"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
The overo pegasus does not look at Leonidas with any sort of expectation. It is the same gaze which looks upon the stars each night, with a storm brewing in the depths of his blue irises. He stares upon him in angry silence and accusation, in the same way he does when the stars are further away. But Warden does nothing; only narrowing his eyes slightly at the softly bouncing star as it hovers above them, indignant as the proud curve of his horns disappear into the long shadows they cast down his auburn neck.
A single ear turns towards Lilliana before the stallion begins to lower his gaze (a slow endeavor, almost as if he suddenly did not trust the star, as their conversation has now turned in such a sharp degree - does Leonidas know his curse? Has he, too, watch from the heavens as the outpouring of devastation and death drowns him?). Because, she whispers, and the sound of it captures his full attention immediately. It causes him to jerk his head quickly towards her, surprised by its sharpness despite the softness in it. There is something in her voice he finds unfamiliar, but he cannot place it. Little does he know of the anger that brews in the depths of her, much like the very caverns of his own chest. I am afraid.
“Afraid of what? That terrible things happen despite seeing it before it happens?” his reply comes immediately, unhurried as it leaves his pale mouth. Warden tucks his chin, part of his heart reminding him to practice empathy and compassion. But the other part of him - the angry, hurt, guilty part - flares wildly, manifested in the way his ears tuck backward neatly. His body tenses, muscles growing taut beneath ivory and mahogany skin while the lithe bone beneath hundreds of pale feathers stretch reflexively. “Before you met me, you were not afraid.” An assumption, of course, but Warden cannot fathom her fear has always been there.
There is something about seeing the future - something nameless, something terrible - that instills that fear.
He smooths his wings with a quick toss of his head, turning his pale and hardened face away from her once again towards the shadows, away from Leonidas’ light. “This does not need to be your burden to bear, Lilliana. It was never meant for anyone other than me.” The stallion’s jawline grows tight as he grinds his teeth, the truth and hurt in his own voice more than evident.
12-17-2020, 02:59 PM (This post was last modified: 12-17-2020, 03:46 PM by lilliana.)
There had been a moment where this conversation had been made up of nothing but starlight.
Their world was silent and Lilliana stood there, wondering if this admission somehow changed something. Within herself? Between this queer dynamic of the Memory Keeper and the Watcher? Between Lilliana and Beqanna? She keeps waiting for the rift, the tear to come from somewhere so she will finally fall apart. She is waiting, she realizes over the pitch of her thundering heartbeat, that she is waiting for a seam to come undone so that everything she keeps so tightly knotted would come pouring out.
But there is nothing.
Nothing but the silent, twinkling conversation of starlight that comes glowing from (as Leonidas has told her) either years ahead or behind the Earth-dwellers. They look like reflections of each other - Warden with the storms in his deep eyes and the accusation sparking behind them. Lilliana with hurricanes raging behind her lighter-colored gaze. They are looking up and Lilliana realizes she is just waiting for it all to fall apart; she is back to hurling her anger at the heavens and waiting for the sky to break apart, to come crashing down.
She is thinking of the horrible things that could happen; of the things that Warden might see, of the terrible events that teach the living that there is a far worse fate than merely dying.
Warden tucks his head down when Lilliana finally looks down and turns her slender head in his direction. There is something about the way that he stands - still proud, still the Watcher - that surprises the Taigan. It looks (to her) that Warden is holding something of himself back and yet here he is, proclaiming to know what she is afraid of and, then even more aggravating than his first statement, that she has never been. "Do not make presumptions of me, @[Warden] of Tephra." Lilliana warns the Watcher.
She takes a step towards him, as deliberate in her approach as unhurried as his remark had been. "Do you know what it's like?" Lilliana asked him rhetorically, taking another step. "To come into this life and to realize that you are the reason for your mother's heartbreak?" She holds on to the memory, the one that she could unleash towards Warden as easily as her breath comes out in silver plumes towards the winged stallion. ('It was your fault,' Brielle had said one day beneath their willow. She had fought with Malachi and was looking for someone to unleash her anger on. There had been Lilli with those wide blue eyes, trying to help her sister and all Brielle had wanted was the justifiable comfort of her rage. 'She couldn't make the journey with the others to Windskeep because she was carrying you.')
"Or perhaps you know what it's like to live a life always on the run," she adds, nearly blazing with the words. "Did your father make enemies who realized that targeting foals was far easier than enacting vengeance on a battlefield?"
