It's like sunlight becomes a dream.
The warmth is there, hazy in the back of her mind and shining only in her memories. How the days pass no longer matter. The darkness that existed only behind her closed eyes swallows her whole from the moment they open. Leonidas no longer comes and Lilliana no longer attempts to know if it is day or night.
Her days are measured with the coming and goings of her children, of knowing when Leilan is nearby. These are the rhythms of her time; this is how she measures her hours (like the ebb and pull of tides, like the shift of the stars - if they still existed). When is she is alone, she moves. The chestnut mare wanders through her Redwood home, weaving between the trees and searching through the tangled growth for signs of life. For signs of monsters. For hope of Neverwhere or one of her wayward children (Reave reminds her most of her mother; there is so much of wandering Aletta flowing in the strides of her youngest son).
Lilliana moves through the trails of her home, guided by knowledge and the faint glow her markings still give. Even if this is an era of darkness in Beqanna, life doesn't still. Life goes on, even if the sun no longer shines. There are still patrols to be done. (Life has quieted for the Northern forest, but like Magic, Lilliana doesn't trust it.) And just when she least expects it, a strange scent comes dancing on the wind. The Taigan stops and raises her head, dimming herself so that she might become just one more shadow. It will be a few moments before her eyes adjust to the dark and when they do, she waits with a practiced stillness. A stillness borrowed from studying the deer that wander through these sentinel woods.
After a few heartbeats, her dainty ears swivel quickly. Her blue eyes keep searching through the dim outlines of trees and ferns, trying to intercept any movement. The scent came again, strange and unfamiliar, as she blew it out of her flaring nostrils. Lilliana turns her head towards a copse of trees where an outline looked out of place, a shadow that was the wrong shade. It was a horse, she knew. The stranger didn't carry the bitter tang of Magic on them. She waited a moment longer before realizing that the wanderer had stopped at the border of Taiga, a familiar hint of diplomacy despite the strange times they lived in.
She leaves her cover and approaches the other horse - a mare - carefully. "Hello," Lilliana says in a tone that she had learned while trailing after her Regent mother: welcoming yet direct. "Who comes to the Taiga?" asks the Guardian lightly with a whisper of humor warming the last words.
It's when she glances at the amber eyes - mirrors of the soul - that her expression becomes guarded. She knows those eyes but they belong to a blazing soul with a glimmering golden blaze and long, sleek legs. On the purple stranger, the image is all wrong.
@[Wishbone]