Though the red mare answered with a greeting and even stated an apology wasn’t necessary, Oswin did not let her guilt rest entirely. She had chosen to follow Tyr into this venture and should have done everything she could to continue to show him support. Whatever lingering tendrils of struggling with her self-identity had remained should have been set aside. The Ridge should have become her focus; Tyr’s vision for it, her vision for it, should have been what she strove to achieve.

Oswin tilted her head somewhat as she watched the mare, then stretched her faintly-dished face to meet the other mare’s pink nose with hers. They breathed in deep breaths and the mare before her smelled so distinctly of the Ridge; she’d already lived here so long. Queen’s are busy with the home they contain, the red mare said, and Oswin smiled briefly before turning her own dark-blue gaze out to the water. Maybe it was because she was a child of the islands, but she had always found the ocean relaxing. The waters here on Atlantis were some of the most beautiful she had ever seen, too.

“I suppose,” she spoke after only a few moments of silence and didn’t quite cast her gaze to the still unintroduced mare. “I have never been a queen before; I never thought I would see myself in a herd, guarding a territory. These past few years have been new and strange to me.” She confessed the truth, then watched the white-capped waves roll and crash gently into each other, following their path as they reached up the soft gold sand toward where both mares were standing, and then drew back. “And you?” She asked, now pulling her eyes from the ocean to instead watch her conversational partner, “Have you lived traditionally in a herd most of your life before you came to live here in the Ridge?”

oswin
this is as brave as I know how to be.
I know it’s gonna hurt you, but please… be a little proud of me.