- it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger -
we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution?
LILLIANA
Lilliana stops and then becomes so very eerily, unnaturally still.
@[Izora Lethia] looks to her and for a helpless moment, the copper mare is drowning behind her blues eyes. Is the buckskin looking to her for support? For guidance? For one awful moment, Lilli simply suffocates in the uncertainty. I went to the Mountain, the Matriach says and Lilliana inhales a sharp breath.
The Mountain.
The Heart of their known World and the source of their Magic. The reasons that Lethia shares are so painstakingly similar to Warlight. She understands why the Peacemaker had done it. The start of their Council had been just days in its infancy. The change of leadership was new and the plans that the pair had started to dream between them had been cut short by the theft of the Guardian to Pangea. Lilliana knows that moment of blind panic, of turning and searching and spinning around for help. Of frantically reaching and clinging to the first idea that takes hold.
She would never judge anyone for knowing that moment.
Her wide-eyed gaze diminishes, though, when Lethy falters with her violet one. It slips and instinctively, Lilliana reaches out. A proverbial hand to raise the pregnant mare back up. (Nobody falls in Taiga alone anymore.) Aten had wanted to do the same thing, she says when she speaks again. He had wanted a power to help defend Taiga; he had wanted Magic to keep the Redwoods safe. It's a moment of grim reality, realizing the extent that a soul will go to keep the places and those they love safe.
It's an endless thing and it seems endlessly dangerous when combined with Magic.
Maybe it's because Lilliana still believes the Mountain will smite her if she steps hoof at its base but the chestnut adds, "You will always be my friend, Lethy." She won't add that the Magic won't change her because it very well could. It seems like water to Lilli, the way that Magic moves. A spell or gesture or use of it was like a casting a stone - a ripple sent crashing outward towards a horizon that could yield a realm full of possibilities.
Once upon a time, Lilliana would have marveled that Magic could be a wonderful thing. A gift to whisper to trees. A practical use of healing that might spare a life. An ability to see the Future where the Seer might prevent devastation or desolation.
That time has passed.
"This is why we act as one." Lethy knows well by now for Lilliana's motivations to combine the North. It's something they have talked about and debated and mediated over several times. There was a reason for the Isle and there was a reason for Leilan. (And part of Lilli wonders how she went from such a sheltered girl who had never seen a dragon before Beqanna to living in a kingdom with almost two.) "If anything happens like that again, we strike together."
The determination that took hold of her fades and Lilliana goes unconsciously searching for that peace Lethy so often carries with her. It's been gone for some time and if she dwelled on the thought, she might realize why it is so easy for her emotions to overcome themselves now. "Is there anything you need from me?" she finally asks, fracturing herself apart because there will never be a piece of Lilliana that she wouldn't give away for the benefit of someone else. Her voice quiets, the only way that Lilliana can hold it steady. "Anyway I can help?"
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind