it's a mystery to me
we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
Wishbone thinks there was only one other time where she felt this broken. In those chaotic seconds before she faded into the watery arms of Death, she had thought of her daughters. Their pale faces flashed through the shadows of the Ischian sea, too young to understand why their mother had gone for a walk with their father and never come back. She had felt her heart break then — a sharp pain in her chest that splintered across the rest of her body until she was consumed in it. She had drowned in the ocean’s waves that day, but perhaps more than that she had drowned in the sorrow of her failure at motherhood, at becoming someone important, at being loved.
She cannot say she has recovered from that loss, but she knows this grief is familiar. Her daughters are not dead, but she has spent enough time searching for them to know that they may as well be. And that breaks her just as well as Wolfbane. For all the fractures that ruin her heart, for all the heartstrings that have been snapped, Wishbone’s spirit remains a twisting column of flame rising in the darkness. It whispers the same words Lilliana had told herself: Keep moving; keep going forward.
It seems they are both masters of listening to their inner voices; as they push their emotions into the blackened earth with each step, Wishbone feels camaraderie blossom between them.
The gold-marked woman listens to Lilliana quietly, only breaking her silence with the huffs of thin air she breathes. Wishbone isn’t surprised to hear that Lepis had been his wife and co-ruler. She had heard rumors about their romance in the brisk moments of gossip but the distance of the Beyond, the distractions of Ivar, pregnancy and the Plague, and her death had never given her the chance to confirm it. It does make her wonder — which of the colorful flighted faces of Beqanna might his children be?
Deeper than that (a question she wouldn’t dare to ask aloud or even consider beyond her subconscious) she wonders what their children might’ve looked like.
Wishbone almost laughs, not because she finds Lilliana’s explanation comical but rather because she relates to it. She had thought she loved Ivar and she had given him twin daughters with colors from the sea, but she had been a too-young mare meeting a too-handsome stallion. She firmly believes she hates Ivar now — not just in the sense of wanting to hate him, but in actually burning with anger at the thought of seeing his ridiculous scaled face again.
“I know how you feel,” she says, and instead of laughing her voice is soft and genuine. Does she dare share exactly how she understands Lilliana’s torture? It seems like her body might truly fall apart if she tried to explain a sad story along the several others they have shared on this walk. So Wishbone conceals it for now, tucking into her mind for another day (and without really thinking about it, she assumes they will see each other again).
Instead, she turns her face slightly to catch Lilliana’s eyes. “And I appreciate your condolences.” Yet another mutual story they can share — the loss of a friend, whisked away by the roughened hands of Time and Life. “It seems we have a lot in common, Lilliana,” she says with a smile that brightens like the sun after a thunderstorm. It seems to be the pattern of her life — a thunderstorm and then that ever-persistent optimism — and Wishbone relishes in the gentle coaxing warmth that positivity brings into the cold pieces of her broken heart.
She cannot say she has recovered from that loss, but she knows this grief is familiar. Her daughters are not dead, but she has spent enough time searching for them to know that they may as well be. And that breaks her just as well as Wolfbane. For all the fractures that ruin her heart, for all the heartstrings that have been snapped, Wishbone’s spirit remains a twisting column of flame rising in the darkness. It whispers the same words Lilliana had told herself: Keep moving; keep going forward.
It seems they are both masters of listening to their inner voices; as they push their emotions into the blackened earth with each step, Wishbone feels camaraderie blossom between them.
The gold-marked woman listens to Lilliana quietly, only breaking her silence with the huffs of thin air she breathes. Wishbone isn’t surprised to hear that Lepis had been his wife and co-ruler. She had heard rumors about their romance in the brisk moments of gossip but the distance of the Beyond, the distractions of Ivar, pregnancy and the Plague, and her death had never given her the chance to confirm it. It does make her wonder — which of the colorful flighted faces of Beqanna might his children be?
Deeper than that (a question she wouldn’t dare to ask aloud or even consider beyond her subconscious) she wonders what their children might’ve looked like.
Wishbone almost laughs, not because she finds Lilliana’s explanation comical but rather because she relates to it. She had thought she loved Ivar and she had given him twin daughters with colors from the sea, but she had been a too-young mare meeting a too-handsome stallion. She firmly believes she hates Ivar now — not just in the sense of wanting to hate him, but in actually burning with anger at the thought of seeing his ridiculous scaled face again.
“I know how you feel,” she says, and instead of laughing her voice is soft and genuine. Does she dare share exactly how she understands Lilliana’s torture? It seems like her body might truly fall apart if she tried to explain a sad story along the several others they have shared on this walk. So Wishbone conceals it for now, tucking into her mind for another day (and without really thinking about it, she assumes they will see each other again).
Instead, she turns her face slightly to catch Lilliana’s eyes. “And I appreciate your condolences.” Yet another mutual story they can share — the loss of a friend, whisked away by the roughened hands of Time and Life. “It seems we have a lot in common, Lilliana,” she says with a smile that brightens like the sun after a thunderstorm. It seems to be the pattern of her life — a thunderstorm and then that ever-persistent optimism — and Wishbone relishes in the gentle coaxing warmth that positivity brings into the cold pieces of her broken heart.
@[lilliana]