The lush grass which bent beneath cleft feet was soft and thick, scintillating vibrant greens and yellows as it swayed lazily beneath the high summer sun. Where grass bowed, flowers spun; daisies and violets and forget-me-nots, zinnias and amaranth and daylilies. This was the pinnacle of Tallsun, when all of creation was laid out before her like an arrangement of flowers, ready for her to pluck. But what came next was the unknown, the unforeseeable: Mother said the leaves would turn yellow and red and orange and then shrivel away and fall; she called it autumn, but it seemed positively strange to the filly. A summer child she was, hopelessly in love with the verdant grasses and the flowers and the balmy breezes which stirred her growing mane, and the thought that this would all end made her feel restless and sad.

She walked away her anxiety, finding peace in the soft turf beneath her hooves and the vibrant vistas which never failed to enrapture her. When she wandered, Lothíriel thought about many things: where would she go when her life ended? If summer could end, and flowers died, it was obvious that her life was transient as well (how ironic this thought was from this particular girl). Was there another home awaiting you, filled with loved ones and flowers and clouds? or was death like Father's magic, cold and uncaring, your mind utterly vacant as your body decayed. Lothíriel was no innocent: she had seen what her Lord Father could do, but it did not bother her as much as it might another. You heart beats, you breathe, and then it's soon gone, she had reasoned, justifying the attack on the insolent black equine. It does not matter in which way everything is taken. Or did it?

Unmindful of her surroundings, the girl crested a tall mount, swathed in unusually lush vegetation. She remembered the confusion in Konstantine's eyes as her stoic father loomed over him, tall and steadfast as ever; he deserves this, she had thought, his tainted blood warrants death, and the worst kind of scourge was one that refused to listen. Vermin, scum, pest, the girl repeated, all words she had heard referring to the hornless and winged—it gave her a sort of delicious gratification that she could taste on her tongue, the smug thought that Mother would not approve.

Youthful pondering were brought to a pause when her eyes were laid upon someone familiar; a name flashed with recognition in her mind's eye. It was one of the idiotic brothers she had met by the Arch, but they were comrades, superior kin; they bore horns and long tails and cloven hooves. A smile as hazy as the sun on a summer's day played on her lips, almost a simper but much too fitting on her delicate face. She stopped several meters before him, swaying gently as her keen eyes studied him, noting that he was without that eye-thief brother of his. "You," she greeted almost fondly, at a loss for his name, drolly cordial in the way young girls address young boys before they are anything more than a bother. He could be useful despite his unpleasant nature, she thought, remembering him as the one who repeated things. Would he deign to amuse her today, or would he choose to show some other odious facet?

Lothíriel Stormborn