I stand opposing the dark mare, my eyes studying her as the sky grows slightly lighter with every passing second. Dawn was not too far off but still the darkness reigned over the Peak, a time when all normal creatures would be asleep so why was this one skulking around in the blackness of the night? Was she fearful of being captured by one of the many males that roamed the land after sunrise, searching for a prize to bring home and call their own? No, by the looks of her she could beat even the toughest of stallions to tears with a single, muscle-laden kick to the chest. So why then would she be traveling at night, especially in the winter seasons when the nights temperatures where a least twice as low as they were during the day?

A small smirk pulled at the edges of my muzzle as the ebony fem questioned me of my placement here in the frozen world, when I wore the title of Princess of the Great Isle so openly. A good question indeed and I had pondered that same thing from time to time but in the end I arrived at the same answer and where most would not see the logic in my ideology, I saw it as a type of self-preservation above all else. “Because, my lady Skraeling, it would appear that there are very few in this world that still abide by the virtue of pureness, and I have taken it upon myself to invest my lineage into a new land where I hope it will prosper without the shadow of the weak minded to meddle in its glory,” I stated, thinking of my mother who had so carelessly fallen into the arms of love after my father’s untimely death, tainting our name with her atrocity. I let my words settle in the space between us, finding interest in the ebony mare as her black eye regarded me with daggers. There was something so dark and brooding about the female I began to understand why she may have chosen to fly by night, as she melted into the shadows like darkness itself.

Unfortunately the meeting between the shadowy vixen and myself was rudely enough disturbed by the words of a mare, whose scent was laced about the Peak like an annoying itch that you just couldn’t scratch. I turned my finely dished skull, just enough to allow the vixen’s pale frame to enter my view as I scoffed openly at her incredulously ignorant comment. “Well someone has to uphold a shred of etiquette around here to separate us from those mongrels you care to visit,” I suggested, speaking obviously of the stallions that occupied the Lagoon to our south. It was no secret that the previous queen of the Vulcans had recently returned to the Peak wearing the musty, testosterone fueled scent that was an unmistakable trademark of the bachelor heard. It was also said that the vixen had borne a daughter to the Lagoon king, but it is hard to be sure what truth lie in the musings of an all-female herd. Women do enjoy spinning a good tale after all, myself included.

I had not formally met the pale mare in person until now, but the legacy of her name was inescapable. Shira herself had mentioned the previous queen once or twice, usually some utterance of how the Peak was being laid to waste in the light of its absent leader, but again rumors are the thread to which most stories are held together.

“Her name is Skraeling,” I pointed out, turning my eyes towards the ebony mare again to acknowledge her as I spoke her name. “If you cared to welcome company as they arrived, you would not have to ask a guest to repeat themselves.”




G O D I V A
Mare - Rose Grey (ee Aa Gg) - Arabian - 3yrs - 15.0


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