- it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger -
we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution?
LILLIANA
Lilliana is familiar with the Mountain and the petitions a horse can make. The red mare still has sulfur scents of Tephra clinging to her coat as the pair travel down this trail. Warlight had gone to the Mountain with the desire to cancel out the traits of her potentially-gifted opponents. Lilli understands why horses travel to the Mountain but the thought of that place still sits uneasily with her.
It’s not a place she has any desire to see again.
If there wasn’t a need for healing, Lilliana would completely avoid her gifts altogether.
Speaking of Lepis beneath the rooftop of Taiga stirs a thousand ghosts in Lilli’s mind and she struggles to keep them at bay. She’ll never be a mare completely able to hide all of her emotions and there is a shadow of a grimace that crosses her face when the buckskin mare says the name of the former Comtesse aloud. The chestnut mare who had been quiet before falls uncharismatically silent now. She lets @[Izora Lethia] fill it up with the news from Loess - that the Queen of the South had a new gift, that there had been deals brokered with genies and devils and that once upon a time, the goal had been to unify Beqanna.
"I know,” Lilliana says. "Heartfire wasn’t pleased with her plan to move the kingdom seat to Taiga.” What would the Seer think of them moving it to the Isle, she wonders briefly. "And then Loess wanted to claim us as a colony for the South.” They are speaking of ancient history. One they both know well. They lived through it. It’s easier for her to speak of that then what clamors in her head; it’s easier to speak of the political past than the personal one that Lilliana had allowed herself to become so tangled in.
She purses her dark lips together and gives her head a single shake before offering a tight smile to Lethy. "No,” she replies softly and then echoes what Neverwhere had said in Nerine. "I don’t think Loess will want to share much of anything with us.”
Trouble clouds the expression of the Matriach and Lilliana slows to a stop. Before the younger mare can ask what was wrong, the peacemaker explains. Lethy has more in mind besides a Summit and their Council. It’s not a bad thing to have more than one plan, she knows. Not when she has learned that are so many different possibilities for things to go wrong. "What did you have in mind?” she asks calmly, hoping to ease the tension that was suddenly charging the air. The smaller mare summons her smile again, hoping to draw away the unease that was staring so plainly back at her.
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind