Though she will never admit it (because who would she tell? What might she say?), the Magic wretched from her has left a hollow spot in her soul.
She leaves Taiga because she doesn’t think she can stay. She walks away from the destruction there (even if it was contained, even if it was only a corner) because there had been despair in Nerine; she walks away from the desolation in Taiga because her iron-laden heart can’t even fathom a word for what had waited for them back in the Redwoods.
There is no word for the dazzling way her heart broke.
So when she has a moment to herself, she follows the River (though it no longer laughs; it is like the Waterfall in her dreams and memories, devoid of any sound). Lilliana walks this trail wonders. Where are you, Neverwhere? She asks. Nashua? The mother begs into the silence of her mind.
Her heart catches at the faint smell of blood. It jolts her out of the heartsickness toiling within her, that harrows after each aching heartbeat. Stumbling upon the pair is as much an accident as any place she has ever found. Her blue eyes fall to the black colt first, who has a coat as deep as night and seems to carry something of the cosmos with him.
Orange.
It’s the orange eyes that immediately make her look to the stallion.
Orange. Like a dying, desert sun.
"You,” she exhales (though she doubts that the stallion would have any recollection of who she is. She had held the dying Craft behind a dune while he had screamed is this enough? over and over again, who still screams it in the occasional nightmare that plagues her). Lilliana is careful where she stands, shifting the weight of her own impending newborns from one side to the other.
"You have a child," she says, feeling the weight of a thousand paradoxes pressing against her when she looks into his orange eyes.
@[garbage]
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind