The Princess was leisurely strolling along the path that weaves through the flowers and plants the servants tended to. While she was surrounded by beauty, her eyes were directed upward, peering up at the velvety night sky. The stars twinkled and the moon shone down on her. Looking into its vastness made her feel small and insignificant, and she was able to forget about her responsibilities and the overwhelming task of retrieving her throne. All the thoughts of failure melted away, all her fears and worries subsided. For the first time in several hours, she felt calm and relaxed. But, her nervousness spiked as she was pulled back to reality upon hearing the sound of footsteps behind her. Vail was so caught up in being at peace that she had forgotten about the very real threat of being caught outside at such an hour. Though it was her last night with the only family she knew, they would still scold her for being awake and not where she was supposed to be. As she spun around, her bright eyes landed on the stranger who was to take her to the resistance.<br/><br/>He didn’t seem to be cross with her. In fact, judging by how far behind her he was, he had been following her for quite some time. He hadn’t said anything, and he wasn’t attempting to bring her back inside. He was just . . . watching. The Princess appreciated it so much that she couldn’t help but smile softly. “How long have you been there, Gabriel?” She asked, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb the silence and wake her slew of protectors. “If you’re not here to tell me to return to my bed, then you should walk with me.” Vail offered. She came outside to be alone and clear her thoughts, but one of the many things keeping her up was the fact that she knew nothing about the being that she would be journeying with. He wore the features of the enemy, the beings that her handmaidens had told her—from a very young age—to be afraid of and never to trust. With how they described dragons, they were the stuff of nightmares. They were supposedly vicious and nasty, violent and frightening.<br/><br/>And yet, Gabriel was nothing of the sort.<br/><br/>“You see, I am terribly nervous about what is to come. So much that my mind is . . . racing with thoughts of the unknown. I don’t know what it’s like beyond this valley. It might put me at ease to know what Valdaran is like . . . How far it is, where it is, what the people of the resistance have been up to . . .” Vail could have gone on and on, but she didn’t want to bombard the dragon with questions. It was likely he knew as little as she did. She couldn’t imagine what lengths the Captain had gone through to conceal his identity, what he truly was.