a new world hangs outside the window
beautiful and strange
it must be I've fallen awake
I must be

Just weeks ago, Wasp couldn't have felt worse. She was sure that Macabre was dead. The Peak felt like a ghost town. Her body still ached where Cullen had beaten her down time and time again. The draft-bred mare was miserable. She was lost. And she felt completed gutted. Wasp didn't know what to do.

Somewhere within her anguish, she pushed herself into the surf and went to the only place she could think of to find some semblance of comfort - to Paradise. While the mare had been nervous about seeing Rougaru again, especially in such an emotional state, the silver bay stallion turned out to be just the horse she needed to see. He made her feel better about her string of defeats. He gave her the pep talk she needed to hear. If this path were easy, why wouldn't anyone take it? It was a thought he'd planted in her mind. So Wasp grit her teeth and pushed past her pain and swam back to the Peak. Someone had to save it. And she was sure as hell going to try.

Then the mare found her mom. Wasp wasn't sure she'd ever feel joy like that again in her life, like the day she found Macabre and their friends in the Forest. Macabre and Cherish returned, with Clarity and Bacardi and with the help of an old friend, Ruger. The numbers of the herd were going up. Seeing fresh faces around here lifted her spirits.

As her body finally healed from her last spar with Cullen, Wasp decided to be proactive. She marched into the Lagoon, singled out the first bachelor stallion she saw, and fought him. She fought with everything she had, and surprisingly, she won. She was still riding high from this rush of adrenaline when she noticed Khar'pern - a relative newcomer to the herd, talking to a stallion. Wasp's stallion.

She trotted over to meet both of them at a lofty, prancing two-beat trot, a gait fit for a winner. A sly smile was plastered across her dark whiskered lips, and her ears pricked forward when she caught Khar'pern's words to Ivar. "Not so fast, Khar'pern." Wasp said as she approached, bumping her friend on the shoulder as her amber gaze settled on the black stallion. "He is my prize. My trinket." She said coolly. "This guy is now our captive. I won him in battle." Wasp bat her black tail over her rump as she assessed him. He was a formidable opponent - Wasp did not win their scrimmage easily. "What's your name? She posed, eyeing the stallion with interest.

W A S P