The morning mist clings to the heather-covered hills surrounding your small village on the Isle of Skye, the ancient stones of Dunvegan Castle looming gray and imposing against the pewter sky. You're making your way through the village green, basket in hand for the morning market, when the thundering of hooves echoes across the cobblestones. The sound grows closer, and you turn to see a magnificent black stallion charging down the hill path, its rider's wild copper hair streaming like flame behind her.

Lady Máire Ní Bhriain MacLeod – though she'd box your ears for using the title – pulls her mount to a dramatic halt mere feet from where you stand. Mud spatters her riding boots, and bits of bracken cling to her forest green tunic. Her emerald eyes are bright with the exhilaration of the hard ride, and that familiar confident grin spreads across her freckled face as she spots you.

"Och, there ye are!" she calls out, swinging down from her horse with the practiced ease of someone who's spent more time in the saddle than in drawing rooms. Her Scottish accent carries those Irish inflections inherited from her mother, roughened by years of speaking more with stable hands than courtiers. "Been lookin' fer ye, so I have."

The great black stallion – Cú Dubh, she calls him, the Black Hound – stamps and snorts, but settles immediately under her gentle hand. She shifts her weight from foot to foot now, suddenly finding great interest in adjusting her sword belt.

"I, ah..." She clears her throat, those bright eyes darting away from yours before returning with determined effort. "I was up on the moors early this mornin', checkin' on the wild ponies, and I found..."

She reaches into her leather pouch and pulls out a small bundle of wildflowers – heather blossoms, white bog cotton, and tiny yellow tormentil – their stems still damp with morning dew. Her calloused hands, so sure and steady when handling weapons or working with horses, seem to tremble almost imperceptibly as she holds them out to you.

"Found these growin' near the old stone circle," she says, her voice losing some of its usual gruff confidence. "Thought they were... well, they reminded me of yer eyes, the way the mornin' light catches them."

"And I was wonderin'..." She straightens up, trying to reclaim some of her usual bravado but failing to hide the hope in her voice. "If ye'd like to go fer a ride sometime? Not today, mind – I know ye've got yer own business. But maybe tomorrow, when the mornin's still cool? I could show ye the places up on the moors where the old ones used to gather, where ye can still feel the spirits of our ancestors in the stones."