steady as a preacher, free as a weed…
--couldn‘t wait to get goin‘ but wasn‘t quite ready to leave

She was no longer the child he had taken to the stars.

Though she still had a gypsy soul, the awkward lines on her body had been replaced with the smooth curves of a grown mare. Her eyes still held a wanderlust but they were more knowing somehow, more worldly. One couldn’t see the stars and feel the kiss of the suns fire without knowing a little more. She knew now that monsters lurked not only in the shadows. She had learned that war was a part of her life and her fathers life. She had learned lessons in loss and acceptance, and was better for having done so. No longer did she peer through rose-colored glasses, but instead took everything given to her with a proverbial grain of salt.

She had also learned the true scope of her powers.

Not only could she push her own voice into anothers mind, but she could pull from their minds as well. Their thoughts in particular. While she could not sense their emotions could she hear their thoughts as clear as a bell. It was a most useful skill, one she had practiced quietly and without any fanfare. She wasn’t sure her father (or anyone, for that matter) would have appreciated having their minds pried open and read like a book.

That didn’t mean she was above doing it to him though.

Him. Elektrum. The time wizard who had let her taste star dust and choke on sunfire. He had shown her the world and then plunked her back down in the Meadow without so much as a backwards glance, leaving her cold and aching in his absence. She had always picked up something odd about him, that things weren’t as they appeared, but having no practice with her powers she hadn’t been able to figure him out. But she was grown now, and she had a burning desire to finish what had been started all those years ago.

topsail