Common

The voice that answered her call was deep and masculine, far different from that of the valkyries as they called to each other over the mountaintops. It made her heart race with nerves and anxiety, but she did her best to put a smile on her face as she turned toward the source eagerly. He wouldn't answer me back if he meant me harm, she thought to herself, trying not to linger on the other possibilities. The Peak's new Prime Minister had been very thorough in going over the dangers with Hymn as soon as she'd broached the subject, and it was hard to shake the what-if's from her mind.

Oh, her mind offered, incapable of forming words as the answerer of her call appeared. She watches wide-eyed as the painted stallion makes his way toward her at a jog, his mane and tail blowing in the wind, even as the fur on his feathered legs dances with each step. He was unfamiliar to her, but most stallions were. She'd only met a handful of them in her entire lifetime, and none of them had looked quite like that. He seemed so mature and worldly in comparison to her, unfettered by the doubts that plagued her.

Hymn's face flushed beneath the cover of her fur as he reached to exchange breath with her, but she reciprocated without hesitation. Her dark nostrils fluttered faintly as the warmth of his breath washed across her face and she pulled back somewhat reluctantly as he began to speak, her dark-rimmed ears pricked alertly forward.

Rilke, of the Forest, he said, already confident of who he was and his place in the world. "I'm Hymn, of... um, nowhere." She answered with another full-body flush, doing her best to not be self-conscious of her voice. The Peak mares had been gracious in helping her learn how to speak despite spending her formative years in silence, but there was no denying that her accent was unusual. It pointed to no place of origin that would be recognizable, the intonations and hesitations a mix of influence from those that had taught her. To her own ears, it sounded painfully out of place among the fluid speech that others commanded, but she refused to let it daunt her. Hymn of nowhere certainly didn't sound as impressive as Rilke of the Forest, but it felt wrong to claim residence in the Peak when she was doing her best to leave it behind.

As he asks why she was here, Hymn blinks in surprise. She knew that the intricacies and rhythms of spoken language were sometimes beyond her grasp after spending the majority of her life following her mute mother, but she was fairly certain her purpose was obvious. If not to find a home or seek out new herd members, why would anyone come alone to the Commons?

Before she can even begin to craft a response, a stallion of black and white inserts himself into their conversation, and she turns to him in surprise, her eyes wide. There is no hesitation in the handsome monochrome stallion, no self-conscious pause, nor even a real mote of consideration for Rilke. Even so, his aura is so overwhelming that she cannot look away from him as he speaks.

His words, however, are almost too slippery for her tentative grasp of language. Who were the Norns? And why would he think they had brought her here? "The Norns?" she questions curiously, her head subtly tilted. "Who - oh." Her body and face flush again as she draws the connection between his final words and what must surely be his meaning.

Our paths are meant to cross, he had said. A fancy way to say that they were destined to meet each other, the same way lovers often were in the stories Hymn had teased from the elder Peak sisters as a child. Her heart thrummed in her chest, but still she stood quiet, her amber eyes wide as she watched the nameless new arrival.

She couldn't explain why she felt like she was on a precipice. Neither stallion was rushing her, and she'd been perfectly happy conversing with Rilke just a moment ago... but the lure of true love, of fated lovers, of finding someone that was meant for her, was stronger than any sense of reality. Had Sigurdr never arrived, Hymn would have likely gone on to live happily with Rilke, learning how to write her story from the ground up with real paragraphs and conclusions and interesting introductions. Knowing her romantic's heart, she would have quickly progressed from friends to lovers and their stories would have expanded together. Plotlines and hooks and real, honest character development. She would have been happy with him, she thought.

But before her very eyes he was fading away, and in the absence of the champagne stallion there remained only the new arrival. She did not know if she would ever learn how to write coherently at his side; he felt too much like poetry, like feelings too nebulous to grasp.

But going with him felt like it might be flying... and she was ready to soar.

OOC: Since Leaf is gone, I'm just going to send her along to the Shore <3