It took her longer than usual to arrive to the meeting ground, but though her own slow pace and heavy limp annoyed her, Erthë knew she should be grateful that she could move at all. Everything in life came at a cost, and the price was well and truly catching up to her now, sins of the past demanding their due, toll taken in the form of mobility. Did they know, all those who hurried past her on the winding forest trails, what it did to her soul to be grounded like this? To be unable to fly because her weak fractured legs would no longer bear her weight as she came in to land? For as long as she could remember, from her very earliest recollections, the wanderlust had been there to tug at her heartstrings, making the horizon and the far side of the mountain more dear to her than the warm embrace of family. Now, as she found herself stranded within the woodland realm unable to do more than look, she felt as though the beloved land was slowly sucking her dry, emptying her of that blazing vitality that had been a hallmark ever since she was a foal.

There was a new, listless gloom about her that just wouldn't lift. Though her coat was sleek and shiny as ever (still marred by scars but never faded, never dull) there was a thinness about the ribs that defied the season, a certain hollowness about her eyes even as she joined the ranks and bowed to the Queen and the King. Though she listened to the declarations, though she managed a half smile and murmured words of gratitude in the face of her promotion, the joy and pride that would have turned her radiant in the past just wasn't there.

Erthë knew she ought to be happier about this step up among the herd ranks. It was proof that she was inching closer along the path she had set herself upon, one step closer to the goal, to the stars, to the midnight sky and the radiance of the Moon... But though she tried to be genuinely happy, her smile faded on its own much too quickly, and the sigh that escaped her as she drifted back into the crowd again was much too heavy for someone who had just received praise from one she admired.

It was just so... tiring, all of it. The pain, the longing, the struggle to keep those negative emotions from consuming her and embitter her to all she had become. She just wanted to sleep, to push it on to tomorrow, to drift off into sweet, numbing oblivion on a stream of red flowers.

Did that make her weak? She couldn't really recall why it mattered, only that the deep blue of the kings eyes made her feel slightly ashamed, as though she ought to have said more. Or done more. Or... been more?  

"I can do that" she heard herself say in response to the Queen's suggestion, and was surprised to find some initiative still remaining within her. Perhaps she was not all lost then, not beyond recovery?

"Just send those willing to me, and I will find a way to save the tales for the future..."

There, she had spoken. She had offered. Somewhere the seed of interest was stirring within, but why was it that the taint of guilt upon her tongue still tasted so bitter?

(Because it was not enough.)

But Erthë ignored the thought, and busied her mind instead with ideas on how to accomplish this new task.

It isn't what they say about you
It's what they whisper in the dark