She is so impossibly angry now.
There is nothing to cling to, nothing to grasp because the memories are swirling like a firestorm and they demand out of the little chestnut body that holds them all. Lilliana rails against them, forces them to remain in the lithe frame that houses them. Everything about her glows now. Her pale socks are nearly as bright as Leonidas who still drifts above in the bare branches and the flame marking is burning its gold presence on her right shoulder.
"What if the two hearts you loved the most asked you a choice? And you tore your own out because there was only the one path?"
She takes another step and can feel the heat radiating off his pale feathers from where she stands. Her ears are pinned in the wind-swept tangle of her mane and the smoke of her fury drifts from her dark nostrils towards the antlered pegasus.
"Have you ever thought that the monsters were behind you, only to realize that this land is riddled with them, like any other?"
This will always be the thing that gets Lilliana in trouble. This is her sun and she will forever be Icarus, drawing too close to its warmth because she can't bear the cold. Because there is nothing but loneliness in the dark. Because the possibilities could always be infinitely brighter than the dim reality; her hope will always be the thing that scorches her. Her physical body could be reduced to ash, her name forgotten, before she gives it up (and even then, maybe some part of her will still be out there - eternally hoping).
If hope is lost, what does it leave behind but ache?
Lilliana looks up at him, close enough now to firmly meet his dark navy gaze.
"We all have burdens," she says, finally relenting under the weight of their close proximity. "Nobody should have to carry them alone."
Remember when our songs were just like prayers
Like gospel hymns that you caught in the air?
As the starlight deepens so does the darkness, almost writhing as early evening gives way into the dead stillness of night. The world around them ebbs and flows like it always does as if impervious to their conversation and the deadliness that is trapped along Warden’s hardened jawline; as if the future didn’t affect the chirping crickets or the steady howl of a mournful gale through the pines. It’s almost as if they alone (both of them now, when it used to just be the Watcher to carry such burdens) are the only ones aware of the passage of time, the onward march forward into destruction and death and mayhem. Warden’s lips twitch passively, but there is darkness brewing in the deep navy of his eyes; a darkness that is not unfamiliar, shadowing his face and reminding him of exactly who he is and who he has been created to be. His gaze slides to Lilliana, expressionless besides the haunting shadow that perches there.
He doesn’t mean to be so bitter, so disheartened. But the barbs are there, pressing in at all sides, reminding him of his mortality and that of those around him; of dragon fire seen in a dream and the struggling breath of a stranger gasping for air, or shattered ruby glass by the seashore. It is all encompassing and though there is anger in his heart, it gives way to hopelessness. What can be done? He had been cursed with the power of foresight but with not abilities to do anything; only horns and the jewels encrusting his chest and the blue-black of his opaled hooves, and the perfectly white wings perched alongside his topline.
Lilliana’s voice is slick with warning and it makes the stallion lift his chin slightly, surveying her with a tip of his horned head. He says nothing, of course, because it seems the finality in his words only causes more anguish, and he decides that falling into silence might be the best choice at the moment; especially with that dangerous gleam in her normally warm (albiet sad) eyes.
Do you know what it’s like? she dares him and the Watcher’s eyes narrow. His chin lowers, shadows from his horns and Leonidas’ light making him look menacing as he remains silent, preparing himself for whatever may come next - he knows she isn’t foolish enough to accuse him of not knowing pain and suffering, but he continues to watch her intently, wondering how long it would take before the walls she has built up comes crumbling down.
Warden’s fell long ago on a winter’s night when he was only a colt. He had been rebuilding ever since and perhaps that is why he appears to be made of stone.
Maybe that is why when her words fly so vehemently from her lips, there is no surprise or anger that finds the sharp angles of his pale face.
However, he had so easily forgotten her ability to share memories and to read his own; he takes a visible step back when she shares intrusively, causing his dark ears to fall into the tangles of his mane. It felt like a vision taking over, he remembers from their first encounter, and panic hangs tightly in his chest. His jaw clenches, his deep blue-black hooves digging into the earth as if her very memory will send him reeling into the darkness just behind him. When it fades (just barely, still seared into his mind like a vision itself), his eyes refocus on her, dark and wary. She is glowing, adding to the silver-blue light that Leonidas sheds above them.
