Born in 81 ADT, Marien is just 19 years of age in 100 ADT. Her graduation is recent - though taking the standard five years of training that most students expect. Her Bond to Meadow likewise is new but they have fitted into one another’s lives with barely a ripple. Some Bonds compliment - pairing up qualities and strengths that make a stronger and more complete whole. With these two however, strengths and weaknesses were so similar that the connection has rather amplified them than balanced them out.

Both are free spirits, happy-natured and lovers of life. At this stage of their lives their joint future seems full of promise, new experiences and adventure to come.

Loyal and true Uen Roug, they tend to shy away from other commitments as if they were leashes. Home visits are rare. A desk or teaching job for them would seem a torture and a waste of the fresh air and the leagues and leagues of Uen (and beyond) that neither of them have ever seen. The circuit assignments they are about to embark upon, as new qualified Roug, are exactly what they have been longing for these past few years. Bonding and graduation for them was the fulfillment of the drive to explore and see just what it was that life had to offer them.

Although Uen seems a big enough adventure for now, they have already sent wistful eyes already to the distant horizon that hid Zadiago from view. A mystery land that had somehow claimed her imagination since Marien was a child.

Slight figured, with short cropped blondish hair, Marien’s eyes are a cool, light grey. Her smile is ready and she talks with feeling behind her words. Meadow is as slender as her Bonded. In gallop, the pair seem to fly. Exquisitely pretty, Meadow is a lilac mare, with a silver sheened horn spiraling up from her rippling lilac mane. Academy-born, she was almost five by the time she Bonded.

She gained her name as a tiny foal - just at the time that she also found her feet. It was a beautiful spring morning at the Academy and several ‘corns were out in the Unicorn meadow. Various humans were about at the same time, students and Roug, enjoying the day, the company of their Bonded and taking pleasure in the antics of the younger fillies and colts.

A very new addition to the Academy and Uen Roug family, the tiny lilac foal struggled to her feet, savoring her newly discovered mobility skills and the freedom her four legs was beginning to give her. She tottered to and fro at first, not straying too far from her Dam but, as the day went by, her steadiness increased and the flat expanse of the meadow called her attention and her interest.

Greatly daring she extended her range, keeping an eye on her Dam to make sure that she did not suddenly vanish away. Then, as it seemed that her Dam was always exactly where she had last seen her, the tiny foal ventured further and quickened her pace experimentally. Skittering a long at first but then, with momentum gained, her long spindly legs lengthening and synchronizing to allow her to pick up speed. Soon she was flying at a helter-skelter pace that had the wind gusting through the threads of her mane and the grasses sweeping out of her way with the force of her advance.

Her antics drew the attention of the surrounding group of ‘corns and humans. Smiling with indulgence at her new found skills and her very evident pride and youthful enjoyment, they paused in what they were doing, just to watch her.

And, imperceptibly, time seemed to slow…

The perfection of the spring morning over the golden meadow, rich with yellow and red flowers suddenly re-dawned upon each of them. They inhaled deeply the perfumed air and turned their faces slightly to absorb the warm rays of sunshine. The breeze tickling at hair and sent tiny noises of its movement into their ears, carrying with it the buzz of the bees intent on their business of visiting the bright flowers scattering the grasses.

Every sensation seemed suddenly heightened. No - not *heightened* really. Just taken notice of. It was as though they had paused in their steady advance toward ‘what is coming next’ to simply glorify that one golden moment in time and to experience it to the full. The solid feel of feet touching ground, of the body that housed the spirit. Of senses extending and providing information to that body. Awareness of the presence of good friends around, the promise of the softer seasons and the inspiration of the young and the new, all caught up in the sight of the tiny foal stretching her limits for the first time in her young life in the place they all called home.

The mother, watching her foal, murmured to her nearby Bonded. {{I will never forget this perfect moment in this meadow. I had forgotten how truly the Light has blessed me…}}

She was not the only one to have been struck by the impression as she found when looking about her. A number of others walked away from the field that day with a light of re-found contentment in their eyes - having for that one moment forgotten about past and future, to exist in totality in the miraculous moment that was the present.

After that day, those present at the time took to calling the unnamed foal ‘the little Meadow filly."

The moment may perhaps have been forgotten or glossed over with time but it was however a forerunner of a gift that was to develop as the Meadow filly’s horn began fully to show through. The name of a corn often derives from the developed talent, but the name Meadow however stuck. She doesn’t really knowingly control her gift yet but there have been several times when her emotions have been at their peak and where those close by her have shared something of her ability to experience such moments to the fullest.

Once it was evoked in response to a particularly moving play, put on by the Academy drama troop. It happened for Marien in the moment she and Meadow Bonded.

It is not always pleasant though - a nightmare from either of the two Bonded’s has been known to take days for them both to shake off the sensations of. The gift is a lasting magic - the experiences that evoke the talent are not readily forgotten, allowing the person to partially re-visit the sensations aroused and experience wisps of that contentment, joy, terror, pleasure and pain that they originally tasted in a more defined way than would usually be possible.

Some of the officials at the Academy are hoping that the talent will progress - they feel that, properly controlled, it could be a useful too on reconnaissance work - which appeals a great deal to the two.

Meadow - and Marien - are the sort of natures that do not dwell on the past overly or moon about the future to such a point where they do not live each day to the fullest. Meadow’s talent is sort of linked to that. It’s sort of just living in the moment. Occasionally, when her emotions are perhaps high and her perception of the moment are at their most clear, her talent is evoked, and those around her also appreciate that precise moment in a very ‘present’ way - allowing them to perceive aspects of it that might have been overlooked in an ordinary sense. Sometimes people are so busy thinking about what comes next or what went before that they miss the *now*. Meadow’s talent makes the ‘now’ the total focus for the person. It doesn’t lengthen the time or slow it or heighten the senses - it just makes a person take note of what is occurring and to actually experience every facet of that moment in time.