[private] stranger than your sympathy;

[lilliana]

Maybe Lilliana’s problem came from that she did all her dreaming during daylight. She had looked up to the clouds and crafted monuments in her mind, had created worlds above her head where she could not go. She filled her waking hours with dreams and so when night came - as it always must - her mind was quiet. Her dreams didn’t come with the dark but the daybreak; her world, the one she knew with Elaina, woke with her and was ready to be explored.

Lilliana’s blue eyes go dull as she looks down, watching the waves that crash past the faint outline of her ankles, that go crashing right past her.

"I do,” she murmurs and blinks back unshed tears. Sometimes, she thinks, that’s what makes this so hard. Lilli can see parts of Malachi in her eldest boy’s lopsided smile; the piercing depth and quiet intelligence sparking behind Yanhua’s blue eyes that remind her so much of Jay, a somberness he has that she longs to tell Elaina about that makes her remember all those lost days trying to make Alvaro smile.

It had been the part of motherhood she hadn’t been prepared for - to look at a child and not only see parts of yourself but others, of the generations that came before.

An ear flicks to her golden cousin before she looks up and it surprises her. Lilli finds it a comfort to know that Marcelo had nightmares too. She has them often enough. There are plenty of nights she wakes up with all those shadows pressing against her throat. What little comfort she found in the revelation leaves quickly enough. What a weight that must have been on his shoulders - to dream about the things that could come for them and the inevitable in knowing that there was no stopping it.

(Was knowing worse than braving the unknown?)

"Poor ‘Celo,” she says quietly. He had been the first lesson of Magic from Aletta - that while it could be considered a gift, it was more apt to be a curse. Her father, if he lost control, could have stripped Paraiso of her trees with his gales. Marcelo could see glimpses of the future but he never knew the precise path taken to get there. Ori was gifted with the sight of things gone, unable to change to things already written in history. Lovelace was timeless, cursed to rise and rise again while the mortal hearts she grew to love would wither and die with the seasons.

Aside from the gift of healing, what about Magic could really be proved a ‘gift’? For everything it gave, it had to take and that rendered equal in the end: nothing.

"Do you think Windskeep has been kind to them?” Lilli whispers over the sea, hoping that it has. Hoping that it still stands and that whatever it suffered during the wars, it thrived now. That they found peace.

At her confession (because what else can this be but an altar? Where else would she ever dare to admit such a thing? Elaina has been the very reason that she has learned to fear love and to know what it is to burn with it), her expression parts to reveal a haunting pain. The journey has been a terrifying one; every bit as tumultuous and wild as she is.

(Thats what happens, though, when you grow a girl instead of raising one. Lilliana had been allowed to bloom alongside the gentle hills of Murmuring Rivers. There had been no fencing that child in. So nobody should be surprised when the May Pole turned into a pyre.)

What Elaina says is the very thing she struggles with. The copper mare had grown up looking at her reflection, looking at the angles and planes of her face for a father she hadn’t known. Now when she stares at herself, there is only the sin. "So that's it, then?” Lilliana asks dryly, "That’s all there is? Doom?” The anger rises briefly - inflecting on the last word before she softens. "Are we the sin or is the sin us?”

She buries the last of it - that rage, that anger that has been festering in her since the night that Lilli went into the Forest and Lilliana came out - before she just buries her face into the warmth of her cousin’s blonde neck. A place just as immortal and beloved to her as the Redwoods that loom behind them. ”I love you,” she croaks, ”I love you so very, very much.”

[Elaina]

she's a wild wild woman

“The child wouldn’t be here if things in Windskeep were going well.”

No, she wouldn't have been.
So what does it mean as she stands here in Taiga? She wouldn't be here if things were going well. But this time, Elaina knows as she looks to her cousin. It is not the War of Windskeep, but whatever rages inside and around Lilli that she is here for.

This time Elaina does not run away from battle—but straight towards it.

“Perhaps one day, Elena might be the fiercest of warriors but she needs to reach adulthood before that can happen.” This is what Lilli had thought of her cousin. But, in the end, Elena was not the ferocious warrior, because it is not bravery to look the things you hate in the eyes, but to stand beside your loved ones as they stare them down knowing you would do better to run. “I can’t leave you with him.” She had said when Elaina had refused to leave.

Even then she had been foolish, why had they not been able to see it?

Elaina has broken down more times than she can remember, and she had grown so sick of having to put herself back together for everyone else. How often had she looked to the sky asking where they were when she needed them. Of course, in the next heart beat, it was Lilli who turned up beside her. “What is it like?” She asks curious. “Being a mother?” She wonders because she has never had children, she never wanted to children, when Aerwir had asked, she shut him out, when Aerwir had pushed, she had left. She wonders if it is hard to longer be able to just consider herself when she makes her decisions.

