Coming this close to another is still something that Lilliana has to process. A step closer is measured now, where it had once come as easily to her as smiling. Reaching out with that dark mouth of hers and touching someone is done with an almost constant presence in the back of her mind to remind her that it was okay, that it would be fine. In the year since she escaped from Pangea, Lilliana has learned all the ways to be aware of another. Where they stand. How they move. Where they go. She has learned to become acutely aware of the space between her and someone else and how to keep it that way.
(The only exceptions to this are those who knew her before and as always, her children because there is nothing she would deny them. Nothing she wouldn't do for them.)
What happens between her and Warlight is the sign of the time that has passed in that year. There is nothing left of her too-lean frame now, nothing of her dull coat or the spark gone behind those blue eyes. Her pelt catches whatever little light there is and gleams fire-gold in Tephra's volcanic glow. Her mane and tail have regained their curls and lovely luster. It's just the moments now when she pauses - the way she hesitates and the way that her eyes turn into endless wells revealing the depth of her fears - that her scars appear.
With @[Warlight], none of that happens. There is no hesitance or reluctance to embrace the painted mare. She wraps around her like she could be Brazen or Neverwhere or Elena.
The only scars that become visible are the ones that gleam and glimmer along the lines of her Healing.
It's the sound of a child crying and somehow it emerges in the present. Lilli cries with him, with Warlight. It's so easy to imagine her boys wandering the Redwoods and finding her gone. It's too easy to imagine Aela's fear as she ran and as it always will, her hearts break for her children and this son of Warlight. Lilliana even allows herself to cling to the woman, adhering to the smell of sulfur and water because she could break further. Her heart once held the ability to be an infinite thing. Now, it feels like there is an infinity of shattered edges in her chest and that her heart will always be bleeding.
Lilliana who (unknowingly) came to heal Warlight finds traces of her gift at this moment in the Tephran.
Because while clasping to the two-toned woman, she clasps onto the hope that there is more to life than the darkness. There is more than loss and grief and despair. There is the sound of wild streams and a view of fields full of wildflowers. There are girlish giggles that come as golden as summer sunshine and contentment that comes as sweetly as the evenings during that season, as two children dream beneath a blanket of stars.
The light between them is bright and blinding.
When they tear apart, they both become swallowed by the dark. They drown in watery shadows.
It's hard to catch the deep blue of Warlight's gaze but she finds it. Something glints in the sheen of them and it makes Lilliana smile. She has always been haunted by the ghosts of others; for a beautiful moment, there are none with Warlight. There is only the distant sound of lapping water around them and, Lilli who finally finds her old smile, feels it streaming from her eyes. The first tears she has shed over a year.
"Give 'em hell."
Remember when our songs were just like prayers
Like gospel hymns that you caught in the air?
<3