Common

She lurked like a shadow at the edge of the Commons, her dark brown eyes skimming across the open field with an emotion that not even she could name. Guilt was a part of it, to be certain. She had abandoned her mother to seek a father that had disappeared from the surface of the earth and in the process alienated the only creature that seemed to like her. There was anger, too. At herself, at her family, at the unique unfairness of the world itself.

Mostly though, she was sad. Her heart ached in a way she had never experienced before, as if the space between her ribs was empty. Her mother was gone, her father was missing, and the rest of her siblings all seemed to be going on with their lives.

She was the only one lost.

Rethe sighed and lipped listlessly at the short spring grass without much appetite. She wasn't sure what to do next, or where to go, or why she should bother. She wasn't even sure what she wanted out of life, let alone how to go about getting it. The lithe black mare had spent her whole life waiting for someone and something else, and now that there was no one else to wait for she wasn't sure where to go.

Her ears tipped back, the very tips curled just barely inward, and then resolutely resumed her stare across the Commons. At least there was good horse-watching here.