the firestarters always get the burns
and the good guys never get the girl
The Plague, to Ilma, is history - an event, though tragic, that marks time as much as wars, lands changing, or a volcano erupting. She knows the most horses did not like to remember it; but she had never responded to Carnage’s call of violence (she was a mare of peace, it was not for her), and had not known Rhonen. There was simply no way to know Noah as his daughter. No way to know how much mentioning this particular history would affect her.
When Noah sharply responds that onlookers who know, and don’t act against it, are to blame as well, Ilma is surprised by her tone but she herds the words. She’s about to say that the roan mare is right about that - it is, in the end, what had inspired her pilgrimage in the first place and she would perhaps be wrong to give it up.
Noah continues before she can say so, and then the pieces fall together, and Ilma can see the bigger picture as Noah explains further.
Ilma lets her companion speak without interrupting. Only when she finishes talking, the white mare’s amber gaze fastens on Noah’s with a certainty. ”To Carnage, we’re all puppets. It would not have mattered if your father were a king or a nomad, Noah. He only used his ability. Only if everybody in the world had refused his call, which is unlikely, he might have lived. And be chased, probably.” There is nothing, nothing that could have prevented his death. There is no way for Noah to blame herself for the sickness, and she should definitely stop it.
”We all did what we could. You created a safe haven, as much as we did in the East. Be proud that you succeeded in what I could not.” Her tone has an underlying sharpness too, but the bitterness clearly is not directed at Noah, as Ilma stares in the distance when she says it. And Noah had succeeded where Ilma had not, even if the events leading to it were not the same. For Castile had not offered her sanctuary or protection until after he’d helped her down from her throne. Had not blinked when his new friend returned to her with hatred and revenge on his mind to undermine his other, older friend. Had not considered the effect of stealing a child from Ilma’s highest ranking diplomat, right from under her nose while the white mare had not yet had time to adjust to being crowned.
”Castile was my friend once, too.” she tells the mare softly. It’s her greatest secret for any of his residents and territories, except Lepis who had been there, once, when they met. And why not tell them? She still wants him to be her friend, she thinks. After all that happened in that one year when she took the crown of his neighbouring kingdom, she can’t drop him as a friend. And yet every step she had taken, he took two steps in the other direction.
She doesn’t speak up and talk behind his back because she does not want to undermine his rule, his friendships, his life. Because she knows how that feels, and she wouldn’t wish that upon her worst enemy. Let alone a friend.
@[Noah] Oh breakthrough, I think