A short World of Warcraft story by ZAM user matrigs.

Schuh thought for a moment and then realized that someone, a kid like himself, sent this letter and it wasn’t going to get there in time (it was only five days away.) He was pretty certain that he was going to get something since he stopped being bad a couple months ago, but was she? This Beth didn’t sound like she was bad. Sitting in the quiet hut he recalled his older sister’s chest full of stuff she saved. Safely distanced with her alchemy apprenticeship in Grom’ Gol he decided to investigate it’s contents. After several handfuls of girly junk had been removed he saw what he was looking for…a beautiful though battered human priest doll. She was in decent enough condition but could use some stuffing and Schuh knew he had little time before the goblin would pass back through from Ratchet so he got to work .

In Ratchet, the news was bad; Un Goro and Azshara’s supply of healing herbs was depleted to nothing, without question. Whatever was available from Eastern Plaguelands and the Steppes was so far away it made no difference regardless. Every ship that docked answered the same and Atnas began to feel the dread creep in as to what this amounted to.

“Those people are lost…and that poor little girl” he thought with a heavy heart. Purchasing a small crate of Major Troll’s Blood with the entire funds he made off the crystal vial delivery he sadly made his way back up into the Barrens.

“These potions won’t save them, but it might… might ease... their children’s suffering.”

To top it off he had lost Beth's letter. With that thought the miserable carrier raced back up the hill into the Barrens.

Schuh was not standing idle either. Eyes peeled for any movement on the horizon through the constantly drifting snows, he started as a sleigh came into view. Rushing down to meet the downcast goblin who barely glanced his way, the little troll held up his gift... a present for the little elf he neither met nor knew.

“Eh?” the goblin blurted as the child thrust the package upon him.

“This is for someone who's letter YOU lost.” he replied with an enormous smile. “It’s what she asked for so I think it will make her very happy.”

The weary deliverer smiled back the best he could; devastated that he couldn’t even get Bethlamae’s simple letter to one old man.

“If happiness was all I could take back to that village I’d crawl back to them with it on my back” he said, taking the small box with a simple ribbon and setting it down beside him in the sleigh. And crawling back is just what it felt like, the poor fellow.