Author's Notes: This might be the only update before Halloween, as I have two tons of sewing to do. There is an illustration up on dA.

Review Reply: No, it isn't Elf.

The crane was right there. She could easily sight it down the length of her arrow. She didn't even have to think.

Her target was gone. Everything was gone. Something was in front of her vision completely.

The crane was there again. Her husband was in front of it. He was whispering to her to shoot it. She could hear him clearly.

They were both gone. The blackness laughed at her, taunted her with its completeness.

They were there again. They were in relatively the same position. Immediately she drew back an arrow and fired.

Everything faded out again. It was instantaneous, but it didn't fade out completely this time: only a thin black sheet covered everything. Was she winning the fight? Was she stronger than whatever was attacking her?

The crane squawked loudly and charged her husband. She must have missed. Desperate, she drew back another arrow and fired before her vision left her again. She was able to see the arrow hit a tree uselessly before the blackness hit her again, solidly this time. She fell limply back, not even catching herself as her body impacted the grass.

Fighting her way out of the dream was hard. Just like the night before, she felt as if her dreamscape surrounded her with a membrane that she had to tear her way through to reach reality. She was at least prepared for it this time: instead of helplessly witnessing the events scroll through her brain over and over until she was too emotional to think, she starting working her way out immediately. She broke through and sat up with a gasp.

It was still full dark. Her sense of time had been skewed since she stepped foot on the island, but It felt like the darkest part of the night, a few hours before daybreak. Slowly her heart slowed its fast paced as she looked around. There was nothing out of place in their tent. Dagra had been asleep at their feet, but he had lifted his head when she woke. He was completely relaxed, though. Her husband was still asleep beside her, his hair all a mess and one arm flung up over his head. There wasn't even a sense that something was watching them.

Gently, she smoothed Elforen's hair back from his face. He murmured, but otherwise remained asleep. Carefully, she slid out of the covers. It bothered her from somewhere deep in the back of her head that she could still do that; that she could remove herself from bed without her husband noticing. She took her hooded cloak as she unlaced the opening of the tent and slipped outside. She left her boots inside, though. Silently, Dagra got up to follow her.

The air outside the tent was thick with the humidity and life of the island. Unlike the late summer of back home, a chill permeated her thin nightclothes and she pulled her cloak on. She wasn't going far, after all: she just needed to move. She needed to walk this restless feeling out of her feet and put her head to rights. She dug her toes into the soil as she walked and it kept the feeling of dissociation at bay. Her feet were on the ground: she was on the ground. She rubbed her thumb against her forefinger and by the time she reached the tree she had her eye on, it had grown into a tapping. It was slow, it was rhythmic, it was the sound of her heart beating in her chest and her nearly-silent footfalls among the foliage. She was present. She was fine. Dreams were fine. Even if the dreams took her memories and slid them around like water until she couldn't remember which event had actually happened and which was an exaggeration by her mind. The last thought started to catch her, but she put her hands on the rough bark of the tree and started to climb, and that calmed her again. Climbing hand over hand, she made it several branches up until she found a solid one she could crouch on. She settled down on it, on her toes and haunches, and watched the trees around them.

The jungle was quiet at night. There were traces of birds and creatures, but it was far less than what she would have expected for the activity during the day. Down below Dagra whined as he paced back and forth in front of the tree, but eventually decided to lie in front of it than try to scale the thin branches. That suited her fine: she didn't want anything up here but the chill against her cheek, the thick smell of the jungle below, the wind ruffling her hair.

Elforen found her that way, hours later. She heard him call for her, but she didn't answer. She was watching the sun rise, watching the earliest rays burst across the deep purple and green shadows of the foliage and it was beautiful. More than that, she had spent the entire night wrapped in shadows. If any wayward, semi-sentient dark spots were to pass through, she would miss them. She wanted to confirm, in bright daylight, that they had just been a figment of her imagination fueled out of control in her dreams. As the new light filtered into the shadows around her, scrubbing them out and lighting up the jungle, she took a deep breath. There was no indication of the darkness from before. She must have, as much as she was loathe to admit it, just missed.

"Zarabethe!"

"Here."

She unwound herself from the crouched position she had held for literally hours now and peered down below. Even from up here she could see how upset he was.

"I have been calling you for over an hour, all around this tree. Were you asleep?"

"Sorry." For some reason it took a monumental amount of effort to throw off the intense fugue she had been in and focus on reality. She needed to get out of the tree. It was time to get everything ready for the day. And at some point, she should probably explain herself.

"Were you-did I upset you somehow?"

He reached a hand up to help her down the final few feet and her first impulse was to snatch her hand back. Almost immediately she made herself reach down and grasp his hand and let him pull her down beside him. He kept a hand in her waist and she made an enormous effort to ignore how it made her skin crawl. What was wrong with her this morning? His silence was not a comfortable one and she wracked her brain for an answer.

"I was lost in thought. I am sorry." It was a terrible answer and she knew that he knew by the way his mouth tightened up at the corners.

But try as she might, she had no real reason why she had just spent several hours awake, staring into the oblivion.

They arrived back at camp without incident, Dagra bouncing along ahead of them. Elforen made to go build up the fire, and she grabbed his arm.

"Wait."

Even though it strange to do so, she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.

"I wasn't hiding from you. I'm sorry for worrying you."

His shoulders visibly relaxed. He brought his hand up to brush against her cheek and she had to bit her lip to keep from flinching. Light damn it she had to keep her impulses in check.

"If you need to be by yourself, I understand, just let me know, alright?"

She nodded, grateful that the movement dislodged her hand. After he turned away she swiped a hand across her face. If her touch aversion was going to flare up for no reason, this trip just got that much harder. Determinedly she wiped her hands down her shirt and went to change. She would make it work. She wasn't going to ruin the trip for Elf just because of her strange anxieties.

Despite the strange start to the morning, once they got going things went smoothly. Zarabethe was quiet, but that was not really out of the ordinary at all. Elforen snuck a look at her as they navigated through a particularly dense group of bamboo. She moved with confidence and her face was set with determination. He attempted to shrug off his feeling of unease. She often disappeared to be alone at home. In fact when he woke to find her missing this morning, he wasn't worried at all. He paced a widening perimeter of the campsite, watching for signs of life and calling her name. He found Dagra, and assumed she was in that tree, or at least close by. But when she didn't respond to him calling her, and he circled the tree with no response, he started to panic. What if an animal had gotten her? what if she had gotten stuck somewhere and couldn't answer? By the time she finally revealed herself, he was starting to move past basic worry and into the darkest thoughts. What if she had left him here? What if she had finally decided to continue what she had started thirty-two years ago and abandon their family forever?

He stopped abruptly and shook his head. No, he was going to stop that train of thought right now. He had had thoughts like those for years: that one day he would wake up in the bed they shared and she would simply be gone. Then Genne had come, and they stuck through it, then Kalibose had been lost, and they stuck through it. Then they had gotten married officially and much of his anxiety had finally eased away. It was just the strangeness of this place. It was getting to him.

"Elf!"

She had gotten quite a bit ahead of him. he could barely see her in the dense strands of green that were threatening to envelope them, but he could tell she had stopped and was gesturing him to come closer. He hurried his pace, and when he reached where she was holding the bamboo back for him to see, all other thoughts left his head.

"It's...a pandaren village? Way out here?"

Zarabethe nodded. "I know, it doesn't make any sense."

He pushed past her, through the gap she had made in the bamboo, and tried to get a better look. It wasn't a large village, less than fifteen straw huts and structures. There was a wide, well-worn path down the middle that circled a fountain, then led down to the shoreline and an almost concealed dock. All of that wasn't strange at all, but there had been no mention of a native village in the brochure, either to advertise amenities or warn people away. In fact it had been stressed that there was no civilization at all beyond the Celestial Court.

The strangest thing about it all though, wasn't the pandaren men stringing up fish and the women cooking, and the cubs running underfoot. It was that every single person didn't seem to realize at all that they were in the middle of a dense jungle on an isolated island. And none of them had so much as glanced his way.

