róisín

She waited, and waited, and then waited some more. Roisin wasn't even sure what she was even really waiting for, only that she believed, whole-heartedly, that if she left before the time was exactly right, she would only perpetuate the nightmares that her family had been through. If Tyr saw her leave, or Nyimara happened across her trail, or Aranck returned from the depths of hell that he'd been banished too, Roisin knew that her family's nightmare would start all over again.

So she waited… not particularly patiently, but she did wait. She hovered and paced and grumbled and vented to her beloved companion for hours on end. She never raised her hoof against him, not even when her desperate yearning to make sure that all was well in the Ridge drove her to near insanity and made her crave some sort of release for the tension.

When the days-long summer storm finally released it's grip on the islands, Roisin knew it was time. The ocean was angry - the horizon full of angry, froth-tipped waves - but it was passable now. And so the young mare turned, placing an affectionate nuzzle against Iscariot's cheek as she did so, and departed from their small alcove at a lope.

---

More than a day had passed since she had arrived and checked on her family. A day in which she'd spent covered in her momma's kisses. Time enough to go nearly hoarse from telling stories (much edited, of course) of her adventures to her younger siblings. She'd even managed a trip upward to the Peak, where at her lowest point, Iscariot and Faolain had come to comfort her. Feeling the open air at the top of the Ridge was bittersweet, but she was happier now, and she breathed in a deep, triumphant breath as her gaze roved over the land she'd always called home.

A pair of greyish figures caught her eye and she stared in disbelief, not sure she could trust what she was seeing. One of them moved away from the other, his definitive black patches marking him as none other than her sibling and her heart leapt in joy. Without really thinking about it, she rushed down the embankment at a dead run, relying on her familiarity with the terrain and sheer luck to carry her safely to the bottom.

"Sig!" She responded as his faint summons reached her ears, and she changed course to intercept him, ducking beneath low-hanging vines and sidling through too-narrow passages until she could finally see him. She looked half-wild by the time she arrived - torn leaves threaded into her thick mane and spots of dirt and moss on her sides from scraping through narrow passages. "You came home," she sighed as she closed the remaining distance, choosing on purpose to ignore their troubled circumstances and the gulf of history that lay unspoken in between them.

She was no longer shorter than him, and when she wrapped her neck around his in a fierce hug, it was as if they were equals… as long as one ignored his remarkably fitter condition. "Where've you been, Sig? Was that father with you?" Her gaze cut sideways to the direction he'd been coming from before returning hungrily to his face. "Is… is he okay?"

The last thing she'd heard was that her father had taken their mother's place beneath Nyimara and Aranck's torture. And as the thought occurred to her, the guilt of not going to check on him, of not knowing if he was okay, returned at once and tears gathered on the bottoms of her lids. "Did Aranck hurt him?"

mare . 3 . mutt . dun sabino . 14.3 hh . björn x siobhan . love

Image from Pixabay & HTML by loveinspired