doubt that is difficult to shake.
There is a lesson from the philosophers and monks that I
understand now, that once I did not before. It speaks of a cave. They said that
one must imagine a cave where a few pandaren were born, and for all their lives
they were trapped in this cave, away from the light of the sun. In this cave
all they can see are the shadows of figures that move across the wall they
faced in the darkness, or the silhouettes by firelight. They grow to think that
these shadows are all that is reality. Now, what is the world to them when they
step out of this cave and see it for more than the narrow realm they grew up
in? Would they be able to recognize the people of the shadows they saw?
This is my lesson. For I am now the pandaren that steps out
of the cave, with my mind bearing only the images of the shadows of war and
hatred, of my new Horde and the Alliance. Tonight, we fought at the shores of
Karasang near the newly forged stronghold of the Alliance. I saw wildness in
the fighting that I do not see in the yaungol or the mantid. There was ferocity,
a burning anger in their hearts. They slew each other without hesitation; they
grinned and roared in their dark joy, they took pleasure in slaying mothers and
fathers, sons and daughters. Even those among my own ranks were caught up in
this horror. I fought and struggled through the field to defeat my foes, and
spared a few of them. I crouched over the fallen of several men I had wounded,
and disarmed, insisting as I appeared to take trophies that they lay still if
they wished to live. As I walked through the battlefield in the aftermath, many
had been killed while they lay in their possum state. Even this did not break
me, though the doubt crept in.
It was amongst those bodies that I found what broke my
spirit. There, among the bodies near the water’s edge, lay a young pandaren. He
wore the blue of healing, renewal and vigor, as well as the most beautiful gold,
the color of the Celestials, of good fortune. He was like me, I said to myself.
I fell to my knees and turned him over, his eyes open in fear, empty without
the fiery young spirit within.
I wept there on the shore, mourning over my supposed enemy,
who fought to brighten the futures of both the Horde and the Alliance. I know
this better than I know the names of my ancestors. He failed to bring the
brightest honor to his own.
I returned here afterward, my wounds unattended and my
friends absent. So it is to you I write, only you cannot answer me, you cannot
comfort my pains, unknown friend. I ask instead that you learn them, and etch
them into the stones of your mind and bear them to your family and your
children should they ever know the terror that is true war.
And yet, despite my doubts and my sorrow, I hold hope. I
have taken a medallion of the Red Crane gifted to me by a monk many years ago,
and I will bear it wherever I go. Hope will spring endlessly, and I must never
forsake it. I can still do what I set to do, to bring honor and justice, peace
and respect to the people I fight alongside. I will not forsake their
friendship, nor my own honor by abandoning them. But I have stepped out of the
cave, and I see the world for what it is, not the shadows that dance across the
walls of a cave. I will try to see the new reality and not forget the pleasant
shadows, for they are not separate realities, the shadows remain even in the
sunlight. They are both there, and they are all suffering a struggle of balance
in their existence. I will merely fight to balance the light in their hearts
with the dark. I will do it for them, for my home, and for the other Pandaren that
have fallen fighting for the same cause. I must go, and rest away the pain in
my heart.
I only wish I could have known his name.
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