The hardest part in all this, that Elaina doesn't realize, but in a way, Lilli has, is that one day she will have a daughter and she will look into her eyes and her heart will break a thousand times more than Aerwir, Underworld, Tunnel, or her shadow man ever could. Because when she looks into those eyes, she will see only Lilli staring back at her.

She toys for minute with the crimson of her mane.”Celo carried so much weight with a future and a crown. I never realized it until I was older,” she admits. The boy king, who ruled alongside Aletta with shaking hands and a trembling voice. “Your mother was a good leader,” she finishes with the truth. Aletta had protected them. Pride flares in her chest for her heritage. Aletta was not of legacy blood physically, but spiritually…and Elaina would always look to her as a second mother.

“Everyone seemed happy, when I was there.” Everyone except herself, seeing it in the way her face looked solemn, her eyes dull, Elaina is still not sure at which point Windskeep stopped being home for her. (It is was when her mother gave her eyes of blue because she lost her father’s, when she tried to manipulate fate and fate punished her instead.) “I want to show you it one day,” she says, curious why the idea never came to her before. Maybe because she was too busy thinking about boys with brown eyes, boys of blue, and boys with scars on their chests and death in their eyes.

“Lilli!” She says, letting the mast fly open, to steady the ship about to dive off the waterfall. It is then the golden girl looks to her with matching silver blue eyes. “I don't know,” she admits. She is not Jay with his stars, nor Valerio with his wisdom, or Aesop with her immortality. Elaina has always been aware of just how little she has to offer. “If you are sin, then I should have been cast into the fire’s of Hell a long time ago,” she admits because Lilli has always been the better pieces of herself and when she looks at Lilli, looks at her eyes and her smile, sometimes she can almost make herself believe that only those better parts exist.

Here, with Lilli at her side, every shield she defends herself with, every thought that brings an ache deep in her chest is left far behind her, out of reach. Make no mistake, it runs, sprints, fights its way to get back to her, but for now Elaina can feel the atlas that rests upon her shoulders lifting. One day she will return to this moment, to Lilli, to Taiga, and think that maybe she should have stayed among the trees and the fog. And then her shadow will come, on a night beside the lake (“If you want to remember…) and she will remember different things (distant things), while forgetting this one.

“Tell me your happiest memory. Something that always brings a smile to your face.” She asks, begs for. They deserved this, this moment, they deserved a moment of smiles, of joy. They deserved this.

Elaina; there's a voice calling me back
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me

[lilliana]

Lilli presses her face into the curve of her cousin’s neck, lulling herself with the soothing warmth that came radiating off Elaina in waves.

She has a moment where she thinks that if she presses hard enough, that if her eyes remain closed long enough, maybe she’ll wake up. Maybe they had laughed too hard with the bubbling brooks and they had fallen asleep with aching sides in their favorite clearing. Maybe Lilli, growing so proud and sure of the wind in her stride, had raced the rapids too far and had fallen asleep with the sun dappling her red hide. The chestnut mare buries herself into the silver comfort of Elaina’s fine mane.

Wake up.

Salt lingers on her cousin’s blonde skin and the brine keeps her from falling too far into that dream. Elaina (whose scent, most importantly, smells like home) mingles with the cold and the fog and Lilliana breathes out, finally opening her eyes after many silent moments. She doesn’t pull away yet, just stands in the waves and huddles against her cousin’s tangles. "It’s terrifying,” she finally admits, "I feel like I’m scared for them all the time.” It makes her feel cornered; a tightness in her chest she can never alleviate.

"But,” the copper mare says as she pulls away with a breathless (loving) admission, "They are perfect, Elaina. The first time I saw them... it was like I had waited my whole life to meet them.” It’s as close to the truth as she can say - while there is so much chaos and darkness that brought them into creation, they are her beacons. Much like the golden mare who stands beside her. Tenderly, she turns her head to regard the blonde mare. "I want you to know them,” Lilliana says quietly, fierce against the autumn chill.

Her heart and her head can hardly contend with each other, imagining something she would have never dared to have hoped for, so it just hammers in her chest instead. But oh, if her boys could know Elaina.

"Celo was always so impossibly brave,” Lilliana remembers as her cousin plays with her mane. The Taigan mare reaches out and lightly traces the line of Elaina’s cheek. It’s a comfort to know that he had nightmares too; just like her, just like Valerio had. Lilliana is tempted to share hers: that Malachi emerges from the veil of their willow, that he teases her for sleeping in again. The dream turns sour quickly - Ostere’s shadows grab his legs as tentacles and then the silver outline of her brother turns to nothing but sifting smoke. Sometimes it isn’t Malachi at all who comes but Frostbane - his white coat pristine as new-fallen snow - has eyes that are the wrong shade of green and the hatred burns rather than freezes.

