Common

Time had a funny way of slipping by. It felt like in the blink of an eye ten years had passed in a gaussian blur, taking her family and her happiness with them. But their faces - her mother's, her father's, her brother's, her daughter's - remained in crystal clarity at the forefront of her mind. A lifetime had passed since she'd seen then, and when she tried to imagine her mother's smiling face greyed by age, Schuyler's heart clenched painfully inside her chest. It was easier to remember her as she was, to imagine that time had not stolen away her youth.

She missed them all terribly. She missed Freya's warm and comforting hugs. She missed the playful stubbornness of her brother and the wise words of her father. She missed the feeling of her daughter pressed snugly to her side as they nap together under the sun. She missed the snow-swept tundras of Tinuvel. She thought she'd call those mountains and valleys home until the day she died.

Schuyler did visit Tinuvel, but only briefly. It was only a layover in her journey, a place to stop and rest and regather her wits before moving on. She couldn't linger comfortably there anyway. There were far too many ghosts, specters of her past whose only purpose was to remind her of what she lost. She refused to let them haunt her any longer, so she set her sights on the mainland and its endless possibilities. When she touched hoof on the Crossing, she paused for only a brief moment to shake the salt from her skin, the dark tresses of her mane clinging to her neck.

The Commons were bustling with activity today. Schuyler took note of her surroundings as she ventured into the meadow. Though her pace was leisurely her senses were on high alert. She was well aware of the dangers that could befall an unclaimed, unaccompanied mare in an area like this. Eventually she came to a halt at the center of the field, watching the sea of bodies shift around her in a slow-moving current. Faces passed in a blur of movement, none sparing a second glance her way. At this Schuyler was reminded - again - of the fact that she was a stranger here. The Islands had not remembered her.

But in this realization there was opportunity. A chance at a new start, a new life, a new family. A chance to not be hung up on the past forever. With renewed hope Schuyler lifted her sooty muzzle and let loose a beckoning cry, praying that whatever this new future brought was worth all the pain and loneliness of the past decade.