[open] to a memory i don't mess with, ori

[lilliana]

"Truly," Lilliana reassures her cousin with a smile that shines through the dark.

She casts a thoughtful glance towards Ori, listening as the champagne describes her mother as dependable. The small smile that had tucked itself against her dark mouth remained as Lilli recounted the things that Aletta had told her about Ruth over the years - from Murmuring Rivers to where their daughters conversed now.

"We all have our vices, don't we?" she asks the golden girl casually. But it was something that Lilliana had understood well. How often had she heard others praise her mother and then witness Aletta shrug away all their compliments? Her dam would always insist that it was something needing to be done and if she hadn't been the one to do it, then surely someone else would have.

But like she was to Ori, Ruth was a figure of mysticism to Lilliana. The stories of what had happened at Windskeep, escaping away from Creed, the loyalty to her father. The palomino had been another memory that she had wrapped close around herself, just one more piece of home that she kept tucked close in her breast when Lilli felt something within herself falter and stumble.

"It's good to hear that she is smiling again," Aletta's daughter says in reply to her cousin.

At the rest of their conversation, it is pure joy softening her face. It erases years and Lilliana looks so much like the girl she had been.

"Were you there the day that Elena and I gave flowers to Sutton?" she asks, turning her slender head towards the golden mare as they walk. Her voice drops playfully, like serious-eyed Alvaro could appear around the trunk of a Sequoia at any moment. It's a memory that she had forgotten until now and that day shines brighter in her mind than anything else. She shakes her head, understanding full well why her brother had been angry. "We told her that they were from Alvaro," she explains sheepishly. Oh, how the silver-black had glowered (and rightfully so) at them! "His face went as dark as a thundercloud," she speaks again and laughs. "I thought he would conjure a storm right then and there."

The old ache comes back - the one for home and family. The one for the days that have passed. But even though there is a longing for everything she had known, it isn't as painful as it once had been. Casting another glance at her cousin, there is a warmth that settles alongside it. Like the rains that come after a particularly dry summer, or the thaw that finally comes after a deep winter.

"I miss it sometimes," she finally admits. "Beyond."

Some part of her wonders if she can still consider it home when she has been in Beqanna longer, when she has brought her own children into the world here?
When it has been in Taiga that she has laid down roots and tried to build a life for herself.

"It's very different here," she explains. "And then some things aren't so different."

Her expression turns wistful. "The sun usually rises and sets. The stars shine here as they did back home." She says, thinking of Orani and then wondering about Leonidas. Where do the stars go when the sky drowns in darkness? The tides come and go. The rivers and their currents flow, leading to that same ocean. The things that they knew in Beyond were here as well, but some things -

Some things were not the same.

"The magic here isn't tied to the lands," she goes on to say. "If one leader falls, the land remains." It wasn't like Beyond in that respect and Lilliana had been glad for it; a life on the run was one that she had refused for her own children."But the magic here seems...," and then she struggles. "Wild. A horse just isn't born with it. You can wake up one morning and suddenly you glow or have wings." Her head shakes again, pushing away all those uncertainties that Ori had noticed. But she warns her cousin because what had happened to her and Yanhua and so many others that she had known could easily happen to the champagne. The longer she remained here, the more she should be prepared for those changes. "And then there is the Mountain and you have to be so careful with that magic."

Blowing her remaining caution through her dark nostrils, the chestnut lifts her head.

Ori had wanted her own taste of the world. This is how Lilliana has known it; it could be entirely different for her champagne cousin. Her fear dissipates when they reach the Taigan border and as she senses the wonder in the golden mare's words, the last of her fear falls away. "When I first came here, I thought this place looked like a lost fairytale." Lilli stops and turns her head towards the west where the coast was, enraptured. "The fog rolls in with the morning tides and when the sunlight hits its just right," and the longing fills the silence between them. "It still takes my breath away."

Shaking her head, the spell breaks and Lilliana remembers that their world is dark and there are monsters that roam.

That it was best to return quickly and avoid any creatures that might take advantage of the relaxed pace that Lilliana led her cousin with.