"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
WE ARE ALL JUST FRAGILE THINGS / SOFT AND SMALL / BUT ALL THE BROKEN CAN FIND / HOPE IN THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES /
It's funny how a death changes everything.
(And how typical for Lilliana that isn't her death that changes everything.)
She's stayed out by the River, still searching for Neverwhere. The brute that had spoken about the little spitfire of a dappled filly could only have been talking about her oldest friend. And so she's spent the golden days of summer basking beneath the trees, reacquainting herself with the feeling of the sun shining on her back. The arrival of an old friend has brought back memories of the old days as well.
Lilliana has spent the last few days laughing so much that her sides hurt again. She's smiled so much that her face aches. And perhaps, it because of all those smiles, they've finally reached her eyes again.
They haven't spoken about if he will stay. The Brochturach she remembers had loved traveling and had shared stories with her from all the realms that he had wandered. Those stories - like her laughter - have returned and she's listened to all the places he's been and the things that he has seen. They've recounted the years apart and yet, for Lilliana, it's funny how the years feel like they no longer exist.
He isn't dead, is thought that trails her out in these woods most often. He didn't die.
It had been a grief that plagued her. Lilliana had carried it and journeyed with it and then - in an attempt to move forward - had tried to bury it.
But he hadn't died.
And the thought brings back so many other memories from her past. That last fight with her brother - Malachi - on the Pass when she had insisted going her own way. Elena pressing her heart-marked face against her shoulder during their last night together in Taiga. Brazen as she fought so hard to stay with Reave when he had been born. Being reunited with Neverwhere after Pangea and the way her friend refused to let Lilliana blame herself for the scars on her skin.
She hadn't found Neverwhere. But like her dear friend, the gold-marked Taigan is stubborn. If not today, then there was always a chance for tomorrow.
Her thoughts lead her to the riverbank and the chestnut peers down at the slow-moving water. It's something she had done often as a youth - picking herself apart for a trace of her ancestors like it might give her answer to who she might be in the future. There are Aletta's imperial cheekbones, round and graceful. The summer sun glints on her wavy forelock and the gilded hairs remind her of Ichiro, her grandsire - unrelenting and fierce. The blue eyes that stare back at her are the commanding blue of her sire - Valerio - the strongest windtalker of Legado's line.
You are Lilliana, she remembers. You are the fourth child of five from Valerio the Guardian and his Queen, Aletta. Lilliana recalls, remembering the mantra she used to recite when she got lost in realms Beyond. She continues to stare down, realizing that the blue of her eyes no longer seem so deep and drowning; that is no longer the haunted gaze of her father. You are Lilliana, she starts again. You are a mother to six five, the former Taigan thinks. You have been Guardian to the Redwoods, a diplomat to the North; you belong to the herd of Neverwhere and Brazen and Eurwen. (And so many other thoughts fill her mind here as she thinks of who she is to Leilan and Warden and Wishbone; of her cousins Elena and Ori).
Glancing down at her reflection, for the first time in a long while, Lilli glances back at her.
Turning her copper head to the sound of an approaching horse, the slender mare smiles gently. "Can you help me?" she asks, "I'm looking for someone."
fragile things (reprise) - megan hilty image credit to footybandit
If there’s one thing that Leilan was never good at, it was playing by the rules. Sure, he was good at pretending, especially when in a position of power, such as, you know, king of Icicle Isle and all of the North. Or in this case as the, what’s it, third-ranked northerner, if rulers of territories took second place before the defender of the realm.
Hmm, he should ask Nash to change the title, or at least in name. It sounds more fancy.
If there was another thing Leilan was never good at (ah, see, we broke the first rule by using two things instead of one), it would be staying put. Especially when everything and everyone knows that he should.
Luck would have it that ice is abundant on Icicle Isle. That allows him to stay and watch the kingdom, sort-of, anyway. It only takes numerous open one-way portals and an animal companion with wings and hawk-eye, no, falcon-eye vision, to watch his back, to be able to continue on his quest. Some days he wonders why he never thought of it before, and frankly the only answer is that this is more boring and born out of necessity. He would rather have walked, or teleported, or both.