(Did her cousin know this? That Valerio's daughter leaves her sleeping sons because she is like him - waking up with demons instead of daylight.)

"You would have been a good leader,” she says matter-of-factly. It’s something that Lilliana has always believed. Something, she wonders, if maybe Kensa had seen in the palomino too. Elaina exudes a natural air of control, even if she can no longer command the wind around them. "Ours is missing,” Lilliana finally says the truth out loud, "and we have to do something.” Her voice drops, "I just keep thinking of Mama.. and I -," another shuddering breath. Another tight smile, "Any advice?” 

They talk about Windskeep and they talk about future dreams. A trip to the still-standing kingdom, someday. To this, Lilliana nods. Someday, they’ll go. The how or the when aren’t important; it’s just the knowing that someday they will go and Lilliana will see for herself the place that her father had almost died for. That Benjamin had died for.

Elaina might forget this moment, let it become blurry like the Taigan fog around them but this one will forever be sharp in the mind of the chestnut mare. She had been searching for a sea tonight and found a savior instead. Her compass takes a turn and it is Elaina who spins her that way. "How do you pick just one?” she quips lightly before burying her face against that golden neck again, slightly muffling her last words. "Can you?”

[Elaina]

she's a wild wild woman

They hadn't always been close.

Back when Elaina had been small, all wide eyes and dancing legs, she had come into Murmuring Rivers with Marcelo at her side, new to the land and new to life without her parents. She and Lilli had exchanged quiet words, shy glances, but little else. But, Lilli, with all her grace and kindness, had nestled herself inside Elaina’s heart without her golden cousin even noticing. And there she has stayed, a piece of her heart that Elaina will never be able to lose. Time, troubles, terror, it can try all it wants, but the girls of gold and crimson have proven their resilience over and over and over again. Unbreakable, unstoppable, eternal.

Elaina has tried so hard to shed her past like a snake sheds its skin, but Lilli haunts her like a ghost (a beautiful, warm, welcomed ghost), but a ghost of her past all the same as she presses into her neck with all familiarity and love. There are so many memories pushing the confines of her mind that for a moment that golden head with a heart shape upon her brow thuds with a headache as she buries them underneath layers of trying apathy.

Sometimes she wishes her brandished gold guardian angel would come again. To vanquish her tears and demonstrate his strength.
But, it would seem, after so much time, he has forsaken her.

Though Lilli has not, Lilli has never.

Terrifying, she says. Elaina’s eyes widen slightly. She has never sought motherhood, and maybe it is for the very reason as the very word Lilli has just spoken to her. “I believe it,” she responds, thinking back to her wandering back inside Murmuring Rivers to Valerio’s stern gaze, it had not been anger glinting there, but fear. “Did you feel it right away?” She asks Lilli now. Or only when she remembered the wickedness of the world? Elaina thinks.

She laughs then. Of course they are, of course they are perfect. “Oh, Lilli,” she admires. “I would never have thought otherwise,” she says adoringly to her cousin. Her cousin who now stands as a mother. A mother who is still a daughter, but Elaina is finding it harder and harder to believe as she watches her. “Can I?” The autumn breeze pushes her words and the waves seem to quiet just for her to ask. “Meet them?” She asks, and there is a shine to Elaina’s eyes that are so happy, so bright, because she knows there are pieces of Lilli out there besides just the one in her heart. Living, breathing, beautiful pieces.

Wars could calm and peace could grow with Lilli’s touch, Elaina has always found this to be true, and she feels it in the touch of her cousin along her cheek. Nightmares gather beneath both of their skin. Where did this come from, in their family? Had Legado given it to them? Had he been so good and pure that the darkness that everyone has had to find its way somewhere? And so it was birthed into his offspring’s slumbers? They dream of shadows, with faces, with hands that grab them, that taunt them, but then why does Elaina find herself in much the same way dreaming of dancing with them? She buries the thought.

(Did her crimson cousin know— that while Lilli awakes with demons, Elaina falls asleep thinking of them? That shadows tuck her in instead of starlight?)

