a new world hangs outside the window
beautiful and strange
it must be I've fallen awake
I must be
She awoke to the sound of ospreys overhead - the great gusts of their wingspan muffled from the saltwater in her ears. Her chapped lips peeled back to emit a great gasp - the sides of her aching barrel rising as she willed the humid air to fill her ailing lungs. With that great breath came immediate pain. It enveloped her, washing over her with all it had. It stung in her chest and radiated through her neck and down her spine. It shot from the joints in her legs and ankles. Gashes once scabbed over and nearly healed had ripped open again at her shoulder, chest and down her cheek. They had spilled blood until the seawater washed them clean. Now they just burned in place, threatening to sow infection.
Her amber eyes tried to stay alert, but faltered with every passing second. She blinked hard with determination at first, but grew weak over time. Her hooves shuffled against the wet sand, but her mind could not will them into obedience. Her body had done all it could. And now she was here: limp and half-dead on the shoreline of the Commons.
Why she'd fought so hard to come back here, Wasp didn't know. These islands only held horrible memories for her. Her dam's untimely death, the war that ravaged friendships, the responsibility that eventually broke her, sending her tumbling from a mountaintop to never be seen again. Perhaps it was the hope to see Bacardi again, or Ruger, or any one of her sisters who didn't hate her guts that drove her here. Or maybe it was because these islands were the only home she'd ever known. Wasp tried to find solace in that now as she gave in to the exhaustion that rendered her body completely useless. If she were to die this morning, as the sun had begun its descent over the sea laid out before her, at least she died in the same place as Macabre.
W A S P