The doubt, anxiety and just general exhaustion that setting across her friend's face pulled at the nereid's heart. Lilli had been through so much already, and so much else she was holding back. Now she was apparently raising twin colts on her own. Aquaria couldn't even begin to guess at who their sire might be. She only hoped that the beautiful boys had been conceived in joy, if not love.
She let the simple reply of the other mare fall soft between them. There was nothing else she could add that she was sure Lilliana didn't already know. Her quiet acceptance was rewarded by a glimpse of her companion's radiant, reckless grin as her sons romped in the surf. It was the kind of smile that turned a beautiful mare into something truly breathtaking, and Aquaria couldn't help an odd little smile of her own.
It was funny, but in that moment she was jealous of the copper mare. Just a bit. Lilliana was beautiful. Really, truly, from the inside out, beautiful. And it was painfully obvious when she smiled that way. For all her own beauty, the nereid felt a little fakeness about her own looks. They were preternatural, otherworldly, and very much only by virtue of her water-tied magic. Without her aquatic guise, there was only a plain little grey mare beneath. Thoroughly unexceptional. It was a face she kept hidden, and only now she realized it was out of a kind of vanity.
They had more important things to discuss, however, than the sea mare's identity issues. Lilliana listened well, as a diplomat must, and Aquaria told her an abridged version of the previous year's events. Her touch was a comforting anchor in the tumultuous currents the experience had brought. The tone of her voice hinted at more experience with the matter than most horses would know. The pale mare nodded thoughtfully, gazing unfocused out to sea as she considered her friend's reassurance.
Speaking with a kind of resignation, she had to agree. "I know he will. He's too stubborn not to find his way. I only wished I hadn't been the one to throw his path into question, is all." A gust of hot breath shifted the dry sand at her feet as she tried to release some of the guilt she'd been wearing. It helped to hear another say the things she'd been trying to convince herself of.
A crease of absent confusion furrowed her brow briefly, only to smooth again as she refocused on the current topic. "I'd like to think an absent father is better than a bad one," she murmured, hoping she was right. She would, she realized, never know if Pteron was a bad father or a good one. Or if he even knew he was one, to more than the little Adarra he had told her of once. A shiver of coarse emotion thrummed along her spine. Her head tilted to Lilli, smiling helplessly.
"No, no, you're alright. I'd be more worried if you didn't. Just," she paused, collected the thoughts rolling around in her mind. "I know it isn't fair, to me or to them. I'd just rather get on with giving them the world instead of hoping some handsome stallion is going to show up and do it for me. If I have to work twice as hard to do it, so be it. They're worth it." She shrugged, dissipating the heaviness of the words as best she could.
Lilli's touch on her shoulder was a kind one, and the smooth scaled mermare tried to return the gentle embrace. Her neck bowed over the burnished mare's shoulder, felt the warmth of her, the strength. "I think you're just as strong, and your boys are going to grow to be a credit to you. With or without a father in the collection." She tightened her grip and then released it, hoping her friend would see herself the way Aquaria saw her some day.
@[lilliana]