(2026-01-31) Superior Gentlemen

Details

Author:	inkie
Summary:	Shine and Arric catch up on recent events and mutual acquaintances. They both learn some surprising things.
Rating:	T for Teen

The afternoon sun scatters brilliant golden sequins on the surface of Inkgill Mere, and spills a honeyed light over the dried steppe grasses on the shore that paints them in warm hues of auburn and ochre rather than just Brown. The smell of smoke still lingers in the air, but it is by now mostly the fragrance of cook-fires and campfires around Binan rather than the acrid stink of burning farms and villages.

Costentyn Shine — just "Shine" to, well, everyone — is seated at the end of the dock with his legs folded comfortably. There is a notebook on the boards beside him, a pencil tucked within, but at the moment he is just cradling a cup of tea and gazing at the lake. Bun the tanuki dozes next to him in a lazy sprawl.

"Ho there!" cries a cheerful voice behind him.

Lord Arric Falrevere's Stormwind-noble accent and cadence is so expertly affected that anyone who didn't know better might mistake him for a member of the House. But Shine knows better.

"Gorgeous day isn't it?" Arric says as he approaches. His intent to sit down beside Shine is obvious, but he is carefully pathing so as to avoid embarrassment and continue onward if rebuffed.

Shine glances up and nods equably. "Aye," he agrees. He does not ask Arric to sit down, but the subtle shift of his weight to one side is a sort of symbolic gesture at making room for him.

Arric doesn't need to be not-asked twice! He settles himself down at a companionable distance.

"Seems like ages since I saw you," Arric says. "What have you been doing with yourself since our last adventure?"

"Well," says Shine. He has a way of saying Well, that makes it sound like it might be the whole story.

Evidently it is not, though. He lifts his teacup for a sip, and when he lowers it he says, "Fallon sent my wife up here to meet with Taylor. She ran afoul of saurok on the road, fell down a cave-ledge and dislocated her knee. I went to get her." He has another placid sip of tea. "Then we found a secret pond, climbed a stair up a mountain to a hidden village, and borrowed kites to get Lena back here to the infirmary." He shrugs. "That was mostly it."

It is literally impossible to tell whether the man is joking or deadly serious.

Arric pauses for a moment, then bursts into a warm cascade of laughter.

"A hidden village?" he says. "Capital! Almost worth dislocating a knee to stumble upon such a thing, if you'll pardon my turn of phrase. I'm certain by then she was walking most gracefully."

"No. Had to carry her up the mountain," says Shine, still in that bland way. "Knee dislocations can be rough."

"Oh, how dreadful," Arric says with a frown. "So sorry to hear it. Most fortunate that you were able to help her. I would certainly do the same for my lady, if she ever needed helping. Is she recovering well?"

Shine nods. "She is. Apothecary says she still needs to keep weight off it a while, but she's got proper binding and a crutch for it now. And anyway it's not like shipboard work, up here. She doesn't need to be on her feet so much." He glances over at Arric. "Have I met your lady?"

Arric blinks. "You know, I genuinely don't know! She's been quite active with Cobalt Company, and she is among the last living heirs to Stromgarde noble title, so lately she has been quite gloriously defending that area. She was also at the Battle of Bladefist Bay. Her name is —" Arric's face goes blank. "Blast!" he says, turning quite red. "I — it isn't that I do not know her name. I can just never keep straight which I am supposed to use with whom. She has a pair of them. Miss Ionala Webster, for most of her time with Cobalt, when she was concerned that she might be targeted because of her parentage, but properly Lady Zephyrine Kerwyn."

Shine raises his eyebrow. "Oh, aye, I know Miss Webster. Lady Zephyrine. Though I knew her as Miss Webster. She did some work for Fallon with the Cobalt Eye. Congratulations to ye, then. She's an admirable young lady."

"She… she is. I admire her terribly." Arric clears his throat. "Speaking of the Admiral, have you had much chance to speak with him lately?"

Shine shakes his head. "Not since we came up here. Since sometime before that. Lena'd have talked to him most recent, if there's something ye need to know?"

"Not truly. Nothing to bother him with. Just… wondering how he is. Here we are in more or less the same remote corner of the world and I've not had the chance to lay eyes on him." Arric sighs, a touch wistfully.

Shine's brow goes up again and he contemplates Arric. He is acquainted with people who sigh wistfully about not having laid eyes on the Admiral recently. He did not know Arric was one of them.

"He's well enough," Shine says. There is a moment's silent consideration, as though he is weighing how much to confide in Arric, and then he reaches a decision. "It's been hard on him, aye? He's here wi' three ships trying to organize an Alliance effort against Hellscream. Can't bring in a bigger force from home, can't offend or upset the pandaren, Taylor's been out of it for months. It's all on his shoulders right now." He looks out toward the lake again, and drops a hand to scratch Bun idly. "If it goes pear-shaped before the rest of the Alliance has got off its arse — and it's going to go pear-shaped at some point — every finger's going to point at him. Aye?"

