When she comes back - comes back from wherever the armored man and the blue woman had existed (Heartfire, she realizes with a jolt) - her sides heave against the gale of emotion that blows through her. A flash of white has emerged against the blue of her eyes because even though her experience with it is limited, Lilliana recognizes the dazzling way that magic saps part of a soul, taking something in exchange for what it has given.
In this case, where her light had sought to heal, it had gone deeper and illuminated something beyond the layer of skin and bone.
It's something that Lilliana knows well. Her earliest memories are different. If she were to go searching through the fog and miasma of her mind, it would reveal a different scene entirely.
(A blanket of stars is the only thing that covers them. A silver mare pleads with them, 'No, no, no.' Because the birth of this child represents all the change in her world and that it has not stopped turning. It reminds her that she is truly alone. 'Please,' she begs. There is no healer here. Murmuring Rivers is still unknown and if something goes wrong.. she is alone. But there is no stopping nature and a little girl is born - a red filly lays in the grass behind her. Her delicate head lifts and there are flaring nostrils, her eyes are blue and piercing - of bright December skies. The colors are her paternity, her heritage. Mother and daughter lock eyes and Lilliana who had been conceived in sorrow makes the very first motion towards comfort. Instead of a parent reassuring a child, it is the child who soothes her mother as she watches her fall apart in the moments after her arrival.)
"He loves you Brazen," she firmly insists. (She can't say loved because it isn't her place to make such claims. It is not her place to put things like that in the past tense.) Her voice feels like it comes from some far-away place, that it rings from the distant place she has just come from. Lilliana doesn't know what the relationship between father and daughter developed into; she doesn't know if it was anything like her own. She doesn't know the circumstances that called Dovev to leave. She only knows that Brazen had once called him wonderful, that he was the reason that Heartfire wasn't worse than she was.
Worse than she was, she wonders? Lilliana thinks of Neverwhere and her restored sight. She thinks of the way that the Nerinian queen has left the mantle of leadership on the shoulders of her dappled friend and her mind lights up with so many questions. Questions, like so many others she has, that will likely never be answered.
("I get that you didn't want me", the red man says. She still feels his anger resonating down the memory. Lilliana swallows the emotion that it brings and is reminded again of the mystery that is Brazen's mother, the way that she had countered the stallion: "If I didn’t want you, we wouldn’t be in this mess. And if I wanted to take them from you, you would never have found us.”)
"So much," and though she knows nothing about Heartfire than what others have told her, Lilli feels the burden of grief filling in her chest for her friend. She feels raw. She feels hollow because she knows what Brazen is feeling. Lilliana knows what it is to have that, those lovely and treasured memories of everything feeling whole and making sense. In the recent events of Heartfire disappearing and Neverwhere being handed the title of Queen of the North, she wonders if anyone has come to check on the daughter of the once all-seeing Khaleesi. The daughter who has now been left behind by both her parents. "Your mother too," she says quietly. "She was trying to protect you," from what, Lilliana doesn't have the answer too. She only has that brief snapshot, that short glimpse into a history that is not her own.
"I'm sorry, Brazen," she murmurs and Lilliana can feel it then. Her eyes fill with tears (it is the salt in the air, she thinks, the way that it is so impossibly cold around them that it stings her eyes) and though she tries to fight them, no amount of blinking pushes them back. She steps towards her and places her head over Brazen's neck. It's a motion that she hasn't done in a long time - not since the days of Elaina and the way that the two of them used to lose themselves in Hyaline when both girls had been so eager to forget.
She'll pull her close, if Brazen will allow it. Lilliana will pull her tightly against her because she knows what it is to be left behind. What it is to stand among the memories and to not recognize the present you stood in. How you found yourself existing in a world where those you loved did not. "It's such a wonderful name," her friend says as she smiles gently against Brazen. A brave and courageous heart. One that would endure and withstand the chaos and struggle that this life so often brings. More than that, she will exude light and luster against the darkness of it all. "It suits you," she whispers fiercely against the dead of winter around them.
@[Brazen]
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind