At seven on the clock, as it had done for many nights in months past, the Dwarven District of Stormwind began to wind down for the evening.

With the furnaces and forges left to cool for the night, the men and women who worked so diligently in the hot, almost acrid streets of the metalworkers spilled out onto the cobblestones to head for home. The dwarves and gnomes that commuted into the great city of Stormwind made for the Deeprun Tram whilst the native humans made for their beds, ready to sink into their eiderdown mattresses in anticipation of another day’s hard work.

The last smithy to spill onto the street was a human; tall, but not gangly so, with broad shoulders wrapped in muscle countered by a sturdy waist, a figure that leant itself well to standing at a blacksmith’s anvil all day. He wiped a soot-covered leather glove across his brow, over his mussed mop of brown hair (and quickly over his short beard for good measure), then looked towards the Old Town; the faint glow of lanterns and the sound of gentle revelry drifted over the hatched rooftops, to the metronome of crickets and fireflies. The sky was still yet clear, the air thick and hot with the season, and a clink of beer glasses being tipped together followed a rather dwarven-sounding cheer from one of the cities many pubs.

And oh, what Declan Westbrook would not give for a pint in that moment.

He looked back towards his forge one more time, making sure no errant fires were still going, then once towards the one donkey that carried their wares to the royal armoury and back weekly as she settled in for the night. The beast brayed quietly as if to bid him goodnight, and the blacksmith went to her.

“See you in the morning, Amanda,” he cooed, giving the jenny one last stroke to her forehead, before cantering off into the Old Town.

The Pig and Whistle was a lively pub at any time of day, and the hot night had drawn out more customers than usual. Declan shimmied himself between dwarves and men alike until he crushed himself against the bar, eyeing up the drinks on tap as a child would eye up a sweet treat. He took a seat, idly laying his smithy’s apron on the stool next to him, then raised a hand; almost immediately a drink was in front of him, slid over the countertop by the long-suffering barmaid. Sliding a coin to her in return, Declan looked into the amber drink longingly before tipping it to his mouth- strong, not too bitter, kept cool by the mage-come-bartender’s ice enchanted glasses. Declan watched from the corner of his eye as a small platoon of Stormwind guards entered- no doubt they had been relieved of duty for the night- and the dim tavern light shone happily off the armour they wore, armour Declan knew he had most likely crafted himself. The guards wore their armour proudly, showing it off to any citizen who would look and admire, and Declan huffed in quiet amusement as one of the men preened to the first pretty girl that passed his way.

Staring into his drink, throat already parched and yearning for another sip, the blacksmith allowed himself a smile. I’ve earned this, he thought with no small measure of satisfaction, and drunk deep of his beer. The guard flexing for all he was worth was still on the pull, now with a woman on each arm, as his platoon stared out from under their helmets in thinly-veiled scrutiny. Idly, Declan wondered how many newborns of Stormwind his armour might be indirectly responsible for.

“‘Scuse me, do you mind if I--?”

Halfway through swallowing another mouthful of beer, Declan turned to the soft, Gilnean-accented voice just behind him; a woman stood there, tall and expectant, pointing at the blacksmith’s apron Declan had left on the stool beside him. Two long trails of rusty-red hair framed her face, pulled up into a silken ponytail at the back, dark skin glittering just slightly with the dusting of sweat the summer evening had no doubt left on her. Hazel eyes flit between Declan and the apron, looking just about as parched as he was, and in the absence of a reply she cocked a single, well-shaped eyebrow at him.

Declan’s heart skipped a beat. And he forgot how to swallow. He gulped the mouthful down, coughed and pulled against the aching muscles in his neck, and laid the apron across his lap. “Begging your--” Yet more coughing. He thumped his chest once, twice. “Begging your pardon,” he finally wheezed, gesturing to the seat with a frantically sweeping arm, and with an eye upon him the woman took it. “I’d forgotten I left it there. I’d forget my own head, truthfully, if it weren’t attached to my shoulders.”

The woman nodded once, smiling politely, and took up interest in the drinks on tap. Light’s sake, Declan, he winced. Smooth as sandpaper, you are. He grumbled and looked into his drink again, as if he held all the right things to say and could speak the honeyed words needed to smooth over this botched meeting--

“What would you recommend?”

The woman had spoken again, closer to his ear this time. Her fingers were laced together and her chin rested upon them. Her expression was just a touch softer than the moment before. “I’ve not been by The Pig and Whistle before. Not quite sure what they have here.” She pointed one finger out to Declan’s drink and pursed her lips. “What is that you have?”