Toskr has landed in the lonely tree at the lake after dissecting a snow hare and then eating every last hair of the animal (one would wonder whether the dissection was necessary), overseeing their surroundings while the ice magician is searching. Throughout Beqanna, portals open and close while he randomly places them - mostly in the common lands, because if she has quite literally surfaced, and hasn’t returned, it is probably not in a kingdom that he will find her. They’re shielded, hidden, and wouldn’t allow anyone to enter - only made to carry oneself away from the Isle if the need arrives. He can’t leave, not right now, he promised not to, but at least he would like the option. It feels better, that way, in a way.
What are the odds? Low, certainly. He almost closes the portal again before he realizes it is her, then checks again and gives the white and spotted falcon a side-eyed look. Warn me when anyone enters or calls for me?
The scaled roan warily eyes his portal. It’s warm where she is, so the journey back would be longer.
But oh, what the heck. This promise stood long before the one he is technically breaking, and he wouldn’t be stopping that Curse on his own anyway. Besides, there’s no-one here that it would want right now. Not when Nash and Ciri are out.
He steps through and snorts. What bad timing. Finally he can fulfill his promise to Yan, but now the youngster has run off with a chicken. Oh well. One problem at a time.
She seems to be staring at something other than her reflection, but when she turns she tries to focus. A little late though, to not recognize him immediately, but that’s fine. Now he can quip back easily.
”What a coincidence. So am I,” he says, joking only on the surface, like always.
08-27-2021, 05:53 PM (This post was last modified: 08-27-2021, 05:57 PM by lilliana.)
WE ARE ALL JUST FRAGILE THINGS / SOFT AND SMALL / BUT ALL THE BROKEN CAN FIND / HOPE IN THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES /
It's such a jarring sensation to have the two scents of her past and her present mingled together.
Broch is there against her skin (though not in the way one might assume; Lilliana has moved past some things, but she still harbors a fear of somebody taking what they need and then leaving her to patch up the missing pieces of herself). And then there is Leilan, much larger than she remembered, looming beside her. His shape had been hazy a moment before - something that looked more like a shadow struggling to materialize against the shining rays of the sun - but there is no denying who the scaled roan is when he comes into view.
Lilliana smiles, clearly pleased to see him.
"Leilan," she murmurs, and takes a small step back from the river's edge. How long has it been since she last saw him? Her mind thinks back in months, back to the Eclipse, but the chestnut knows that is wrong. Another wanderer had told her it had been years since the sun had returned, and what little she had heard of the North had been that it was ruled by her son, Nashua, alongside two of his brothers, Yanhua and Reave. (Had Lilliana knew there was trouble in Taiga, she would have returned sooner. She would have gone there first.)
But her days have been spent searching for Neverwhere, a companion from her first life and the one who journeyed with her from the Afterlife, and learning about the life that the former leader of Culloden had led. And telling him about the things that he once spoke of for them - the herd, the babies, the leading - things that Lilliana had once upon a time hadn't been sure that she wanted, had happened anyway. Had happened without him.
It brought along the more melancholy thoughts about what it might have been like to have those things with somebody who wanted to share them with her. But as she glances up to the former Freyr, Lilliana reminds herself that she hasn't always been completely alone. She and Leilan had come together the best they knew how - the best that two cautious hearts could - to raise their children and unite the North. And that is something she will always be grateful to him for.
"And who would you be looking for?" she asks, the soft smile tugging into something much brighter for the draconic stallion.
09-16-2021, 01:13 AM (This post was last modified: 09-16-2021, 10:43 AM by Leilan.
Edit Reason: Falling lead vs falling leaf seemed significant
)
Leilan
She smells strange, and it feels almost like meeting a stranger. Like meeting her for the first time. But where their first time had been on the Taigan border, now it is the River, another boundary of sorts. Another border, between the forest and what’s beyond. Beyond, is where she had been to the best of his knowledge. Gone into the greyness of the Afterlife willingly.
