Lost in the deep end // Lilli

[Tyr]

Everything he said today seemed to be wrong. When he had started out the day, he'd been hopeful that it might be possible to brighten Lilli's day. Instead, he seemed only to be drawing attention to her worries. 

With every second that passes without response from her, he feels the weight of his misstep grow. His coarse head dropped in submission to her unspoken ending to the topic. Tyr had never been pushy by nature. To let the subject go seemed the best way to let the tension between them slacken. 

Obediently he followed her, grateful for the audible trail her steps made. Whether the noisiness was intentional or not, he wasn't sure. He liked to think it was, though. Lilli had never struck him as anything less than graceful. 

When at last she speaks again, he's relieved to hear her voice with something other than grim disapproval in it. Her love for the land shone clearly in her words, and he smiled softly to hear it. It was the same kind of devotion he'd heard in his sister's voices when Ischia was the topic. Taiga was lucky to have such a stalwart lover among its trees. 

"I don't think it's silly." He replied, hoping it wasn't terrible to be contradicting her yet again. "I hear them roar in the wind, groan with the cold. Just because you don't speak tree doesn't mean they aren't speaking." He shrugged, feeling the weight of the giants all around them. 

Like the diplomat she is, the conversation is returned to him, and he found himself shrugging again. "Not a lot to tell. I was a foal who didn't want to be stuck in the family cove forever. Wandered off and got lost in a storm." A hot breath exhaled, the words as simple an explanation as he could render for his wandering ways. 

"It was scary at first, but by the time I found my way back and let my family know I was still alive, the damage had been done. I'd gotten a taste for the world and we all knew I'd have looked for it sooner or later anyway. They don't seem to mind, s'long as I let them know I'm still making it alright every so often." He stated, noting the contrast between his and Lilli's views on home. His was as flexible as wherever he found himself sleeping each day. Hers seemed as deeply rooted as the redwoods themselves. 

@[lilliana]

[lilliana]

While she is in his presence, Lilliana is very much alone in her thoughts.

She doesn't mean to be. She doesn't mean to let the silence build until it is the loudest thing between them. Like most of her actions, what the original intent was and what final result comes to always seems to be made of completely different origins. She doesn't mean for it to be but that is the way is - it is way her rivers flow, her breezes go and her stars fall. Knowing that Tyr was harassed in her home - the only place she has ever felt an ounce of control - sends gales blowing through her veins while her mind remains very much the eye of the storm.

So speaks of her love for this forest in the hopes that he might understand (as she had spoken to Aten). She speaks of Taiga because it soothes her it spirit and she cocoons herself in that love as it settles into the marrow of her bones, where it drifts to the bottom of her cyclone soul. There, Lilliana lets it spread. She lets it go with all the warmth of a summer breeze. For a moment, it stills the squalls and she is able to look back to make sure that Tyr hasn't fallen far behind.. Something reminiscent of a smile forms against her dark maw. He might not think her silly but for a moment, she can see Neverwhere scoff and hear Elaina's ringing laughter.

(She has always been that way; too fanciful, too much of an idealist. And arrogant too, she now realizes. It never occurred to her that some dreams never come to light. That some are lost to the depth and darkness of space with only the stars to recall whatever they had been.)

She is silly, she knows. In more ways than he can imagine but Lilliana is too good-natured to tell him that. The chestnut mare shakes her head in light admonishment but the smile that does come is one that is pleased. Whatever his experiences in the Taiga has been, he doesn't seem to begrudge the forest for it. Another purposeful step, another snap of a twig beneath her hoof as they ascend to a top of a small hill that overlooks an empty cove. "If only more of us had the grace to listen," she muses. As the chestnut mare surveys the few trees that surround them and stand guard at their backs, her gaze comes to linger on the way that the beach below them curves. Nerine imposes to the North and Hyaline promises to the East.

"Does Antares always keep you company?" she asks. He reminds her of Orani, as he did in that first meeting. The star talker had explorers in her veins, too. Travelers and stardust call to each other. Apart they are wayward things but bring them together and wanderlust is born. Gently she adds, "The tree cover isn't as thick here. I thought he might be able to find you easier." The conifers of her home come to yield to the shore, softening under the embrace of ages against an ocean tide. "And I thought the elevation might help." She swallows because she remembers as her eyes fall on the beach that waits in distance below them. The memory forms a knot in her throat but stubbornly Lilliana loosens it, "Someone once told me that the closer we are to the stars, the easier they can hear us."

Orani, she thinks. And with the full weight of hindsight asks the memory of her childhood friend, Do they? Because I'm not sure if they ever heard me.

A gull cries overhead and suddenly concerned, Lilliana looks to Tyr for his reaction. "There are other spots if you'd prefer somewhere else. We can go further north or follow the River."

@[Tyr]