A huff of laughter pauses on her lips. “Yeah, would have led my kingdom right over the Hyaline cliff side,” she says. (“Would you catch me?” She had asked him.) Any advice, is what Lilli asks for and Elaina laughs again, because the answer is obvious, so obvious as it stares at them from across the empty ocean like a lighthouse, drawing them home. “You are your mother’s daughter, Lilli,” she says sincerely. “And your father’s too,” she adds watching her with sky blue eyes. “You are descended from great leaders,” she pauses, wondering if Lilli has noticed where Elaina leads this conversation like a child running with a kite. “I’d say it is more than just your destiny, Lilli—it’s your bloodline.”

She sees herself in Lilli, sometimes, that longing, that wishing, and it terrifies her. Because that glimmer of hope, of promise, is dangerous. It is more dangerous than any of the monsters she has ever given her heart to. But she says nothing, because dangerous as it is, it is that look in Lilli’s eyes that has gotten Elaina through so much in her life. Selfishly, she stays quiet about such things. “There has been one lately,” she says, almost dreamily. “Do you remember a night in Hyaline.” (Were there not so many nights?) “When we found each other again?”

Elaina; there's a voice calling me back
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me

[lilliana]

"I always thought it would be you,” Lilliana admits quietly, looking away from her cousin. They had spoken of this once before, when the chestnut mare had teased Elaina about waddling through winter and babies come spring during one of those visits to Caunion’s country. The autumn before Broch had stolen her away to Culloden - before the beginning of the end of their time in Beyond.

"But yes,” she says, moving the conversation away from the days clouding her mind.

The copper mare looks down to the black water that laps past their legs and wonders how she can explain all the ways she is terrified for them, how it paralyzes her now. For all their stories and legends, how does she explain anything about what has transpired in the years that have separated them? Not just an affair - not only tangling her heart in the way they both swore they wouldn’t - but something much darker and Lilliana lives on those ledges that Elaina claims to love, looking for that door Kagerus had once told her she could slip through.

"You’re here,” Lilliana replies, looking up sharply. "Of course you can meet them.” Part of her expression is mired in shadow and the other half of her face is framed by a curling forelock, "you’re family.” She softens as her dark mouth reaches for her cousin again, "Their aunt.” That is something, regardless of where they found themselves, that couldn’t be altered. A bond of blood and that was something, for Lilliana, that would always be stronger than any pulling tide at their ankles, any silver stars twinkling above their heads.

When she pulls away, Lilli listens with an ear on Elaina and another flicking between the tide and behind them. Her cousin, after all this time, still seems so impossibly sweet, girlish. She is told that she is Father’s child (and she has always known that, deep down. She has always been more of Valerio than Aletta - impossibly soft, reckless-hearted and wind-spirited. Like Aletta, though, she is singularly independent - her problems have always been her own and she will find her own way out of them).

If Elaina leads this conversation like a child with a kite, Lilliana follows eagerly like she always has. The two of them fall into those same frantic strides - one girl racing after another, running and never bothering to see where they are going.

Until Lilli looks up.

Seriously, she tells her cousin: "It’s your bloodline, too. It’s in you as well.” And for a moment, that terrifies her. For all their stories, there is so much they still don’t know and to see the hope still shining on Elaina’s lovely face terrifies her. The veil of fog nearly chokes it out of her.

"Elaina,” she whispers, "I'll show it to you."

--------

'I missed you, if even it was for a short time,' the golden girl says. 'Did you find any adventures while I was gone?'

'Adventure? I’d call an afternoon outing to the Meadow an adventure. Trying to find you has been an epic.' The copper filly grows serious, her features sobering for a moment as she studies her cousin. 'Where have you been?'

'And I would call it an epic success,' she says with a laugh towards the chestnut girl. 'I think we would always find each other in the end.'

--------

When the memory recedes (like the midnight mist won't - it barricades them from the outside world, envelops them in an embrace that Lilliana has become familiar with over the years), she asks, "Do you remember that day?"

[Elaina]

she's a wild wild woman

She caught sight of herself in the water once.
She looked just like her mother.

There is a part of her, a quiet part of her that Elaina hates to acknowledge, that found it terrifying.

A mother who would stay forever young, forever beautiful (death is so kind in that way, leaving that sense of immortality) is suddenly aging on Elaina’s face.

If they were seasons, Elaina would be summer, bold, bright, fiery. Her mother—winter, soft supple, a quiet snowfall. Her father autumn. Bursting with colors, the season that arrives to protect the harsh heat of summer with cooling breezes, but a warm enough sun to keep winter thawed. But autumn has always been far too short, but always long enough to fall in love with wonder of it.

