OOC: Post-dated to post-Bjorn thread and pre-Nyimara challenge.

The past few hours have been a rollercoaster. And not the kind that leaves you with that warm, pleasant adrenaline rush that makes you feel like you've beaten death. No, this was the herky-jerky kind that left you with whiplash and a deep, deep regret for your rash decisions. It was only the promise of respite that she knew that she would find in Ailill and her daughters that keep Siobhan on her feet today.

Even now, as she extricates herself from her lover's embrace and paths along the jungle floor, her thoughts return to the grulla stallion and all that she had lost. She should be happy that he was alive. Relieved that Roisin and Sigurdr would still have their sire to help raise them. And yet she cannot help but be furious with him. She cannot bring herself to forgive him for the mistakes that he had made, nor could he forgive her. They had reached the penultimate breaking point, and found out that what was between them was not strong enough to endure.

He had returned to his icy kingdom and land of war, with it's bitter queen and unforgiving landscape. She had watched as he plunged into the dark waves, never to return to her.

Sadness still made her breath short and her nerves sensitive, but it was not so slowly being overtaken by anger. Anger that he had left in the first place and deserted them all. That he had chosen the frigid north over the home that belonged to them. That his actions had reduced her to nothing more than a herd mare in a stranger's territory, with two young fillies to raise. That he chosen Nyimara over her.

That he had abandoned Roisin.

For all of his other sins she could perhaps learn to forgive him, but a seed of darkness had sprouted in her hear the first time she'd been forced to make empty promises to her daughter of her father's return, and for this, she could not forgive him.

It was only Ailill's light now that grounded her and kept her sane. She could not help that a part of her would forever yearn for the grullo, but she placed her faith and trust in the golden stallion that had been at her side constantly since they had come together for Aislinn. Siobhan could not have asked for a better helpmate with the fillies, or for a gentler soul to give her heart to. His joyous confession played on repeat in her memories to soothe the ache in her chest as she lowered her lips to the water to drink.

A movement ahead brings Sio's head up, and she expects to see Faolain or one of the dark mare's herdmates. But it is, perhaps, the last person that Siobhan had expected to see. "Ysabel?"