Falls

I was actually born in the Forest, Bacardi tells her, and Arkana's blue and brown eyes widen with delight. The stallion is young enough that they might have encountered one another without knowing, but another quick search of her memory comes up blank. The name Macabre sounds dreadfully familiar, though, and Arkana also knows of the Peak, if only through what her mother and Persephone had told her and her sisters regarding the Amazons' role in the war. While Arkana still retains vivid snapshots of memories from that dreadful night and the days that had followed, she had been too young at the time to understand what was happening or who all the horses that had invaded their shores in the dead of night were.

One of her most vivid memories from that time is stumbling upon the body of a red mare in the gray light of dawn, a horrible stench emanating from her body. Arkana does not know it, but that body had been Macabre herself.

"The Peak have been good friends to our herd over the years," Arkana says with a nod. "I've always been so curious about them."

Tinuvel, however, is another matter, and her expression falls a little when Bacardi reveals he's made a home there. While she knows that, realistically, not every horse on Tinuvel must be bad, it's hard for her opinion of the island and its inhabitants not to be colored by the violence Warsaw had brought to their shores when she was a child. When her mother and Persephone speak of Tinuvel, it is rarely - if ever - in a favorable tone.

"Tinuvel, huh?" she says, doing her best to maintain a friendly intonation. "I've never been, but my mother says it's awfully cold." She chews her lip thoughtfully, debating whether to ask her next question. Bacardi may know nothing of the war, and even if he does, his opinion on it may not be what Arkana wants to hear. Though surely, if he was born in the Forest and raised in the Peak, he could not be an ally of Warsaw? "How are things there? Is it peaceful? Do the herds get along? I've always been a little scared to visit after everything that, you know… everything that happened."

She shifts her weight, a little unease sitting tight in her belly.