He’d been places, trying to find out why she had been left behind. Or had she simply chosen not to return? It was a gnawing question, that had led to less study of magic in life and more of it spending on altering portals and trying new transportation methods (and he remembers Kensa’s surprised face, and his own uncomfortable feeling that she might have wanted to stay). Speaking of… she wouldn’t know that. Wouldn’t know anything but the ice dragon alternative that he’d longed after for some time, and used for good and bad things. Wouldn’t know what he was capable of now if he set his mind to learning how.
With Yanhua turning his mind into chicken feed, he had thought about giving it up. But if his promise had been made to a now dead man, he had to keep it. Besides, Nashua and Reave could benefit from their mother being around. Let alone Oren and little Rosey, both not so little any more. Himself? He doesn’t think about it too much. Some questions may be best left unanswered. Like how Kensa was close enough to Lilli, and how come his spotted ex-wife hadn’t shown up instead. Didn’t he want her to come back after all that was said and done?
Her soft smile brightens, his eyes take on a warm brown color and he thinks perhaps the careful answer may be no. He had moved on. He had told himself this many times, but seeing a bright blue spark that he had been missing for so long - so different from those dark, near-black pools he had drowned in - he cannot tell if he prefers the moon or the sun, only that he wants to bask in their light.
Who had he been looking for? He remains silent for a heartbeat, then retorts with the same basic question he had drilled for years. ”You haven’t by any chance seen a chestnut, blue-eyed, star-marked, sleek and about this high?” He hardly thinks about the illusion that’s created - icy crystals turned this and that to create a shadowed silhouette of her stature and composure, lingering for approximately three or four heartbeats before they sublimate like the Taigan mist in the sun. His head tilts and a flash of green is seen behind his eye as studies her as if he didn’t just paint her image in the air, like she is just one of the many he is asking. ”Last seen entering the realm of the dead, though her companions have returned. I’m starting to think I’m looking in the wrong place.”
The words hang between them like an accusation would, but he lets them slowly sink to the floor, like a falling leaf or a sinking hollow acorn. There is no true accusation there, only the hurt of not knowing; but his cautious mind shields it away from his heart, skilled in that precaution since his first steps and the meeting of his sister. Feelings hurt, and they have no place in a rational conversation.
something so wrong doing the right thing
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
WE ARE ALL JUST FRAGILE THINGS / SOFT AND SMALL / BUT ALL THE BROKEN CAN FIND / HOPE IN THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES /
It had been an odd thing, to see herself as she had been.
She had caught glimpses of her past through someone else's eyes and it was a startling revelation to Lilliana. The changes of her decade in Beqanna had always seemed so subtle to her, and while she knew that there were some parts of herself that she would never get back, Lilli hadn't thought herself so different from the girl who had come from Beyond.
But there had been her past, staring right at her from a matching pair of blue eyes, and it had shown her exactly how much she had changed.
Did Leilan see it?
Was she altered in some way after dying?
Lilliana teases him like nothing is different between them. And it isn't. She's glad to see him. If she hadn't been so focused on finding Neverwhere, he would have been one of the first ones that she would have sought out after returning to life. She glances up at him and then her eyes widen as the air beside him shifts into something made of shadow and ice. The former Taigan is mystified by the Magic - as she almost always is by others - but it starts to take the shape of something familiar and as it takes form, Lilliana recognizes herself.
"You really were looking for me," she realizes and looks away from the vanishing haze. The shock of that barely has time to settle. It had been a joke - the usual banter that they had always shared - but this doesn't feel like their usual teasing or even cordial companionship that came in the years after. Lilliana has been missing from her home for so many years, and not once, had anybody ever come looking for her.
