| abstract | - I should start with my beginning, though my beginning is lost to everyone but myself. Who we are is based on our friends, our families, and our homes -- on the alliances we form. All of those are long-gone for me. I start here, awake to this new day. I slept for what felt like a thousand years; it was very nearly that long, in fact. How to explain the Emerald Dream to someone who has not existed within it for a millennia? Did you ever happen to find yourself feverish to the point of delirium, where you were unsure of time or place? Yes, it is perhaps a bit like that. Not so unpleasant, certainly. But not so different, either. And how to explain my awakening from that Dream? I will tell you: I thirst insatiably. My mouth and lips were dry, cracked leaves. I thirst, yet I could scarcely remember how to drink; I hungered, yet could not recall how to feed. To feel that burning desire and to know the way to satisfy that desire is lost to you, that was my pain, waking from the Emerald Dream. I did not even think of those who had passed during my long sleep, only of the thirst and hunger that racked my body. It was a strange, new world I woke to. And with that awakening came fresh insight into the workings of the world and the nature of Balance. How can I join with my elven brethren in – yet again – fighting to correct the wrongs they’ve committed? How can I join forces with the same orcs who fight the Scourge and clear away the forests? How can I ignore the prideful sins of my own people and ignore the spirituality of the Tauren? Archdruid Fandral and Priestess Tyrande quarrel openly in Darnassus, demonic forces run on both sides of the alliances, betrayal knows no boundaries, and the sacrifice of my thousand years of sleep was for nothing. My sacrifice was almost for nothing, I should say...the Balance is strong. It is strong enough that I have learned the hard lesson of the Emerald Dream...it is only the disappointment of a thousand-year sleep and the toll of history that can open eyes such as mine. I can say now that Balance is about embracing something beyond one race, beyond one single homeland. We create alliances to fit our time and place, and this time and place, for me, is not among the elves or the orcs or the humans; it is among all of them. Nations rise and fall. Merchant houses rise and fall too, it's true, but there will always be those to buy and those to sell. There will always be those who rise, thirsty, and those who will have a cup for them to drink from. Nations and merchants clear forests, drain swamps, lay roadways, drive caravans across the lands. It's a struggle to keep them from destroying the same things that they would provide to others. Still...there are yet others who provide. These other individuals are the ones walking hidden by-ways and deer-runs with soft steps. These are the ones who carry what they need through their own strength. They supply what the teeming masses of the cities cry for, but they do so with as little sound as possible. This hidden network knows no boundaries, knows no homeland, and suffers to endure no betrayals. In this way they are pure unto themselves, and so they remain through the ebb and flow of nations.
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