Lilliana doesn’t know death like Ryatah has. She knows it in one way. Like one of those stories that her mother loved to spin, as one of those legends her father had imparted during their brief time together. In those stories, death was never an ending. It was simply another existence of being, another way of living. In those legends, it was a place to be reunited with loved ones and to find eternal peace.
Death has always darkened the fringes of Lilliana’s life (she doesn’t know about the murder of Kalina, how Malachi paid with his life to defend his daughters) but she doesn’t know what it’s like to have your heart stop beating, for the blood in her veins to grow still. She doesn’t know what those eyes see when the light dims and they turn unseeing.
For all her fables and fantasies, she knows nothing of what Ryatah saw (or didn’t see) on the other side. Knows nothing of the darkness or the sea or the shadows in Eternity.
It’s not the angel mare’s first time there. Is that what made her Divine? Lilliana wonders. The chestnut mare has grown unconventionally quiet but this conversation isn’t like their last. This is Death and Resurrection and Divinities they are speaking of. Of course, Lilli is quiet. What would she have to add? They could return to the idle topics of motherhood - of how Nashua is born to test the skies, of how Yanhua can seem too intangible to hold - but after this?
No.
"You’ve been more than once,” Lilliana murmurs to herself. Her voice - light, lyrical - sounds almost incredulous. When her blue eyes come to rest on the haloed mare again, they are a mixture of admiration and awe. And a question. It never occurred to her that Immortals actually died - she simply thought their blood turned to gold and they stayed pristine, ageless. Like the glowing mare beside her.
It’s a feat, she thinks, that speaks favorably of @[Ryatah].
A tentative smile starts as she looks to meet the darker gaze of the other mare. "I’m glad they don’t fit,” the Taigan mare says, almost fervently. "It would be a shame to define you, I think.” It would be a waste, she thinks. For a mare who has been a former Queen? Who has died more than once? More than that, who had been there when the gates of the Afterlife opened?
Extraordinary might be a word where Lilliana could start but even that word feels paltry in comparison. The red mare decides she likes that there is no word in their known language to describe Ryatah. It seems fitting that she should remain indescribable.
Lilli, however, is perfectly describable.
"I fell in love,” she says quietly - distantly - as they walk. ”And that-,” Lilliana breaks off. Her voice cracks because there is some piece of her that is still so angry (one of many, many emotions she associates with Wolfbane), so furious with herself for allowing this to happen. Because hadn't there always been some part of her that had known? Some warning lingering in the back of her mind that if she ever gave her heart away it would be anything but catastrophic? She should have known, should have learned. "It’s changed everything,” Lilliana admits.
The red mare abruptly looks away, not entirely sure if she is ready to see Ryatah’s reaction and focuses on the empty trail instead.
LILLIANA
if i ever get to heaven
i've got a long list of questions