- it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger -
we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution?
LILLIANA
She doesn't mean to do it so easily but it escapes from her lips before Lilliana has time to catch it. The Taigan mare laughs. She gives her head a slight shake to move the curling forelock out of her blue eyes and tries to feign a somber look for the Freyr. When her gaze rises up, she won't succeed. "You're incorrigible, @[Leilan]." The corners of her dark mouth tease and then finally lift, spark catching flame into a smile.
Something stills behind her eyes as the laughter finally fades. Her children are never far from her thoughts and so when the moment comes, Lilliana asks, "He doesn't give you too much trouble, I hope?" She broaches the subject gently. Her boys are well past their second birthday and yet she still worries over them. Her query is meant to be a polite one but Lilli is perfectly exposed in all her fire-gold glory beneath the Nerinian sun. Her eldest son might be destined for the stars but his earth-bound mother clearly misses him. Is he okay? that gaze asks. He is well?
Leilan, who seems to think Lilliana is a distraction, distracts her from furthering those thoughts.
The chestnut mare blinks once and a fine line emerges above her brow as the large roan stallion considers her. "The first winters in Taiga were hard," Lilli admits. The first the most because it had been the winter after Elena had vanished. Everything had been blanketed in desolation after that. Lilliana's world - which had always been painted in varying shades of gold - had suddenly become lackluster.
Speaking softly, she adds: "But I think I'd swelter beneath Tephra's volcano. And Ischia is lovely." There is a look of admiration on her face as she thinks of Aquaria and the island chain she rules. What she says next, though, is what keeps Lilliana in the North. "My family is here." Yanhua and Aela in Taiga. Nashua on the Isle. Neverwhere and Brazen and Eurwen in Nerine. Lethia of the Redwoods and even Leilan on his rebuilding island.
When the truth has had enough time to settle, Lilliana gives a half-shrug of her slender shoulders and tilts that delicate head at Leilan. It makes her curious if he's considered somewhere else but the ice that she has seen coating his glinting scales suggests otherwise to her. Where else would he find the cold?
One catches her attention on his shoulder, gleaming in the autumn sunshine and Lilliana catches herself admiring it.
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind