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Dreamer: In a world where you can be anything (anyone) you want, you wanted to be a MacLeod. Not like your father but like your grandmother — wanderlust must skip a generation, you figure. It’s the most obvious answer, after all. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, you kept hope for twenty years. When hope came, you were ready. Bag already packed. Plans already in play.
The world didn’t know it needed Olethra, but you needed the world. Goodbye, Pilby. Hello, Gath. Goodbye, Gath. Hello, Zood.
There’s a certain privilege to being a MacLeod (one you took for granted, admittedly). Not everyone has a legacy. Most people, however, have a grandmother, which is not a privilege extended to you. On a technicality, yes, Comfrey is around somewhere, but she’s never been present. Like a spectre haunting the narrative, her impact is felt in every moment, but she is never truly there. You knew her not, but you know of your grandmother, and isn’t that wonderful in its own way? Aren’t the questions better than the answers?
You know Comfrey loves adventure. By the transitive property, you must embark on the adventure she loves. In doing so, your grandmother will love you, too, hopefully. Surely. Probably. It’s never about the destination to wind riders like her, like us. It’s about the journey. It shouldn’t matter if she loves you, but it does. It matters incredibly.
Maybe it is about the destination, after all. Maybe you just don’t know how to get there.
“What does adventure mean to you, Olethra?”
“Everything.”
Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, and an idle mind knows not what it wants. Without something to occupy, thoughts often wander — quick to doubt, and one prone to overthink. The perpetual motion machine that is Olethra MacLeod exists as a hypothetical, as the constant feedback loop of ennui, restlessness, and wanderlust can only take a young woman so far.
Undeniably weak, you hide behind a metal carapace, a gift of protection in a cruel, cruel world. Coddling, perhaps, and yet a comfort all the same. A tree house. An automaton. A treasure left for you and you alone. Like a bug waiting to come out of its cocoon, Olethreutes will emerge when the time is right. Winged moth, flapping steadily, a child no longer.
Driven now by the approval of others, what matters is the guiding hand of the Wind Riders Society, desperate to follow in the footsteps of those before. Who wouldn’t want their hero’s blessings? Validation is the carrot dangled before your nose, and you can’t help but yearn to be something of an equal (maybe not now, but one day).
Mom and Dad shouldn’t be discredited — they love you fiercely, and that’s more than some can say. Proud sovereign citizens and prouder parents, they’d go to Hell and back for their little girl. So would the rest of this crew. You would go to Hell and back for all of them just as fast, if not faster — a love for adventure rivaled only by a love for each other.
You’re the kid. You’re a part of something greater than yourself. You’re a league of your own. You’re a legacy in the making. You’re a MacLeod. In a world where you can be anything (anyone) you want, you’re exactly who you need to be.