The wind plants frigid kisses along her spine. “Well, that would be a foolish decision now wouldn't it be?” She jests. “That kid wouldn't stand a chance.” Elaina’s life has not aligned for children, she thinks if it didn't happen with Aerwir, it most likely would never happen with anyone. It was not in her fate to have a child. Just as. Elaina was never destined to be a leader, she knew this, she could not command the masses, could not disregard her compassion for a single person to better a kingdom. She is thankful though that is had happened for Lilli, in the end, it should have always been her. There is no one, in Elaina’s eyes who deserved a beautiful life, a beautiful family, more than her cousin. Her sister, really at the end of it.

Almost instinctively, Elaina can feel her mind drift away from her, out onto the water, something more sinister lurking below the surface. She touches her, and wishes she could absorb any pain she has away. Elaina would take it all, carve it into her very skin if it meant that Lilli could be happy and whole. The sunshine girl would wear every scar, bleed herself dry, and break every bone in her body. Underworld had scolded her, had shamed her once upon a time for such behavior, but Elaina hasn't never regretted a moment when she has stood in the line of fire for Lilli.

Lilliana always pulls her bruised and shattered body from the ashes to rise and rise again.

“How many twins in the family is this now?” She laughs. Hoshi and Hikari, troublesome, the two of them. Jay and Brielle, as different as the sun and the moon. Kylo and Kalinda, ebb and flow of pain and illusions. Tarian and Liam, a sword and a shield. Maren and Mina, two halves of a whole, wild and tamed. “Do we say if it is a blessing or a curse?” She jests, knowing that each of the children in their family have been undeniably beautiful. “By blood and bond we are bound,” she says, unable to help the way she touches her forehead to Lilli’s own for a brief moment.

Elaina has never known if she favors her mother of her father, they hadn't been around long enough for her to find out. Aesop had always laughed so gently, telling Elaina she reminded her of her mother greatly, in her laugh, her smile, the gentle crease of her eyes, the compassion of her heart. But the temper that releases out with an outspoken and stubborn attitude, Valerio has told her he expected nothing less from Benjamin’s daughter. “Your heart is fickle,” Aesop had told her one day when Elaina had ventured back to Windskeep. “Your great-grandfather was much the same way. Royal Legacy loved more women than he ought to have. Love too many, too fiercely, and you risk losing them all.” She had spoken wisely about the great-grandfather Elaina looked so much alike, sporting that palomino coat. “I don't love multiple men, Grandma, you describe me like some harlot,” she defended herself against her buckskin grandmother. “No, no Elaina, you just…too often, it seems give your heart too freely and too strongly.” Elaina had simply narrowed her eyes and turned away, signaling an end to the conversation. Her parents had always been so wholly devoted to each other and only each other and Elaina pains that she would never be able to say the same.

Elaina would never allow Lilli to follow for long. She pulls her ahead and places the kite string within her hand, desperate to watch her soar.

She smiles wide, like a little girl at her words. Even if Elaina doesn't believe them, Lilli believes in her and the golden girl finds this to be enough—for now, anyway.
“You,” she says. “Are so very wonderful.”

The joy in the memory is contagious. It is beautiful and Elaina knows, oh how she knows. It was a beautiful day, a beautiful moment.

‘Honey Bee to Butterfly. Honey Bee to Butterfly.’

‘Best friends forever.’

‘Forever and a day. Forever and always.’

And suddenly she is back in Taiga and the tears wont stop flowing from her eyes. Elaina who is strong, who has bitten her lip when she wanted to scream, who has held her breath when she wanted to cry, who blinked tired eyes when she wanted to sleep away the pain. She would never be weak, not with Lilli, she could always be strong and suddenly she doesn't know if she can be anymore. “That was the last time,” she aches, weeps, the words are strained against her sorrow. They fight through tears like a canoe upstream. “The last time anything made sense, the last time everything still seemed like it was going to be okay,” she says. “Nothing else was right after that. I was never right after that.” She turns blue eyes away to keep Lilli from seeing the truth swimming back and forth within them like fish in their childhood lake. She presses her forehead into Lilli’s shoulders, her body shaking with the sobs she so desperately wants to hold in.

Elaina; there's a voice calling me back
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me

[lilliana]

"Too many,” the chestnut mare retorts with a quick jest of her own. Lilliana is still looking out, past the breaking outlines of waves as they materialize into their hazy (midnight) view. She’s thinking of them, though. Her boys. Thinking of a bright sunny day as Nashua and Yanhua had flickered in and out of Taigan sunshine as they raced beneath the titan Redwoods and how badly she had wished for Malachi - how she wanted to throw that (reckless) wildfire grin over her shoulder to tease him about how she might just be an overachiever, too. 

How she had forgotten for just a moment that he wasn’t there for her to look back to. 