Declan sat up straighter. A second chance! Don’t you dare screw this one up now, Westbrook--

“Um, beer.”

You prat! You unerring, pure unadulterated prat!

Before the woman could cock that devastatingly sharp eyebrow again, Declan sputtered on. “It’s, uh, the house special- really quite nice. Not too strong, not at all weak, just a little bit sweet around the edges…”

“That’ll do nicely, then. Parched as a murloc in Tanaris, me.” The woman reached slender, calloused fingers into a pouch at her side. In years to come, Declan would remember gallantly sliding a coin across to the barmaid before the clasp on her purse had even come undone; in actuality, he fumbled and flipped a coin hard enough to bounce it a foot into the air until it sadly came to rest on the floor behind the bar.

Declan winced and sucked in a breath through his teeth. Here goes nothing.

“I-if you’ll pardon my candour, ma’am, I’d quite like to buy you a drink.”

With her remarkable precision, the barmaid slid the woman a drink. She cupped a hand and gently caught it, and Declan saw one corner of her mouth pinch in a smile she was trying to hide. “Well, if you’ll pardon mine, I’d quite like to buy you one. If you’re still thirsty after that one, I mean.”

With a vigour not seen since his younger days, Declan threw back his head and chugged the rest of his beer. The last dregs of it spilled over his mouth and into his short beard, and he brought his elbow over his mouth to hastily wipe it off.

“I am awfully thirsty,” he said, with not a hint of irony. The woman laughed, and every other drunken soldier and boisterous dwarf tale faded into static. Declan’s mouth lifted in his own laugh; it was wonderfully infectious. So caught up in the genuine, beautiful laugh she had, he did not immediately register the hand being held out to him.

“Amanda Coleherne,” the woman said- Amanda said- and Declan moved to clasp his hand to hers.

“Declan Westbrook,” he breathed, voice pitched higher and just a little giddy. “...You have the same name as my donkey.”

You prat--!!

For all his inner turmoil, Amanda laughed harder.

“Who names a donkey Amanda? That’s a human name!” she cried, smiling into her beer as she finally drank deep of it. Her eyelids fluttered as the taste hit her tongue, as the chill ran through her and oh, that was cute--

“She’s as hardworking as any man or woman in the whole Dwarven District! These fine soldiers wouldn’t have their armour if she did not deliver them so diligently,” Declan laughed, defending his beast of burden’s honour, and gestured to the platoon from earlier. The two women the man had fawned over now sat in the lap of their captain, a woman so well-built Declan was sure she could break him over her knee if she so desired, and the man had taken to sadly fingering the rim of his beer glass.

“You made all that armour?” Amanda said, her interest clearly piqued. She leaned in closely, as if telling a secret. “Funny that we should meet here then- see those tabards?”

It was hard not to see the tabards, boldly coloured and adorned with proud lions in gold embroidery. Declan had always thought the tabards complimented the armour well, and vice versa.

Amanda took another swig and her smile grew just a touch smug. “We made them. The store I work for, I mean- I'm a tailor. We’re originally from Gilneas but thought to set up shop here once Stormwind was rebuilt. The Alliance is a fairly big customer of ours- chances are a fair number of tabards you’ve seen went through me first.”

Declan’s eyes grew wide, and his smile softer. "I dare say we've outfitted the entire royal guard between us, then." He raised his glass in offer of a toast. “To a job well done.”

With no hesitation, Amanda raised her glass in kind. The steins touched, making a happy little sound to mirror their expressions, and Declan let himself be bought many more drinks.

~~~

Conversation came easily after that. Amanda was quick-witted and sharp, funnier than anyone Declan had had the good grace to talk with, and for reasons that escaped him she found his bumbling attempts at flirting charming. After hours of deep conversation, shared laughter and wisdom and the occasional oversharing of issues, the end of the night drew nearer; with fatigue pervading them more and more with each passing minute, the smithy asked when they could do this again. His chest dropped into his stomach at the tailor’s fallen smile.

“We’re back off to Gilneas in the morning, I’m afraid. There’s political rumblings and I’m not entirely sure we’re welcome here anymore,” Amanda said tiredly, looking out the open pub door into the street. The sun was not too far off rising. “So, I’m going to set up shop back home. I’ll quite miss Stormwind, honestly.”

Declan’s heart broke. “You… won’t be coming back here, then?”

“If the men in charge can’t get along, then… no, probably not.” Amanda finished the last dregs of her beer and stood, no hint of a wobble to her. Declan stood with a gentle hand to her back regardless.

“...This is goodbye, then,” Declan mouthed, and he hated how utterly put out he sounded. The Gilnean woman smiled reassuringly, patting his forearm with beer-powered familiarity.

“Unless you visited me in Gilneas, instead.” Amanda trailed off as she rooted around in her pouch, pulling out a parchment and quill. Her tired, beer-addled hands betrayed her ever so slightly as she wrote, but she eventually passed Declan a scrawled and blotchy note- an address.

“I’ll be staying at my folk’s place for a while. See if I can’t get back into tailoring suits for Gilnean nobility. Some decent coin to be made there, I reckon.” Amanda looped an arm around Declan’s and pulled him into the street and he easily let himself be led- the early morning air was fresh and cold and settled gently on his skin. Amanda’s silhouette caught the faintest pink from the sky, her face rimmed in gentle pastel light, and Declan found himself a little breathless.

Amanda turned to him, that one eyebrow cocked again, and laid her free hand on Declan’s arm. “So, if you’re in the market for a suit or a good time, you’ll stop by?”

Holding the scrawled address to his chest as if it were the most precious thing he owned, Declan nodded.