The Watcher surveys her with knowing eyes, despite the fervor that burns in the depths of her own.
“Nobody should,” he replies uncannily, without emotion, “but they still do.” Warden pauses, feeling the pulsing heat of her glow and trying to resettle himself from the waves of her memories (that he cannot admit still sit ill with him). “Did you?” He asks suddenly, curious, contemplative. “Carry those burdens on your own?”
12-26-2020, 09:00 PM (This post was last modified: 12-26-2020, 09:07 PM by lilliana.)
She is exhausted by sadness.
It is a burden on her heart and no matter how Lilliana twists and turns, tries to untie the knots that have tangled themselves there, it only fastens itself there like a noose. Her anger is easier to bear; it is a lighter, brighter thing than a heavy emotion like sadness. It burns and blazes and she has to be careful with it because the brilliance of it is always right there. It is always sitting at the edge of her tongue, poised and ready like a sword.
But the sadness tempers it. Lilliana lifts her chin and stares levelly at Warden through the darkness, ready to do whatever she has to protect the fragments of the girl within. She stares up at him, waiting for him to say something like Leilan had. She has created a barrier between herself and the Watcher and she thinks she knows how he will react; it was always the same. Lilliana rages forward, draws a line of fire between herself and everyone else. She hides behind a barricade of flames and nobody questions the burning girl.
And they all leave her alone because who willingly walks into the fire?
Lilliana becomes angry with Warden. She shares more with him than she ever has with anyone and as she draws closer, she expects him to withdraw. She expects him to do more than to look imposing; she expects that he will tell her she knows nothing of sadness or pain or anger. She thinks that he will tell her that since he knows the endings - that he knows Death intimately - what does she know?
The chestnut becomes guilty of the statement she made of Warden just moments ago and bites her tongue, aware of the fact. But these feelings are necessary for her. Her tongue is a sword in moments like these and this projection in her mind - this expectation that Warden will turn and leave her is needed so that she won't be startled by it. There is nothing she hates more now than being caught unaware; Lilliana tries so hard to be a step ahead, always.
He surprises her. @[Warden] stays, staring down at her with knowing eyes (of course he does, of course he knows). The realization buckles her knees into place and some part of her wishes he would go. Lilliana wishes he would have left her here with this anger because it is so much easier to carry (because it burns away everything) than this ache. There is something soul-wearied about her when she looks up at the painted stallion.
The fire-anger in her goes dark. The glowing about her markings cuts out and even Leonidas hovering on his branch above seems to dim. There is only the winter silence and the biting cold surrounding them and Lilliana suddenly feels the chill. "No," she tells him quietly. "I've never carried them on my own."
Everything in her feels tired and her shadow looks away from Warden. Her mind races with everything. The family that came before that was gone. The one that came after and the holes that were starting to emerge. Brazen's death had torn something within her; Neverwhere's absence was another weeping wound. Eurwen had drifted in and out of Nerine after the Pangean attack. "But they aren't here now," she whispers. A thousand memories flicker across her mind, a candle that burns between a life she had loved, and this one that she was struggling to make peace with.
"Sometimes I wish you could tell me how this all ends," she says, staring out into the dark. Her head lifts in awareness of Leonidas, making sure that he was still nearby. The star still hovers in the barren branches above and Lilliana muses, "but I suppose that is what immortality looks like. There is no end." She closes her eyes briefly and then speaks again. "I have always been afraid. What is given can be taken away and sometimes I don't think I have anything left to give, Warden."
It isn't true. And she knows that with a slight shake of her head. She's afraid of that, of what will happen when she truly gives it all away. She won't die; she knows that much. Her days are never-ending and if there is any benefit to her immortality, she'll give it to him.
But, "how do you give up hope? What is left when it's gone?"
Remember when our songs were just like prayers
Like gospel hymns that you caught in the air?
If he allowed himself, he too would feel the exhaustion; but he wraps it tightly beneath him, pressed into the deepest recesses of his chest - along with all of the other feelings that could swallow him whole (anger, sadness, guilt - the list is neverending). Instead, he has found, that the only way to continue to walk and talk and eat is to allow the numbness to take over, to nearly pretend that none of it is happening - as if that would change the very real reality that is so obviously unwraveling before them both.
The light that surrounds them goes out; not in a flicker, but almost as if it has heaved its dying breath and settled into finality. It sends a shiver down his spine, settling heavily across his back. It disturbs him more than he would care to point out because it reminds him so much of the moment that he gave up, too. And if Lilliana is giving up, what will he do?
