The feeling of otherness had not abated. No amount of familiarizing herself with the jagged skyline, or mingling absently with the varied personalities of the residents of the Peak seemed to wear away at the sharp edge of division in her mind. She wanted the best for them, not just because the ideal of being good was intoxicating, but because she believed that someone needed to be a good example for the multitudes of children in this world. And it wasn't that Roisin truly believed she was fully good either, but she did wholeheartedly consider her moral compass straighter than that of some of her other sisters.
Try as she might to forgive Oswin for her choices, she could not stomach the choices that the golden mare had made. No amount of consideration (and she had wasted a great deal of the past year considering it) allowed her to reconcile the mare that had promised a brighter future for the Peak with the mare that Roisin now knew. And that incongruence had only intensified Roisin's uneasy feelings.
The more time that she spent here, the more clear it became to her that if she wanted the Peak to be the safe haven and refuge she had imagined as a girl, then she needed to work for her it herself.
But not now.
Now, she needed a break from the severe mountains and the windswept valleys... even if that break only constituted a short walk south to the gentler landscapes of the Crossing. Here, at least, she felt like she could breathe without the imagined eyes of her herdmates upon her. Here, there was no collectively held breath, waiting for her to make something of herself. But perhaps most alluring of all, here there was no guilt.
No one to know who she was, or where she'd been. No one to judge her for the choices she'd made or to ask what her plans for the future were. Here, she could just be Roisin. Not Siobhan's daughter, or the Peak's General, or Nyimara's enemy.
Just Roisin.
The dun girl moved absently through the meadow, lipping at the grass as she passed with no real appetite. She watched the small families of mares and children with a smile but made no move to join them. They reminded her of her mother, and she shied away from the guilt of her long absence. She should go see her, but the thought of facing them all made her uneasy.
Instead, she turned away from the small groups and angled toward a lone creature. Between the sun on her face and the shade in which they stood, she couldn't immediately tell much about them, but they were alone and didn't seem hostile which seemed inviting enough for a conversation.
"Have you ever had that feeling where you think you know someone and then you find out that you really don't?" Blinking as her eyes adjusted to the changing light, Roisin stopped just beneath the growing shadow of the tree and attempted to meet her target's eye. Tilting her head inquisitively with an expression that somehow managed to be both smile and frown, she elaborated in the hopes that this stranger might at least humor her need for conversation. "It keeps happening to me this year and somehow I keep getting caught off guard."
ooc: for dirge <3