Sliding off Nisha as the tiger stalled in the road, Kathlin spent a moment simply enjoying the freedom of unrestricted breathing now that she had been released from the prison that was Ashei’s boobs and Rithrynn’s ass, before looking back at Rithrynn. “Uhm…did you see someone?”

“No. Nobody important”

“…but who didn’t look like Li?” the girl persisted. Rithrynn merely tossed a disgruntled look over her shoulder, before going back to measuring Hester up for being transformed into a feathery scarf with her eyes. “How should I know? Some girl.” 

“What did she look –“

At this point, taking the lack of argument from those around her as permission, Ashei fished her longbow out of her quiver and began to cheerfully fit her string to it. Hester apparently took this as a personal offence against her, shooting vertically upwards with a screech of anger and vanishing from the scene, to be seen distantly fluttering around the chimney of the pub occasionally. 

“Nice one, Ash. Now we need to get it back, [i]again[/i]”

“Hey I could bring it down here if you want, Ri…”

“What good would that do!? I still need it to find Li!”

“What? How many of these monkeys do you even own, anyway?”

While the two elves bickered between themselves, Kathlin was padding away from them through the snow to reach the door and tap on it. After a long pause with a couple of repeat knocks, the window in the door eventually slid open. “WHAT? Closed!”

“Sorry!” Kathlin responded immediately, before clearing her throat and trying again. “Uh…sorry. For bothering you. But I’m looking for a friend of mine. Long, kind of reddish brown hair, might have acted like she owned the place a little bit?”

“……”

“Hey! What are you doing!?”

Jumping slightly as someone else called out to her, Kathlin looked back at Ashei who had turned around to stare at her. “Uhhh….I was asking….to use the bathroom”

“…the bathroom?”

Kathlin gulped as the Night Elf gave her a probing look. “Yes.”

“……”

“Haaah….such a primitive biology…” Ashei snickered as she turned away from the little human to give Rithrynn a grin, inviting her to share the joke also. “monkies, huh?”

*

Liaena sunk gratefully onto the chair that Doin had offered. It was considerably more comfortable than the hard bar stools downstairs and warmer to boot, even with the fire no longer burning in the grate. It took a moment to realise the dwarf was actually still talking, as she looked over to him. “Oh yes. About that. I [b]am[/b] Li.”

“…..”

In the immediate shocked and/or disbelieving silence that her statement caused, Liaena held up a finger to the dwarf to shush him for a moment as she continued talking. “I know it does sound weird, but there are an awful lot of people in Stormwind that want to kill, maim or otherwise abduct me, even for my standards. So, I[i] might[/i] have bought a few polymorph potions from Gimpsi when we visited her last, and they’ve been pretty handy actually. Not that it always helps entirely….”

Here Liaena waved a hand absently at her nose to illustrate her point, with a brief sigh before she looked back at Doin. “So yeah. Sorry about lying to you earlier, but I really don’t want anyone to know that I’m here. As far as everyone else is concerned, I’m still back at Sharon’s house and I’d kinda like it to stay that way”

The room falling into a lull as Liaena subsided briefly to consider her own situation, she looked over at Doin with a smile. “How are you, anyway? You look waaaaay better than last time I saw you”