She is grateful for the hours it takes to travel from the Common Lands to Taiga.
What was normally a quiet, contemplative journey for the flame-marked mare was filled with laughter instead. Each step the pair took towards the forest in the North, well, each sweeping stride grew lighter as Ori and Lilliana trekked towards the Taiga. Despite the darkness that had spread across Beqanna, the shades of her childhood glimmer against the shadows. Red and gold, colors that she has known and trusted since her earliest days (and thus some reasons why she had adored Ruthless and trusted Wolfbane and saved Craft).
There is so much to talk about. So many questions that she wants to ask (and Lilli stops herself from saying them all at once, hearing the gentle tenor of a laughing Malachi in her memories: 'The words won't all flutter away, Lillibird. It's okay to take your time.') The smile on her dark lips softens and the chestnut tucks her slender head down, holding on to the memory of her beloved brother. She had time, she reminded herself.
There was time, she soothed herself.
But this happiness she feels, this moment she shares with Ori, Lilliana means to bask in this warm glow as long as they can share it.
"Your mother was the only reason Mama had any peace," the copper mare says softly. "Aletta had been searching for him, all this time." Lilli adds, remembering those days after the fog had come to Paraiso and the valley had vanished with it. "When she found me here, she said the only thing that eased their separation was knowing Ruth was with him." Her head lifts a little as they continue and her expression softens, "She believed that since they got through Windskeep together, she knew that they'd be alright."
Ori continues to speak and for a moment, they could have been back in Beyond. Lilliana's laughter is bright and airy and full of life; she loves this. Her cousin reveals that Alvaro has not one but two children and she laughs again, turning her sculpted head conspiratorially towards the champagne. "Do you remember Brynn's son, Roland?" she asks with a matching grin. "He and Brielle share a daughter," explains Lilliana. Her head tosses, shaking the notion playfully in her mind. Temperamental and head-strong Bri, grown-up just like the rest of them. "Elena told me about them some time ago," she says. A shadow falls across her face as she remembers their last night in Taiga, "She was here for a while."
It had been for the best that she had gone, though. (This is something Lilliana tells herself often. She was glad that Elena never saw her... after. How hollow she became after Pangea.)
Shaking her refined head again, "Word is she found a land ablaze with sunflowers." Her smile returns, imagining their palomino cousin surrounded by them. It's one of the ways she perseveres, how she has at least kept parts of herself intact. If she can know that Elena is out there somewhere, that she is alright, some part of Lilliana thinks she can be alright, too.
There is still so much to say and to learn. Alvaro is Guardian of Paraiso? Lilliana is stunned for a moment, because something in her can only imagine that ever being her father. But life is not stagnant. It is always changing and those changes had even found their way into the ancestral valley. "He'll make a wonderful Guardian," she says and finds her heart wishing that wherever the ebony stallion is, that he is happy and well. "Oh!" she exclaims, still finding more to share. "Jay found a cove," Lilliana says before she looks up to the pitch-black above them. "Mama had brought news of him and said he found a place where the stars always shining."
The Guardian slows her steps and searches the sky, like some part of her hoped that a star might actually appear.
"She said that he can hear them," she tells her cousin before her eyes fill with a quiet sort of wonder. "And when the stars are silent, there are creatures in the ocean that he can hear singing."
It's so much easier, she realizes, to tell these stories than her own. It is so much easier to speak of Brielle and Jay and Elena and her parents - about home - than herself. But Lilliana has never shied away from anything before and she doesn't start now with somebody who has known her as a wind-spirited filly from Murmuring Rivers. It doesn't have to be her entire story but something on her face grows bashful (and had the light returned to Beqanna, her cousin might have sensed the blush heating her cheeks), "I have children of my own." She says shyly, "and my eldest two have families of their own."
For once, she is grateful for the immortality that Beqanna had given her. Even if she looks barely older than the last time Ori saw her, enough years have passed in Beqanna to tell this story. "And they are," she stops, finding that there is only the truth: "perfect." There is more to say and when Lilliana elaborates, she shows her golden cousin. There are a few waves of memories, a gentle lap at the edge of her mind with the invitation of more if the champagne wished it. There are images of the first twins frolicking through Taiga - Yanhua tossing his growing horns, Nashua flaring his fledgling wings. Images of the second set among a bed of Snow Drops - Roselin's dark face reaching tenderly for one while Oren's glittering blaze catches in the sunlight. And then there is her youngest, white-and-red Reave with bold daring in his youthful gaze.
As they come closer to the border of Taiga, however, Lilliana can't let the towering Sequoias remain in the shadows. She looks to her cousin to share another memory, one that is precious to the Guardian. It is her first, with her vision glancing up and the sunlight trickling hazily in gilded hues through the branches above. The smaller mare slows and tilts her head towards her cousin. "This gift," she offers, "it isn't so different from your mother's." Lilliana says, "I can see glimpses of the past." (And part of her is tempted to ask, did it ever bother Ruth? To see the things that had already happened and have no power to change any of it?)
"Tell me something of you, @[Ori]." She finally says when they resume their trek to the Northern forest. "Where have the winds been blowing you?"
so wow this a novel marma.
if somebody wants to say hello from the taiga crew, come on down! just let ori reply first <33
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind