a new world hangs outside the window
beautiful and strange
it must be I've fallen awake
I must be

She moved slowly across the hard, frozen earth, a dull pain radiating from her tender, chipped hooves and shooting through her legs. But still, she carried on, through choppy, short strides, as she traversed a territory she hadn't seen, well, since her mother was still alive. Her nostrils flared as she breathed in the dry, cold mountain air. It wasn't the Peak, but it was perhaps the next closest thing.

Her sire lived here.

Wasp's memory of Diamant was fuzzy. She'd only met the large, black stallion that one time, here on this very frozen soil. Macabre had wanted him to know his daughter. But that was it - that one meeting. Then he vanished.

She gave her heavy noggin a good shake to rid the memory from her mind, at least for now, and carried on. Her amber eyes remained peeled for Bacardi. He was the reason she was here, after all, and she dug at the snow, leafing through dead branches and roots for whatever was still edible. It seemed early in winter, but Wasp couldn't know for sure. She was lucky to be alive and standing. But she had to regain her strength quickly, before they were in the throes of the season on the most unforgiving island among the chain.

The details of how Wasp washed up here were still piecemeal. She remembers seeing her brother, recognizing him immediately, despite his grown-up stature. She remembers another mare coming to her aid... And Anath? The former Prime Minister of the Peak doesn't remember how she got here - on Tinuvel - but she knows that weeks have passed since that dazed reunion with her brother and she was slowly feeling more like herself.

Her heart ached for the Peak but she was too fearful to face the ocean. At least that's what she told herself.

W A S P