“Good,” he replies heavily, though there is no discernable reason for his voice to be so grave and low. But his chest tightens with a sudden worry - had he done this, had he made her light go out?
The Watcher heaves a sigh, shaking the weight that settles across him with a physical toss of his head. He, too, nearly wished to see the end - but it wouldn’t be the end of it all, only the end of himself. Then, perhaps, the world could continue to spin the way it was meant to, with the future coming one minute at a time, without his eyes to see it before it happens. Suddenly, his face becomes amused at the thought of immortality - something he did not have. “Perhaps you are more cursed than I am, then.” There is nearly a smile on his pale lips and the hint of laughter somewhere in the depths of his baritone voice. A cruel joke, but one that is lined with a morbid hope that at least his visions would one day end with his own death.
“When it’s gone?” The stallion becomes contemplative under Leonidas’ light, lifting his face to the star once again. “Well, I assume you’ll do what I did.”
He turns to her slowly, his horns casting long shadows across his back. “You find someone who still has hope and then cling to it as tightly as you can. I’ve been borrowing yours for quite some time now.”A thief, he thinks to himself bitterly.
12-29-2020, 08:44 PM (This post was last modified: 12-29-2020, 08:48 PM by lilliana.)
Lilliana has only met (that she is aware of) two Immortals.
The first had been their healer - a dark unicorn who had gone by the name of Lovelace. She had lived within her father's clan for as long as any of them could remember. The dark mare had taken shelter in a cavern near the edges of Paraiso and as far any horse knew, she had always been there. From Valerio to Ichiro and if the rumors were true, even to the fabled reign of Legado.
She had asked her once. 'Have you always been with us?' She can still remember her laughter - a warm, rushing sound like summer rains - and the knowing look that the unicorn gave her. The smile reached her rich brown eyes and they crinkled at the corners, as if her happiness couldn't be contained in a mere smile. That there was a secret to acquiring it and more importantly, to keeping it. Lilli, who could barely fathom existence beyond her single year, had no concept of immortality. Of what it might mean to never end. 'Always,' Lovelace had said. And the idea that the ebony mare had always been there became concrete. What came before was washed away with the belief that Lovelace's immortality began the moment she came into the golden valley, like her heart hadn't stopped or skipped a beat before then.
The second had been a pale, unassuming (albeit lovely) mare named Ryatah who had once been Queen of the Dale.
She's thought of Ryatah often since their last meeting in Taiga. She's thought of many things lately and usually, the topic of her immortality leaves her bitter. But tonight, Warden makes a morbid joke of it and Lilliana blinks. The smile that etches itself on her dark lips is out of place but a clumsy laugh even manages to follow because the sound of it shocks her. Her vision had blurred for a moment, all those pent-up tears and worries, all those emotions that she isn't quite as adept as the horned stallion at keeping locked away threatening to pour from her blue eyes.
But Lilli doesn't cry. Not tonight.
"Perhaps," she adds. This is what makes them such good friends, isn't it? Warden, who sees the endings, will never see hers. Lilliana can't die and even though the Watcher and his bones will one day turn to dust (as Brazen had turned to stone, as Neverwhere and her scars will, as she fears some of her children will), they forge a bond because this is one burden that Warden will never have to carry. This 'curse' (as he aptly calls it) remains solely her own.
Looking up, she says, "my mother used to have a story about how the stars only went dark because another became light." Aletta and her starlore. She had passed them on to her own children - her fanciful stories - as Neverwhere and Leilan liked to call them (and how Lilliana longed to tell them that there was some truth to them, that if they had only known Orani and Keav, what the star-talkers were capable of). Her blue eyes linger on the silver-blue form of Leonidas, who seemed to be content to hover out of their orbit. "Maybe you and I are really just stars." The idea quirks an edge of a grin that fights against the edge of their somber conversation. "You'd make a rather grand constellation."
Remember when our songs were just like prayers
Like gospel hymns that you caught in the air?
