Evelynn blinked as she woke up from her trance, squinting as the light of the eclipsed sun shone through the porthole of her cabin and onto her sensitive pupils. She was sitting at her desk, papers and parchment spread out in front of her where she had left them the previous evening, a blot of dry ink staining one of the sheets below a forgotten quill, and her right hand precariously close to knocking over a pot of ink. For the past few days she had been reviewing all the information they had, trying to figure out the pattern and the answer to the riddle that had eluded them for so long, that had taken them to so many false leads and dead ends. She must have nodded off into a trance while working late into the night.<br/><br/>The elf reached out for a small silvered mirror and studied her reflection. The stress was beginning to show, in the form of small dark circles especially under her eyes. The never-ending twilight was getting to not only her, but the ship's crew as well - sailors who would never do so in olden days, now were acting shiftily around the female passengers, and not even an increase in rum rations was going to maintain morale for long. She got up, wrapped a cloak around herself to shield her skin from the sea spray, and stepped out of the cabin, onto the deck of the<em>Dusk Strider</em>. Named so after the vessel's graceful slide into port at the end of a long day under sail, she had never imagined before that the name would turn out be so prophetic.<br/><br/>"Easy on the poor mast, Anna. We don't carry a spare." Evelynn turned towards Aria, "Did you sleep well last night?" It was half genuine concern, half formality - few were those who could truthfully claim they slept or tranced well, ever since that fateful day. "And you too," the high elf acknowledged the wood elf.