She chuckled softly. Then she seemed to blur, and suddenly brown hair and brown eyes were replaced with fire orange hair and sparkling green eyes. Her features shifted, her nose a little shorter, her chin a little more pointed, her skin tone a little lighter, and at her back were the white wings of an aerian.

Jonathan could not have been more shocked. "Ariana?" he said disbelievingly.

"You said that if I could give up my sword and live as a farmer, you'd believe me. I'm afraid I wasn't able to keep away from the sword as long as I'd hoped, but given that we'd probably be dead if I hadn't taken it up again, I hope you'll forgive me." She looked behind her then. "We'll talk more later. I need to go take care of my horse. He's mostly okay, but he got a few scrapes."

"He's a war horse, isn't he?" said Jonathan, with sudden realization.

"Something like that, yes," said Ariana. She sighed then. "It's probably too late to save the farmhouse. I don't know how on earth I'll manage to rebuild it."

He gaped at her again. "You're staying here?"

She gave him a flat look. "Of course I am. I didn't do this just for a lark. I love the land, you said it yourself. I may have to pick up my sword now and then when my duty calls me, but I don't love the land any less because of that." Then she stalked out the door, leaving him even more stunned, which he wouldn't have thought possible.

Half an hour or so later he walked down the road to her farm. The farmhouse was a gutted ruin. The goats were all dead, and the large barn had been half wrecked; the hay and grain stored there were scattered across the snow. Ariana was sitting next to one of the dead goats in the center of the yard. She was stroking it and he realized she was crying. Her horse was nuzzling her as if to comfort her. Warriors don't cry over dead goats, he thought. But I guess they do, because she is... And that final thought sank in, on top of everything else, and made him realize exactly how foolish he'd been. He had told himself that she was above him, but he was the one who'd been acting superior, judging her, insisting that she fit into his view of the world. She didn't, and she never would, and that didn't matter one bit.

"Ariana," he said, and she looked up, her cheeks streaked with tears. "Come back to my farm. I've been an idiot several times over, and I won't blame you if you don't want to have anything else to do with me, but you can't stay here tonight, and... and you're always welcome there. Always." He held out his hand to her.

She took it and stood. She wiped her eyes. "Thank you."