She cannot remember if she had ever radiated such a glowing innocence the way the younger woman before her does.
She cannot remember ever being innocent at all, actually.
It was such a short span of time that it may as well have been a fleeting moment. In comparison to all the years that she has lived, those few years where she was simply reckless and sweet and untouched feel like they hardly existed. That night so long ago when the darkness had touched her, it had consumed her. She had let it swallow her whole, let it twist and corrupt what light was there until her moral compass couldn’t stop spinning.
Until she couldn’t stop spinning.
She had never turned hard or cold, but she was fractured. It doesn’t always show, and not because she has put on a brave face, but because she has simply learned to hide it. She would never consider herself particularly strong or resilient, but she had her ways of survival. Masking was her ideal choice, and over the years it became easier than feeling.
“I suppose so,” she answers her softly, thoughtfully. Her curious gaze studies the young girl’s face for a moment, wondering if she knows what this place is like. Wondering if she knows that most that leave eventually come back, that letting go in a land such as Beqanna was nearly impossible because you never knew when a line that had been slack for centuries was suddenly going to yank taut again. “And if that’s the case, I’m immortal several times over,” she says with a stolen glance and a small tilt of her lips. She has more children than most, and while there were worse mothers out there, she was certainly not the best. She doesn’t think many of her children would actually miss her.
“Lilliana,” she repeats her name, and finds that she likes the almost lyrical way it feels on her tongue. “What brings you to the meadow so early in the morning?”
@[Lilliana]