Already she can feel the tight constriction around her lungs loosening—the winter air relinquishes it’s grip with one last, lingering stroke, tender fingertips trailing the inside of her.

With a great, towering restraint she releases it, one eye cast sideways to the silhouette at her side. She would do a great deal to keep her most obvious weaknesses from others who have not earned her trust, and she is a grudging creature. She does not give it often, or easily.

Though the air thins as they descend, slips easier into their rattling chests and out of their rolling nostrils, similarly it darkens.

Already, she wants to trust Impazienza, to throw it at her, defensive, but for her to do with what she will. (Derry understands that this is the problem with all great political minds; with speeches that send shivers down spines, the kind that would leave her googly-eyed, tongue lolling. She has been easily fooled, before.)

Already, she feels as if she could follow her into hell, and come out spitting brimstone and revelling in flame.

“We are cut from the same cloth, you and I,” she says, and though she is smiling, she is deadly serious, “I will help in any way that I can.” She had meant to say: I will follow you into whatever battle you wish to lead me into, but had managed to refrain at the last moment, her teeth sharp on her tongue until she tasted iron.

Derry can feel the other mare’s gaze digging deep into her skin, scoping out her tainted flesh and chipped bones. She tends to the fire beginning in her stomach, blots it out with sand and stone and lifts her head up.

“You speak very well,” her voice is very, tenderly slow, lacking any of its previous edge, “you will make a fine leader—in fact, I have found myself wondering, in our short acquaintance, how you are not already so appointed. A movement such as the one you speak of surely cannot move forward without a spearhead,” she rolls to a stop then, her spindle legs and threaded feathers still amongst the damp grass.

“I will be glad to follow you, Impa.”

And never has there been such a creature so passionate, so earnest as she.