Common

Fall was coming again. This was not particularly surprising, given the cyclical nature of such things, but it was worth noting all the same. Rethe felt it in her bones the way the trees must feel it in their limbs, reading the energy of the world around them and developing a plan. The lithe black daughter of Fell and Kohelet had always failed at that last part; she knew the land, knew the shape of the island from each rock down to each bush, but she was never able to convert it into any kind of usable plan.

She was the girl who waited.

The one who watched her mother swim away from her and yet stayed, not even chasing her into the ocean. Eventually, she grew into her own mare, with her own wants and her own feelings, and still she waited for something she could not name. Even when her father disappeared and her whole life was once more thrown into chaos, Rethe waited.

She didn't know what she waited for, but whatever it was, it most certainly had not come.

And she couldn't wait anymore.

She couldn't spend another moment attempting to cajole and comfort Kohelet as she mourned the continued absence of Fell. Couldn't stick around and pretend like she was enjoying being a ghost in her own home, when the only one that had ever truly known her, truly seen her was gone. Rethe didn't want to be alone anymore, but she had never quite figured out how to not be alone. Even in a crowd of faces she'd always felt separate. Strange. Weird.

Even now, as the slender mare stalked her way uneasily into the Commons, she did so with a wild eye and an expectation that she would leave here empty-handed. That despite her mother's warnings of this reckless place, she would be as ignored here as she always had been in the Bay.

And yet she had to try.

And so the anxious young mare settled herself as much as possible near the rim of the Commons, letting the shade of a large tree dapple her back while she grazed uneasily in the warm summer air.