('Lilli, tell me a secret,’ her yearling cousin whispers. Lilli grins and happily obliges her: 'You are my very best friend in the entire world.’ Not really a secret but Lilliana hadn’t known what else to share then.)
('Lilli,’ Elena whispers one night in Culloden when they had both still teetered on the edge of youth and adulthood. ’Tell me a secret,’ she pleaded. Lilli had hesitated but answered, 'I think I’m supposed to love him.’ The chestnut admits and then the worst part, the part she dreads and she knows that had disappointed him. 'But I don’t know.’)
(’Lilli,’ her golden cousin had asked on one of their last nights in Hyaline, 'Do you think we’ll ever find it?’ and Lilliana had known what she meant. The peace. The quiet. ’I don’t know,’ she had answered. And then there had been no more secrets - her cousin had gone, vanishing into the quiet they had been longing for.)
It is harder for her to make the daily trek between Taiga and Nerine and so some nights Lilliana stays North. She rests not far from Brazen and tries to find sleep where she can though her mind often goes to the Redwoods where she worries for Ruth. And she still hasn’t forgotten about Brine - about the promise she had made - and the Ambassador was still trying to figure a way to find the roan mare.
She had hoped Ghaul might offer more insight but one of the few benefits of having him in Nerine was knowing that he couldn’t harm Brine or Brinly. (Though the horned stallion is one that is difficult to place - she has seen him ‘look’ down upon a nest of rabbits and leave them be and then be just as apt to ignite a tree with his fire.)
The world is full of shades of gray - not the clear cut black and white she had once thought it was.
When she finally sees Ruth - there is a warmth, a love that swells in her chest at the sight of her - and she manages to come forward as quickly as a mare carrying twins can. But she isn’t blind. The closer she comes, the more she sees the lines of pain (and something else, lack of sleep perhaps?) on her youthful face.
That feeling comes back - the one from the Field - that fervent desire that Lilliana has. The want to protect her. To keep her safe. And while she can’t understand (who could? What explanation is there for what Wolfbane had once been? There is betrayal and infidelity woven in that tale.) why she had chosen as she had - of the way, that for a moment, a curse and a past and a ghost collided and Lilliana had only wanted Ruth away from all of it. They could have fought, perhaps, but where it concerns Ruth, it seems that is a risk she wasn't willing to take.
”Ruth,” she says with a voice full of relief as she comes closer.
And then her magic - out of habit perhaps from Brazen, from the way her healing had sought out the cuts and tears in her armored skin - unknowingly reaches out to @[Ruthless], coming forward before Lilliana can. It’s a strand of light, a luminous embrace around her coronet band and then instead of taking, the magic gives.
(It’s an image - of another golden girl who Ruth has reminded her so much of from the start - a young blonde mare of age with the pegasus who whispers through the memory: ‘When the mists came, Alvaro wanted me to stay as did Marcelo. But I couldn’t Lilli. I couldn’t stay. Not when this is such a cruel world and I have a chance to bring light to it.’)
LILLIANA
and its harder than you think
telling dreams from one another |
art by the day of shadow
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind
|
