maybe redemption has stories to tell; lilliana - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: OOC (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=24) +--- Forum: Archive (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=81) +---- Forum: Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=98) +----- Forum: Tephra (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=85) +----- Thread: maybe redemption has stories to tell; lilliana (/showthread.php?tid=27508) Pages:
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maybe redemption has stories to tell; lilliana - Warden - 08-01-2020 resurrect the saint within the wretch He rises with the dawn, where the sun is not yet over the horizon but its rays have already begun to chase away the blackness of night. Stars begin to fade, twinkling gently as they give way to the sun’s warmth. His horned head gently tips upwards, a mixture of moonlight and sunlight dimly illuminating the blue opal that spirals from his head. His dark eyes enjoy the way the colors of the sky changes, melting into each other as night steps back and day takes over. Pink, orange and peach clouds slowly make their way towards Tephra, all lit up with the sun’s strength as it rises. The warmth against his auburn back causes the stallion’s shoulders to roll beneath it, his feathers ruffling gently to catch each ray as it hits the earth. Warden @[lilliana] <3 RE: maybe redemption has stories to tell; lilliana - lilliana - 08-06-2020 - it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger - we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution? LILLIANA It does take all night. Between her limited healing abilities and the power of Tephra’s lake, it takes all night to heal Warlight. When the painted woman finally regains enough of her strength to leave, Lilliana finds a place along the shore and beds down for the last remaining hours of nightfall. She waits (hopes) anxiously for dawn. Her rest - when it does come - is fitful. It's full of shifting the weight from her thoughts from her mind to her hips and back again. Nothing stills. When she finally decides that there is no more point in (pretending to) rest, the copper mare leaves the lovely alcove behind - strung with tropical fruits and made alluring with blossoming orchids. Perhaps it’s because she is already tired or perhaps it’s because of the humidity already hanging like a heavy curtain around her but Lilliana moves sluggishly. Despite her increasing desire to get home, each step feels weighted. Like her hooves should be made of stone, like her legs long to root themselves where they step. North, she tells herself. Lilliana’s absence - any amount of time that she has been gone - will be noticed. The former captive knows this and can hear Izora Lethia in her mind asking her not to leave again. She thinks of Yanhua’s (anxious?) blue eyes in the Redwood forest and forces herself to move at a faster pace than she might have otherwise taken. Home, she thinks. The day goes on and so do her travels. The sun goes peeking from the East to rising above her and the day grows hotter, the humidity rising steadily like the steam from Tephra's volcano. Lilliana is made for this kind of climate; her red pelt is sleek and fine. She shines and glints a fiery-gold sheen in the sunlight that manages to catch her, that manages to keep up with her determined stride. The only part that dampens with sweat is where her thick, wavy mane crashes along her long neck and slender shoulder. Her thoughts are distracted - full of home and yet lulled by the rushing sound of her ancestors - when she comes across him. Her blue eyes sweep first to his ivory wings (of course, they do) and if it were possible for her face to blanch, it would. Only her eyes show this, draining their usual intensity. They dim with worry and she stops, freezing as she peers to the pale (troubled) face that emerges from the density of Tephra’s jungle. "I’m sorry,” she says, apologizing for an intrusion she creates. She’d leave, keep moving and leave him but the troubles are painted plainly on his white face. She never leaves well enough alone. But she never leaves anyone - even a stranger - when they look as this one does. Like they are anything but well. "Are you,” she starts though she knows otherwise, knows it with a lead certainty that sinks to the bottom of her stomach. "Alright?” @[Warden] <3 RE: maybe redemption has stories to tell; lilliana - Warden - 08-07-2020 resurrect the saint within the wretch It does not take long for his deep ocean-colored eyes to find hers, an essence of fear within their depths as he makes that first initial eye contact, his forehead pulsing wildly in warning. There is an apology on her lips but it’s barely heard as his head pounds fervently, causing him to close his white lids around his eyes, champing as he presses his chin to his auburn chest. Then for a moment’s breath he is perfectly still. When Warden’s head lifts, his eyes are a milky white, looking beyond the chestnut mare at something she would not be able to see and in a time only he would be able to venture into. Warden @[lilliana] i'm assuming she'll use her echoes and reference the vision to keep him from leaving? <3 RE: maybe redemption has stories to tell; lilliana - lilliana - 08-07-2020 - it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger - we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution? LILLIANA He is the very vision of something she fears. Lilliana is drowning in the depths of his ocean eyes (a reminder of someone else she has encountered here) before he closes them, hiding the white that had breaking around the rims like waves. Warden tucks his chin to chest and the chestnut mare stands with locked knees and a held breath - a tendril she (unknowingly) holds like it might unravel the rest of her. What happens next is quick. It is a flash. Lilliana knows something is wrong. It’s like he has gone somewhere she can’t know about or even follow. The breath