Kazelia must have been very good at going places that she didn't belong, I thought. She certainly wasn't supposed to be here with me now. She was under Oberon's protection. He was very dashing. A bit much sometimes, I thought, quite loud, but he was the embodiment of one of those pieces of truth in the universe and that made him someone special. It doesn't matter to me, of course, whether that truth is the unbridled arrogance of the cold and the dark that believes it owns something or whether it's a shining heart that believes bonds of friendship and light transcend all worlds. At least, I don't think it matters to me? It feels like maybe it will start mattering sometime soon, as I sit here and watch myself, or watch Kazelia moving about lost in the dark.

Back then, you see, her heart was still buried. She was so subsumed in Oberon's truth that it was hard to reach anything else. The only reason I could do that at all was that she had come here unannounced, without the usual entourage that Oberon brought with him, and without his regalia of power to fix his will into all the travelers. 

But without that, I got to look into Kazelia. Really look. I'm very good at seeing all the falseness of people, you see. She was full of jealousy when she wandered in here, but all I had to do was pick at one little thread to see that jealousy was nothing but the product of living with Azora and Oberon for so long. It was hardly core to Kazelia, and as soon as you pulled that tiny gauze of association off of her, it was gone like so much dust blown away on a sunless wind.

It was odd though. I hadn't seen a case like this one in a very long time. I was all ready to tell her that there was simply nothing to her at all. I'd picked apart her loyalty (magically induced, worthless) and her training (nothing but drills). I enjoyed the taste of her wanderlust, but that had been imposed on her and she had not, at least at that time, adopted it in her heart, there was no joy in it yet you see, and so it wasn't real. But right when I thought I was done, there was something that my searching little fingernail bounced off of. That was rare, you know. Less than one in a thousand who visited me. But it happened. This though, it was an odd case. Kazelia didn't know she had it, you see. Normally I receive some kind of defense. There's a dialogue, I pick apart the threads, and the person sees that core of themselves and lets me glimpse their truth, if they have one. But Kazelia, she had one without knowing it herself. That must have been Oberon's influence. Her passion was buried beneath his shadow. 

Hmm, yes, that seemed a cruelty even to me. Truth should not be hidden, it was a rare enough thing without trying to stamp it down. I really didn't like that. I don't like that. I believe in passion and freedom you see. I do now. Maybe I always have. I knew that the girl there needed something special. She needed to feel something to unlock that passion within her. Ah how rare indeed for me, of all things in the universe, to think about adding something to a person. And yet, I knew that she needed to feel and few emotions were permitted to her. So I took away the stars from her. I do that for many riders, but they see the falling stars in their eyes, the strange light and darkness of the void. From Kazelia, I took them all, a sight robbed from her that would leave a keening pain in her heart. 

I cannot say that I can see the future, but then again, this is the past so it's not at all a difficult vision. She would feel that pain, that loss dearly. She would ask her father about it, and Oberon, who did love his favorite daughters in his way, would promise her that she could get them back. He would plant a seed for her, a seed that would become anger and frustration. She would go somewhere full of magic and expect more and she would see her father fail and realize that he was not everything to her, could never be everything to her. Nourishment for a seed within a heart that would admire a flame and beat an ancient song. I could hear it, can hear it now, so gentle and so strong. Pulsing with the flame in our heart. 

I took her stars and sent her back, even as her sister thought to tackle her and remove the book from her hands. And the rest, as we say, is history.