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

Wasp had become a recluse in the aftermath of the war. She and her remaining sisters returned from Luthien battered and bruised, and with fewer numbers than they'd originally set out with. It was difficult to share the news, that Macabre had passed, back in the Forest. The stout dark mare woke in the mornings and relieved the trauma and grief of knowing she was now without her dam every day. It was agonizing.

The Peak was leaderless. Macabre was their guiding light. She gave the herd some sense of purpose. But with her gone, everything in the Peak felt like it was barely strung together anymore. But Wasp didn't have the wherewithal in her to care. Not now, at least.

Each day, she labored up to the tallest peaks she could find, her nostrils flaring as she sucked in the thin, crisp mountain air, and she she fell apart. Her legs would quite literally give out, and she'd melt onto the hard and abrasive boulders, where she would cry until there were no more tears left to spill. She limped along in the valley down below when nourishment was needed. But the warrior of the Peak selfishly pinned her ears at any mare who strolled too near. She didn't want their sympathy nor their company. Not now.

As the weeks passed, she began to feel a little better, physically anyway. The limp from her bowed tendon began to stiffen and balance out. The superficial blemishes that marred her dark brown coat scabbed over and disappeared under her thickening winter fur. She was going to be fine, the others told her, even if she didn't believe them. She had to be strong to carry on for the herd. That's what Macabre would have wanted. Fuck that, she thought, as she toiled away in her isolation.

The dark mare just happened to be in the valley below on this particular day, with her head lowered to the stream among the tall grasses, when she heard a call she did not recognize. She lifted her heavy head, her amber gaze drifting out toward the brush in the distance where she spotted an unfamiliar mare. Wasp snorted gruffly, and didn't bother returning her call. She flicked her thick tail over her haunches and lowered her head to continue drinking. But then another mare appeared, and a strange stallion. The three stood stiffly among each other, muscles bunched, as if something was about to happen.

Wasp felt a familiar pang beat in her chest. She couldn't advert her gaze from their gaggle any longer. With a deep sigh, she finally peeled herself away from the riverbank and trotted over with her brown ears laced under a bed of black mane. She arrived just in time to catch some brief exchange from the tall and lean stallion and one mare, and the the quip of the other in return. Wasp eyed the one who spoke last, who touted herself as if she lived here. Maybe she did - Wasp certainly hadn't been paying attention lately. But she was wary of all three of them.

"You heard her." She barked at the stallion, looking for answers before she grit her teeth and was ready to bully her way into some pointless fight. "You are not welcome here. This is your one chance to change our minds."

W A S P