@[Warden] i don't know what this is but i spited the bot
12-30-2020, 08:11 PM (This post was last modified: 12-30-2020, 08:11 PM by Warden.)
resurrect the saint within the wretch
Immortality is not something that Warden thinks of often. He has heard that his elder sister and her wife hold this magical elixir - the power of living without fear of dying (or maybe it is with fear, for it only means they can return - not that they aren’t susceptible to death as all mortals are) - but other than that, the notion has not crossed his mind until tonight. Until Lilliana brings it to his attention and it is such a robust and prominent realization, he couldn’t help but comment on it. Despite its morbidity, the realization is also a relief; perhaps Lilliana herself will never grace the images that flash across his eyes unwarrantedly - at least, none of her own death. It is something that, though there is only a sliver of hope carved into his chest, emboldens it with a strong pulse he has long since forgotten the feeling of.
Lilliana’s laugh is out of place but it is genuine - the Watcher can tell - and it causes his dark eyes to glance at her from beneath a shadowed brow, where his own smile tugs lightly at his pale mouth. He cannot remember the last time he had tried to be humorous and in reality, he hadn’t really been trying when the realization left his mouth. It just sort of came out, unfiltered and raw, and perhaps in the weight of their sadness, they were able to find the humor in the midst of such a macabre thought. Maybe when they both run out of hope and they aren’t able to suck the life out of some other poor soul, the two would resort to laughter and humor to keep the otherwise darkened days bright in some way.
The light in his eyes dim suddenly and the softness that came to the edges of his face when he smiled now vanishes, replaced with the familiar thin line that Lilliana will find more than reasonable for his stature. Had he been a colt, the deep ocean color of his eyes would roll immaturely; but he is not a colt (he is the King in the West) and he remains otherwise expressionless, idly watching Leonidas hover silently but watchfully over them. He had always thought the stars to be nothing but burning balls of gas, but with a purse of his pale lips, he watches the sentient star above him prove all of his inklings wrong.
The Watcher’s dark tail flicks at his auburn haunch, stamping a single onyx foreleg. “I’ve heard that before and not from my father.” Little does Warden know that they are both thinking of the same silvery mare with a hardened gaze and steely voice. “Sounds silly - something made up to make us feel better.” His voice is grumbly but it is not said with the same tension when he speaks of visions and death and mortality. It begs to be proven wrong, imploring for her to find holes in his reasoning so that all the doubts will fall silent. “We are not stars. You are you and I am me.” Warden glances up at Leonidas with a shrug of his shoulder in the star’s direction. “I think your little friend would have told us if that were true.”
Her final words cause him to turn his horned head towards her curiously, the disbelief on his face only muted by the slight sparkle of amusement in his eyes. “Oh don’t patronize me, Lilliana.” The humor remains in his voice - there will be no solving of the future tonight, or even the past.
01-02-2021, 09:46 PM (This post was last modified: 01-02-2021, 09:47 PM by lilliana.)
She tries not to think of her own immortality often.
To do so only reminds her that there will never be any going home (what is home anymore?), that she will never be able to reunite with her family. Her parents will gray with age and eventually pass (and will she know when that time comes?). Her siblings will cross over - one by one - until she is the sole heir of a dynasty that had once stretched spanned realms and worlds.
There had been a time that all one would have to do was look at the fire-forged sheen beneath her copper coat and see the brilliance in those blue eyes to know who she was. Generations before, there would have been very places that Lilliana could have gone and remained unknown. She had the sky in her eyes and the flames on her skin and they would have known the legends and the tales of the herds that remained secluded away in an ancient valley, in a place where the horses were said to have been descended from the golden rays of the sun itself.
It's been such a long time since she has felt the sun.
It's dark all around them. The night feels never-ending, even with Leonidas' light. Had Lilliana been alone, she might have felt the usual stifling feeling it often brings. The way it wraps around her throat, the way it burns against the lids of her eyes. A presence that always reminds her that it is there. Perhaps after all this time, it should be a familiar comfort; she has come to know this far more intimately than any lover.
Lilliana turns to look at the expression of the Watcher, the way he studies the star and presses his lips together like he still doubts something that he can see with his very eyes. She looks up then, too. Should she be more reverent in the presence of her bonded? Leonidas has never said anything of gods or creators that might exist in the world above. He has said things that she has heard before (from Orani and it isn't a coincidence that Lilliana had pleaded with the star-talker; it isn't a coincidence that she begged for something to chase away her dreams and that Leonidas appeared).
"Your father had stories about the stars?" she asks, surprised that he hadn't mentioned it before. There is the stamp of his hoof against the frozen ground but she can't help the small burst of hope that blooms in her chest despite the frigid winter chill around them. Lilliana glances back up to Leonidas then, the way that the star has started to float towards them again.
