As Theramore vanished on the western horizon, the small group of passengers aboard the Lady Mehley made their way away from the rail and below deck.

They were a motley collection heading to the Eastern Kingdoms: A dwarven married couple and their great white bear, a gnomish member of the Kirin Tor, a dwarven paladin of the Argent Crusade (whose nervous hippogryph was attempting to sleep away the voyage in the hold), and a very jumpy goblin.

“So, what do ye reckon ye’ll do, then, when we arrive back in Khaz Modan?” Beli Flinthammer asked her husband as she dropped into a chair in the galley.

“Ah know meself,” Mountaineer Ringo Flinthammer said ruefully. “If’n Ah go with ye to see our wee one, Ah won’t want to return to me mission. Ye’ll have ta give him the presents Ah bought him and tell him Ah’ll see him as soon as Ah can.”

“Steamwheedle!” the goblin squawked loudly, after bumping into the ship’s cabin boy. “Not Bilgewater!”

“If you’re with the Steamwheedle Cartel,” the crusader rumbled, looking up from his soup, “Shouldn’t you speak better Common?”

The goblin flushed a darker shade of green and waved a phrasebook in the air.

“Steamwheedle! Not Bilgewater!”

“If he’s a spy,” the Kirin Tor gnome dryly observed, not looking up from the tome he was reading, “He’s not blending very well. Logically, that suggests that he is, in fact, not one.”

The bear wandered over to the trembling goblin and gave him a head-to-toe sniffing. Frostmaw decided that the goblin was, at least at the moment, not an enemy, and wandered back over to the Flinthammers, dropping to the deck and rolling onto his back, displaying a belly in need of a rub.

The crusader muttered something about “famous gnomish logic” and went back to his soup.

“Reckon Ah’ll give a whistle fer Rusty and light out fer the Twilight Highlands. One of them Hammer bastards may know about the Curse of Flesh. And e’en if they don’t, crackin’ their skulls will be more useful than gettin’ locked in boxes with Brann was.”

“Well, don’t be afraid ta come visit. Yer king ain’t goin’ nowhere, but yer boy is growin’ up fast, and ye donnae want to miss it.”

“Aye,” Ringo said sadly. “Ah aim ta have the king cured and come back home soon. Me adventurin’ days are over.”

((Inspired by the Blog Azeroth shared topic “Do your alts know each other?” No, no, they don’t.))