The sun was high in the sky, it's rays dappling through the trees along the gently worn path towards the portal rock. I had long ago lost the feeling in my legs and I badly wished that it would have instead been my back. Riding a horse for so long while balancing two other riders, though small, had taken a harder toll on me than I had expected. The matter was not helped by my insistence to ride as long as possible each day to ensure our trip was as short as possible. The two girls hardly seemed to notice the extended days, their youthful bodies not bothered by the constant jostling.

"Miss Mari?" the princess asked, turning her head to catch a glimpse of my face. "What is your kingdom like?"

"Much like what you are used to, only without men in charge," I answered.

The princess shifted to better turn towards me, a look of contemplation on her face.

"But then who makes the decisions?" she asked.

"The women, of course." I snorted with irritation at such a silly question. "Surely even your mother had some power over your kingdom, it should not be such a foreign concept."

She furrowed her brow and looked towards Alice as if she would back up her confusion, the little girl only shrugged back.

"Well yes, about things like the cooking and the servants, but what about war and armies?"

I let out a grumbling sigh, it seemed like the princess could barely go a few minutes without some sort of question that could be easily answered with just a little thought on her part.

"The queen, my great niece, takes care of everything, including all the different tasks I know are wanting to spill out of your mouth. Women rule even more effectively then men, no matter what you've heard or seen before."

The princess turned her eyes back to the forest we were passing through and went quiet, much to my relief. Alice had realized that I would give no more answers than I desired and that her constant chatter would annoy me, Tiffany either had not picked up the same lessons or she, more irritatingly, did not care. Either way, I could not wait to deliver the girls and take a long solitude in the comfort of my own room.

"But when she's married, she'll let her husband rule, right?"

I let out a sharp laugh. "Queen Toria will never marry," I informed, "she is quite content with her consort."

"Never marry?!" Princess Tiffany exclaimed, her face morphed into a mask of horror. "But what about children, there needs to be an heir!"

I answered with a shrug and a grunt, the girl had accidentally hit on a point that worried me as well. We had been lucky that Toria had been born and was a good fit for the throne, but beyond her, we knew of no others. The twins could have reproduced, but nothing had ever come back from the reports to indicate that either of them had children. I had a feeling that they were vehemently against conceiving their own progeny due to the magic that influenced the outcome. I only hope that Toria would see reason when the topic would inevitably have to be broached.

"Many women birth children while not married," I answered, "surely even you must know that."

"Servants, perhaps," she said, face turning pink, "but it is certainly not proper for a royal woman to... to..." The princess let out a loud huff and took a deep breath in. "...to carry a child whose father is not her husband."

Tiffany glanced briefly at Alice with a look that said she didn't think this kind of conversation should be happening before someone so young. In a low voice, barely above a whisper she said, "That would make the future heir a bastard."

A wry smile curled up onto my lips and a staccato laugh escaped through my nose.

"My dear, you are currently riding with someone who could be called a bastard."

The girl's face paled and her lips parted slightly to start apologizing.

"I carry that title with a bit of pride," I explain, waving away her terrified expression. "My mother was a strong woman who raised my sister and I to embrace and reinvent what it meant to be a woman in this world. She never needed a man at her side to dictate the decisions of her life. Frankly, I think the world in general would be much better if the whole absurd notion of marriage was abolished with. Does a noble horse care to marry? Perhaps the regal cat slinking through the tall grass? No, nature's base state is not monogamy or silly contracts, it is ever fluid and transforming."

The princess looked at me with wide wonder, she couldn't seem to wrap her mind around everything I was explaining. It was no matter, there would be plenty of time to undo the years of incorrect training.

"It is of no matter now," I said, "just quiet yourself with the knowledge that you are traveling to a place where your happiness and fulfillment will be paramount and your worth will not be determined by the status of who you marry."

The girl turned back away from me, looking out into the distance where we were heading. The transition stone should be coming into view by the end of the day and I had encouraged them to play a little game to see who could spot it first. I could tell that she was not playing the game, but instead was mulling over the new information I had fed to her.

Wearily, I returned to my own thoughts, the only refuge I had from the drudgery that was this return home. My thoughts were now of my mother, the tender, yet fiery woman who gave Evonia her regal sense of purpose and my own stalwart independence. It seemed that the older I grew, the more often I thought of her, perhaps now that I was an elderly woman, I could look back and she the impact of her rearing in the path of my life.

