Common

She was here again, wanderer and traveler without a purpose. When the new Lord of the Inlet had made himself known to the land and earth to which he felt entitled, she vanished into the trees and mountains. Her trek brought her back to the shoreline and then deposited her just in the place she had left from originally when Bjorn had offered her safe passage and given her reason to believe that she might find the Man of Fire with him. He had not broken his promise, mind, only Fate was not in keeping with his desire to command the land he had somehow obtained previously.

So she approaches the commons once more, still unaware of its purpose and the ramifications beyond ‘people come here to gather followers unto them’. The thought of lonely days continuing into the spring made her open, more aware, than when she had first arrived in fear of the Evil that had driven her out of her Demesne. Still she felt the ache of it like an old wound that would never heal, a wound from a morgul blade, if you will. She would never be rid of that pain, never be rid of the absence of its voice save for its wailing for her to return to it when the night was its most still. Until a new Chalice could be born to it, it would forever be in pain. Her duty to land and duty to people had given her a catch twenty-two.

Either way she would mourn and grimace to the last of her days without her Man of Fire to break the tie to her once-home. He was supposed to be the blade that slowly stripped the twine about her, potentially even tying it to another land altogether so that while she might not affect the earth of her home, she would be able to speak to it as she had done in the land she left.

Her eyes turn brilliant once the springtime sunshine finds them, robin’s egg blue and beautiful. It was like the springtime fed off of her, tried to become a little more like summer with her presence and satin-shining coat. Her dreary thoughts have no alteration on this, save that when she sees the painted palomino by the great oak, she thanks it for encouraging a sister of gold to rest beneath it. The great tree does not respond as one might have in her once-Demesne, but she thinks it has heard her, the rustling leaves friendly and kind.

"We make quite the pair, you and I," she says with a smile and an inclined head, walking just to one side enough to slide in beside the other mare. "I am Chalice." Her voice is sweet like honey and smooth as milk - everything wonderful about summertime and comfort in her every cell. "I had been worried I might not find someone to pass this day with - perhaps you might not mind my company?"