~~~

A hot summer’s week later, Declan stood on an unfamiliar doorstep, knuckles raised to tap on the wood. He checked the address on his treasured scrap of parchment once, twice, matched it to this door-- Amanda was here.

The hastily picked wildflowers in his hand were already beginning to wilt in the heat- had he not gotten turned around almost immediately after walking through the gates of Gilneas, perhaps they would be as presentable as Amanda deserved, but it was much too late now. He had spent his last bit of coin on a gryphon here, he had no idea where the nearest florist was, and these were better than nothing. Probably. The smithy fought back to urge to simply fold in on himself and cease existing. She might hate them. She might be over me. She might have forgotten me. Oh, by the Light, what on Azeroth am I doing here--

“Are those for me?”

From above him, as if sent from some ethereal plane, was Amanda’s voice. She leaned out the frame of a diamond-hatched window, arms folded beneath her and smiling impossibly wide. Declan thrust his hand out towards her, offering the flowers, before his brain supplied that she could not possibly reach them from here. “Ahh, I-- um-- flowers--”

In the next moment she had disappeared into the house, apparating in the doorway almost immediately afterwards, and softly poked at the wilting bluebells in the bouquet. She was dressed in simple work clothes, covered in thread as if just having left her workshop, and her hazel gaze flicked up to meet Declan’s, expectant. Waiting.

“I’m-- in the market for a suit,” Declan sputtered, wishing so badly he had the courage that came with drink and knowing full well that this woman deserved infinitely more than drunken ramblings. “I’ve a date tonight.”

Amanda’s eyebrows shot up. “A date?”

“Yes. Possibly. Maybe. I hope.” He took a single, long breath and eased the wildflowers into Amanda’s hands. Courage, man. “I’ve yet to ask her, actually… but I’m hoping she’ll give this fool smithy a chance. She’s not left my head since last week- she does constant circles over my mind, I’m yearning for her good conversation, and I can’t sleep for wanting to see her again.”

The sly, happy little smile Declan had remembered Amanda with had settled into something warmer, fonder- touched.

“...I think she’d quite like a date,” she said finally, gently stroking a drooping bluebell to full height with the back of a fingertip. “If you’ll give her five minutes to change into something nice.”

The smile that beamed from Declan easily outshone the midday summer sun.

~~~

Not two years later, on a late spring day under a gently drizzling sky, Declan and Amanda Westbrook lay lazily on their shared bed with a newborn boy between them.

“He’s got your eyes,” Amanda crooned, brushing back the mop of rusty brown-red hair from the babe’s crown.

“He should give them back,” Declan grinned, laughing before he had even finished his sentence. Amanda groaned.

“That hurt more than the childbirth did. Dare I ask what name you’ve got planned for him?”

“Got a few ideas,” the new father said- father, by the Light, how did I manage that- letting his son grasp gently onto his finger. He was the perfect mixture of them, Declan thought; his mother's soft features and rusty-red hair, and his own iced blue eyes. Not too heavy a child to carry, not malnourished in the way so many unfortunate children were in recent days. Fitting between them perfectly, like the final piece of a jigsaw.

“Make it a good, human name. None of your weird donkey names.” Amanda curled around her son to gaze at her husband, all love and contentment.

“Does Fenton sound like a weird donkey name to you?” Declan grinned, liking the expression Amanda wore as she turned the name over in her head.

“Mmm.. Fenton. Fenton Westbrook. Our little Fen.” The new mother smiled, face damp in exhaustion, seeming to glow in the hazy light coming in through the window; and not for the first time, she effortlessly took Declan’s breath away.

“Sounds perfect.”