He brings it as a joke - no different from before - but he is, in all accounts, dead serious. Leilan had never known himself to be subtle, but this time he had tried. Tried by hiding that layer of unease, of fear for another, and for himself (what was he without an anchor, what would he he capable of, how terrible could he become?) - all of it under thick layers of other emotions. She points right through those layers and scales the wall of ice like she always did. He wonders if she practised it when he wasn't looking.
There’s only two reactions he can think of. ”Yes.” The most vulnerable one first, a single syllable word with so many emotions behind it, he can’t tell which one comes first. Then he covers it up. ”I promised your son that I would.” One of many reasons and not even the primary one, but it is the best excuse he has without admitting to anything else. That home was not the same without her. That if it weren’t for Nashua needing someone to talk to every now and then, he would have long gone rogue.”Besides, entering the Afterlife is not the same as being dead - unless you wanted it to be.” He narrows his eyes at that, just a little; suspicious that while she had returned she had only done it out of a sense of duty, not because she wanted to. ”All your companions returned. Myself included.” Cheri, Memorie, even Reave and Amarine. All had entered the greyness at some point. Taken other paths perhaps, but everyone had made it back.
Except her.
one minute I held the key next, the walls were closed on me
WE ARE ALL JUST FRAGILE THINGS / SOFT AND SMALL / BUT ALL THE BROKEN CAN FIND / HOPE IN THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES /
She doesn't understand.
There is some disconnect - something that has gotten lost along the years - of where she should realize why Leilan would have been looking for her. But nobody else has. It's a precedent that had been started by her father and all the men in her life have all taken the same path; Lilliana has seen far more of the backs of those who have claimed to love her than anything else.
"Nashua?" she manages to ask and then, "Yanhua?" It wouldn't have surprised her if both of them had asked after her; if she had died and perhaps they were more like her than she ever knew, that even after she had gone, they had continued to look for her face in every stranger that crossed their path.
Leilan had always known her as a worrisome dam - and had even chided her for a time or two with their own twins - and the corners of her blue eyes crinkled anxiously. How were Oren and Roselin? How much had they grown? Could they forgive her, for not returning with the light? What of her youngest, Reave?
"I died, Leilan." She confides, quietly revealing what had happened to her. "And then I found my - ," she pauses, struggling against the weight of the memory. Malachi had been dark with his handsome dapples when he should have gone as pale as the moon, as their mother had. "My brother was waiting for me." He had told her no tears, that his death had been on his own terms. He had died protecting Kalina and their children. He had lived and died as only a Legacy could aspire to, in the service of others and those they loved.
"He told me I could - I could go home."
That clearly hadn't happened, and she has to glance away from Leilan as she admits this. Those that have come to know her, knew that her heart had been searching a long time for what had become of those who had been left behind. "But then I found Neverwhere and something went wrong." Turning her slender head towards the dragon mage, her blue eyes glittered with worry, refusing to think of the tentacles that had come grabbing towards them and shattered the little peace they had found. "I woke up here, alone, and I've been trying to find her ever since."
She doesn't latch on and perhaps he is glad. In fact, the longer he thinks about it later, the more glad he is. They waltz on, nothing had happened, and in the reflection of a frozen lake, somewhere in the north, where snow and ice remain even in the hottest summer, he will find what he always looked for. There is no such thing as standing still. Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. Such is and will always be the case, and so, he lives it forwards.
Looking back, this must have been the turning point. A realization that hit harder than it should.
He - subconsciously at the time - didn't want his ex-wife back. She would release a wave of emotions he could not deal with, not then, not now. He didn't want to move on, either, and wonders why he had bothered to try. Everyone was broken, nobody perfect: he couldn't make anything or anyone more perfect but himself. He hadn't found a way how yet, but he would find it soon enough. After all, he was magic.
"Yan," he replies to her question, amused in the back of his mind that she hadn't thought of Reave or Oren. But they both knew the twins had needed her more than any of the others, because somehow, Bane's impact on their life was bigger than anyone else's, no matter how they tried. He shuts away any other emerging thoughts and emotions then, when the chestnut mare that he had looked for, admits that she died. And would have stayed.
