Marceline is already lingering nearby when Khar'pern's first words echo out over the rocky slopes of the peak. She is taking shelter from the wind amidst the dense conifers that creep up the side of the mountain like ivy, lipping idly at the stray strands of grass that poke through the leaf-littered ground. Khar'pern's call gives her pause and she lifts her head, a few dry strands of grass poking from between her pink lips. In all the time Marceline has been here, Khar'pern has never addressed the herd as a whole - surely, she thinks, this must be important.
The spotted mare ambles up the mountainside, grateful that she no longer has to stop every few steps to keep from keeling over in pain. Her leg still aches something fierce, but it is no longer the swollen and excruciating mess it once was. Where once she had thought recovery impossible, Marceline can see the light at the end of the tunnel now. She can see a future - albeit not the one she had envisioned, but a future is better than none.
She emerges from the forest just as the dappled mare finishes introducing her latest trinket, proud head lifted high into the buffeting winds. At her side stands a stallion with a coat of striking gold and eyes more blue than the sky over Salem on a clear day. Marceline listens eagerly, crimson ears perched atop her crown, as Khar'pern gives her rousing speech. Pretty promises flow from her lips like honey, and if Marceline were a woman starved of purpose she might feel nourished by them. But the Prime Minister's words leave her wanting. She admires her ambition, undoubtedly, but cannot shake the shadow of doubt that lingers at the corners of her mind as the elected queen continues.
When at last she has finished, Marceline steps forward from the gathered crowd, peering up at Khar'pern through pale lashes. "I respect your victory, but one won battle does not make a queen. Or rather, a Prime Minister." She says evenly, regarding Khar'pern with a look not of challenge or scrutiny, but of intrigue and openness. She does not want to fight the woman, be it with words or teeth, but nor does Marceline want to stand idly by when she feels something here must change, and soon. Now seems as good a time as any to make her bid for leadership known to her sisters, and so Marceline steps forward again, then once more, until she stands apart from the crowd.
"We need more than the occasional won battle or thwarted claim. As it is the Peak is barely a threat to any stallion who would impose on our freedom. We are merely a thorn in their side. Perhaps not even that." She pauses, head turning to sweep her gaze over the lingering bodies of the Peak mares. They are the ones she needs the support of. Even if Khar'pern takes her words personally, it will not matter so long as enough of them are on her side. Marceline hopes, quietly, that it will not come to blows between them, that her retort will not be seen as insolence.
Slowly she scales the small bluff, one aching step at a time, until she is nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with the Prime Minister. The halcyon-hided stallion - Cullen, he'd been called - lingers in her periphery, but she spares him no glances as she addresses Khar'pern and the mares she had come to call sisters over the past several months.
"From your words it sounds to me like the Peak and Lagoon have spent quite some time quarreling with one another. And I congratulate you on getting your revenge. But while you do that, stallions on other islands are no doubt committing atrocities against innocent mares, and those mares are undoubtedly wishing someone would help set them free." She thinks of herself long ago in another life, held captive in a gilded cage and relegated to little more than a pretty broodmare, and of what a blessing something like the Peak would have been in those times. But with a flick of her ear she banishes the ghosts of her past back to the shadows of her mind and fixes Khar'pern again with a questioning gaze, the point of her little speech hanging on a simple query: "Only now are you vowing to do something about it?"
Once again Marceline turns her face towards her sisters, the tips of her ivory tail brushing against her legs as the breeze picks up. She is forced to raise her voice as the wind threatens to drown it out, head lifted high into the gale. "Sisters, if you graced me with your vote to be your new leader, we would no longer sit idly by. In my time as queen of the Hills I saw many battles, and won a fair number of them. I can no longer fight as I used to, but I still have a keen eye, a sharp tongue, and a mind for politics." Although the last part could use some work, given her track record with Rafe and Zevulun. "With your blessing I would use these skills to make the Peak a force to be reckoned with, a name known across the islands that will invoke terror into any stallion with darkness and ill will in his heart!"
Just as Khar'pern had done, Marceline concludes her hearted speech with a firm stamp of her hoof against the grassy wind-worn slope, fire burning behind her amber eyes. For a brief moment she could not help but think of how odd she sounded to herself. She was used to speaking with passion and temper in her words. This new, level-headed Marceline, the one who spoke calmly and with conviction, was a stranger. But perhaps she would do a better job of being a leader than the Marceline of years past. |