~*~*~KINGDOM MEETING~*~*~

[Pomona]

Pomona... I was staring at the sky, just looking for a star... Pomona's attendance to the Jungle waxes and wanes like the seasons, sometimes spending months in seclusion before returning to attend her duties.  This particular absence has left her heart guilty so when the beautiful flower that had graced her chest for so many years melted away into the earth, she gave a scream of horror and raced back to her familiar lands, liver chestnut pelt quivering. Sullen and shy, afraid to meet the gaze of any of her sisters, she doesn't realize precisely what's happened until she answers the summons to a meeting and is shocked by the site of a creature she doesn't immediately recognize.  Scorch without her living flame and dragonesque appearance is strange to behold.  Pomona pulls her mouth closed and gives a jerk of a nod at her greeting, aware of how uncomfortable the usually brash Khaleesi and takes a spot near the back.  This forces her to stand near the huge General and her new horns.  Only then does she realize that none of her sisters have their marks, personal or otherwise.  It fills the drab mare with disquiet, the usually bright gathering is somehow more subdued.  Even with her golden wings of light, Pomona no longer stands out quite the same way without her bloody colored orchid and golden chevrons. Listening wordlessly, Pomona offers no name for the cub, though it does bring a ghost of a smile to the nervous mare's lips.  Only after the others have spoken does she make her presence known as she says, "I know that I am not the most reliable of mares," she put her head down shamefully before regarding them with large brown eyes, "but if it's decided that someone must go to the Falls as... well, hostage...  I would be willing to go.  I have tried to find a place among the warriors but giving a woman weapons does not make her a fighter."  Her wings flapped sharply, one swipe neatly bisecting a branch from a tree in demonstration, "I have tried to be an ambassador but I lack the spine even for that, I am too quick to back down.  But even I can be a warm body in another land if that's what's required."  With that she drops her head and backs away slightly as if trying to make herself smaller, regretting that she'd spoken at all.