Fuck, it's cold.

Split irises squinted at the horizon as if it had personally insulted her, shoving aside the mounds of snow with her lean pillars. The wind was calm, hardly more than little swirls that danced upon the surface of the snow like frisky, playful kittens. The sun had finally returned, and it glinted like warm butter and honey off the reflective ivory surface of the cold substance she pressed through. She had watched it rise with Tingal at her side, and had only felt empty. Hotaru had not rejoiced at the glow that appeared on the cusp of the world after so long without it. Why should she? Having lost everything, why should she dance about in joy? There was a hollowness in her, a chasm that split across her insides and stabbed like a million needles and knives. Her sister and mother were so far away, unreachable. The woman she'd looked up to had dismissed her harshly in view of all she loved. Everything had crashed down like a tidal wave, and she was left floundering, anger shielding the hurt inside, winding briars around her frame to keep all others away.

Even so, Tingal followed her faithfully, and it was both a relief and a source of confusion for her. Why? Why did he stay by her side when she was nothing but a troublesome youth? There was nothing special to her. Had he wanted looks, he'd have preferred her twin. She was just...herself. There was no attribute that attracted others to her side. In fact she pushed others away more often than she drew them in, these days.

The shy, borderline mute filly had shed its skin in bitterness and hurt, and had emerged broken and weathered, distrustful. So she had set out to find her ever absent father, with only the name of a world unknown to her whispered in her thoughts from so long ago, and a name. Two names, to be precise. Tolio and Faelene.

And that was how she ended up in the Steppe, a pale pink in a whitewash landscape, silently wishing Raeden was there to complain about the cold, the wetness, anything really. Hotaru equally hated and loved her sister, her twin, the one she was supposed to trust implicitly. Did she trust anyone at all, really?

"Where the fuck am I now? How the hell am I supposed to get to the Basin when everything around here is just white?!" Snorting angrily she lashed out a foreleg to cut like a loosed arrow through the fluffy, annoying substance. There were no landmarks to speak of, and she was growing steadily more and more irritated with how things were turning out. The sun warmed her spine, but it did nothing to ease her frustration. She needed to get to the Basin. If she didn't...then she wouldn't know where else to go.