OC: Set back in summer <3

She woke to the sound of familiar birds, their chatter ringing in her ears despite the fitful night of sleep she'd managed following her arrival to the Prairie. Extricating herself from Lir's kind company had not been an easy feat, which she assumed was because solitude was an unusual thing for a new arrival to request immediately after arriving. The dun had needed time to grieve, which was strange to say but felt intrinsically true. It wasn't until she'd set foot in the Prairie that the reality of being claimed, of being a herd mare, had set in.

And with that came the end of her career as a Peak mare.

The justice she'd sworn to get for her mother and other mares like her were reduced to nothing more than could-have-beenss, and she knew she would bear the weight of that for a long time. She had had such high hopes when she'd joined the valkyries as a newly minted, freshly traumatized young mare. Hopes that had withered and died as year after year passed without any true change coming to the islands. What was one voice crying for change when so many others were chanting the same song they'd been singing since the dawn of time?

The little golden dun sighed and rose to her feet before shaking off the fallen leaves and dirt that clung to her coat. She brushed off the last of the remaining tear tracks that lingered on the fur beneath her eyes and then forced herself to stretch, limbering muscles that she had slowly but surely honed over the years.

Only then did she emerge from the little copse of trees she'd chosen to shelter in overnight, her mismatched gaze squinting against the bright morning sun. The promise of heat lingered in the air, and so she moved toward a likely looking open field, intending to graze before it became unbearably warm.