she had been cradling releases when she notices movement from the overo stallion. A twitch of an eyelid. A quiver of his pale lips. The tensing of his shoulders. Subtle things that betray nothing about what is happening beneath his two-toned skin, subtle things that give nothing away. He blinks and wherever his soul has flown, it comes back to his body. He exhales - a gust of demanding air - and he looks at Lilliana. Her head tilts slightly though she says nothing. It seems like the pegasus has come crashing back into his body and she isn’t sure if there are any words that could be considered comforting. Only his face wracks with guilt like a coastline. No, he says and something wrecks in her, too. Catching a memory is no easy thing and for every one that Lilliana has ever found (at least deliberately), it has been through touch and elaborated through storytelling. It - like her - is practiced and controlled. This is a tsunami, something that roars in her ears before she finally succumbs and sinks to the bottom of it. There are glimmers and gleams. She doesn’t stand in the future (she can’t, not when the woman is so closely bound to the past) that Warden knows. But there are the proud ledges on the horizon. Nerine. Lilliana knows that. Another flash and the memory catches on something hard. Bone. White on red. Only this time there are no wounds to ease, there is no place her healing can that it might alleviate some of the pain that Brazen carried through the years. There is nothing at all. No, she furiously echoes back. Anger that stems from being ripped from her children (She thinks of them, Nashua and Yanhua, still needing their mother when she had been stolen. She thinks of the child she hadn't been given the chance to raise. She thinks of Neverwhere and Eurwen and finally, Brazen. Everything that they have endured in the last year.) She is all rage and finds a voice that had been devoid in Pangea, when she had hidden in caverns and wept in the dark. The stallion is turning away from her and showing his back - an angle that Lilliana is far too familiar with - when they stand on Tephra again. "No,” she tells him flatly (though she wants to shout, to scream, to curse). Her mind is running from the altered memory but threatens to spill from her eyes, instead. "Take it back,” Lilliana says. It’s not a memory. Something in her knows that much. Was this a manipulation of her mind? Had her memories mangled with him in some way? There are other things lingering beneath the surface of the antlered stallion and Lilli is wary of all them. "Change it back. You don't get to ruin them." @[Warden] RE: maybe redemption has stories to tell; lilliana - Warden - 08-10-2020 resurrect the saint within the wretch Her voice trickles through the air - firm yet with some give - like the fervent drizzle before a storm; a warning. Warden @[lilliana] D: RE: maybe redemption has stories to tell; lilliana - lilliana - 08-13-2020 - it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger - we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution? LILLIANA He storms around and she steels herself when Warden approaches. There are warning signs flaring in the back of her mind - run, run, run! - her blood hums in her delicate ears. This is not her first time dealing with anger that burns from the eyes and so she smolders him back. She lifts her head, determined not to give up the ground she is standing on. She is no Tephran - no, she is like her Redwoods. She is rooted and firm and unyielding. She can handle the fury of this storm. Let him rage, she thinks. Let him fury. He blusters forward with all the grace of a hurricane, sending emotions whipping around him like a gale. What was he so angry about? He was the one who had warped her mind. He was the one who taken something beloved and tried to destroy it. (Though something in the back of her mind is whirling too, asking: why Brazen?) The painted pegasus doesn’t stop coming. He doesn’t halt or yield despite how she grounds herself to this spot. She’s a stupid woman, she knows. She’s a stupid woman not to run. Lilliana should have turned and left nothing of herself for him to see. (She’s promised herself that it’s not something she will ever do again.) Lilliana burns back at him, fueled off his fire. "There is always a choice,” she seethes, not understanding what he’d done was involuntary. Her mind jumps to the worst - that he has toyed with her mind because he could. Because he was more powerful than her. "Stay out of my memories,” she blazes. Her emotions - a wildfire at this point - show around the whites of her marked ankles, from the gold of her tattoo. Her mind - still lingering on the edge of ruin and demise - swings back at Warden. The chestnut mare thinks of the most terrifying thing she can. The first memory is bright and brilliant, radiant like new-fallen snow. It’s a pale man who smiles with destruction in his green eyes and Lilliana remembers how afraid she had been - barely a year old - frozen into place by fear with Elena beside her. There are other things: the serrated glint of kelpie teeth in the spring sunshine as Celina lurches forward. The helpless cry of a child on a cold, winter night who screams her name - 'Lilliana!’ The dark stallion who lingered on the other side of a sand dune, staining it with blood and his tears as he tears himself apart. 'Is this enough, Mother? Is this enough?’ Warden calls (dismisses) her a fool. He tells her not to speak of things she does not understand. Like this is all above her. It makes her angrier and so she pushes back again, glaring up into his monsoon eyes. The second wave is forceful, stronger than the first. Lilliana fills it with the very thing he’d disarmed her with. Brazen. She shows a fearsome face made of bone, one that might intimidate some but not Lilliana (at least not then). "I’m still figuring this place out,” explains a much younger Lilli, one much more optimistic than this guarded woman. "Would you like some company while you figure things out? I can’t promise I’ll be much help,” Brazen laughs, "but I can probably make things more interesting.” Lilliana sends wave after wave of memory at Warden. Brazen - strong, fierce, alive - as the two of them ventured into Pangea. The bone-armored mare walking quietly near Brinly on the pebbled beaches of Nerine. The way that Brazen watched after the lost mares - Lilliana included - when they arrived haunted and still looked over their shoulders for the ghosts behind them. Brazen teaching Nashua how to fight - a sharp pivot, a clash of hoof - and comparing her own horns with Yanhua with a playful grin. Let @[Warden] see that what he toys with is not something to be toyed with at all. She hopes that when the flood of memories leaves him, he might feel something similar to what she had felt. Helpless. Desolate. Agony. She hopes that they crash over him and leave him empty. She hopes- And then the memories stop. The future always comes. Only it is not Warden who says it. Another memory dawns from the back of her mind. It’s a gray stallion, dressed in the dappled hues of their mother with her dark neverending eyes. He looks tired, defeated and yet he smiles to the girl who asks: 'But why, Malachi? Why won’t she speak to me?’ The stallion had smiled - an indulgent, lopsided grin that let him get away with anything as a colt - and said, 'Give her time, Lillibird. Keep a listening ear and a waiting smile.’ A pause as he looks towards to the setting sun and where the sky had already turned into a canvas of pastels with a few shimmering stars, waiting in the midnight eaves. 'The future always comes,’ he says, 'and there is always the hope that tomorrow will be a better day.’ Her anger is gone when she blinks again, but she is left with something worse. Distressed and disturbed with her ears hidden beneath the curls of her copper mane and her sides heaving like she has done the very thing she swore she wouldn't. How was he doing this? But more importantly, she has to know: "Why?” i'm sorry, apparently my characters love giving you novels RE: maybe redemption has stories to tell; lilliana - Warden - 08-16-2020 resurrect the saint within the wretch He festers. Warden @[lilliana] RE: maybe redemption has stories to tell; lilliana - lilliana - 08-22-2020 - it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger - we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution? LILLIANA She trembles. Lilliana stands lost somewhere between the past and the future. Some part of her mind can rationalize that this the present - that she is standing here with a stranger in a reality that constantly tests and trials (her, him, Neverwhere, Brazen, all of them. Sometimes she thinks all she sees is struggle). Her mind had fled to the safest place it could go, back to the place she had been born. Where the rivers had run swift and the laughter that echoed had been bright. From her siblings and cousins, from the streams and creeks that shared in their foalhood antics. So some part of her - that one that always seems lost, the one that had seen searching - flees to the past. Malachi tells her that there is always the hope that tomorrow will be a better day. For one beautiful, blissful moment, she had been looking up at him and even though his smile was fatigued, Lilliana had believed him. The days they had spent traveling - trying to find sanctuary - were tiring. The dappled stallion was a father of five and yet he still found time to comfort his youngest sister. She is still trembling when she comes back to the present. She is still looking up but there is a bitter disappointment when she glances up. Lilliana is staring into the storm-gaze of Warden. Not Malachi. And like so many things in Lilliana’s life, there is no explanation for this either. There is no reason to seeing what will become of Brazen; it just another facet of this life (this reality) that strangles her once fire-bright spirit. The spark turns again to an ember, a flickering thing among the shadows. The Taigan mare doesn’t say anything at first. There are flames licking at the back of her throat and scorching her tongue. Lilliana knows that if she says something, it might raze them both. Warden doesn’t deserve her anger. She reminds herself that once upon a time, she wouldn’t have acted this way. She wouldn’t have been this way at all. In another time, Lilli might have tried to convince Warden that there was a reason or a purpose to what they had both shared. Some things for Lilliana, however, do not change. Even drowning in her despair, there is still his to consider before her own. His spiraling horns turn away from her and the chestnut mare quietly says, "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-,” she stops herself because this is a lie. She had meant to hurt him. In a white flash of panic, she had thought that he was intentionally hurting her and so she had harmed him in return. Her gaze drops again when she remembers. Brazen. The bone-armored mare is one of the pillars that holds Lilliana together and this knowledge that @[Warden] has shared starts to crumble her infantile strength that had barely begun to grow. The image hits her again and again. Brazen - who is fierce, who is tenacious - becomes absolutely nothing at all. Those blue eyes stare absently at the ground and she reminds herself that this is the present. She is standing in Tephra, simmering emotions below the silhouette of its volcano. A foreshadowing, perhaps, that one day she too will erupt. "How am I supposed to tell her?” she faintly asks them both. The knowing is the worst, he says. And Lilliana, who has stopped trembling, disagrees. RE: maybe redemption has stories to tell; lilliana - Warden - 08-28-2020 resurrect the saint within the wretch He can see it on her face. Warden @[lilliana] RE: maybe redemption has stories to tell; lilliana - lilliana - 08-28-2020 Her coat wasn't the only thing that used shine fire-bright. Remember when our songs were just like prayers |