Words were not enough to describe how much she missed her daughters. Each day that she woke without them at her side was it's own form of torture, and she had long since stopped attempting to justify the reasoning behind her incarceration. Siobhan relied on her memory of those nights spent wrapped in the embrace of her golden lover and darling daughters. Their memory, and the promise she held within her womb, were the only reasons she kept fighting. Every morning brought it's own battle for her to face, whether it be withstanding the melancholy mood that had stolen over her or fighting to obtain even the smallest scrap of food.
Why anyone would want to live here was beyond her. Each day was frigidly cold, filled with harsh winds that blew fiercely over the open, unprotected space. What meager food there was remained buried beneath snowdrifts that required excavation, and even once found, were no more appetizing than twigs. In a way, she was actually almost grateful for the work required as it had a way of keeping her mind busy and protecting it from the hate that overwhelmed her.
It would be so easy to lose herself here. To wrap up in the hot embrace of the hatred she felt for Nyimara, and to extend it to each resident of the Inlet. But she couldn't do such a thing. Raksha was innocent, and Sigurdr was practically her son. She could condemn neither of them the same way that she did Bjorn and Nyimara.
The love that existed between herself and the grullo was slowly but surely changing and morphing into something approaching loathing. To know that he had not only supported Nyimara's challenge, whether implicitly or simply by not stopping it, and then to allow her to be imprisoned here for months on end. If he had done so out of an attempt to repair what had broken between them, she might have been able to understand, but each day that she spent alone painted a clearer picture in her mind. He had well and truly made his choice, and she was little more than a casualty of the war he was raging against the stallion he had once been.
Siobhan wandered from the herd, taking advantage of the relatively mild day and a lapse in Nyimara's focus to wander along the southern edge of the territory. Each step was deliberate these days, as the size of her belly had become prohibitive as winter raged on. The red mare had begun to wonder if she was indeed carrying twins, for it would explain any number of strange occurrences during this pregnancy. Whether it was one or two, however, she was eager to meet them. She would have loved for them to be born in the familiar landscape of the Ridge, but she now knew that this would not be an option. There would be no happy welcome into this world beyond what she could offer to their tiny bodies, and she could only hope that they would be strong enough to withstand early spring in this wasteland of a territory.
Movement ahead of her jerked her attention back to the present and she looked up to see a golden mare that she did not recognize. Granted, she had spent none of her energy bothering to get to know any of the other residents in her prison, but she did not remember seeing this mare and found herself strangely nostalgic for the simple pleasure of speaking to a herd member. Her red ears, their tips destroyed by frostbite, pricked toward the mare and she ambled closer. "Hello," she offered softly, extending her muzzle toward the mare in greeting.
As she pulled back, she couldn't help but feel as though there was something familiar about the mare's scent. She had never seen her before, of that she was certain, but the mare's scent was tied to the Ridge in her memory. Perhaps she was one of Faolain's mares at one point and Bjorn had continued to take advantage of the Teke? Or maybe she was a remnant from the herd long ago, before Bjorn's disappearance had turned everyone's world topsy turvy. "Are you from the Ridge as well?"