"Oh my," Arric says gravely. He studies Shine for a moment. "I don't suppose there is anything I could do to help? Between squad missions, of course."

"Likely not," Shine says. "He just carries shit around in his own head.” He thinks about it, shrugs. “Might be an idea for ye just to go and see him, though. He'd probably be glad of a visit with a countryman, a friend, someone outside the fleet."

Arric's pale blue eyes widen slightly; he hesitates.

"Do you think so?" he says, a bit quieter than his usual blithe, congenial tone. "You've said he's overburdened with work — at times a social visit can be a respite, but at other times, it's just another burden. I wish I knew him well enough to be absolutely certain."

"I know him… probably better than anyone save Lady Sintha, and I do think he'd be glad of it. You've talked engineering with him in the past, aye? Something like that. Not the war effort or the Horde." Shine glances down at Bun, who has wriggled over on his back to dangle his paws in the air so that Shine can direct scratches to his belly.

Arric is briefly distracted by Bun. He makes a blobcat_aww face.

"Oh, what a little gentleman," he says rapturously. "What a polite and patient little gentleman! His belly in desperate need of attention and yet he does not say a word to interrupt, no he does not!"

Shine pauses the tanuki-belly-skritches to look up at Arric for an impassive moment. Then he goes back to scratching. "Aye. Manners, that's what Bun's best at."

"He must be so wonderfully soft. Such a soft little belly." Then with such a lack of transition or tone shift one might wonder if it was the Admiral's soft underbelly they were discussing all along, Arric says, "I shall go see him then, if you truly believe it will help. Cheer him with talk of bolts and gears. I think I shan't show him my new ghost iron dragonling though; I've rather got the impression he detests such creatures."

"Ah," says Shine. He continues to scratch Bun in silence. Then, "Ye picked up on that? He likes mechanicals well enough — Lady Sintha makes them by the dozen — but no, can't abide a dragon. I expect a mechanical one wouldn't… have the same effect on him, but probably best all the same if he doesn't see it."

Arric nods. "I do try to… note people's preferences and such, when I can. It does make befriending them a great deal easier. I can usually talk my way out of a blunder, but better not to wander into the weeds in the first place, hm? Oh, I can ask after Avior as well," he interrupts himself. "The foal he let me name." He smiles proudly.

Shine nods. After a silence, he says, "Some blunders are harder than others. The business with the cloud serpents for the navy, for instance. I… wouldn't mention it to him. It would go badly. For him, mostly, I mean. But it wouldn't help you."

Arric furrows his brow. "Ah is that why you nearly quarreled with your lovely wife? Worried she would bring one back to the fleet? I did find your resistance peculiar at the time. But…they aren't dragons! They haven't even any wings! Does he simply abhor anything with scales? Snakes as well? Lizards? Such wonders he'll miss."

Shine shakes his head. "Lena knew why I thought it a bad idea. Just hadn't struck her at first. And they haven't got wings, no, but they fly. And they fight." He glances sidelong at Arric. "Ye know he was at Crestfall, aye? As a child."

"Crestfall," Arric repeats quietly. Not being a military man, it's obvious that there is no immediate association, but he visibly rummages through his brain. "The orcs…" he says. "They had dragons, yes? But surely he doesn't blame them. The dragons, I mean. They were enslaved!"

"He was ten years old," Shine says. "And he died. He's had nightmares all his life. Had… a bit of a breakdown after the Wrathgate, when the dragons came."

"He… he died?" Arric's eyes look likely to pop out of their delicate sockets. "Ten years old?" Arric stares. Then his mouth trembles, and he looks away. "Bloody Tides…" he swears softly. Perhaps inadvertently describing the scene all too accurately.

"That's right," says Shine — whether confirming the truth of the tale or agreeing with Arric is ambiguous. He sets his teacup on top of his notebook and lifts the bonelessly drowsy Bun into his lap.

"So he doesn't hate dragons, he —" Arric seems to take a moment to process this. He has the look of someone undergoing a massive, cataclysmic paradigm shift. Admiral… afraid???

"Tides and Light, that must be — a man like him wouldn't know how to — so he just avoids them? But they're everywhere. It would be like drawing a maze for yourself, always having to bend your path around them."

Shine nods equably. "Aye. About like."

"Ah, if only he would accept my help," Arric says, eyes suspiciously shiny. He blinks a few times. "If I avoided everything that frightened me I would have to live in an actual box. But then I'd be frightened of the dark. So you see, I'd have no kind of life at all. There may not be much I can teach a man, but there are two things I know: animals, and how to face fear.

"Three things," he quickly amends. "I also know firearms and the like." His tone suggests that he is defending his manhood.