My mother, Aurora had been little better than a servant, a handmaid to a noble woman who kept her as more of a friend than a slave. Though my mother was beloved by the lady of the manor, the duke was a hard, cold man who cared only for his wife's abilities to entertain like a well-mannered lady and to bear children. When my mother was barely a young adult, the duchess began to find trouble conceiving anymore children, losing them early or going for long stretches without any signs of pregnancy. It was not long until the duke began to look elsewhere, the easiest target was Aurora who was still beautiful, youthful, and fertile.

Despite the duchess' displeasure and my mother's unyielding refusal, Aurora gave birth to her first child, Evonia. After the birth, my mother, despite having no power before, used her new leverage to demand better accommodations for herself and her child with the unspoken agreement that she would willingly submit herself to the task of carrying more children. It was the darkest point in her life, being used for nothing more like a means of production and the agreement did not last much longer beyond my own birth.

With nothing to her name, my mother planned her escape for the middle of the night, taking whatever valuables from the home that could fit into a bag. Into the night with Evonia on one hip and myself pressed to her bosom, she left the manor, never to return. Aurora spent many nights wandering the beaten paths towards the towns scattered throughout the kingdom she resided in, keeping off the road during the day to prevent anyone who may be looking for her from taking her and her children back. Eventually she made it to one of those towns, sell her goods, and bought safety for us in the home of an elderly woman, her silence assured by the modest sum the noble goods had brought at the market.

We were raised, partially in isolation in that small town, I could not bring it's name to mind and I could not be sure that I had ever actually known it. My mother worked in the bakery down the street, reporting long before the sun rose in the morning and not returning until the afternoon. Evonia was much more impacted by our simple life in the near ramshackle house, she had lived with much delight in finery with rich food and constant pampering, though young, she made her displeasure known. My first memories of my sister were her screaming fits towards my mother about taking her away from the manor and her threats to tell people where she really belonged. Thanks to her constant fuming state, my mother and the old woman took turns ensuring that the two of us were never outside of hand's reach in case Evonia took an opportunity to run off and make good on her threats.

"There!" Alice called out, dragging me away from the fading memories in my mind. "Is that the rock?"

Focusing my eyes on the road ahead of us, I was relieved to see that it was instead the point of transistion. There would still be a long ride ahead of us after passing the barrier, but there was light at the end of the tunnel.

"It's just a rock," Tiffany said with a sniff, "it doesn't look like a door or something we can pass through."

I ignored the girl's ignorance and dug my feet sharplly into the horse's flanks to spur it into a faster trot.

"It's not..." Alice said, voice trailing off. Her eyes were wide, pupils dialating as she went into a sort of trance.

Tiffany seemed not to notice, she frowning at the rock in front of us, but I watched the youngest girls face carefully. The girl's reaction to her first dose of pure, unmitigated magic would speak to her possible affinities when trained.

Alice's face turned up in a smile, eyes wide and unblinking, her hands clasped tightly into the mane of the beast. With a loud gasp, she seemed to snap out of her fuge state, looking to me with wonder. Now withing the sphere of magic surrounding the stone, my own magical aura shown brighter, the edges clarified against the haze of wild magic eminating from the stone. I would feel her gently press against my magical aura with her own, a giddy look coming over her face as our aura's touched. Her aura felt young and wild, it contained a terrifying strength within it, my own eyes going wide at the girl's sheer potential. I had never felt something so powerful residing within a human, especially a human from such low birth. Her potential excited the hairs down the back of my neck, sending a shiver through my body. She alone could hold the potential to turn the tide of any war she was a part of.

"Yep, just a stupid rock."

Princess Tiffany's words broke my awed state and I looked to her with a frown. If she could feel none of what was happening around her, she was truly as magically inept as I suspected. It was a pity that her ultimate residence would not be within the walls of the kingdom, perhaps the best we could do for her would be to let her chose her own, separate fate.

"It's beautiful," Alice whispered, her eyes back on the stone in the path.

At least I was bringing back one recruit, her potential perhaps great enough to make up for the fact that I was returning nearly empty-handed.