[private] should have known better than that; torryn

[lilliana]

She is a tangle of emotion.

There is a heart that beats in her chest that is wrapped with grief and sorrow and even rage. (Can he sense that? That is the emotion she is most afraid of. The anger that overwhelmed Warden - the Watcher - in Tephra. That cut against Leilan's temper and the pair could have frozen half of Taiga with all the fury that bled out between them.) Those emotions have knotted in her chest and Lilliana has lived so long with them that part of her can't fathom living without them.

They have been the things that have stayed with her when so many others have left.

But Taiga stays; the Taiga has always been there for Lilliana.

Her chestnut head tilts in the darkness, watching the pair of glowing eyes as they tell her that he had been born in these woods. She listens, wondering if he might reveal what Taiga that might have been. Aten or Pteron? When the Comtesse and her Commandant took charge? It doesn't matter, she finally tells herself. Not when he didn't even dwell beneath the Sequoias anymore. But the shadowy creature reveals his parents (Ether, whom she knows as a relation to the Freyr) and whatever distracted expression might have been on her face softens. The longing in his voice resonates within her. How often has she wished that she could see her own family?

To see her father again? To be reunited with Elena?

Lilliana can't imagine that he would come to Taiga - to the place that he was born - and not seek his family. "Do you visit often?" she asks the shadow. Her head lifts and turns towards the cloaked stallion, the barest hint of a smile hidden from the light. She's done enough patrols of these woods to know most of its inhabitants (with @[Torryn]'s family being the exception, there is only the awareness that they are there; rumors that have passed from horse-to-horse since she has been here). He's rather fantastical and she is certain that if she had come across him before, there would be no forgetting him.

"Well, welcome back to Taiga," it's Guardian says. Her blue eyes meet his with only a glimmer of curiosity sparkling there. "I'm Lilliana."