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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    [private]  on a stormy sea of moving emotion; Lilli
    #1
    Breckin had lost track of how long she’d been rooted - foreleg lifted and frozen midstep - dark eyes unyielding against the sharp lines of grey. Long enough for the sun to rise to its highest point in the sky, she could surmise, without shifting the mark of her dreamstruck gaze.  It was impossible, to know that a boundary ran just before her, that her body could not physically cross that line though her heart begged it.  How could she not move?  How much more ridiculous could she be? And yet there she stood, head low and ears just as idle, unable to find the courage to make a tiny leap.

    What if I fall? What if there’s just more of nothing?
    But what if there’s something? You might find your wings to fly.

    Had it not been for the silence, she might not have bothered.  Not quiet of Taiga per se, the redwood sentinels had seen a bit of activity lately, but the quiet that nearly suffocated her.  Self inflicted it might have been, but it was a small price to pay at the time to do her part to protect Arthas.  Though in those long days of isolation and laying low, questions had become tainted with wisps of doubt.  Insignificant in stature maybe, but still there.  All because she had placed a seed of faith with the charcoal stallion, harboring hope and fostering wishes that someday soon she might find more answers with his help.  Patience, she’d come to find, was a hard learned virtue, and one that was harder yet in practice. 

    Such practices had been especially difficult that ugly spring morning when she’d awoken.  Foggy, cool and dull, the morning dew had stuck to her pitch speckled coat, and struck her ever so oddly.  It sent a chill down the length of her spine and a tickle in her mind, when she realized that something was painfully familiar about a morning like this.  And it had set her northbound in an unthinking moment, drawn not unlike an insect to warmth. 

    But there was that pesky wall now - that she should can see and not see simultaneously.  This was impossible. And she sighed, consciously making the effort to relax her clenched jaw with the threat of a pounding headache just moments away. But there was something else beyond the physical pain, something deeper and primal that could be ferried away with the change of thought. 

    It was scary, to see how easily she saw it now; A thing born of the known and unknown.  She recognized it, with the same certainty and affection as prey might meet with the eyes of a predator across the meadow.

    Fear.

    It was then she realized she couldn’t do it, and her food dropped to the ground. 


    @[Lilliana]
    #2

    It comes as a flash - just a glimpse.

    Lightning strikes have made more sense to Lilliana. The image that comes unbidden in her blue-eyed gaze makes sense in only the way that she has seen that place before. The chestnut mare who had spent another quiet morning succumbing to the Taigan fog finds herself suddenly invigorated. Was it a sign? A message? Lilliana turns her head to carefully regard the Nerinian border to the north, as though she might see that invisible boundary through the cover and density of her beloved Redwoods.

    The border has diminished less and less these days. Where Heartfire had given Lilliana pause, the warmth and comfort of Neverwhere and Brazen pull her frequently to their world's edge.

    The Taigan feels torn as she continues to stare through the density of the forest, past the shadows that the trees cast and past the sunbeams that come dancing down from the branches above. All there is silence. There is no knowing. The air around her is absent of any kind of feeling at all. Waves crash in the distance and the native seabirds can be heard crying out their impatience with the days' catch from where the slender mare stands. She keeps waiting and the only sign that the mare is a living creature at all is the way her daintily-tipped ears swivel, alert as they attempt to catch any source of the unusual.

    If it is a sign, who would it be from? And would they have intentionally sent to Lilliana? She doubts it. She fervently hopes not.

    When enough time has passed that the tide has gone further out and the seabirds that cry have faded with it, when the sun has risen higher, Lilliana has decided that she has waited long enough. She decides, for a moment, to ignore the vision. It would be for the best, she tells herself. Perhaps it was rogue magic, something wild. Perhaps it was something ancient. Perhaps, even better, the vision wasn't intended for Lilliana at all and her feigning ignorance of it would be in the senders' benefit.

    It could be so easy to do.
    It should be easier.

    But then she remembers the day tucked away on a misty Nerinian beach with Brazen and the images that came that day about Dovev. What if it was her friend? What if Brazen was honing some kind of untapped skill, something that might help in answering the questions that came in the aftermath of the disappearance of the former Nerinian queen? Heartfire had been the one skilled in "seeing" and had seemed almost omnipotent to Lilliana. There isn't a doubt in her mind that the Seer's daughter might be any different.

    So Lilliana, despite the apprehension that spreads in her veins and sinks her soul, goes North.

    She follows a path she knows well and it is with an experienced eye that observes the way her forest falls behind her. The imperial Redwoods become sparser the further she goes and though the fog doesn't quite burn away in Nerine the same way it does in Taiga, sunlight does manage to trickle down through the silvery haze of the morning as it dissolves to midday. There is a good amount of searching involved (because this is Lilliana, because she has never been good with direction or navigation) and the sun has risen to almost its highest zenith by the time that a sense of familiarity creeps down her spine. The crimson mare slows and studies a quiet meadow, a place where the mist hangs as a veil and Lilliana stops.

    Her blue eyes scan the shapes and shadows from where she wearily stands. Perhaps it doesn't want to be found, whatever it was.

    Still, she can't pull herself away. A rather stubborn inkling of something keeps her here, determinedly searching through the afternoon fog. Lilliana walks forward though it seems like the haze blurs everything. What was so definitive only a few steps before suddenly becomes shadowed and the lithe mare finds herself fighting waves of panic and fear the more steps she takes. (Where is she? What if she gets lost? Is she already lost?) Nothing around her feels familiar. It all gets lost in the obscurity of the fog.

    Until there is a shape. A silver silhouette. A spotted specter in all this gloom. (Why is she so afraid?) Lilliana has to swallow it, her fear though it widens her eyes and makes her heart race. (Run, run, run, her pulse hums.)

    This ghost is the only solid thing she can sense. And she is more afraid of being alone than she is of the apparition. The chestnut comes closer until relief floods her voice and breaks the silence as warmth radiates from the stranger, "You're not a ghost." She comes closer until the form becomes more definitive. It takes on a recognizable one because who could ever forget those remarkable spots? "Roz?" Lilli prompts, remembering the name that the silver stallion had called her and the one that Lepis had inquired. "Or Breckin?"

    LILLIANA

    light me up, i will blaze
    like a soul you have saved





    @[Breckin] i wrote you a novel.. i'm sorry
    but it's all in the past, love
    it's all gone with the wind
    #3
    It’s not long before she’s found, paralyzed atop a granite cliff somewhere along the coast of a home she couldn’t recognize.  With fear atop her, she continued to stand grounded, watching curiously as a distant observer cautiously made their way forward.  Whoever they were, they must have been intelligent enough to tread lightly through and towards such murky weather.

    You’re not a ghost.   But of that the battered leopard mare is not truly certain.

    Though her lungs fill and body bleeds as the living do, she’s convinced that that is enough to deem her alive and not a phantom.  There’s an itch somewhere, that what she is now is just a fractured piece of something else, something bigger that she might have been.  But that voice that called to her that morning is fleeting - small and diminutive now  - hardly a whisper and more akin to a sigh, quickly overshadowed by the ugly bulk of lacking confidence that guided her as a shepherd might their wandering flock in that voice’s absence.

    “Roz,” she said, closing her eyes heavily against a throb of pain deep within her skull.  When she opens them, the edges of her vision are clear again, and she looks to the fire coated woman. “And you’re Lilliana?”  It took but a moment for Breckin to notice the pattern of white against chestnut and a pleasant voice to lend its hand in the recollection of the small gathering that had greeted her that first day in Taiga.  That day had proven to be too much in the end, and her anxious nature couldn’t cope with their curiosity and questions, not when there were so many questions left unanswered for herself, and hardly any means to gain answers.

    She could never forget that next day, begging Arthas the question of Who is Nerine? and becoming glad she hadn’t inquired that same thing to the questioning winged mare the day before.

    “The fog is so thick in this place.  It’s practically a small miracle that you were able to find me,” she says wryly after awhile with a small, hesitant grin.



    @[lilliana] don't you ever apologize for that madame! sorry this took me almost forever and a day!
    #4
    Lilli. Lilliana. Lilli. Lilliana.

    The crimson mare knows what it is to go by two names and to wonder what the differences are. For her, there are some obvious truths: Lilli had been the girl who had laughed with her eyes and smiled with her heart. Lilli had looked for the moon when it waned into midnight oblivion and had wondered what happened to stars after they raced across the sky. (Surely something so bright, so lovely didn’t just extinguish?

    Lilli had been as much of Beyond as Lilliana is of Beqanna.
    Sometimes the weight of the two identities doesn’t matter. Sometimes the weight shifts the scale entirely and the weight offsets the other entirely.

    If she had known what Roz or Breckin or whoever the spotted mare wanted to go by (or whoever she thought she was), Lilliana might have said it's not the name that matters.

    ”Roz,” the chestnut confirms through the fog. And with a raise of her own copper head, the Taigan mare nods. ”Lilliana. Lilli.” She says with a smile, with a warmth that she tries to draw from the sunshine she knows must be lingering outside their clouded world and a roll of her slender shoulders. "Whatever you prefer.”

    That day in Taiga - when Aten and Lepis and the strange gray stallion arrived - Lilliana hadn’t taken long to excuse herself. The gathering had been too much for her as well. Though her reasoning wasn’t for the lack of memories but rather the opposite - remembering too much and becoming wrapped up in memories of past and present.

    When she comes to stop in front of the pale mare, Lilliana looks up with a blue-eyed gaze that searches through the haze and the silver mist. When she looks back down, an almost shy smile blossoms on her dark mouth. ”Somebody once told me the Gods hid things in the fog,” the chestnut foolishly muses. "It's where the old worlds and new ones collide.” Silly stories from her youth, her expression says. But still, the dreamer in Lilli likes to imagine that there still might be things to find in the clouds that blow through Taiga and Nerine.

    Souls to find like Roz.

    "So," she can't help the teasing that comes out, "what do you think the Gods would be hiding out here?"

    @[Breckin]
    but it's all in the past, love
    it's all gone with the wind
    #5
    So much lying lately and skirting about the truth.  Was that the root of this resounding headache?  It would be a fitting punishment, she thinks.  And when Lilliana mentions the Gods and their workings just after, she can’t help but take that as a sign of confirmation, as small and exaggerated that may be.  Breckin smiles ruefully, shallow and guarded in appearance, but still warmer than before, thoughtfully considering the childhood musings of the copper woman as she laid them out.


    The Breckin a few years back who had a firm grasp of her memories might’ve told her that most stories and lore held a grain of truth within them - it was just a matter of siphoning them out if one was particularly keen in finding the truth they hid.  “I would like to imagine that there are answers hidden out there - somewhere in between those old and new worlds.  I suppose that might mean that I should be looking in the present.”   It wouldn’t surprise her if that scared away her newfound companion - that revelry sounded a bit too fantastically philosophical to her even before she had parted with it.  And yet, she had spoken it out loud all the same.


    Clearing her throat a bit and fixing her far off gaze, her dark eyes turned back to find Lilli’s blues, “That would be something though, wouldn’t it?  But unfortunately the Gods take no pity on people like me.”   Not on wanderlusting liars, she thought inwardly.  When she smiles again, it’s grand enough to bring a faint sparkle of mischief into her troubled eyes, “I’ve only come to find cold and dampness that’s making the strands my tail clump rather unceremoniously.”  As if to prove her point, her black tipped, matted tail swung against her protruding rib cage, causing the fog to swirl and dance in its wake.


    “What about you, Lilli?  Would the Gods be kinder to you in their game of hide and seek?”


    @[lilliana]
    #6

    Lilliana would have loved her - the @[Breckin] of old.

    Her stories are as much a part of her as the golden flame on her right shoulder, as the heritage of her blue eyes. Some things might have been exaggerated. Truths might have blurred into falsehoods. Names and places get lost to the haze of time, an unfortunate (and mortal) casualty. (Why had the first Liliana run away with a diplomat? What had brought Starlet to the top of the world and kept her there? Why had Mae drifted to the beaches of Beqanna to die?) But there is always a reason a story starts and a reason why it keeps going. Why the generations that come after echo their own reiterations of it.

    What comes after can become a truth all it's own.

    The two mares trade philosophical answers in the fog and the irony of the moment isn’t missed Lilliana. It’s not often, however, that someone wants to wonder with her.

    "Look too far ahead of you, you’ll trip over your present. Look too far behind you and you’ll miss it entirely.”

    The smile that lines her dark mouth turns somewhat impish, "I doubt the present is any safer than the rest though.” The dark eyes of Breckin meet with Lilliana’s blue and the dreamer in her can’t help but agree. It would be something if grand designs could be parted in the fog, if the Fates and Gods revealed what they intended.

    "How do you know it’s not a kindness?” she questions, tilting her head to the swirl of silver mist around them. "Sometimes, I think, the not knowing might be a kindness. What if the knowing is worse?” The thought dances across her blue eyes, twirling around them much like the fog does before she shakes her head. Just more things to bury.

    "Well,” Lilliana teases, "you’ve certainly found it.” Taiga was as renowned for her fog as Nerine was for her angry cold. When the two lands met, especially in winter, there was nothing pleasant about the greeting. Lilli motions her head to one copper side of her, "If you’d like some Nerinian hospitality, your welcome to walk with me.” The grin on her face warms her delicate features, "now that you’ve found the damp and the cold.” There is something playful in her expression, a slight tilt of her head that says perhaps that might be preferable to what the pale woman has found. Two bodies together might make the winter brace more bearable against the windworn edges of Nerine.

    It’s Breckin’ next question that makes her pause and consider what she asks. The chestnut bites her lower lip, emerging a flash of white before turning her gaze back at the spotted woman. "You know,” she muses, "I don’t know.” Sheepishly with her smile returning, Lilliana adds, "I’m too stubborn for my own good, sometimes. I think I’d keep looking for answers for as long as the Gods intended on hiding them.”

    Turning her attention back to Roz, she asks: "Any particular reason the Winds blew you this far North?"

    wow you got a novel and she is so chatty

    but it's all in the past, love
    it's all gone with the wind




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