i feel a bad moon rising | any

[Lepis]

the rain that falls upon your skin it's closer than my hands have been The answer that Leliana gives is not the one that Lepis wants to hear. It is the one she expected though, and it is not as though there is any less amount of hope than the nothing that she already held. Yet somehow there is still disappointment, a sense of sinking. She lets out her breath in a single sigh, the heat of it steaming even in the spring time air. “I thought not,” Lepis replies. For a time they watch the water together, each of them reminiscing. This is not a bank that Lepis has stood upon before – perhaps that is why she has ended up here. She has no memories of this river, no emotions weighing heavy on her at the sight of the sunlight flashing on the surface or the glittering backs of the fish that leap above the rapids. Her navy ears flick back at the sound of Leliana’s voice, and though she is slow to turn, she does. The red-haired woman speaks of a daughter, and Lepis is reminded of what she knows of the other mare. Very little, other than that hers is not a joyous story. Or rather, the journey had not been; the heartache that Leliana spoke of is surely in the past. Her husband has returned to her from the dead. Some of the stories even say that she went and got him herself. Death, it seems, is an easier foe than disinterest. There is more to Leliana’s story, Lepis suspects. There is probably a happy ending – a baby girl grown strong. A family reunited, many happy children born afterward. That she does not finish it says more than if she had. Not about her own tale, but perhaps about Lepis’, about the way that it has ended. “I thought he went to Tephra,” she admits. She’d thought he would seek out Vulgaris; the two men were close. Starsin had told her otherwise, and for a few weeks she’d lived in denial. Sometimes she longs for those weeks back, when she hadn’t known, when it was easier to believe that a friend would lie than to accept the truth. And after she longs for them, she berates herself for the fool she is. “Tell me the rest of the story,” Lepis says to the river, “I hope there is a happy ending. I could use one, I think.” @[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