@[Warden] is grumbling and Lilliana has to fight back a smile.
"For now, perhaps." She is musing, dreaming. It feels almost heavenly to do so after so much time away from it. It feels like falling into the embrace of something lost; of finding something that went missing long ago. It feels like a broken piece of her soul finally clicking back into place.
"Your horns," she says with a breathless laugh existing on the tip of her tongue. "Your wings." The start of a smile quirks to one side and Lilliana glances to the Watcher. "I imagine you could take up the entire sky," and with that Leonidas brightens, dims, and retreats to his bower, rather affronted at the idea. "So dazzling that you'd even eclipse the sun."
It never occurs to her that the sun could be eclipsed by something sinister.
It never occurs to her that the very stars they contemplate beneath could flicker out.
Remember when our songs were just like prayers
Like gospel hymns that you caught in the air?
He does not talk about Warrick often. While the two hold far more similarities than they do differences, Warden knows that he cannot help but be darker than his father - gripped tight by the reality of the future, held as a captive to its impending doom. It alone is the reason he scoffs at the stars and their supposed sentience, a thing that he only knew to scoff at because Warrick would look to them hopefully for the return of Warden’s grandmother and aunt. He knew each name of every constellation, knew their route throughout the sky and the patterns throughout the year. He knows them so intimately and yet, he dares to ignore their existence all together.
“I was a terrible listener,” comes the curt reply from the Watcher, turning his gaze back into the strange darkness of the forest. He had been better than his older brother, from what he had been told, but as a colt, he had no interest in stories or folklore; not when the sinister threat of reality loomed around every corner. There is not much more he would share, not without being pressed, though it is evident that any talk of stars only deepens the frown on his pale lips. He does, however, find the ability to laugh at Lilliana’s notion - that the stars would shape their likeness to him, in honor of him. Enough so that he’d take up the whole sky, eclipsing the sun.
The laugh that attempts to roll from his throat is cut short, though, and his frown vanishes. The familiar feeling - triggered by what, he didn’t know - burns bright in the center of his forehead. Warden does not turn his face towards Lilliana but he is sure the deep-set notion of panic that freezes his entire body could be felt like a thundershock (with or without her being an empath). He barely has time to take a breath before his forehead splits into white-hot pain, causing him to call out into the stillness of the night.
Without warning, he is plunged into another time while Lilliana is left to watch his soul leave his body, where the now-milky white of his eyes stare into nothingness.
At first, he thinks he is the one who is dead. The world around him is lifeless and so eerily still. There are a few moments of silence that passes and Warden realizes he is still in the forest he ha been in with Lilliana - in the same exact spot, too - except she is gone and so is her star. The familiar feeling of foreboding tightens his chest, minutes ticking by as he waits until he is brought back into the present.
Above him there is nothing - no stars, nothing to the atmosphere except endless black and the terrible ring of light that seems to drag everything into it with deep, gaping breaths. Warden’s skin shivers, but not because of the sky. Something shuffles in the dark, skittering and clawing in the blackness - something that hadn’t been noticeable before, but now lurk freely. Something angry, something that is incredibly out of place.
The scenery flashes suddenly. He is in Tephra, Nerine, the meadow. He is thrown all throughout Beqanna and all if it is the same: unending darkness.
In each scene, the monsters become more hyper-aware of his presence. Their shadows turn to look at him, noticing his prying, and in each new landscape, they are drawing closer.
Whatever they are, when Warden feels their hot breath on skin - like its jaws were opening wide to clamp across his neck - he closes his eyes tight and is torn from the vision.
With a gasp, his eyes return to their deep navy color. His sides shudder, sweat staining his flanks. The Watcher stares into the ground below his hooves, the shock making him sick to his stomach. He tastes acrid bile rising in his throat and for a moment, it is almost as if he has forgotten Lilliana is beside him. He slowly turns to her, maybe frightened that she will no longer be herself, with gravity in his expression. He seems to nearly buckle before her.
01-09-2021, 05:09 PM (This post was last modified: 01-09-2021, 05:13 PM by lilliana.)
Lilliana's earliest memories are of the stars.
