She is nobody.
Once, she was an orphan. A tiny thing, alone, her mother dead beside her in a pool of blood. And then she was one of many – the mouse-gray girl in the swirling galaxy that was Nera’s foal herd. But they couldn’t stay there forever, because they grew up. And Nera wanted to place them in Kingdoms and places of power, but none of the Kingdom representatives who’d spoken had captured the pony-girl’s interest. They were impassioned about their homes, that much she’d noticed, but there was something they were missing. How odd, to be defined as a person by where you lived.
But if she is not to be defined by where she lives, then what is she to define herself as? A murderer? There was no denying the blood, her mother’s still body beside her in the den (her fault, her fault, her fault)…but she has not killed since then. It does not lurk underneath her skin, the urge to kill, though she has recognized that drive in strangers she’s met since leaving Nera. A child? No, no longer. She has not grown tall but she has grown an adult’s body, and adult’s mind. A mare, then, a woman? Yes, but to what end?
Sloene stops, looking up at the sky, expecting the bright blue of coming spring. But it is not – it is gray, drab, unappealing. Like her own color, her gray against the galaxy colors of her Brothers and Sisters in Nera’s herd, the sky here is invisible against the bright green of spring grass and the colors of spring flowers. Wrong, not quite belonging, but not wrong enough for someone to say something. Just wrong enough to make everyone ignore it, as if it is invisible.
Maybe that is what she is – the invisible girl.