Nighttime . It is dark. Only a few stray beams of moonlight filter through the forest canopy. A faint breeze rustles the leaves of the surrounding trees, then abruptly ceases, leaving the forest in silence once again.
A young elven lady is lying on the leaf-covered ground, taking her last breaths of air. A trail of blood leads from her, eastwards, through the forest. The broken end of a stick protrudes from her back. A faint orange glow can now be distantly seen, accompanied by a barely-heard crackle of fire. She takes one last look at the tree hollow before her, where she had stashed a small crib, and closes her eyes forever...

A child walks through the forest, her long golden hair barely hiding her pointed ears. She slows her advance and proceeds with stealth as she approaches a centaur from behind, then leaps and lands on his back. He rears, his front hooves reaching up in the air, as he tries to shake her off. 'Stop it!', he cries. 'Rosette, stop trying to ride your brother, come here', her mother calls softly from a distance. Rosette sighs and jumps off the young centaur and, sticking her tongue at him, makes her way towards her mother.
'Rosette', she says, 'it is time for us to have a talk. Time for you to understand why you are different from the rest of the herd. I know of the names the other children call you, such as "half" and "elfgirl"'.
'While I have raised you, and consider you my child, I have not actually given birth to you. I have found you when you were a baby, hidden away. Your family had been killed and I have raised you among us centaurs'.
'But now things are changing. The heads of the herd were never content with you living with us, now less than ever. They say that us centaurs must keep to ourselves, and that an elf could never live with us'.
'You are old enough to take care of yourself now', she continues, trying hard to ignore the tears in Rosettes eyes and to stop her own, 'It is time for you to leave the forest now, and go seek your own life in the lands in which elves, humans and other races live. You cannot stay in our herd any longer'.

Daylight changes to dusk, then dusk into dawn. A young lady is seated cross-legged in a small grove, deep in meditation. Nothing but her chest, rising and falling, would suggest that she is even alive. The touch of dew on her cheek, the prickle of grass on her legs, the smell of fresh leaves in her nostrils - all are a part of her, as she is a part of them, at one with nature. Memories fill her mind. Moonlight dances in a clearing with her fellow centaurs, splashing in a creek, laughing. For the past few years, her life has been a life of travel. Always an outsider, always an outcast. Is the world shunning her out, or is she shunning out the world?
Suddenly, something breaks her meditation, attracting her attention. She opens her eyes and turns, seeing a young man, clad in armor, crawling into her grove. His breath is in short gasps, and the broken end of a stick protrudes from his back. Something seems to her disturbingly familiar, although she is sure she had never seen this sight before...
Her thoughts are broken by the sound of hoarse cries and the rush of footsteps. Without thinking twice she utters a few words to Chislev and the ground behind the man is filled with vines, quickly growing in mere seconds, blocking the entire grove from view. The footsteps and cries near, then grow farther and fainter as the persuers rush on...

Rosette lay on the bed of leaves, a cool night wind blowing on her naked body. Glanes' warm body was pressed to her own, and she ran a loving hand on his cheek. Glane prefered the comfort of the city, but she had insisted that once a month they spend a few days in the wilderness. After two years, it seemed that he was even beginning to like it. With all his training and assignments, they usually didn't have enough time for themselves. Not that she didn't like his friends - his fellow Knights had always been extremely nice to her, and were the first people since her childhood whom she would consider her own friends - but the constant companionship left little time for solitude. She put her hand around him and fell asleep...
When she awoke, he was gone. She sighed as she noticed a note where he had been lying, covered by several flowers. It read:
"Rosette, my sweetheart,
I have been summoned from the High Clerist Tower to an urgent mission.
I will be back in a few days. Love,
Glane."

The centaur tracker moved purposely through the woods, Rosette close behind. Approaching the centaurs had been hard, after all these years, but they had not forgotten her and had welcomed her warmly. Hearing her story, the centaurs had readily agreed to help her search for Glane, whom had disappeared after being sent scouting for a dragonarmy advancement. The tracker appeared to know what he was doing, pausing once in a while to study the ground. Rosette was amazed by his abilities - the tracks were weeks old, normally impossible to follow.
Abruptly, the centaur stopped, with Rosette nearly running into him. Looking ahead, she saw what he had seen - a corpse, clad in solamnic armor, hanging from large tree branch. It appeared to have been hanging there for quite a while, as it was already rotting. Something glinted on its finger, and Rosette recognized the ring she had given him... she broke down and cried.

Rosette stood tall in the courtyard, her gaze firmly fixed ahead. Lord Justinian touched one of her shoulders with the tip of his sword, then the other. Her cloak, adroned with the symbol of Habbakuk beside the symbol of a Centaur, flapped in the strong wind. Glane was not around to see her, but she would continue from where he had left off. She would make him proud.