"I think," says Shine thoughtfully to the top of Bun's head, "that ye might be the man for the job. You're Tirasian, you understand Crestfall. You've known Fallon for years. You're sensitive to this sort of business. And ye won't patronize him." That last sentence has the tone less of an observation than a warning.

"Never!" Arric looks somewhere between offended and astonished. "I'm well aware that the Admiral is my superior in every imaginable way. I couldn't manage to condescend if my life depended upon it. How he chooses to interpret me is another matter — I cannot claim to have power over such a strong and willful mind — but I can assure you that my respect and sympathy are sincere and that there isn't an ounce of perceived superiority anywhere in my veins."

Shine looks flabbergasted. Which is to say, he turns his head to look directly at Arric, a faint line inscribed on his forehead. "Your 'superior in every imaginable way'? I assure ye, Falrevere, he's not that. Just a man. A good man, mostly, and a brave and accomplished one. But I've known him from the age of fifteen and I can assure ye there are stories I could tell. I won't, but I could. You're a principled man, and skilled and sensitive, and that doesn't make either of ye inferior or superior. I'm a ferryman's son, never rose higher than lieutenant of marines, and served in his house as footman and butler, and I know he's not my superior in that sense. Tides. He'd be insufferable. But I'm just me, and you're just you, and Fallon's just Fallon."

Arric colors slightly, a fact all too visible on his near-transparent complexion. It's not clear if he's pleased, or embarrassed, or ashamed, or some unholy combination of the three.

"You're kind to speak of me so highly," he says after a moment in a subdued tone. "And I imagine, with him being almost a brother to you, it is easy to both admire and find fault. To me, he is simply the man whose company my childhood best friend preferred to mine, and who outranks me twice over, and to whose cleverness and charisma and fortitude I would be foolish to even aspire." He smiles warmly, giving Shine a brief pat on the forearm. "But do not worry that I am overly troubled by this, my friend and comrade-in-arms. I've never had expectations of equality. I was superfluous from birth, have nothing in particular to distinguish me, and I take a sort of perverse pride in the life I have managed to carve out for myself despite this."

Shine stares at Arric for a time. Then he shrugs equably. "Personally, I don't believe in superfluous people. I'm surprised that a friend of Lady Sintha's does."

Bun lifts his head to glare at Shine. At some point the petting ceased, which is an unacceptable degree of neglect.

Arric looks briefly troubled. "How does Lady Sintha figure in?" he asks, with the tone of one who possibly left the stove on in a very flammable cottage.

"Ye know she went to live with her mother's family because her father's counted her useless, aye? Because she wasn't born a tidesage, and that's what Fallons are. Or ought to be, to their way of thinking."

A temper worthy of his hair flashes briefly through Arric's eyes, and he sits up straighter.

"But they were wrong," he says. "That's just madness. Madness my poor sister married into, Tides carry and Light save her. One has only to stand in Lady Sintha's presence for three ticks of a stopwatch to see her quality. To say nothing of the fact that she probably designed the stopwatch."

"And she chose you for a friend, and ye design guns and ghost iron dragonlings, and ye took a stand at personal cost against your people and your country when they turned their back on the world, and ye know more about animals and their care than nearly anyone I've met." Shine shrugs again. "I don't see the difference. Your sister's the lady who married Rhodri?"

Arric needs a minute to stop himself from bursting into tears at the praise before he can process the question.

"Yes, the poor soul," Arric says. "She would never desert him, and she adores their children, but he is most neglectful of her, and the one time I met him he seemed a dreadfully boorish and heartless fellow. She worries for the children's safety, you know, after what Those People did to poor Lady Kinseil."

Shine digests this. "Ye might ask Fallon, actually, if ye go and see him. About Rhodri. I think he's the one of the Parrish cousins that Fallon knew best. And the man certainly understands wanting to protect a sister. He's done it all his life for Lady Sintha." There's a pause and the furrow appears again. "Lady Kinseil? I haven't heard of her. She's a Parrish?"

Arric's jaw works briefly. "The fact you haven't heard of her is exactly what they did to her. Erased her. Told her she wasn't part of the family, on account of not being a Tidesage, and when she ran away in what I imagine was absolute despair they didn't even look for her, just… struck her from the family records and moved on." Arric shakes his head.

Shine's expression remains neutral. He nods and looks away. "Sounds like Parrishes. Although then ye have to wonder why they'd marry their eldest son to a grass noble." He pauses. "Begging your pardon."

"Hmmm." Arric clearly hasn't considered that angle. "I wonder if the Admiral could enlighten me. The more I understand their thinking, the better I can protect my sister — assuming communication ever resumes." He sighs. "I must believe it will, and in my lifetime."

Shine nods. "It will," he says with quiet conviction. He scratches beneath one of Bun's ears. "I've got family over there. There's people at home won't let them shut us out forever."

"In the meantime," Arric says, "All we can do is pray. To whomever will listen."

"Aye," agrees Shine dryly. "That and keep saving the world."