Elaina is, though. Lilli turns her head towards her cousin and as they press their foreheads against the other, she drowns herself in relishing the way her palomino playmate feels against her skin. It’s nice to find the fragments of the girl again - the edges of her beginning - and even consider that there might be a chance of putting them back together. Lilliana’s future had always been a hazy thing but the bond between the pair had been her certainty; Elaina had been and would always be enough. 

(Why hadn’t she known that? Why had she doubted it?)

When they pull away and Elaina keeps talking about blood and bonds, Lilli returns to the strongest one she knows. "Nashua is a tornado,” she says with a rueful smile. "Like Liam. Except I turn my back for a moment…,” the copper mare gives a playful sigh. ”I blame the wings. That one is bound to test the skies.” Thoughtfully, she adds, "Yan though,” a contemplative shake of her head reveals how deeply she worries for him, "seems to take after his mother.” Elaina would know what that meant - who had known the chestnut mare from an age similar to her youngest child - and would remember another copper foal who had been timid and shy. Who had been happiest amongst her family and felt her emotions strongly (how many times had she cried when her beloved flowers wilted?) 

"I promise you,” the Taigan mare corrects her, "I am not.” Exhaling gently, her features soften and Lilliana shakes her head firmly. Wonderful would not be a word she would use to describe herself these days; maybe back then, maybe back in Beyond she might have accepted such a statement. Now? She is reckless and impulsive and trying so hard not to allow herself to fall one way or another. 

Wallow or rage, dim or blaze. There is nothing of the flower child ghost the pair might remember between them. Nothing of the girl who had cried over wilted flowers and had thought of ways they might survive a frost (hadn’t she dreamt of that on the Mountain once?). Nothing of the girl who had been fleet and swift and sure of her stride. 

"I’ve always compared you to fire,” the chestnut murmurs as another crisp, briny breeze makes her cast those blue eyes out to sea. "I’ve always thought it was so easy to borrow your courage when you shone so brightly.” That had been one of her very first thoughts in Beqanna, that Elaina light her way. "Remember that.” Lilliana says because she isn’t so foolish to believe that she might get another chance to tell her and she wants her cousin to remember this for the darker days that might come.

Maybe this has all been a dream and she will wake up again - damp with sweat with nothing but the fog slipping past her. Maybe she has reached some kind of breaking point and this whole encounter is nothing but a mirage. Maybe her gold cousin is nothing but a hallucination because there is nothing at the edge of the world. 

But even in her wildest dreams, Elaina never cries. 
There is no memory that Lilli can recall where she weeps as she does now. 

The blonde mare looks away but the copper one comes closer, determined that the pain shining in her eyes and spilling down her lovely face isn’t cast out into the dark. "Hey,” Lilliana says as she reaches out for her. Speaking in a way that she does when Nash is frustrated that his scrapes don’t heal as quickly as he’d like or when Yanhua wakes in the middle of the night from a haunting memory. 

Lilli pauses, though, because what can she say? (She remembers the Deserts and their Queens: ‘I can’t promise you that everything will be alright on the other side.’) Tenderly tracing her dark mouth over Elaina's pale mane, she thinks about all the things she could say and how lost she feels that she finds nothing. It’s Lilliana - not Lilli - who gives her a fact, instead. "You’re here now.” It doesn’t change the fact that nothing feels right or how things should have been different. "That’s all that matters and we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure the rest out.”

Elaina finally pushes her head into Lilli’s shoulders and crashes, wave after wave of sobs that ebb on her soul. The copper mare murmurs many words into the delicate ears of her cousin - lovely things about the winds, the stars, love and her boys, about how they are together and that is enough - but never does she say that things will be okay.

LILLIANA

if i ever get to heaven
i've got a long list of questions

[Elaina]

she's a wild wild woman

Memories live her, between them. They glow as bright as the stars above them, as firm as the steady ground beneath their feet. They press against her, working their way up her throat, behind her eyelids. They rest in her forehead and they are shared with Lilli as her own brushes against her. Oh the memories they share, that they hold. Oh the memories.

There is a voice that hammers at her head. It is his voice, and she silently begs the ocean to crescendo drown out the sound of it:

‘Everyone you meet, everyone you get close to...they will break you in ways you can't even comprehend yet. Even your precious little friend, Lillian, was it? You'll be a distant fond memory someday.’

“Lilliana. Her name is Lilliana. And we will never forget each other. Ever.”

The promise has held true, Elaina has thought about Lilli every day since she has known her, an ever present face in her life, even if they are not right next to each other. Lilli is there for her in ways that Elaina cannot even begin to thank her fore.

