i feel a bad moon rising | any

[Lepis]

the rain that falls upon your skin it's closer than my hands have been Though Lepis has never laid eyes on the red-haired woman in front of her, she knows exactly who Leliana is. A bay mare with flowers in her mane as red as her hair, smelling of ash and the jungle. This is most definitely the magician of Tephra, walking toward her from downriver. There had been a time when Lepis might have struck the woman down (or at least tried), but that had been when her own wounds were fresh, when hate was providing immediate balm to the grief that ravaged her. But hatred – and vengeance – are hard to hold on to for very long, not without burning herself up too, and those fiery emotions had slipped away with the seasons. There is still a Gale-shaped hole in her heart, but it is no longer broils beneath her skin, no longer drives her every action and shouts for the justice. There is no justice for accidents, for slips of fate, for little boys who didn’t listen when their parents tell them to keep away from a battlefield. Instead, the dun mare does what she can to ensure that there are no more battlefields for them to find. Or at least, she had thought that was what she was doing. It is a recent revelation, and Lepis has not yet determined if it is even a true one. Wolfbane is the one who has told her, after all, told her with claws pressing into the scarred flesh of her neck. At the time, she hadn’t doubted him. But now? Now she doubts everything. So there is doubt in Lepis when the other mare comes closer, and it deepens when the nearness brings an unexpected scent along with it. If not for that, the two women might have stood there, mild and steadfast and showing each other nothing that they did not want to. Instead, Lepis is unbalanced by the scent of her husband and reminded all at once how tenuous her control has been since his departure. Her composed mask, once so adeptly hiding the doubt, falls away to reveal a wry smile. It is small and mostly self-deprecating, and flashes just for a moment before Lepis speaks. “You’re a magician. Is there a cure for this?” Even as she says it, the winged mare is not sure what she even means. A cure for a broken heart? For a wayward husband? Her blue-grey eyes flick toward the gurgling river, swollen with spring snowmelt and expanded far beyond its banks. Her next words are less bitter than the first, but she does not look away from the water when she says them. “I’ve a great many flaws, but I did not think being an inadequate wife was one of them.” @[leliana] lepis, comtesse of taiga queen of loess | queen of sylva | queen of the south lover of wolfbane | mother of pteron, marni, tiercal, eyas, gale, celina, and elio