"I met my sister in there." Just making conversation. "She died a long time ago, and I wonder if she took the way back that I'd paved, of if she chickened out." He smiles wryly, not bothering to add any eye contact because she probably already makes the comment bigger than it is. Because there was something else. "Wolfbane says hi, too. He's more of himself in there," he tells her, smiling a bit at the memory and knowing that it might be a comfort that the striped pegasus had chosen to stay. He could share their conversation with her, probably, but he doesn't linger.
"Which home did you want to go to?" he wishes to know. He doesn't indulge in the Neverwhere story, not really - the extra hour that it might take to ask Lilli the more important questions (to him more important, that is) wouldn't kill Nev. Besides, she had already been dead once before, it seems. And dead people tend to be patient.
told you I'd change even when I knew I never could
WE ARE ALL JUST FRAGILE THINGS / SOFT AND SMALL / BUT ALL THE BROKEN CAN FIND / HOPE IN THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES /
"Is he alright?" Lilliana asks quickly. Her second son was well past the age of needing his dam, but Leilan's mention of a promise to him makes her maternal concern sharply rise. She peers up at the taller horse, suddenly desperate for news. She had been out in the Common Lands searching for Neverwhere, and hearing no news of Taiga, she had assumed that everything in her former home was fine.
If something was wrong - if something had gone wrong during the Eternal Night - surely she would have heard a whisper about it in the Meadow or the River. Beqanna loved gossip, and if there was a murmur of anything about Taiga or any of her children, Lilliana had been certain that she would hear of it.
"Taiga?" she continues, wanting to know about Oren and Roselin, and Reave.
She continues to look up at him, but Leilan won't look at her and it makes Lilliana uneasy. The slender chestnut shifts her weight from one hip to the other, waiting for him to meet her waiting gaze.
He found his sister in the Afterlife, he explains, and then wonders aloud if she had stayed there or returned to Beqanna. They had been alike in that way. They had both come from large families; both came from unions that had been love matches. Lilliana has her head tilted towards his, listening to listening to Leilan continue to speak. Would he return for this sibling, or try to figure out what had happened to her?
But it isn't family that he continues to talk of. Instead, it is Wolfbane. He speaks the name so easily, and yet in the almost decade that the striped pegasus had been dead, Lilliana has never been able to say it. She stills, and her muscles grow taut for a moment. Wolfbane said hello? Her confusion registers plain enough on her face, and the chestnut pulls slightly away from him. Why would Wolfbane have anything to say to her? (And more importantly, was there anything left to say?)
"I don't care what he has to say," she finally decides. Leilan even smiles that handsome grin of his, slightly mischievous, and Lilliana continues to glance up at him, trying to make some sense of what he was trying to do. She knew that he didn't intend for the message to be cruel or unkind (she might assume as much about Wolfbane, but Leilan had helped rear her children - even the ones that hadn't been his - and despite their differences, unkind would never be a word she could associate with Oren and Roselin's father).
What home did she want to go to, he asks? That had been the reason for the fog, hadn't it? The filly who had been born in Murmuring Rivers, who had spent such a short time in Paraiso, who had spent a year or more on the run before coming to Beqanna, who had lived in Taiga and Nerine, where was home?
"I don't know," she answers him. Her mind returns to the Afterlife and slowly, the tension between her shoulders and creasing at the corners of her blue eyes begins to recede with the memory of her brother. Malachi had once told her that home wasn't a place, but a feeling; a sense of belonging, of family. Lilliana had been careful over the years to not bring up Leilan's former spouse, not willing to cross anymore boundaries, but perhaps his mention of the man that she had once strongly cared for had already broken them.
"Did you ever want that again?" and she doesn't let the memory stay overlong, but an image of Breckin presses gently against his conscious. Her voice becomes soft, because she doesn't want to upset Leilan, but here they were, talking about past loves; it seemed that Death made something abundantly clear to Lilliana. Maybe this was why she hadn't truly died.
