(2025-04-23) The Patient Sentry Ghosts

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Author:	inkie
Summary:	Emerine heads for the highlands to give Shine a break from playing friendly ghost.
Rating:	T for Teen

Arc: The Red String Game

It is never completely dark in this part of the Highlands. At night, the eerie violet glow from the Black Breach to the northeast and other, more distant ruptures in the land make a strange, dim twilight.

A solitary, half-ruined building stands a mile or so outside of Thundermar, amid the more thorough rubble of some smaller satellite settlement. The whole area looks uninhabited, abandoned: No firelight gleams, nothing moves in the semi-darkness. Approached from a certain angle, however, one might make out the triangular silhouette of a tent standing in the partial shelter of the broken building.

Up a short slope from there, in the deeper shadows of a slumped and broken wall, Shine is sitting cross-legged and close to invisible, motionless as another crooked stone. He is watching the surrounding area like a patient sentry ghost.

A riddle for the ages: How do two near-invisible people find each other?

It helps when one of them has been told where to go.

Emerine purposefully reveals herself in silence, and then there is a kaldorei standing in the rubble of the building across the road. She pulls down her hood and mask, revealing dark green hair given additional shimmering tones in the twilight.

Shine is instantly alert: Without seeming to move, he is up from his seated position to a ready crouch, knife in hand — and then the gleaming green hair registers. After a wary, assessing moment, he slips the knife away and rises to his feet. He crosses the road to Emerine in silence.

Emerine nods to him with a trace of a smile. "Shine. That's his tent, then?"

Shine looks over his shoulder at the silhouette and then back to Emerine. "Aye. How'd ye find us?" He tenses again abruptly. "Is everyone well? At Fallon House? Is there news — ?"

Emerine nods. "Everyone's well," she says, holding her hands out in a placating way. "Fallon sent me. They're getting organized to head out to the Highlands. Coit will be coming sooner than the rest."

Shine relaxes. "She knows I'm not at Highbank? And who are… 'the rest'? The brothers?"

"Fallon told her you were with Fray." Emerine ticks off on her fingers, "The brothers, three druids — Miss Curran and two Gilneans, Oslynn Gravehowl and Lady Merelda Veyne. Fallon himself. Bertrand Aspenwood. Aszera Sunstrike. I'm making an assumption that Natalyah Kensington-Whit will also be accompanying Dinnsfield." Those are the ones she knows about, at least.

He nods. "Aye, good, all right. I told him we had a team that could fight." Shine glances over his shoulder at the silent tent, and then back to Emerine. "I'll want to get in to Thundermar to send some word to Fallon, but we've been keeping low out here the last couple've days. He patrols during the day, keeps an eye on the Twilights. Doesn't love people in general, loves Alliance military even less."

"I can watch him," Emerine offers. "I don't know if he'll be too pleased to meet me, but he doesn't have to, if he's sleeping."

Shine glances over his shoulder again. "I'd be obliged if ye would, Nightvine." He looks back at her. "He'll be up an hour or so before dawn. I'll likely be back before then, but if I'm not — I'll write a note, aye? You can give him."

He tilts his head in a beckoning motion. "Come across with me and I'll get it together. Good vantage over there, if ye want the spot. But I expect if anyone could find better, you'd be it."

"Better for the area at large, perhaps, but not for watching him," Emerine agrees. "It's a good spot, you picked well." She vanishes in front of Shine's eyes, but he can hear her footsteps softly following him.