Turnabout

Whatever else could be said about the questionable dwarven charms of Wildhammer Keep, at the very least it had the blessing of soon turning mercifully empty and quiet shortly after its nocturnal residents woke, even more so as the last few stragglers of the Servitors gradually trickled out to join their company in the Isles. Shrugging on a loose robe over her tunic and leggings, Ilyssae waited for the sound of footsteps to fade outside her room before stealing out to the upper levels and to the mess hall, still littered with dishes and crumbs from the evening’s dinner. A few minutes’ rummaging turned up a still-warm loaf and an unfinished block of cheese, both snatched up into spindly hands and squirreled in short order back to the shelter of the bedroom–

–and nearly dropped again when the young elf’s knees hit an unexpected obstacle just inside the entry. Only by clumsily bumping her arm into the doorframe was Ilyssae able to avoid an ungainly fall onto her bed, so blatantly not where it had been before.

“What.”

It was another moment more before the rest of her sleep-addled mind woke up and took in everything else wrong with her room; the tiny bedside table and wardrobe directly in sight of the door; the desk tucked away in the far corner where her bed rightfully should have been, and even the inkwell swapped over opposite of its usual spot so that the pale scratch on the desk was visible; everything, everything so horribly jarring in sheer wrongness of her personal little hole in the mountain being mirrored from its usual order. For a wild, fleeting moment, Ilyssae feared that perhaps she had made some horrible mistake–perhaps she’d flipped reality on its head somehow with some spell gone awry, yet she could not recall having once cast a single portal since waking up–

And then, before she could truly panic, some recollection stirred in the back of her mind, probing a sharp click of realization.

This wasn’t the first time someone had snuck into her room recently, nor the first time she’d come back to find something changed.

“One-Eye.”

Ilyssae was further calmed when things did not, in fact, unravel further after she blinked past her bed and into the center of her room. The smaller bits of furniture glided to their proper spots readily enough, but magic did little more for her bed than cause it to shudder and scrape across the floor a short way before settling again, requiring her to set down her pilfered breakfast and struggle with dragging it over by hand. Vehemently her mind seethed, scheming up many ideas of revenge against that Shadewhisper woman and promptly dismissing them each in turn; surely there must have been something better that would drive home an undeniably clear message to stay out of her space, to leave her belongings in peace–

Something slipped off of her pillow and onto the floor. She paused a moment, not recognizing the pale green envelope as anything of her own, and stooped to retrieve it, extracting the stiff, folded parchment within–and blinked a few times at the crude, boxy drawing of what she belatedly guessed to be a wrapped present before chancing a peek at the sparse note inside.

Starspire:

Happy birthday to you.

Ilyssae had to read it again before comprehending. She felt a somewhat uncomfortable jolt in her stomach once she remembered–just how many days were left before her birthday this year? Four? Five? By the moon, she’d gotten terrible at remembering over the last several years. Whether because she was so busy now with her studies, or because she’d gotten so used to it passing in silence, she had just plain forgotten she was about to turn seventeen this week.

It didn’t occur to her right then to question how Skybrooke had found out, and certainly not to check that the missing persons poster was still in her bag where she’d tucked it away out of sight. For now, she was just too perplexed that someone had thought to acknowledge something that hadn’t been important since she was very small.