Is he alright - Yanhua? Leilan pauses before answering, allowing the brief silence to introduce what he must report now. It isn’t a quick confirmation, because how could he lie about something so big, how could he lie to her at all even if it made her feel better? Still he hesitates to speak and the heaviness of that silence is more than he could tell her - but also more than he likes to endure, and he smothers it. ”I don’t know,” he tells her, and in that, he tells her just about all that he knows about the subject. ”He’s disappeared. All I know is that he let a chicken nest on his head and Ama has followed him to make sure he’s okay. I haven’t seen either for a while.” She’d better hear about the chicken from him - but it should be some sort of consolidation that Amarine hadn’t given up. What had become of Borderline, he doesn’t know either.
And it’s not that Taiga was failing as a whole; Nashua was looking after it and Reave as well, though both had other priorities too. Leilan himself, well - should he have seen this coming? He has never really experienced this kind of madness, only assuming that the young male needed time. His mother reappearing might have helped, so he feels like he failed in his task by not finding her on time. Still, at least he had tried to fulfill Yan’s wishes - but in doing so he knows he has avoided the responsibility for the north, ungracefully dumping it with Nashua.
But he doesn’t think he could have done it differently, so however she wants to, she will have to deal with it.
Taiga? ”I don’t think anything will ever end those trees. I’m sure your other sons are keeping an eye on it.” He hasn’t checked in much, he knows - it’s just the whole Gale-thing that has occupied everyone. Does he dare move the conversation thataway? No - first he wants to see how she handles the first part of the bad news; he moves the topic forward.
She responds coldly - perhaps due to the earlier message, perhaps she truly believes Bane to be what he ended as. For a moment, the magician’s grin freezes on his face, then falters into a more stoic grimace. ”I’ve known him as a yearling,” he confides in her. It sounds like an excuse and maybe it is. Wolfbane was never this cruel monster - not until he got cursed. Wasn’t that why she had fallen for him in the first place?
The subject goes as quickly as he had touched it; a short quip was all he had given, and she brushed it aside. The ice mage lets it slide, too; in the end it is not his business to correct her feelings for a man who’s long gone and happy where he is. It is her, who needs to decide what she wants and it clearly isn’t him.
For a moment he wonders if he meant Bane or himself with that thought - but when she says she doesn’t know which home she wants, perhaps she doesn’t know either. She is an indecisive mare, and he starts to question his own heart too. Is this her likeness with the spotted mare? Is this truly what he keeps falling for?
Lilliana has a way of entering his mind, asking just then if he wants it to return to what it once was. The image, a memory of Breckin presses to his mind, or perhaps rather the emotion that comes with it.
He doesn’t have to open this package to know what it contains. He shakes it, knows what he will find, and softly sets it aside. A mental ice mirror sends her a set of memories in return; a very young Breckin in a creek, her head held up haughtily as she tells him she does mind sharing the water on that summer day, though her eyes sparkle; two golden-maned fillies in the snow, one chocolate-coloured, one spotted, her roaning pattern barely visible beneath; Breckin in the River, following a sapphire and gold tobiano kelpie into the waters. The latter memory comes with the feeling of a shattering icicle on a frozen cave’s floor, but also with a mental pull-out. He shakes his head when he mentally and physically turns away. ”Not anymore.” There was someone able to take that place, once - but she hadn’t tried and he hadn’t asked her to. ”I think I’m done now.”
Saying it out loud closes a chapter. The sound of it echoes through an empty ice-walled cave, not too unsimilar with the one he had sheltered in in Hyaline, once. Where Kensa had allowed him respite, and distraction (though not of the kind one might assume - neither he nor her had wanted consolation of that sort from the other).
And so it had been her whom he had pulled out from beyond, because he didn’t want the hassle with his former wife any longer, and the new girl hadn’t stepped up, in fact she had turned the other way. It was only then that he realized he didn’t long for those things any more.
He would always be a loose projectile at best, when it came to love.
told you I'd change even when I knew I never could
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
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