There are so many things that she doesn't understand.
She had tried too, once. She had tried to understand the names that her father whispered while he slept, the ghosts that haunted behind his blue eyes. She had to reconcile the image of the man in the stories that she had been raised on to the reality that presented itself that day in Murmuring Rivers. She tried to reconcile herself to the fact that her home was no longer needed and therefore they could all go to Paraiso, they could be together and they could be happy.
Their story could end that way.
It hadn't.
It seemed that instead of seeing what was in front of him, all Valerio ever saw was what was gone. (If only Lilliana could have known the cries that still echoed in his mind, those two little girls and his niece who had been brutally murdered by Frostbane. How her father had split open his own chest on a sheet of ice to try and save those girls. How he struggled to live with his failure, of why he survived and those fillies did not.) Nobody had told her; the crimson child had grown up sheltered away from those particular horrors.
But if Lilliana had known..
(A sunny day, a golden stallion smiles indulgently down at her while the laughter of her baby sister rings around them. 'Don't forget your wings, Lillibird.')
Living has it owns struggles and she has tried to brace against them. She has pushed and pushed, always trying to keep herself moving forward. (Sometimes she wonders though what she is missing behind her, of the moments gone that might have been beautiful if she had only looked.) The last time she had been in this forest, she had exposed her emotions. Lilliana had laid her emotions bare here, inch by painful inch, fully aware that she could be donning a noose that she would hang herself with. She had known that and yet she had done it anyway.
Lilliana is holding the forest in her gaze. She is looking through the branches that are now almost bare, that gnarl against the piercing autumn sky above and she remembers.
(Branches bathed in moonshine, the light streaks through the empty places where the leaves have surrendered to the season.)
She is remembering and she is trying to understand. Her body is angled away from the woods, an indication that she would be anywhere but that forest. Her slender form, always a touch too lean, has been made leaner still with her attempts at sparring and the hours she spends walking in the northern part of Taiga. She is trying to understand and as much as she tries to, she doesn't find the answers here. The uncertainty, the uncertainty that is her fault, only festers and Lilliana turns to leave.
Against all the brown and flat scenery of late autumn, she sees her. A mare who stands by herself and when has the chestnut ever left a wandering soul alone? She should know better, perhaps. Maybe the brown mare only wants her solitude as Lilliana has wanted hers these last few months. She might inspire the ire of someone else in this forest; she has done it once before and there is a moment where her mind flashes to Brigade in the dark forest, wrapped up in all his fury for protection.
But there is something weary and careworn about this woman. She doesn't cloak herself the way that Lilliana does. There is no humor or anger. There is only the expression that Lilli percieves as tired. As the wind blows by, the copper woman calls to her. "Are you waiting for someone?"
LILLIANA
light me up, i will blaze
like a soul you have saved
@[lilian] i know we talked about this ages ago so here we are <3