Illidan's Private Journal - The Stars Remember
(journal fragment, penned in Illidan's hand)
I had not expected to see Lord-Magister Lynath Starwhisper look twice at her.
She is beautiful, yes—but he is a scholar of renown, a man long accustomed to being courted by nobles and Magisters, not apprentices. And yet his eyes lingered.
He kissed her hand as though he already knew its shape.
I took it for courtesy. I told myself that was all it was.
But later… later I returned to find them speaking quietly, her cheeks warmed with something more than wine.
He called her Little Star.
A name that did not sound newly given.
For a moment, something old stirred in me—an instinct sharpened by years of being overlooked, replaced, set aside. I examined it honestly.
Jealousy? Perhaps it could have been.
But it was not.
What I felt instead was something stranger—recognition, and an unexpected ease. As though I were witnessing a truth I had simply not been told yet.
For all his stature, for all his knowledge of the heavens, he spoke her father's name with reverence. Lucien Ariakan. A mind still honored in Tel'anor. Still cited. Still alive in the language of scholars.
I saw the pride kindle in her at that—quiet, steady, unguarded.
And I understood then that this was not a man seeking her attention, but one acknowledging her place. Not claiming—but remembering.
That alone would have been enough.
Then came the invitation.
Tel'anor.
His observatory. His sanctum. Opened not to Magisters or Lords—but to us.
To her.
I do not know what to make of it yet. A door has opened—one I never imagined would admit the likes of me. For once, I was not the shadow trailing my master, but standing within a larger constellation.
The stars remember.
And tonight, they remembered her.
She smiled when Starwhisper spoke her father's name.
That smile remains with me—quiet, certain, unchallenged.
It is a rare thing to stand beside something luminous and feel no urge to diminish it.
Rarer still to realize you are trusted to share its light.