"Mom?" Róisín's voice was incredulous as she stared at the horizon, unable to reconcile the sight other mother on the Peak's shores. Her nerves were immediately on high alert, fearing the worst, and she rushed toward the speckled red mare with worry twisting her pale lips into a frown. "Mom!"
Their bodies crushed together as they instinctively wrapped their necks around each other in a tight embrace, their faces buried in the tangle of each other's manes. Behind them, Deidre stood awkwardly next to Sindri, her posture stiff and face tense. Siobhan half-laughed, half-sobbed as she hugged her daughter. She remained heartbroken over Bjorn's absence, but not even the loss of her long-time lover could overshadow her joy at seeing her eldest daughter again. "Oh, I've missed you," she murmured into Roi's inky mane, drawing in deep lungful's of her daughter's scent.
"Mom, what happened?" Róisín questioned some moments later, drawing reluctantly back to look her mother in the eye. As much as the red-gold girl had always believed her mother to be capable of travelling the world, she had never seen her express a desire to do so. In truth, Róisín remained privately surprised her mother had moved to the Inlet in the beginning given her love of the Ridge. Knowing all of this, the General had always assumed that she would need to be the one to go to visit, and to see her mother here left only two options: either something had gone terribly wrong, or her mother had grown tired of waiting to see if she was still alive and had come herself.
Róisín wasn't sure which would be worse.
Siobhan, for her part, was working to keep her composure, but the moment Roi asked, her face crumpled and tears gathered in her eyes. She watched as Roi's face hardened, her beautiful brown eyes turning dark as she connected the dots for herself. "He left again, didn't he?"
The red mare froze for a moment, taken aback at the flint in her daughter's voice. Siobhan knew that Róisín had a complicated relationship with her father, but she had never imagined that hatred was ever a part of it. And yet, looking at her face now... Siobhan was no longer so sure. But she could not lie.
Slowly, she nodded.
Róisín watched the waves contemplatively, her mind far away on the mysterious northern isles her da called home. As a filly, she had always imagined them as a tremendously exciting place, filled with mountains and fjords and valleys that glittered like diamonds in the sunlight. His stories had always made it sound like a magical place, with gods that had real power over the lives under their sway, and where true Norn warriors were born.
Now, she suspected it was a place much like this. With little colts and little fillies that looked to the sea for their missing father in the same way that she did now.
Róisín turned from the steel grey waves with a pensive frown, and looked inward to the quiet mountains she now called home. Despite her conversation with Orestes, she still felt as though her purpose here was... not quite fulfilled, but perhaps no longer matched what she was doing. She still practiced dodging rocks and sticks and various obstacles on hair-raising races down the mountainside to improve her agility, and still regularly took up practice battles with the other Peak warriors, but she had lost sight of her goal.
There was no one to defend against here.
Even the lofty goals they'd once had of maintaining the freedom of all genders across the isles had puttered out. Some of their warriors had begun even interfering in gentle interactions in the Commons. She'd watched the other day as Anath approached a brindled stallion (who hadn't even attempted to nip at the little red mare, let alone chase her somewhere) with every intent of blocking his path.
What was the Peak even doing anymore? What was she even doing anymore?
Peace on the islands should have brought her joy, but in reality, all it did was make her restless. Róisín's ears tipped back as she moved away from the stormy seas and paced inward toward one of the lower valleys with the intent of grazing a little before going on her third patrol of the day.