Falls

let them eat cake.

The absence of a single vote stung more than any hurled insult ever could. One by one the sisters placed their votes, and one by one they all voted for not her. To continue going back and forth with the Lagoon, to keep playing nice with the bachelors who stole and abused mares for fun.

At least it was Ashteroth and not the gray mare that had usurped her mother's position that would take up the Prime Minister's mantle. At least it was someone that Tony knew was competent, even if she hadn't put her damned self up for the job she was about to be elected into. And really, how fucking dare they ignore her like that? She had royal blood in her veins. Had lived and breathed and dreamed of the Peak ever since she was a little girl, born at the feet of the most fearsome Prime Minister the Peak had ever seen.

She sighed, heart heavy and chest aching. There was nothing to be done for it now, though. As much as she wanted to race back into the Peak and rip off the heads of the mares that had spoken against her it would be counterproductive. All she would end up doing was ostracizing the very mares that she would need to support her next bid for Prime Minister. Politics were the worst part of the Peak, but they were an immutable part of being a valkyrie.

Some hours had passed since the vote had been called for and it would be some time yet before the winner was announced but that was hardly important. What was done was done and unless a miracle happened, the writing was already on the wall. Tony had retreated to the Falls to wait out the rest of the afternoon, hoping that the waterfall's mist would conceal any opportunistic tears that slipped past her guard.

"It's just a setback," she muttered to herself, letting the almost-warm late-spring water cascade down her spotted shoulders. "Not the end of the world. And," she continued on, doing her best to convince herself. "It'll give me time to find Nikki anyway. There wouldn't have been enough time if I hadn't."

Thinking of her baby sister gave her some resolve and helped to soften the tense jut of her shoulders, and with that relaxation came an awareness that the water wasn't actually all that warm at all, and she'd been standing knee-deep in it for the better part of two hours, to the point that she could no longer feel her toes or her ears. And as if just noticing this had been the signal her body was waiting for, she began to shiver violently as she wobbled her way from beneath the water, as weak-kneed as a newborn foal.

Another creature stood only a few feet before her, having previously been obscured from her vision by the falling water and embarrassment rushed into Tony's cheeks. It took a moment before the woman's injury registered in her vision and her brow furrowed as she noticed. It clearly wasn't new, but that didn't mean much given that it looked decidedly painful.

"Are you okay?" The question sounded fine in her head when she thought it, but as the words tumbled out of her quivering lips they lost some of the genuine concern and came out rather brusque. "Uh, right. Sorry. That's a weird thing to ask someone you don't know." She sucked in a breath and tried to brace her shoulders to stop the embarrassing shivers. "I ask because the Peak has a healer, if you need it. It's a man," she murmured, not bothering to hide the wrinkle of her muzzle as she said it, "but he's capable enough."

daughter of marceline.