“Did you ever doubt it, Lilli?” She asks then. “That we wouldn't be friends, best friends, forever?” She breathed with a touch of fear. Elaina nuzzles close to her cousin, needing her because all of this uncertainty makes her feel so fragile. She turns then to find Lilli’s own eyes, eyes she loves so much. Blue for blue. As she speaks of her sons, her wonderful, perfect, beautiful sons. Elaina has not met them, but she didn't need to in order to know this. It is written in the smile on her cousin’s crimson face.

“They sound like they compliment one another,” she says with a smile. Nashua the storm and Yanhua the quiet just before and after. She wonders about them, she cant help herself. She had seen them in a memory, such a brief, brief memory that left her with more questions than answers. Which one of them smiled like Lilli? Did they have her eyes? Who had Aletta’s fire? And which had Valerio’s large heart? She doesn't think it now, but she will when she returns home, one evening in her home beside the sea. She will think about what her own child would be like. If she would have her own smile, if she would have Benjamin’s bravery and Beylani’s eyes. But for now the image of the twins holds her captive. And how beautiful it is.

She laughs. “Could have fooled me, Lilliana,” she says drawing out her full name in a way so childish it takes Elaina back to days of being scolded for wandering too close to the borders, or swimming in the lake when it was far too cold to do so. It is only when she sees the expression brush against her chestnut face that Elaina’s own changes. There is still a smile, but it is one of compassion and gentle love.

“Well,” she says exhaling. “Fires always need a spark,” she says turning to face the ocean for a moment. “And you’ve always been mine.” She plants a kiss upon her shoulder before blue eyes catch her own. “You remember that,” she says, and it is not a friendly offer, it is as much a command as Elaina can give to the Taigan girl.

And the memory comes.
And the memory goes.

Tears flow like a waterfall in an almost forgotten childhood home.

Lilli is reaching for her and it is only then that Elaina allows her to see. To see her in all her weakness, the way she is crumbling, falling apart. The truth of it being that it was all an illusion, she has never been strong, she was made from far too fragile of things to be so. It is only when Lilli touches her that suddenly Elaina can steady herself. Her breath still shakes and her eyes are still damp, but she no longer feels blinded by this woe that aches inside her chest for things that cannot be changed. “Here,” she laughs and it sounds like she is choking on poison. “For now, but how long will that last?” She asks because it is never enough. Her eyes flash with guilt. “Sorry,” she apologizes as quickly as she had spoken. “Marcelo once told me everything happens for a reason,” she says. “I’ve looked, Lilli. I’ve looked, but I don't think I have ever found one.”

Elaina; there's a voice calling me back
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me

[lilliana]

"No, I didn’t.”

Lilliana closes her eyes and smiles (though she remembers, still hears those words that echoed through Elaina earlier: 'The child wouldn’t be here if things in Windskeep were going well.’ She remembers feeling that reeling shock that the presence of her beloved cousin could be taken as anything but a gift. It had been the first time she remembers feeling angry, too. That there had been more to that story and nobody had wanted to tell it.)

"You’ve always been with me,” Lilliana says because it’s true.

She had trusted Wolfbane that day in the Meadow because he had been gold like Elaina. (She remembers looking at him and thinking what could go wrong?) She had adored Ruthless from the moment she laid eyes on her because not only did the two girls share similar coats but spirits as well - both torches burning bright, both beacons ready to light the world. Lilliana had wrapped herself around Craft instead of leaping after Anatomy because of the palomino mare who gathers close to her slender side.

@[Elaina] - regardless of where she has gone (or will go) - has been with Lilli in one gilded shade or another.

"And don’t you ever doubt it,” the chesnut teases, seeing the fragility peeking from behind her cousin’s eyes, fracturing out from beneath her blonde lashes. Lilliana gives a gentle sigh and presses her dark maw into the warmth of her golden cousin. Her blue eyes close and between the two of them, they could be swept out to sea with the tidal waves of memories that could come crashing over them. Some are happy and some are hard; but that is life. A knife has to cut so that the skin can heal.

It’s only when Elaina calls her Lilliana that she stiffens. Her eyes open and while the nip she gives her companion could be called playful, there is something in the way she tugs on her cousin’s pale mane that asks her don’t. Elaina has known her from the beginning and has been with her since the days she had started asking that others call her Lilli because Lilliana was such a mouthful. (It had felt like the polite thing to do - nobody needed to tie their tongue in knots over her name!)

There are other things to talk about (and there will never be enough time to say everything).

Elaina thinks she is falling apart but it does nothing to lessen the love burning in Lilliana’s eyes. There is nothing wrong with fragility between them; how many times have they proved that their love is not a fragile thing? It might be filled with broken promises but here they are - trying again.

