She had still been a child, experimenting with the Elven magic. She remembered the time she had used the wishsong on the old tree. Brin still wasn't sure who had come out on the short end of that reprimand. In comparing his children one time-a time occasioned by one of Jair's more reprehensible misadventures-Wil Ohmsford had remarked rather ruefully that the difference between the two was that Jair was apt to do anything, while Brin was also apt to do it, but only after thinking it through first. Brin had her father's temperament, cool, self-assured, and disciplined. All that Brin lacked was her mother's fire. Twenty years ago, Eretria had looked exactly as her daughter looked now, from dusky skin and black eyes to soft, delicate features. Long, black hair fell away from her face and there was no mistaking whose child she was. Her fingers touched the roughened trunk of the maple softly, caressing, and she stared upward into the tangle of limbs overhead.

Jair would argue the point of course, but that was only because Jair found it hard enough as it was to accept his role as the youngest. She was a tall girl-taller than her parents or her brother Jair, nearly as tall as Rone Leah-and although there was a delicate look to her slim body, she was as fit as any of them. Impulsively, she stepped off the walkway and moved over to the aged tree. That old tree was the source of many childhood memories for her. It was a massive thing, its trunk broad and gnarled. Brin Ohmsford paused by the flowerbeds that bordered the front walkway of her home, losing herself momentarily in the crimson foliage of the old maple that shaded the yard beyond. In the forests of Shady Vale, the leaves had already begun to turn. Though summer's warmth lingered, the days had begun to shorten, the humid air to dry, and the memory of life's immediacy to reawaken. Gone were the long, still days of midyear where sweltering heat slowed the pace of life and there was a sense of having time enough for anything.

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