done a lot of things wrong; loving you being one

It strikes her as sad, that the colt has no one to play with and treats it is so normal. Hollis knows her upbringing wasn’t exactly the healthiest, but at least she wasn’t isolated. What hits her even more is when he mentions leaving the Peak. Her brow furrows and she frowns - he cannot read this expression, of course, but she’s genuinely bothered. He’s blind. Surely his mother cannot mean to cast him out? After all, Oswin has seemed such a reasonable leader. Naturally Hollis assumed that translated into being a reasonable mother…but perhaps that isn’t the case. “You’re going to leave? She’s going to make you?” She blurts out, shock evident in her tone. “But…but how will you get anywhere? The islands are all so far apart…”

It isn’t her place, she knows, and Hollis glances nervously around. What if Oswin overhears? What if she is cast out for questioning her Prime Minister? The Peak is a haven that Hollis is reluctant to lose. So she bites her tongue, hoping that if she was overheard, or if this colt tells his mother just what she said she won’t be chased out of her newfound home immediately. He asks a question about playing, but Hollis is so distracted with her thoughts and the growing anxiety that she misses it. Bile is rising in her throat, her heart racing and her breath coming quick. “Um,” she manages to choke out, a desperate gasp of air filling her lungs. Her blue eyes slip closed as she tries to steady herself, focusing on the cool rush of water around her feet, the way the breeze tugs at her mane. “Yes. Yes, usually just me. I don’t…it’s hard for me to meet people.” Hollis explains, unable to put into words how her panic rises up all the time and drowns out any hope she ever had of connection. There’s no way a child, a colt, (and a sheltered Peak one, at that) can understand. And that truly is something she is grateful for, that he will never have to know fear like she did. But she doesn’t know how to conceptualize it for him, especially not while she is panicking in a spiral of doubt now that she questioned the Prime Minister’s child rearing decisions. So far, this experiment to engage has not been going well.