Sinijahl had lost her acclimation to the sweltering heat of the jungle in the short time she had been north. She had left the Blacktooth Grin, temporarily, to return. She had lost touch with herself, and the images had grown stronger, sharper and more persistent.

She sat now, on a stone jutting out into the river, her foot dangling into the cool water as more of the images came to her. She surrendered herself to them, now, where it was safe to do so.

.......…A young child, confused and fearful of the tall rush’ka masked troll that stood in front of her now. She had been left hurriedly by her father, words exchanged that she didn’t understand, then, hustled off to a dank hut inside the huge compound. She had always wondered what it was like inside…she had looked often at the huge wall from her place in a small hut on the outside......

.........The other young ones, the acolytes, had looked at her oddly, only to move on without speaking. She had made few friends inside, the priests kept them all busy with menial tasks and an occasional lesson thrown in. She kept to herself, the images were her company. She had never taken the time to identify them, they had always been with her, a part of her, and she had been shocked to find out that she was somewhat unique. The reaction she had gotten when she told her mother had been enough to convince her to keep them to herself. It had been soon after that revelation, that her father had taken her and left her with the priests......

........Sinijahl realized that she was different. Her coloring was the most obvious. Ghostly grey blue skin, where her parents had the rich blue-green coloring of the Gurubashi; her eyes were a piercing red and her hair was as white as the dead eyes of the shark that she saw in the river. Most of the other things she found out as she grew older and learned more the ways of the world. She was particularly adept with the shadow magics, so she had been placed to train with the Shadow Hunters. More and more of the women were being accepted into traditionally male dominated paths, mostly due to the diminished number of those skilled in the arts. As she grew older, she began to earn some of the respect due her station, but it was still a suspicious respect, she was never trusted fully by those that she had taken on as pupils........

Sini’jahl pulled her foot quickly from the water as she was startled by a small fish nibbling on her toe. The sun was lowering and the sky turned a soft orange through the heated haze of the jungle. She shifted slightly in her place, her chin resting on her tucked in knees as she continued her musings…

..........The priests had grown increasingly agitated, and beatings were more frequent when tasks were not completed as expected. There were things said in whispers and her images had grown increasingly frantic. She had done all she knew, burned the fragrant herbs and drank the ashes, tied fetishes to the limbs of the tree near the hut, even sacrificed a small child from the village that she had lured with a treat laced with calming herbs. The carefully shrunken,dried and stitched head now hung from her belt. The Ancestors, it seemed had abandoned them, or had been angered. She prayed to the Loa, Lukou, who stuck with her though, spoke to her and helped keep her safe, but she knew that something was eminent.......

........It came in the form, none had expected. The world changed in one hellish moment…fire, floods, death all around. When those that survived emerged, The Jungle was altered, dead littered the ground, the animals feasted…and Zul’Gurub, her home, the city of the priests of the Gurubashi was deserted.......

Sini’jahl stood and stretched, her shoulders cramped. The night sounds grew louder now and the not too distant roar of a jungle panther convinced her to move closer to the hut.

She sat just outside the door in the cooling air, the images still clear…she had realized that they helped her understand. It wasn’t images so much, (that is what she called them), but more sensed thoughts, nothing identifiable, but vivid in color, sound, smell - all her senses combined. Sometimes they blocked out all else. Sometimes they appeared at the fringes of her perception…but they always left her with a stronger sense of what she was, where she was or what she needed to do…

.........They had come to her at that point, the images. She was to leave. The Temple Atal’Hakkar in the swamp to the north, if it still stood, might hold answers, though the whereabouts of the Soul-flayer were unknown, and there was a clan there, at Stonard, Orcs and others, there could be answers there as well.....

.....She had gone, she had joined with the Blackteeth, but still the answers eluded her, and the Temple had been silent as a tomb…

She rocked in the chair, breathing in the fragrant night air, back to herself now, released from the images. She had come back again to the jungle and saw that the Priests had returned to Zul’Gurub, lead by Venoxis and his serpents, and with them the Zandalari . They were preparing for war. Fanatics had seized control and the blood lust was high. Sini’jahl knew that their attempt would end in disaster, she wanted no part of it, but as a Gurubashi Zulfi, she was suspect all the same. She would return to the Blackteeth, rejoin their ranks and follow the images that had guided her all her life. .