remember when our songs were just like prayers?
like gospel hymns you caught in the air
Maybe he can't see the beginnings because he only sees the end.
He doesn't know that the mare in front of him once had a smile like sunshine. Warm, kind, illuminating. Lilliana had tried to brighten her whole world with that smile. An unspoken invitation - that if some soul found themselves lost in the dark, they were welcomed to be included in the light of hers. @[Warden] can't know that in another time and place, the chestnut mare had no magic of her own. There would have been no need for the literal glow that she can exude now; before Beqanna, Lilliana had known how to do that with a tilt of the head, the quirk of her lips, with a thoughtful word or her once-chiming laughter.
When Warden calls her weak, Lilliana does exactly that.
She laughs. It's an empty and hollow sound. It echoes from a cavern in her chest because Lilliana is far too scared to try and fill it.
The painted pegasus seems to have resigned himself to the what is. And Lilliana wonders if that has been her problem all along. She has seen what could be. The vision of Brazen that lingers between them is the Ending. It's what Warden Knows. Her death will come without question (which they all will, even Lilli knows that). Maybe this is the End for Lilliana, too, because she would have once fought harder against this brooding darkness that the Seer carries with him. She would have tried harder to find the Light. (And maybe much doesn't change about her at all because neither does she leave him with it. Lilliana stays standing in the darkness with a stranger because it seems a kinder thing to do than just to leave him to suffer with it.)
An ear flicks to him when Warden speaks of faith. He's tried praying, he admits. Lilliana laments with him and perhaps in the dark, they consecrate a shrine. "I've tried," she confesses. "I used to worry that by calling them different names, by praying to different gods than mine, would make them angry." She shares this with him because Warden speaks with a heaviness that she has carried. With a weariness, she has felt. With anger that has burned. Lilliana looks away from Warden because even though he doesn't know her, it still feels like sacrilege to speak of it.
Who is she without hope?
(Who is she?)
"It didn't matter," she finally says. A finality in the tone of her voice that says she no longer prays to her ancestors, to Legado or the Winds. She asks nothing of the Sisters or the Stars or the River. What she does for Brazen - what she will try to do - will be done without them. Maybe the revelation should have been a freeing one but it elicits a knife-twist in her gut instead. An empty part of her seems to resound even louder now, crying out against the void.
"There's comfort in knowing you're alone." Lilliana offers him what little she has, recalling that moment at the portal when Craft had faltered before returning to this life. She shares it with Warden now because what else can be said between them? They've spoken about forsaking Gods and doomsday prophecies before speaking names. She knows that she isn't alone anymore, not in the way she had once spoken this to Craft.
But they've both known the Dark and it is important to Lilliana that Warden knows that: "If we're all alone, then we're together in that."
this post is brought to you by Grammarly: 'uncertain' and 'joyful'