"It's a fishing village." Zarabethe slipped up beside him. She had an arrow out and on the string, but her bow was pointed at the ground. "I have no idea why, though."

"Look at this."

He picked up a small piece of shale, and skipped it right into the midst of three pandaren women gossiping while doing the laundry. They didn't acknowledge the stone, even though it rolled right up to and then through their washtub.

Zarabethe made a noise of surprise and stepped past him, until she was standing right in front of the trio. She waved a hand right in between them. They ignored her completely.

"They are trapped between worlds." As Elforen approached them, Zarabethe waved a hand right through the nearest woman. She didn't even look up, just laughed at something her companion said and wrung out a shirt before hanging it up. The closer he got he realized that they had a slight shimmer about them, as if they were not entirely in this world. He couldn't resist waving a hand in front of one woman's face, although he declined putting a hand through them.

"Do you think they are dead?"

"I have no idea." Zarabethe started down the path that led through town. She avoided the ethereal pandaren as much as possible. Dagra slunk through after her as if he thought this was the worst idea in the world.

"I guess, to them, it doesn't matter. They are continuing on whether they are alive or not."

There had been feelings and creatures on the Timeless Island that had made him uneasy before, but as he strode carefully through the village locked away from time and reality, nothing had been flat out creepy like this village was. There were children here that would never grow up. There were adults who would never leave. Were the fish in there with them? Did they repeat the same day over and over or did they follow along their own timeline? Would there ever be an end or at least a continuation of their story?

A shout came from the pier sitting by the shore. Already on edge, Elforen turned that way, his short sword and shield at the ready. An older pandaren man wearing a floppy hat and waving a fishing pole around ecstatically was obviously yelling for his friends to come see what he had caught. Elforen felt a pricking feeling along his spine. The water started to churn in the ocean just beyond the jutting dock and beside him Dagra flattened his ears against his skull and whined.

"This, this is just part of the illusion, right?"

Zarabethe's hesitant voice did nothing to calm his feelings of trepidation. He took a step in front of his wife instinctively as the ghost pandaren around them began to run in fear back to their huts. The water churned more violently at the end of the dock, and Elforen could actually feel the spray kicked up by whatever was beneath the surface, could smell the saltiness and fish smell of the water. His answer was so low it blended with the rumble of the earth.

"This is no illusion."

He started forward, Zarabethe and Dagra behind him. The pandaren were in no danger: although they ran away as if afraid, they were ethereal. Even if they were about to be injured, they couldn't be saved. He wove his way swiftly through them until he was standing right at the dock. The water churned even more violently, he could feel the vibration of it through his metal-tipped boots and the spray was wetting his hair. He heard his wife move around into position behind him on the right side. He set his shoulder behind his shield, and drew one of his long swords. He really had no idea what was kind of eldritch horror was about to emerge from the depths, but they were ready.

With a roar that shook the trees, a creature burst out of the water as if it were escaping confinement. Elforen jumped back in spite of himself. the sea creature was huge. It had large bulbous eyes set on the side of its heads, spiky fins on its head and all the way down its thick neck. it didn't have much in the way of arms, just stubby things with fins at the end, and no legs that he could see. If nothing else it appeared to be strictly a water creature, which was a small relief considering half its face opened up in a gaping maw filled with pointed teeth.

Behind him Zarabethe cursed creatively enough to make his brother proud. He half-chuckled as he tipped his head her way.

"Think we can handle-"

The rest of his sentence died on his lips. She wasn't looking at the monster that had spawned out of the sea in front of them. She squinted at the shoreline, shook her head, squinted again, then cursed again. With the back of the arm holding her arrow, she rubbed it across her eyes furiously. Elforen glanced back over at their opponent. While they were distracted, the creature had found the pandaren fisherman who had pulled him up. Whether the pandaren was ethereal or not, apparently he still made a good lunch. Elforen flinched as the pandaren was chewed up and swallowed right in front of them. He took a step back to Zarabethe, but still in range of the creature.

"Zarabethe! What's wrong?"

"Nothing! There's-there's something in my eyes!"

