róisín

The dun girl danced along the mountain tops with ill-grace but boundless enthusiasm. She tried to spend at least a little bit of each day training in such a fashion, hoping that endless repetition would drill the surefootedness she envied from the long-time Peak mares into her bones. Assessing which rocks could hold her weight while also planning the next four steps ahead turned out to be vastly different from memorizing footpaths through the jungle or dodging low-hanging vines at a moment's notice. She wasn't good at it, not yet, but she was getting better.

It gave her something to do without the cacophony of the Ridge's children at her heels. Coming to the Peak had underscored how very little Róisín knew about herself in the absence of everything she'd once found familiar. Perhaps that was why she pulled away from Iscariot as if by relying on the comfort he provided, she was hiding from the fact that she was a stranger to herself.

Everything felt unfamiliar here, even his gentle companionship.

It didn't help that spring was here, and with spring came the talk that she'd been dreading ever since he confessed that Faolain had come to see him. If she were honest, a little bit of her had begun to dislike the black mare. Not because she viewed Iscariot as a lover that she needed to guard (that ship had come and gone when it became clear that he did not reciprocate her girlhood crush), but because he was vulnerable. It was as if Faolain were using him for the affection he'd once had for her, and counting on his disability to keep him from pursuing his rights.

It was perhaps unfair to categorize their relationship in such a fashion, but it was the only thing that allowed Róisín to justify her anger at the situation. Because if it wasn't Faolain's fault, and it wasn't Iscariot's fault, then there was no fault at all and her anger would be unfounded. And she couldn't deny that she was, in fact, angry about it.

At first, when she spots him mid-dance, she isn't even sure that what she's seeing is correct. After all, she'd never before seen her cream-coated friend this high up in the mountains, let alone on his own, let alone this close to the edge. The whole scenario brings the memory of her lowest day in the Ridge to mind and she panics, suddenly terrified that she had missed all of the signs that he was headed down this path.

"Iscariot!" She cries out, quickly changing course to race haphazardly to him - relying on brute strength and adrenaline to carry her across the rocks, rather than fine motor control or care. As she gets closer and it becomes more apparent that he is not, in fact, about to fling himself off the cliff, she flushes beneath her red-gold coat and slows her pace. Of course, he hadn't been about to do that. He was stronger than her in every way that truly mattered.

Swallowing hard to hide the lump in her throat, Róisín settled across from him on the ledge and cast her gaze downward at the meadow below, thankful to have something else to look at. "It's pretty up here," she says, her mind rapidly searching for the words to say to kick off this terrible no-good discussion. It needed to be done and yet every fiber of her being was recoiling against the thought of making him sad. "Starting to feel like home," she lies, swallowing hard again. In truth, she felt alone in this sea of sisters. There was promise here, and a future if she kept at it, but it wasn't the sort of easy belonging that had always come with the Ridge. Here she only belonged if she was worthy, and Róisín didn't yet know if she was.

Lying to Iscariot was never easy, and in truth, had a very high probability of failing. He knew her better than almost anyone in her life... but she also knew him. And if Iscariot thought she was any kind of lonely, trying to make him go home would only be harder.

Finally, turning to face him, Rói brought her gaze up to his and dove in. "When are you planning to go back?"

mare . 3 . mutt . dun sabino . 14.3 hh . björn x siobhan . love

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