- it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger -
we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution?
LILLIANA
Autumn is supposed to be about endings, isn't it?
The season that sets Taiga's leaves ablaze and cools her mornings should warn about things to come. The fall days grow shorter and Night tests her strength, greedily stretching out her velvet arms to clamor for more. Dark always bleeds across the sky easier in autumn. It bruises and blemishes the vibrant blue of day and as another brisk breeze winds past her, the Guardian is reminded that her hours of daylight left are few.
Night will be back again before she knows it and the chestnut will make her way back to the northwestern corner of her map, to her part of Taiga. A little alcove where she can still hear the sea and there is enough space between the trees that she can see the stars. (Despite everything, Lilliana is still a dreamer.) A place that offers enough cover - an area of a few overly-large ferns kept in company with a solitary Redwood or two - from the elements for her sleek, fire-bright pelt to stay warm. Her rounds done for the day, she turns her back on the Northern border and starts south towards the River.
The wind whispers through the trees and keeps her mind occupied as she goes, trying not to reflect overmuch on the lull that has fallen Beqanna. It's the quiet that Elena had once speculated they both deserved but there is a roaring edge to this silence; it's like cliff dancing and ledge walking combined. It's like a creeping height - while there is a view to admire, Lilliana is already weary of the brink. There could be a price to pay for this peace, she thinks.
Weaving and winding through the Redwoods, rounding the massive trunk of one and sliding between the foggy embrace of a pair, the slender mare cuts through Taiga at a pace that suggests she is trying to stay a step-ahead of her thoughts. (And she can hear Aletta in them; she can hear the iron-clad certainty in her voice and the granite resolution of her mother. Wandering the ambling trails of the 'what-ifs?' would do her no good. What mattered was the 'what-is.')
And what matters in this present moment - or rather who - is @[Yanhua].
When she finally finds him within singing distance of the River, her expression softens and yields easily to tenderness. The love for her youngest son is written easily in the gentle smile that parts on her dark lips when Lilliana stops. The chestnut mare lifts her refined head, still unaccustomed to his impressive height, and lifts her blue-eyed gaze to meet his. A shade not so dissimilar from her own. A shade that brands him very clearly as her son.
"What is that?" she tilts her head playfully. "Another inch? Two since I saw you last?"
There is gold in the star that marks his broad chest (as it does her flame) and there is joy lighting in her eyes as they briefly glance over the glow of his mane. When they meet his again - though the gold and fire-red of the striking pair could be reminiscent of the fall and things ending - Lilliana isn't thinking of that.
Meeting the azure blue of her son's gaze, there is a fierce blossom of love in her chest. She thinks his story is just beginning.
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind