- 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 wants to ask him if everyone knows, why doesn’t she? If everybody is so sure of who she is or what she intends, why isn’t she? Lilliana wants to tell him that she has always prided herself on her ability to adapt. She’s always told herself that it was a sign of strength, a measure of resilience.
It’s been said that your best trait is often your worst.
This isn’t adapting, what she’s talking about with Leilan. Lilliana doesn’t want to adapt anymore. She doesn’t want to brace or soften the blows. The dragon stallion tells her to trust herself - her decisions - and while she doesn’t fully agree with that, the chestnut mare reminds herself that she spoke her peace to Leilan. She told him the truth and it was up to him what he made of it.
He has, she thinks. So she’ll start here, with this decision. With this moment.
"You’re capable of great things, @[Leilan].” The Taigan murmurs quietly and Lilliana does believe that. He - like so many she has encountered in Beqanna - has a touch of destiny about him. An aura that he carries around with him like the Isle burns the night sky with. He is capable of great hurt or great joy, like any of them.
An ear stays with him as he speaks about Lethy and Lilliana does turn her head then, taking her gaze away from the gray winter breakers. They didn’t get into that level of detail and it feels like he leaves something hanging, though Lilli is unsure of what. Something had transpired between the Matriach and the Freyr but their conversation gets deflected back to the present, back to the task at hand. She shakes her head gently, a softer expression coming across her refined features.
"I keep hearing that,” she manages, sounding something like her old self. A smile tugs on one side of her dark mouth as a brisk arctic wind pushes past them, freezing in a thin line on her face. "A unified North,” the red mare finally says. "A North where the territory lines don’t matter. A North where the marauders of the Isle know they are welcome to what Taiga has. A North where if a mare is stolen from Nerine, her captors will be met with the swift anger of an entire realm.” She grows still as the fog billows past their hocks, rolling in off the tide.
"I’m not entirely sure how to go about all of this,” she finally says, half-laughing. "But when Neverwhere was... gone and I was in Pangea, you were who I thought of.” Lilliana exhales and continues on, "Taiga needs numbers. Nerine needs a reputation again. Those are things that take time and I’m not sure if…,” fear knots in her throat and cuts off her last words.
Lilliana doesn’t think he’ll come back. It’s been quiet of late - almost too quiet. She doesn’t want Taiga (or the entirety of the North) to wait for a blow that may or may not come. She wants them ready. Even if it isn’t him, there will be another. There is Ghaul. There are other monsters who roam Beqanna and she wants her home to be ready for them. She wants her children protected.
"If Neverwhere and Lethia and I were to agree to it, would you take up the mantle of the North?”
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind