They told me, he croaked and she watched him with sympathy. She knew the pain of betrayal, and how deep that knife wound could reach. It was likely unfair of her to compare his unknown situation to that which she'd faced with Iscariot, and yet she had no other frame of reference to compare it to. Iscariot had not admitted to being a monster of course, nor of doing evil things, but he had revealed a side of himself that even now she could not stomach.
The change from they to it did not go unnoticed by the young mare and her lips twisted downward, growing into a deep grimace by the time that he'd finished talking.
"It's here?" She as yet had no idea what it was, or what evil it wast capable of, but the prospect of it being here forced her into an emotional state full of contradictions. The last thing that she wanted was something evil to come back to the islands, but there was some small part of her that was almost grateful to latch onto the prospect of a threat, a villain, a return to the sort of troubled normalcy she'd grown up in. A world where monsters lurked behind corners and every shred of peace came bookended by tragedy.
Róisín was hesitant to press him for more details, reading the pain of the admission in the nervous way he cleared his throat and introduced himself, but the curiosity burned inside. She didn't consider herself the sort to go off on a crusade of any kind, but the prospect of having any sort of direction was vastly preferable to this awkward limbo she found herself perpetually trapped in.
"No apology necessary," she replied quickly as he finished introducing himself. "I'm the one that approached you, after all. I'm Róisín." A faint smile briefly replaced the worried expression she'd worn only moments ago, and she hastily attempted to gather her own thoughts before replying to the implied query.
"Mine is... the opposite I think, or, at least the worst is anyway. It's happened a lot lately." Oswin. Iscariot. Nyimara. She had options to pick from, although she'd rather have none. "There was this mare that has tormented my family since I was a little girl. Captured and tortured my mother. Drove my father away." There is no hiding the bitterness in her voice as she starts to catalog Nyimara's sins, but just as abruptly as the tirade began, it ends and she clears her throats. "Awful things. The sort of unforgivable things that leave you absolutely certain that there's nothing redeemable about her at all."
And she still thought that there wasn't. That some crimes were unforgivable, unerasable. She hadn't forgiven Nyimara for what she'd done... the problem came that with the understanding that Nyimara had soft parts came with the realization that there was probably a reason that she was the way she was now. That some part of her - no matter how small - deserved pity.
And Róisín wasn't sure she was prepared to grant that.
"And then I met someone else, someone I'd never seen before, who knew nothing of her villainy and spoke only of her kindness." Frustration and confusion turned the brilliant aquamarine of her eyes dark and she shifted in irritation. "It made no sense to me. Still makes no sense to me." Perhaps the worst of it all, however, was what Róisín all but murmured, her voice lowering as it edged toward the other half of what bothered her about the situation. "I don't know why she was afforded kindness, but my whole entire family had to suffer."
Shaking her head, Róisín turned back toward Orestes and found herself suddenly shameful for going into so much detail. It was probably a heavier conversation than he had bargained for when he'd come to graze in the open Meadow. Abashed at her forwardness, she offered an apologetic expression and gestured gently toward him. "I'm sorry. That was too much, wasn't it?" Clearing her throat, she surged forward, hoping to carry the conversation to something else that wasn't saturated in her own personal traumas. "Do you know anyone else here?"