There was something rather magical about the way one experienced the exposal of someone’s true nature for the first time after a lifetime of respect and admiration towards them. To Mrs Whitmore that ‘someone’ was the entire race of elves—not just the elusive kaldorei that young Sue had obsessed about as a kid, but also the noble quel’dorei who she’d learned to look up to on the streets of Stormwind on the rare occasion that one had passed by on one of her daily walks to the marketplace. Elves were the power that had driven her dreams where she could be anyone she wanted and learn anything there was to learn.<br/><br/>Even after Sue had moved to Westfall to marry and become Mrs Whitmore, a farmer’s wife, and life had shown her that she was in fact a human and not very special at being one either, the idea of the Perfect Elf never really vanished from her thoughts. One day, she had thought, she’d finally pursue her dreams, pick up on all the books she had wanted to read and begin to acquire the knowledge of the oldest and the wisest of the elves, and then if she’d work really, really hard, even harder than the elves who had all the time in the world for that task, she’d become just as wise, just as perfect, even if it took her until the end of her days.<br/><br/>The book in Sue’s hand was not the right one to pull out, not because she didn’t want to read it, but because it made a gaping hole in the shelf that was empty on the other side. The loud noises of the argument behind the bookcase had already caught her attention before, but she had mistaken the participants for humans because she knew only humans behaved that way. Now she stared directly into the eyes of a highborn elf who she really, really hoped hadn’t noticed her through the rectangular hole, and quickly plugged the heavy book back in its place.<br/><br/>It was as if a spell had broken. Sue’s vision blurred and her feet wouldn’t move, which was in retrospect probably a good thing as she then decided she’d rather be very, very quiet and not make a racket with her heels. It wasn’t like she could outrun an elf, or anyone else for that matter, not on these shoes that she had only been using for a week, not on these legs that were still just as thick and heavy as years of farm life had made them into. She wasn’t really even sure why she thought she had to run or hide. Maybe it was the way the glow in the elf’s eyes had briefly pierced into her skull. Maybe she had stared for too long. It was too late now, anyway. Sue stood still, waited, and hoped that the pause in the argument had some other reason than the fact that she had been seen.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>