He risked a glance backward. She met his gaze but something in it was wrong. It took longer than the glance warranted for him to realize belatedly that her eyes were not the right color. She glared at him and then back to the sea monster.

"Are we going to kill this thing or what?"

She set an arrow to her string, and shaking her head again, fired.

Elforen watched the arrow fly true to its target and hit it dead center. Unfortunately, its target seemed to have been one of the tall palm trees right in front of the creature. Elforen could almost feel the indignation coming in waves off his wife as she darted forward and fired again. This time she hit it directly between the eyes. It roared in irritation instead of pain, and Elforen let his warrior instincts take over. He charged forward, and within moments was engaging the sea creature.

Fighting the creature was not hard. It's stubby fins were obviously meant for swimming and not combat. He deflected them easily as he tested his sword against its underbelly. The skin was soft enough there: his sword penetrated easily up to the hilt. The layer of blubber under its skin protected its organs, however. He would need something of considerable length to reach the proper depth.

He heard his wife cry out in warning at the same time that the creature flexed backward, and without even thinking, he threw himself to the side. He hit the ground hard on his right shoulder, and kept rolling. Far closer than he was comfortable with, the creature slammed its face onto the ground, tearing up chunks of earth as it tried to consume the prey that had been there moments before. Elforen did not wait for it to rectify its mistake and scrabbled to his feet, kicking up mud as he got as far away as quickly as possible. Zarabethe had taken up a point position on a rocky crag several yards away, and he headed there. Behind him the creature thrashed and roared, but it did not leave the safety of the water. his wife had the heel of her hand pressed against her forehead and her eyes squeezed shut, but she straightened up as he approached. As much as he didn't believe her for an instant that there was nothing wrong, right now they had bigger problems.

"I think we need to re-think this."

She nodded once, her expression tight. He continued on, his mind going miles ahead. There were palm trees along the shoreline, and the dock was in the way, but there was a hole in the natural windbreak just to the right of the creature. Just big enough to let it through. He reached up and patted her boot to get her attention.

"Come on, we can't lose its attention."

He took off at a zigzag toward the open section of shore. The ground grew more sandy and wet as he advanced and threatened to suck his feet in and trip him up, but he ran as lightly as one wearing plate mail could. He heard Zarabethe leap off the rock and follow him. The sea creature was looking for them. Its eyes were huge, but it didn't seem to see well in the brightness of daylight and wobbled back and forth like a blind man. He bent and picked up a large lose rock without slowing down.

"Hey!" he shouted, and lobbed the rock to the side of him. The creature turned his way, but when it dove teeth-first into the sand expecting to make an Elforen-sized meal, it was in the direction of the rock he through. He nodded to himself as they approached the break in the trees. He slowed his steps as he turned to his wife.

"It can hear better than it sees, and it feels vibrations better than that. Do you think you can piss it off?"

She nodded curtly, but her face was hesitant. He glanced back at the creature as it scrabbled along the ground where the rock had been thrown.

"I will need to get closer."

She didn't quite meet his eyes as she said this, and he didn't dwell on it. "Make sure you line up with the break in the trees. We are going to lure it on to shore."

She startled visibly and beside them Dagra gave a panicked whine at the creature. "Are you sure that's the best course of action? We don't have a weapon that can penetrate its blubber."

"We don't have to." He picked up a rock and threw it as hard as he could. It hit the monster on its side and it roared in anger as it snuffled for its attacker.

"It's obviously a deep sea creature. It can't see, it can only hear so well, and it senses through vibrations. It doesn't have any kind of appendages to walk with and its ridiculously big. We get it up on the shore," he indicated the break in the trees where they now stood, "and it will collapse under its own weight. Just like a whale shark or some other creature meant only for water."

"Effective." She dashed ahead of him to stand in the break, right next to the water. With only a slight shake of her head, she lined up an arrow and fired. It only grazed the creature, but it was enough to get its attention. Elforen picked up a rock and hurled it into the water right beside it. It dove at the rock immediately, thrashing in the shallows. The combination of the two worked: it had moved closer to them. Elforen waved a hand behind him.

"Stay here."

