The stars were a book, full of stories and fanciful illustrations, and Sarah was a child who had not yet learned how to read. Their language was a mystery. Sometimes she dreamt, yet on the rare occasions those dreams did not terrify or unsettle her, she could find no meaning to their images. They were buildings, or people, or the stars once again, or even herself and Luc, together in some faraway place. Never words. The tower was the only place she knew that occasionally intruded upon her slumber.

All things change.

The sun was high in the sky, and the roof long since gone to dust. It was not the tower she set foot in, but a structure so eroded by rain and wind that it no longer bore the markings or intricate carvings that marked Sindarin ruins for anyone else to see. The architecture was consistent, but who knew that, aside from treasure hunters and scholars? It was so worn down, so crumbled, even that telltale style was faded and blurred around the edges.

She knew, though - she was aware, by that humming in her bones, that these were not just ordinary ruins. They had a voice of their own. The complex sang like a tuning fork struck against the stone. It would have called to her even if Luc had not sent her with a purpose.

The way was straightforward. She passed through the corridors to the center of the complex with sure steps. Everywhere she looked the walls and columns became whole again, not in the waking world, but in her imagination, until it became an illusion with a glimmer from her rune, and she was looking at ghosts of what had once been. A waste of energy, yes, but it was rare that she encountered something from a dream.

There were no people of course. She was tempted to create them, to, but it seemed wrong to disturb their rest. What if it called them? She would not know what to say. Knowing her ancestry was all well and good, but facing them was frightening. Sarah was not afraid of ghosts. She thought they might be afraid of her.

What was their purpose, so long ago? Her steps echoed as she passed through a hallway that was miraculously intact, then entered the sun again and released her spell. The walls faded, once again crumbled and cracked. The floor darkened from polished marble to mud-stained brown.

What was their purpose? She was not following it, surely. Part of her thought it would be right to feel ashamed of that.


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So, ideas.

I think many of my ideas are the sort that leave Sarah with too much mystique, and too much power. She isn't a Mary Sue, but sometimes it might be argued that I treat her like one. It's just unfortunate that the things I see as interesting are hard to expand on without doing that.

Here, the idea is that Sarah has dreams about the Sindar at the height of their power. She sees the ruins when they were intact, she dreams of the people and the things they said, and feels a much deeper kinship with them than one can infer from the game. (Of course. The game didn't tell us anything about this in the first place. -_-) Many of these places will have disappeared over the years, but some she would recognize.

I was also going to link foresight with gate magic, but I didn't get around to that.