Fury raised in her heart as she looked out over Guardria's moon bathed hills of silver green.  She blinked back the tears of pain.  If you are a true heiress and have compassion for your people, she remembered her father telling her a few days earlier.  You will follow through with this.

 

 "I am Selene Silverwing, Daughter of Torrentas, Heiress to Guardria, and the future of my nation.  My people shall not suffer, and neither shall I." She stood  on her feet and looked defiantly out to the moon.  "I swear on my ancestry and heritage that I shall not fall to you Reikan.  Even if I have to leave all I love and deserve to fight you."

 

 She tore her eyes and violent fury from the gaze through the window, stripping herself of her garments as well.  She stood for an instant, bathing herself in the moonlight with her eyes closed and head lowered in a silent prayer of strength.  Slowly, and almost ritually, she pulled her braided black hair around to the front of her chest where she unbound the blue ribbon that held it.  Running her fingers over it and unweaving he braid, she felt her promises made to her father slowly break, replaced by those she made now in the moonlight illuminated darkness.  With her hair down she looked amazingly different from what she did normally.  She pulled her hair back and securely tied it with the ribbon, letting a few strands fall forward on her face.

 

 She walked to the chest that lay at the foot of her bed and opened it, taking out a few different articles of clothing and a set of armlets.  I shall take the look of my sorceress title I faintly hold with these clothes, she told herself as she laced the sides of her magic garment.  These shall bind me to my people as well as protect me from my enemies, she thought as she snapped the armlets on her arms.  I shall never be to far from the people of Guardria, those whom I am meant to serve always.

 

 She packed a bag of essentials quickly and took a small sheet of parchment and ink to the windowsill.  As the silver of the moonlight played on the wet ink of the paper, she wrote a letter for her family.  She told her sister Elaya, her mother Gitana, and her father Torrentas specifically that one payment would not be made to Reikan.  Her.

 

 She reached into her chest once again to retrieve her headpiece, but her heart sank in her chest as her fingers ran across a silver disk of metal about the width of one's fist.  Slowly she pulled the silver brooch out of the chest and into the moonlight.  Upon it was carved the symbol of a dragon laying within the curve of a crescent moon.  As a solitary tear fell onto the brooch of her family crest, she gripped it close to her heart. She cursed the fates softly.  Reikan would pay one day dearly for all they did across the lands of Elysion.

 

 Wiping her eyes, she reached into the chest once again and retrieved her single crystal bejeweled headpiece.  She picked up her rough traveling bag and placed the headpiece by the letter on the windowsill.  She turned and looked at the room once again as she stood there in front of the window, the curtains flowing violently in the breeze that blew into the room.  In that corner, she reminisced.  I played with Elaya and mother.  Over there is where father sat when I was ill and mother had to attend to me.  This is where all of my dreams grow from.  Her jaw clenched for a moment with fury raging in her eyes again.  This is where my dreams were to grow from, she reminded herself.  And in this very house, she scowled, I was given away.  My title and inheritance stripped from me.  My soul and body given supposedly as a gift of peace.  A gift so that war would not be waged on the peace loving people of our land from a war nation.  I can not be given as easily as my sister and mother, for I will not be given at all.  I will fight if must be, to protect what I am and what I have.

 

 Selene stood in the windowsill for a moment and looked down.  There was a couple feet to drop until she began a new life and road in fate.  A cool and ominous breeze then blew over her body as she let out a sigh.  Her heart set cold on her new road, she leapt from the sill.  Never to return until her vengeance was fulfilled.