It was Katryn, not Jace, who first saw signs of ghosts.
The sleek-furred boy dropped off to sleep soon after the sun sank beneath the edge, while the great dome of the sky was still bright with its light. Sheiral, despite all her grumbling about sleeping on the ground, had been out before him. It was only after the sun began its journey underneath and the night grew dark that the faint glow became visible between the trees, and it was only Katryn who was awake to see it.
“By all the seas,” she said.
She blinked her eyes, rubbing and squinting to make sure she wasn’t afflicted with an afterimage of the fire… not that the fire was burning all that high or bright. Certianly not brightly enough to explain the glow, which now that she was looking at it seemed quite bright… bright enough that it was reflected on the face of the natural rock wall behind the trees.
The seasoned sailor stretched out her leg and nudged Jace with her toe. He, no stranger to being kicked awake, yelped and started up at the lightest touch.
“Hush, you fool boy!” she said.
“Sorry! Sorry,” he said, much more quietly the second time. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Katryn said. “I need you to look over there, in the trees, and tell me what you see.”
He turned, confused… and then stared, no less confused.
“You see that, too?” Katryn asked him.
“What is it?” he asked. “Ghosts?”
“Of course not,” she said.
“Then what?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was hoping it was a figment of my imagination, brought on by your blathering about them earlier…”
“What’s going on?” Sheiral mumbled.
“Nothing,” Katryn said. “Go get inside the Horizon Chaser.”
“Now I know something’s going on,” the girl said, suddenly much more awake. There wasn’t much space on the little island for anything to be going on, so she soon spotted the phenomenon. “What’s that?”
“Probably ghosts,” Jace said.
“Probably nothing of the sort,” Katryn said. “But since you’re the resident expert on the subject, you can go take a look.”
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