Recognition is more solid as time slips on. Name has stirred memory, pushed by hints of apprenticeship never completed. Scholar. A rank unbefitting the flighty youth. Desire to know the mysteries of the earth and skies have brought her nought. Knowledge withheld by turmoil within her mind. Any lessons she could garner from her travels have been corrupted, tarnished by her own steel trap mind. Should she really hold title in this herd if she cannot even stay within its walls for more than a single passing if the moon?

Cassiopeia would not know of this. They had only just been introduced. How Rowan's name could have circulated even minutely throughout the dulcet whispers of herd members was impossible to wrap her thoughts around. Rowan was a ghost, a weak image of their leader. It was amusing to see how similar they were, yet so drastically different in the mazes of their souls. Rowan could never have the grounded experience of Kri. Both women had lapsed into silence that lasted for hardly the beat of a hummingbird's wing. And when at last her mentor's melodious voice reaches her ears it is infused with a type if playful self defeating amusement that Rowan understands vaguely. Crown turns slightly away from her, angled towards the sand they stand upon. It feels wrong for Cassiopeia to apologize to her, someone Rowan looks up to asking for such trivial forgiveness from a peasant. "I admit to not having been around enough for you to mentor me at all, fair lady." Admission ripping something fragile and heavily guarded- her privacy. The night has swayed her, she muses. Releasing the very shadows that plague her, drive her away from an abode lips refuse to call home. Moonlight surely must be playing with her, for why else would she reveal something so drastically intimate? A laughing, skeletal faced companion that hounds at her heels and drive her to the edges of misery and self doubt. Pulling back the cloak that shield her friend from the eyes of the wise, of the ones who can possibly help her. But why would a princess, both feathered and fine, look upon a child with a tempest for heart and wish to reach inside to calm it? Present time has brought upon her the sinking of dread. Grief rises up to claim her like the swamps of the forests she is afeared of. How dare she think she is even worthy of saying such things, and to a loyal member of the family she intrudes upon? To admit to slipping away every morn? She is a disgrace, but she keeps coming back. Hoping that maybe someone will see past the cloak of invisibility she appears to wear and will keep her locked to them, ball and chain. Logical mind struggles to break through this sudden swarm of emotion and self deprecation. 

Why must she think so cynically? Perhaps Cassiopeia will not turn her away. Perhaps she will lean forward with eyes that see right through Rowan and tell her that everything will indeed be alright. That this really is home. That there is no more need to run. 

Cyan eyes are thick with every thought, windows to the soul she cannot shut down or control. Even as the midnight lass inquires to Rowan's own inquiries. "When one is faced with such a question, mind goes blank. Questions that once plagued the mind at oddest of moments, hound us through our days, suddenly cannot be held onto. After all, when faced with such a question, the entire universe is under examination. And how can we fathom all those questions? Pick merely one out of a mass so unending? So infinite? For there will always be more to appear with every passing moment and breath. I suppose I can ask how is it the Gods could possibly make a world such as this, yet not destroy it with the tremulous bonds between them? What is it that brings the northern lights to our skies in the north? How does the mind work for each individual equine, and how is it that one can read personality through the subtle structure of another's face? Or the simple question of our own existence. There are many questions within my mind, Cassiopeia. Always formulating more. What I do with those questions is what matters. For how can my questions be answered if there is no one by my side to give me such pleasure of knowledge and understanding?"Philosophical perhaps. And Rowan feels old with the way her mind is buzzing. Circulating over the subjects that never seem to end. Photographic memory has sealed every question in a tight indestructible package. For the dame wishes to know everything. Learn about every impossible question, every particle that effects the entire universe. That is her desire, her goal. One that is unattainable as of now because of her own discrepancies between the mind and heart.