For her father, she had never been enough.
Once, long ago, under great moonlit stars and amongst the trees that reached great, green fingers into the heavens, she had been curled up, red and striped and listening eagerly to the cool, soft voice of her father as he told her stories. A son, so he had begged for, a son that would wear his own skin and look like him and behave as the red king should- and instead he was gifted with a daughter.
The last of their kind, and still there was little to behold in her.
On these islands, awash with the stink of salt and seaweed, her hefty fur coat was matted and gnarled by the waters, there was little impressive about her. A little speck, a stain upon the coast, and about her shoulders the heavy disappointment of her father. Meek and mild, a treasured woman had been her mother, and she had loved her child so, but it had not been enough for Sighurd.
For she was a knight- a warrior princess that had been raised as a son, learning the rough and tumble ways of the boys. Kicking heels and clicking teeth, she had learned the right way.
Yet, she had been tossed aside, forgotten and ignored, even as she followed the great lurching red body into the ocean and found herself here.
Here, amongst the shopping-mall aisles of the commons, a dangerous place to be had for certain, yet she was unafraid. Unafraid and unabashed, gaping and staring at the puff of hair that creeps across the pressed flat snow and finds herself in the middle of the field. The boy was a whisper of a man, contrasting against the small creature in the snow, and Sighurd could not help but stare. Mouth ajar and ears pressed forwards, she moves towards them in a trance, eyes only for the small creature that seemed to be made of hair and nothing else, watching blankly as the colt nips her, and introduces himself.
Foreign words, strange and distant, rip Sighurd from her trance as she finds herself mere footsteps from the two, first staring at the other woman and then back at the colt. “Rude, na.” She interjects, interrupts, and all but steps into their bubbles, and pretending as though she had a reason to be here. “No one ever told you not to touch the merchandise?”
mare . red dun . fifteen pt one . russell