It was the mark of how much the little white mare had changed that she did not sing to greet the morning. In the time just before dawn there was a hush over the meadow, frosted over as it was and she moved through it quietly.  Content enough with her life, with her world, to abide in silence and appreciate the cold stillness as she had never had the patience to do before. As a girl she had never been content to watch and listen to the world as it was, she would have insisted on filling it, on distracting herself with songs and stories that were only fantasies of what it might be. Despite the count of her years Aisling had been a girl quite a long time.

She had always dreamed of love in a naive way; she'd wished for it, seen it as the be all and end all of existence. She remembered thinking that there was a true love, so singular and perfect that it made all other loves false and pitiful by comparison. All of her beloved tales had found their conclusion in the heroine finding that love, but as she remembered them now there was not one she could recall that told her what love brought with it. Aisling knew love now: the love for a man, a love for their child. She loved her herd, her queen, her companion and with all this depth of wondrous feeling came fear. Fear and worry and pain follow love into a heart like night must follow each day. Inescapable. In holding something so precious in her grasp she knew the possibility of losing it all in a moment.

She had more lessons to learn, and perhaps in the fullness of time the Gods would see fit to show her just how painful that loss could be. For now her naiveté was tempered not with grief but with purpose and the desire to keep all that was precious to her safe. And so as she walked through the frosty morning she was watchful instead of exultant; she listened instead of sang.

The near-glow of the hybrid's pale coat in the growing light caught the little mare's attention and the arched her path to draw close to where the creature stood at the bank of a twisting stream. Aisling's petite but sure little feet crunched in the frozen sprays of grass and thistle so a stealthy approach would have taken more effort that this chance meeting seemed to call for and so she made no attempt to disguise her approach. "A fair morning, is it not? I i hope you find yourself well in it." She greeted as she drew near, her soft voice musical with the lilt of her homeland. "Would you be minding if I join you for a spell?"

The little enchantress looked the part this morning thanks to Sorcha's enthusiastic help. The sacred blue of the druids of old was traced in a swirling bar across her eyes and her mane was braided into elaborate ropes that hung along her neck. Across her shoulder was slung the glittering black flute the Sun had given her and like always her front legs were bounds in leather cuffs. The green dragon (culprit of the painting and the braiding) snoozed across the little mare's withers, her plumed tail twitching in the midst of some dream.