There was work to be done. None of it was glamorous, of course. Most of it was mundane, the sort of campaigning and recruiting that Róisín still felt ill-suited for... but it needed to be done. The little dun had peeked into the Lagoon while she'd been out patrolling the Commons and had felt sick to her stomach as she counted each new (and old) face among the fetid swamp. Their numbers were rising, and the Peak's were not. She needed to change this if they were to continue trying to protect the islands.
She cast a glance upward at the mountain Peak, wishing - not for the first time - that Oswin or Bane or Anath were around to help. Oswin had disappeared after the Peak's vote, with only the presence of her children and the odd far-off glimpse to suggest that she was still around. All of the weight fell to Róisín's shoulders, and while it was also objectively true that she seemed to be the only one applying the weight, it did nothing to lessen the pressure.
Sighing softly, Róisín picked her way quickly down the Peak's mountains and along a familiar deer path to the Meadow. She'd been taking it more often than not lately, but had not yet had a massive amount of success with it apart from Khayali. The pretty Arabian mare was a spitfire and an asset for the Peak, but Róisín knew firsthand that one soul was not enough to make up for the overbearing silence of the mountains.
"Oh, excuse me," Róisín muttered, as she dodged around someone she had not seen. She'd been so focused on her self-imposed to-do list that she hadn't expected to come across anyone on the path, and as a result, had nearly crashed into the elegant mare. "I'm sorry, I didn't expect to see anyone there," she said with a strained chuckle. The little dun shifted to a more comfortable position so that they could speak; from here, it was more obvious that the mare was desert bred, her figure nimble and elegant, much like Khayali's. Instead of a dished face, however, the mare wore a halo of her own.
"Wait, were you headed to the Peak?" She hadn't meant to be so blunt, but it seemed like an obvious conclusion to draw, given that they were on a well-worn path leading to the mountains.