She thinks of a winter night in a meadow and wide, velvet sky. She thinks of the silent presence that was twinkling down on her mother as Aletta spoke softly - revealing her worries, sharing her wonders, trying to make sense of her anger. It was at the silver side of her dam that Lilliana learned what it was to revere something. Stars were timeless, flickering things that existed far above them. Their presence wreathed the stories and fables of her youth - filled with messages of hope and prophecies, warnings of devastation and curses.
And then her mother had so often said that a horse who follows the stars seldom gets lost; they follow the same paths year after year. They moved across the horizon as the seasons changed. Fall could fade into winter and the sky would shift but those changes could be as expected as the coming frost. Follow the stars, Aletta had said, and your steps will find a familiar trail. Just as the sun rose and set each day, just as the moon illuminated each silvery night.
The chestnut had never thought to question them, to condemn them until she came here (and that had been another of her mother's warnings - that Beqanna was brimming with Magic but also greed. It had been the setting for so many fairytales - mentions of events like the Reckoning - but they followed with a warning: Magic always had a price.) She hasn't known what to think since the arrival of Leonidas. It means something but what? For all that she can claim to not believe that they have no trajectory on her - or her bloodline - there is the young star, beaming brightly above her. A blatant truth that shines down on her night after night.
A small smile plays at the edges of her dark lips as Warden claims he was a poor listener. She doubts it. There is far too much, she thinks, that doesn't escape the Watcher's notice and the image that she conjures in her mind could easily be a memory: a young colt listening to stories about the cosmos and constellations with a too-serious expression that he had yet to master. The chestnut might have teased him more but she senses his reluctance on the subject and that is something she understands. There are corners of her own memories that she would like to keep in shadow.
But she teases him about something - gently, easily to divert the subject - because they both deserve a lighter mood.
There will be more troubles for them to ponder beyond this night.
The sound of his laughter is bright. It breaks the darkness that comes creeping closer the higher that Leonidas climbs and clings to his barren branches. The chestnut can't help but follow the painted stallion and a soft laugh joins in chorus with the Watcher. But then he is gone, left her stranded with only the sense of foreboding to fill the newly-created void. Lilliana turns her head sharply and takes a step towards Warden, searching his face for any shadow or trace of... anything. His souls flees, goes to the Future that always finds them and Lilliana stares into the shockingly-white expanse of Warden's knowing eyes.
It feels as if an age has passed; an entire epic could have been composed across the time that Warden has been gone. "Warden?" she whispers as she takes a tentative step closer, wondering if a voice in the present might call him back. It's only when she goes to lightly touch his shoulder does she catch glimpses of it: the nothing. She is drowning in a sea of black and the vision that comes is fragmented. There is a glimmer of a ring of light that looms insidiously above. There are more images of the obscurity that devours the lands she comes to recognize - Tephra, Nerine, the Meadow.
What is worse is that there are things out there.
They creep and prowl. They linger on the edges of sight so that the viewer questions their existence at all.
And then they return.
The white of Lilliana's eyes are burning through the dark and her dark nostrils are flaring as she tries to regain control of her senses - of her own vision. The pegasus turns to look at her and her light blues find his darker ones through the dark. He looks afraid (as he should be), she realizes from studying the lines of his usually stoic face. The future has cracked something open along the angles of it. "I don't know," she tells him because when has she ever been a match for anything but calamity? She is usually the spark that ignites the disaster and nobody ever asks kindling if it wishes to burn.
But he says we and something in her windpipe hitches; he says we where Lilliana has been left alone with her tragedies, left alone to navigate through the disasters (or those who would help her are no longer there). Her mind is reeling with all kinds of thoughts - what of her children? What of Taiga? Leilan? What of Warden's family? Tephra? "We prepare the others," she says, almost numb with the overwhelming thoughts of an apocalypse swirling across her mind. "We do what we can to help."
She blinks, suddenly worried for Warden. With what the weight of this burden would do to him. "I'm not sure how to help you, Warden." Lilliana admits, "but if I can, I'll do whatever you need." Perhaps because she hadn't been privy to the entire premonition but it had been absent of something. There was that awful dark, that never-ending night that encompassed everything. "I didn't see-," she starts and then stops, unsure of how to proceed. Their earlier shared visions have always been of Death, of terrible things - Brazen fighting for air until her body succumbs to the battle, Nashua falling from the sky in Loess.
There had been a moment where this conversation had been made up of nothing but starlight.
Remember when our songs were just like prayers