Rumors had been whispered faintly into the harlequin's ears, but they had been feeble words, twirling aimlessly along the steady streams of the wind. They had promised a change in leadership, that Gossamer and her lover no longer reigned supreme over the vast, luscious, yet relatively stagnate region - at least as of late - that was the Windtossed Foothills.

Not only that, but they had suggested their new superior to be a particularly valiant stallion: one that Valhalla had nearly been with so long ago; a once desired, eligible companion; the sire of a foal he had never known. The hapless young child had become a stranger to even the one who had given her life, estranged from her mother's side far too soon. She was gone, likely claimed by the consuming shades that had terrorized the fair maiden's beloved land of moonlight. Yet another casualty of war. She sighed solemnly, as if dismissing the chronically disheartening memory of the land of her birth.

She sometimes wished she could just forget that Isilme had ever existed, to wipe it clean from her memory, for despite the pristine image she had amassed of that wondrous place, not even it had been perfectly devoid of inadequacy.

But that is the past, now - it's what she always tried to convince herself, and yet this melancholic state never so much as evidenced the slightest hint of wavering. Perhaps all the weight of her past is what stifled her, bearing down in a great heap of regret and deficiency: of hopes shattered and dispersed into the whimsical caprices of the wind. She grunted. All this emotional concavity, persistently marring her true demeanor, was growing bothersome.

What had she become?

Cavalier hooves soon found a diminutive pool of water: rain droplets which had collected into a shallow depression in the loorien. Her nostrils flexed with a deep exhale as she lowered her face to the reflective puddle, ripples propagating across the surface as her lips scanned slowly across it. She grunted deeply, a contralto grunt rumbling deep in her throat. Her brows furrowed, and she outstretched a dappled leg to shatter the image which had manifested.

Nothing felt normal or sane anymore. She wanted nothing more than to regain some semblance of what normalcy had once existed; to rewind time and fix the mistakes she had made; to claim Paladin when she had had the chance.

What of destiny? Kismet? Did she believe in such things? Not even she was entirely sure, but that had become maddeningly routine.