róisín

Róisín waits uncomfortably for either mare to speak after her proclamation with her gaze dancing between them. Bane seems mostly unbothered by it, but there is a sense of shifting energy in Oswin that makes her wary of what will come next.

Unlike the two mares that she stands beside, Róisín did not grow up in the heart of the Peak. She had worshiped it from afar as a child and dreamed of the day that she would come to call it her home, but she held no allegiance to the memories of the past or to the souls that had once made the mountain trails their own. Róisín understood that she could not change history, but she also believed that they were not necessarily doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

Beside her, Bane was the first to speak and the dun girl turned to her expectantly, half-certain that she was going to scold her. After all, even Rói knew that her words hadn't been particularly complimentary of her sisters. To her surprise, there is no admonishment in the chocolate-colored mare's voice, but there is a lot of fence-walking that makes the young girl instantly less willing to take her advice.

As much as being willing to compromise was helpful, Róisín knew it wasn't always the answer. While this current situation was not so easily black and white, in the girl's eyes there were clear comments that had been made that painted the Peak in a less than favorable light. To claim that the ideas of right and wrong were ever-changing was absurd to the girl who had not yet experienced life for long enough to have lived it in shades of grey. For her, good and evil remained clearly defined. And if Bane was unwilling to condemn the clearly wrong choices the Peak had made in the past, it suggested to Rói that she was willing to make them again if the opportunity arose.

Her ending statement restores some hope, and Róisín fits a tentative smile to her lips as she finished. Hunting down and ending injustice was certainly something that she could get behind. "I like the sound of that," she murmurs into the brief quiet before Oswin responds, and then lifts her gaze over to the golden-coated mare.

You're right, she says, and at first the dun girl isn't sure who she's speaking to. After all, her posture had been tense and her gaze faraway during Rói's speech. When she clarifies a moment later that both of them were correct, that same tentative smile from before flickers across her pale lips. As Oswin continues to speak, Róisín finds some of her doubts ebbing away. There was a possibility that the mare was simply playing politics and attempting to sugarcoat her actual feelings on the matter in an effort to earn her old position back, but Róisín opted to remain hopeful in this case.

Opting to remain silent, the dun girl simply nodded in agreement to her commentary. What she was saying was true. It was incredibly important to have leadership in the Peak. It was why she had inquired first about their absent leaders, and forced an activity check early. It had been with the intent of taking up the mantle herself if no one remained to claim it.

Instead, the activity check had dragged far more souls out of hiding than she had ever anticipated, and with their arrivals, her hope of leading dimmed. It wasn't that Róisín craved power necessarily. She understood that she was still young and untried in the ways of the Peak, but she had also been here. It was not the lure of a rank that had driven her to become active in the Peak, but a true craving for justice and change.

She wasn't yet sure if the same could be said of her sisters.

"That is a good point," the dun girl conceded with a nod toward Oswin. Anxiety closed her throat for a moment as she considered her next words carefully. She did not want to discount their experience or offend them, but she also wanted to make sure that they understood her position. "Strong leadership will be important moving forward," she said firmly with a small intake of breath. She did not yet have the grace to accomplish her politicking with the finesse that Oswin brandished, but she could not stay silent either. "And while I think prior experience is invaluable, I also think it will be important to have someone that has recent experience with the state of the islands…"

"Which is why I intend to offer myself as the General when the vote comes... if the sisters choose me, of course." Her bushy tail flicked uneasily at her hocks as her gaze flicked between the two of them. "I also think that it will be invaluable to speak to the men that call the Peak home," she continued with a subtle lift of her chin while carefully avoiding the word Trinket, which she loathed. It implied that Iscariot was somehow less than her, as if the gentle soul hadn't practically helped to raise her since she was a filly. "Some of them come from the Lagoon and may be able to share their experience, while Kunžak, especially, has lived here for a long time."

Knowing, as she does, that Oswin intends to run for the position of Prime Minister, her attention returns to Bane in curiosity. Given that it seemed that so many had risen from the woodwork at the prospect of a ranked position, she was curious to know if the enigmatic mare had any aspirations of her own. "What about you, Bane? Do you intend to offer yourself for a position?"

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

Image from Pixabay & HTML by loveinspired