I have been and am continuing to be rather ill. I’m not looking for sympathy (thanks though), this is just the reason I’ve been so quiet here and on Twitter and on WoW Insider, etc. I’m getting better. It will all be okay. In the meantime, I have something very important to post here. Important, wonderful, and very belated. Belated because of me, not because of my Furtive Father Winter.
You see, I fully intended to participate in FFW, but my illness made all my creativity go bye bye. I’m still waiting for it to come back. In the meantime, I completely dropped the ball on my gift recipient, but Redcow has since taken care of that. (Thank you!) I also dropped the ball on getting my gift post posted here. I love this poem and picture so much that I must admit it overwhelmed me a bit. Enough of my whinging.
Without further ado, I give you Prinnie Powah’s wonderful gift to me:

Hello there!
For Furtive Father Christmas, I have elected to butcher Edgar Allen Poe in Lorell’s name. This is based on the character’s diary entries found at Cosmic Geek, which seem to take place at the Keep on Fenris Isle in Silverpine. I was also inspired by a quest in the area called “Rise, Forsaken”, where you bolster the Forsaken’s forces by killing the human refugees in the Keep.
Will the First would be the narrator here. While he is mentioned only twice in the sparse diary entries Lorell keeps (once as a potential appetizer and once in passing), it sounds as though there may be something there (or was, prior to death). In the twisted little happy ending I picture, Will the First was raised as Darnell. Mary – now Lorell – no longer remembers him, but he hasn’t forgotten.
With fullest apologies to both Mr. Poe and Lorell, because only Gawd knows just how far off I am …
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a woman there lived whom you may know
By the name of Mary the Free;
And this human she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a guard and she was a cook,
In this kitchen of the Keep;
But we loved with a love that was more than love- I and my Mary the Free;
With a love that the winged seraphs of Northrend
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A foul plague came from the east, killing
My beautiful Mary the Free;
So that her darkborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in the Sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The Light, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the plague came out of the east by night,
Creating and raising her Lorell the Free.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who stood longer than we-
Of many far warmer than we-
And neither the Light in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the formidable Lorell the Free.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the rotting Lorell the Free;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the terrible Lorell the Free;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling – Forsaken – undead yet my bride,
In the Sepulchre there by the sea,
In our tomb by the sounding sea.