"I don’t know,” Lilliana says honestly. She could blink and Elaina could be gone tomorrow. It hurts to speak these words because the palomino mare has just come shining into her life and here they are again, contemplating an ending. What her cousin says next, though, makes her stomach twist with dread and churn like the black ocean lapping at their ankles. How many times had she wondered that exact same thought? She had been raised underneath the knowing eyes of Marcelo as well and she had heard that mantra before; there is a reason for everything.

But as Neverwhere has told her, sometimes there isn’t.

Sometimes rain falls on souls who deserve nothing more than sunshine. Unfortunately, those souls found the clouds instead.

Lilliana aches when she asks this of her cousin: "Did you ever think the reason was you weren’t meant to find it?”

Hypocrite, she thinks of herself; but she's recalling the day that Elaina wouldn't run. She's remembering the way that Elaina has dared their world at every turn (absolutely Benjamin's audacious daughter). She knows that though they have only just found each other, the inevitable will happen and they will be apart again. Lilliana's afraid that her cousin will go looking for answers and will learn the hard way that some things are best left alone.

LILLIANA

if i ever get to heaven
i've got a long list of questions

[Elaina]

she's a wild wild woman

She does not like this cold that sinks into her bones. As if Lilli knows this, her words instantly warm her. That she has always felt the same way, that they have always known how much they would love and care for each other. “I can hardly remember a time without you in my life.” A statement that both lifts Elaina up and tears her down in tiny fissures roaming over her heart. It is so comforting to know that Lilli has been such a large part of her life, but she only gained Lilli in the end, by losing her parents.

Maybe, somewhere, in another universe, where Elaina’s parents walk above the ground instead of resting beneath it, she still mets Lilli. Years later, after the War of Windskeep was won, and the rebuilding had ceased. She and her parents travel back to beyond, back to Paraiso. She is young still, though nearing adulthood. She has become both strong like her father, with the compassion of her mother. There is a confidence, this assuredness to her the Elaina we know now does not have, it comes from being raised in the arms of two loving parents, to the safety net they have provided her. Elaina has still fallen, fallen more times than she can count, there is always the gentle feel of their hands on her back, ready to guide her. “I have someone I want you to meet, Elaina,” her brandished gold godfather says after they have arrived. “This is my daughter, Lilliana.” And Elaina smiles politely at the crimson girl as she had always been instructed to do so. They meet, they talk, they have the perfect childhood and they grow up alongside each other. Best friends.

But in this universe, they never become sisters.

“We always find each other in the end,” she says because it’s true.

She teases and that is enough to make Elaina laugh, that silver chime, the tickling of high keys on the piano. She laughs so little now in life, real, true laughter. When was the last time she laughed until her stomach ached from the effort of joy? Was it so long ago under a Hyaline night sky? Or walking through the redwoods? Or maybe it hasnt been since they sat in their fort or beside the river bend. Elaina looks back at her with blue eyes when she senses a change in cousin’s posture. “Lilli?” She says under her breath, before the chestnut girl tugs her mane. Elaina reaches out with all the gentleness of a mother she isn't sure she quite remembers anymore and pulls back. Okay, a silent reply.

Butterfly then.
The butterfly and the honey bee.

She hates not knowing. She doesn't know whatever holds her here will last, eventually she will have to leave. Nothing lasts forever, it had been a difficult thing for Elaina to learn, that everything in this life is transient. Even death is not such a permanent thing. Had she not see the way Ori speaks to spirits?

Anger rises from the flames that flow underneath her skin, through every vein in her body. “Well, why not?” She asks, fire grows in her eyes as she is ignited. She is extinguished as quickly as it was built. An explosion, then desolation. Elaina stands there, golden amongst the ash and smoke, maybe a Phoenix in her own right, but altogether she looks like something else entirely.

There have been many great friendships within Paraiso, but everyone knew of the friendship between Aletta and Brynn. And Elaina doesn't realize the words she says next echo those that once belonged to Aletta, said at another place, another time. “I’m so angry, Lilli.” And it is said in the hushed and quiet because Elaina cannot bare to let her emotions go again. “I fail at everything I do.” She admits, she doesn't know what brings on these thoughts. “To make my parents proud,” she chokes before gaining control. “To start a family.” It had been there for the waiting with Aerwir, but Elaina had left. It had presented itself again in the form of Altair, but again, she rejected him. “Being a politician—protecting you.” This hurts the most as she turns to her with too blue of eyes. She falls into her again, wrapping herself around Lilli because right now she feels like the only thing that is solid, that if she doesn't hold on tight she may just crumble atop those cliffs she dances upon and into the sea she that she loves so.

Elaina; there's a voice calling me back
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me