For one blissful moment, she doesn’t fear or panic. Aela comes swimming into her view and when the girl is beside her, relief floods her veins. The filly trembles but Lilliana is coming to learn that her youngest isn’t as brave as Nashua had been or as calm as Yanhua could be. Her daughter has all the flightiness of her ancestors and Lilli tries to comfort her as best she can.
(How does one soothe a gale?)
Lilliana lowers her head and traces the flaxen mane that curls with the moisture in the air, starting between her perfectly-tipped ears down to her slim shoulders. The wind that stirs past them exposes another healing wound from beneath the Taigan mare’s flowing locks and reveals a scent. (She should have noticed; Aela’s memories came in frantic heartbeats. The Osprey flying away. A dark .. something that flits in and out her daughter’s vision.)
It comes. The dark stallion and that familiar stiffening that makes the chestnut mare look up sharply.
She shouldn’t be surprised to see him, but she is. Worry creeps in behind her eyes before she guards it. Wolfbane smiles - manic, arrogant - and when he stops, the copper mare lowers her head to murmur something to Aela. (Let him wait, she thinks.) A golden ear flicks back and while the child doesn’t pull away from her side, the filly stops trembling. Another loving whisper of encouragement and Lilliana carefully raises it.
The chestnut mare knows it's him. The gold-and-blue might be gone and even though the swagger is more prowl than strut, she knows. This isn’t an innocent bystander or a passing stranger - it’s @[Wolfbane].
Why the black coat, she wonders as the Taigan mare studies this borrowed (created?) shape. Why such a ragged, beaten form? Perhaps she should have paid more attention to her mother’s stories. There hadn’t been many tales of the skinwalkers. What limited lore the grey mare had known about shapeshifters had always come back to the basic law of Magic: that if something was taken, something had to be given. If they took so many shapes, what was left?
(If Lilliana hadn’t been so intrigued by Wolfbane instead of his Magic, she might have stopped to ask the same thing.)
Aela edges closer to her mother and the chestnut mare makes no motion to correct her daughter. Lilli only levels her blue eyes to his vacant (false) ones. "This was the best you could do?” she asks, a retort that might have been taken for her trademark teasing if this had been anyone but him.
Maybe, she thinks, what he's borrowed is running out. Maybe the Monster of the North is finally running out of shapes.
LILLIANA
if i ever get to heaven
i've got a long list of questions