He took a second, longer look and noticed the way that mist and fog seemed to cling to her in the shape of a common gown. He noticed the way her eyes kept shifting from the hue of one metal or gem to the next. And, most of all, he noticed the depths of her eyes; eyes that belonged to no young woman - to no human being at all.

“What do you find so interesting?” the woman repeated, smiling.

“Not interesting, exactly,” Tavi replied. “It just… seems easier to consider the future when I’m looking out over the sea. What might happen. What I might do in response. How I might shape it.”

The woman’s smile didn’t widen so much as deepen. “You are all the same,” she murmured.

“I don’t understand,” Tavi said quietly. “Who are you?”

She regarded him with steady, bright eyes, and he noticed that neither her hair nor the mist of her dress stirred with the evening wind. “Your grandfather,” she said, “called me Alera.”