#sunshine;

Hyperventilating, he kept trying, but was the definition of insanity not trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

Oh, great, now he was going to careen down that line of thought. The line that said he was crazy on top of weak and dumb and worthless and... 

I don’t want to be that guy but I’m gonna be for just a minute.

“He can be invisible for a total of 24 minutes. But only needs one of those minutes to find a shadow to hide in, obscuring himself from view for good. I found no footprints that would tell me which way he went once he reached the treeline... so he may have climbed and decided to jump from tree to tree. Which, if we don’t find any face imprints between the trees, is very impressive for a drunk man.” Having finished his explanation to Vyth and their recently-returned friends, Naut sighed. “We can rest easy knowing that he isn’t going to get captured... but he is defenseless against the environment. I’m sure we don’t want to let someone die of exposure just because he got overwhelmed by a bottle of wine.”

Vyth nodded in solemn silence.

“He went east-northeast of the campfire and he trances at the same time we do-- so he should have just finished his daily rest,” Naut continued.

Unless Mor took that into account and skipped rest-- No. The wine would have made him too tired to try that, even if he did think of it. It wouldn’t be too restful, either, meaning he’d still be absolutely exhausted. This was the perfect time to start looking.

“I learned how to make fire from a human woman named Clarise. We have flint in the caves and we can make steel... so I started always carrying those around.” At which point, he dug the implements out of his rucksack to show off one black rod and strip of steel.  “I... I don’t need fire to see or anything. But... it... calms me down. I guess it does more than that; I enter some kind of state of mind that’s like a trance, but it isn’t.”

He bit the inside of his lip.

A clear bottle filled with pink cream and topped by a metal cap slipped softly onto the nightstand. Thin, stringy fingers flowed away from the glass, while exhausted red eyes landed on blonde locks.

“I thought...” He took a shallow breath. “While we waited, I thought we were never gonna see you again. And if it took too long, then I was gonna... I was gonna break the whole door down. And I don’t think anyone could’ve stopped me.”