He waded out into the water. It was shallow for the first few yards, before the abrupt drop off that obviously went down into the depths far deeper than he would have assumed. Immediately the creature stopped its thrashing and turned his way. He bent straight down into the silty water at this feet, soaking his head, and came back up with another rock. He stepped closer to the drop off, until he was almost chest deep in sea water.

He bared his teeth at the creature. "Come and get me, you bastard," and then he threw the rock right into its face.

With an angry sound louder than any it had made so far, the creature flopped sideways into the sea. Elforen backpedaled as fast as he could, and then simply turned and ran. It was fast in deep water, even faster than he had thought it would be. It would be on him in seconds, if he didn't have a plan.

"Shoot it!" He waved frantically at the shoreline where Zarabethe was squinting into the ocean behind him. She lined up an arrow and let it fly. It zinged past him, far closer than he was really comfortable with, and hit the water. He slogged through the water as fast as he could as the creature advanced on him at breakneck speed.

"Shoot it again!"

This time she hit it just as its head surfaced, going directly through the crest on the top of its head. It roared in pain, and its thrashing about gave him enough time to make it to the shallowest part of the sea and relative safety. He turned, keeping his feet in the water, and picked up another rock. He flung it at the creature, hitting it on its face, and the creature stopped crashing about and wobbled its head as it looked for the tiny things that was hurting it. Elforen stomped in the water. With an immense heave of its body, the creature threw itself at him.

Zarabethe let out a terrified shriek as the both of them ran further up the shore to avoid numerous sets of gnashing teeth and the consequent tidal wave that ensued. The creature did not stop in shallows but dug its stubby fins into the surf and propelled its way up onto the shore. It again, moved much faster than Elforen had anticipated and he felt his legs burn as he struggled against his wet clothes and armor to get to a safe distance. Ahead of him he saw Zarabethe turn and shoot in one movement without stopping her retreat, and the monster's cry of frustration in answer.

It only took a few minutes once it was out of the water. Its breathing grew harsher with each passing second. It flailed about more than made any kind of distance, and its movements grew weaker until finally it stopped. It laid on it side and gasped for air, not trying to reach them, not trying to get back to the water. Zarabethe shot it again, directly into the side of its neck, and although it flinched, the roar it gave was weak and it didn't struggle to get away. Elforen took his longest sword and cautiously trudged right up to the creature. Its eyes were already glazed over, and it didn't sound long for this world either way. He was doing it a favor at this point. He ran the sword down the torn crest on its head, until it reached the joint between its skull and its spine, He angled the sword upward, and plunged it in to the hilt. It shook violently, nearly throwing him off in its death-throes, then lay still. He pulled his sword out of it, and grimaced at the ichor coating it. He took several steps backward to find a clean patch of grass, and cleaned it off the best he could. With his dip into the ocean, he would have to wash everything tonight. Again.

"Well that was anticlimactic."

Her voice was casual as she stepped up beside him to examine the dead creature, but he was done being fooled. Wiping his hands on his cloak, he gestured to her.

"Come here."

He took her face in his hands without asking. This close he could see her minuscule flinch, but he did not relinquish as he stared into her eyes. They were red-rimmed and stared out at him in apprehension, but they were every bit the silver that they had always been.

"What's going on with you?"

He could see the lie in her face as she tried to look to the side. "I had something in my eyes. Sand, salt water, I'm not sure, but it obscured my vision."

"You are not telling me the entire truth." He kept hold of her as her eyes widened. She took a ragged breath.

"I-I do not know the entire truth."

This at least he could tell was honesty. She was scared of something. She blinked, but met his gaze fully.

"When I figure this out, I will tell you. I promise."

"I will hold you to it."

He let go of her. She stumbled back from him as if he had been violent, and he tried to ignore it as he shouldered his shield and turned back to camp. Somewhere inside him his stomach twisted to know that he had caused the panic in her eyes.

More important than that though, was the fact that he wasn't wrong. Something had been going on since they stepped foot on this island, and even if he wasn't sure what it was yet, he was going to find out.

Either with Zarabethe's consent or not.