[private] wide awake in a world of lullabies

[aletta]

Aletta has always been proud that she has no gifts to speak of. That she has no traits to show. Her birthright is the silver coat that she wears - something passed from mother to daughter since the reign of Coca-Cola and perhaps even before that. Every obstacle that she has ever encountered has been done without Magic and that has only strengthened her fortitude that she is better off without it.

Everything that Aletta has ever done - everything that she has ever accomplished - has been done without Magic or knowing and on some occasions, even help. It has all been done on her own merit, on her own terms.

It doesn’t mean, though, that it has come without cost. It doesn’t mean that it has come without heartbreak or loss or grief. It doesn’t mean that hasn’t come from her encountering dead ends and having nowhere to turn. In those moments, Aletta has always looked up. She looked above and she asked: What now? Where do I go from here?

And the stars, sometimes, answered with their sentinel presence.
Sometimes, they gave nothing at all but their silvered silence.

So when she looks at Warden, she meets his gaze with the same stoicism that she gives her twinkling companions. He will tell or won’t. He will show or he won’t. Warden inhales and Aletta follows his attention, her dark eyes suddenly rapt and full of starshine. She waits with baited breath. Where he inhales deeply, she doesn’t dare take a breath at all.

For the first time since.. since she heard the message that Keav gave her, she hopes.
Aletta hopes and it rises in the summer heat. It goes above them and beyond them, where it might buoy them both. What she is thinking of - of Paraiso, of Valerio, of Brynn and her children and grandchildren - keeps her spirit high. It might even shine for Warden too, if the Watcher needed to borrow something from the older mare.

Water, he begins and Aletta knows where this story ends.

Oh, the wanderer smiles. It is as broad as the journey that she has taken - from Craignair to Beqanna to the Islands and Beyond to Liridon and back to Beqanna again. She smiles and turns that radiance towards the antlered stallion. ”Home,” Aletta corrects him. Warden speaks of the end because that is all he knows but the way she looks at him - even hidden in the obscurity and depth of night - speaks of only the start.

”You’ve seen my home, @[Warden].” She tells him and the gray mare sounds like her old self. The one that had teased Valerio for his chivalry - for the damsels he’d saved and the dragons he’d vanquished. The one that had laughed with Brynn on the edges of those banks as their babies raced and reared and grew, that loved and brought forth their shared grandchildren. The one that told too many stories to them.

The way she looks at him is brighter than any star that burns above them.

”You saw my beginning.”