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

Life was moving seemingly too fast and not fast enough at all. Some days, Wasp would blink open her bloodshot, amber eyes and be surprised at the world around her. The Lagoon stallions still littered the lower elevations of their mountain and valley. They lived here, even if it was only temporary. The fresh green chutes of grass and the bright return of the sun signaled the turn of spring season, which meant the captive period of all of Cullen's recruits would end sooner rather than later. But Bozena's great victory sparked something serious. Something special.

Conversations were turning talk to action and action to real change. Wasp could feel it in the air - a new chapter, not just for the Peak, but for the islands as a whole. She only wished Macabre was still around to see it. After all, this was everything the former Codebreaker had hoped for.

But her grief moved at an excruciatingly slow pace. She felt the weight of it constantly, dragging down her shoulders and back. Sometimes the stout, dark bay mare would turn a corner and a moment of deja vu, or of nostalgia would hit her square in the face. There, that boulder, where Macabre faced down Ruger for the first time. Or there, that crack in the great mountainside, where Macabre squeezed around her to keep her safe during the monsoon season. She felt her dam all around her. And the sadness she felt sometimes could fill this entire mountain.

Wasp was feeling more glum than usual on this particular morning. She made her way down from the Peak only to drink from the fresh stream, which was full this time of year with last of winter's melting snow. She dipped her whiskered lips to its edge and drank her fill. A call then came, its strill tone streaking across the sky. Wasp lifted her head from the bank and cast her gaze in the direction it came, her muscles bunched instinctively under her dark brown hide. She flicked her wavy tail over her haunches as her sights settled on a gaggle of horses, all of them some shade or tone mimicking another. Their scents felt foreign and different. But still, the newly minted Prime Minister of the Peak returned the bugle with one of her own, a hoarse and baritone call, before thudding off at a lazy two-beat gait to meet them.

Wasp knew Oswin by name alone and not appearance. The former Vulcan was gone by the time Macabre brought Wasp into the world, but Macabre had often spoke of her, and her family on Tinuvel. Nevertheless, Wasp approached them cautiously, halting several feet away in the tall grasses. She bobbed her head once in acknowledgement, eyeing them all from her vantage point before issuing a snort. Her gaze lingered the longest on the stallion among them, and her eyes reeled into tight slits momentarily. "Welcome to the Peak." She offered as she stared down her nose at them. "My name is Wasp. What is your business here?"

W A S P