A puerile voice interrupts Lothíriel's musings.

Black ears tip backwards; in a hasty motion, the flower maiden's head jerks towards the source. Eyes narrow once they find it—a half blood girl with feathers and horns, snowy pelt tainted pink in the red half-light. Repulsive sores ooze along the insides of her slight limbs, and one of her eyes is pale and milky; she wonders if the filly is dead, brought back to life by some insidious god. She does not notice the monstrous bear's carcass behind the imp, for the strips of decaying flesh are disguised by the odd ruddy atmosphere. Perhaps she is diseased, the nymph thinks, a conclusion that upon closer observation appears to be a plausible theory. This creature, this mongrel dares to regard her—Lothíriel Stormsinger, queen of flowers, daughter of death and rain, blood of Cinnoru—with insolence, a thing like disgust causing the urchin's skinny lion tail to curl distastefully around a leg and her little nose to wrinkle. For a few moments, the queen of flowers does not deign to bestow the lamb with a reply, watching her intently from beneath pale eyelashes.

Children never endeared her very much, especially those of impure blood. 

"I did not drink," Lothíriel says airily, gently, softly; though her voice is deceivingly quiet, her tail's twitching and lashing betrays thinly veiled contempt—she will not tolerate being spoken to in such an impudent manner by a half-breed. Though she remains impassive, girl's words trouble her—were they just a child's stories, or were there some truth to them? What stuff? the anthousai longs to ask, but before she can say anything else, the rustle of leaves beneath approaching hooves reveals the presence of a newcomer. Her gaze leaves the snowy girl, scrutinizing the dim forest sharply. Initially, she cannot locate the new soul, but eventually a dark form emerges from the red haze, a fine specimen in his prime, tall and virile. A long golden horn sits proudly on his brow, and he smells of the Basin—ice and alpine grass, of home. She studies him intently, attempting to discern his motivations, his passions, his dreams from the creases and ripples on his skin. Is he a friend of her brother's? A phantom of her childhood? Where could she possibly have seen him before?

The gilt stallion mentions a battle, and her ears perk with curiosity—is this related to what the pock-marked cur had mentioned? "What happened?", she inquires tacitly, turning her eyes to scrutinize the glistening red pool and the rubies studding its depths, and then to the ghostly filly, and then back to the comely black-bay. Something has happened here, something sinister, and suddenly the world seems full of wonders once more.