Even if Isilya would never know the difference, Leliana grieves for the first time that they had met. She grieves for the way she had been so different in that moment—how her heart had been locked beneath the magma of her magic and she had been incapable of embracing her as a sister. She looks at her now with a softened gaze and she feels the pangs of that guilt, the wish that she could have been herself then.
But the logical part of her sweeps away such guilt.
She doesn’t give it roots and instead focuses on the fact that she can be herself in this moment. She focuses on the warmth that spreads throughout her when the woman returns her embrace and she feels her neck wrap around hers. For a second, she feels nothing, just feels the well of her own magic open up in the presence of its sister and rush through her, leaving her skin tingling and sensitive and ears ringing.
When they step back from one another, Leliana smiles—wider than usual. “My magic likes having you here almost as much as I do,” she muses, her voice rippling and calm as she wonders at how it feels to have her gift behave so much of its own accord. Growing up, her healing had always responded to her. It had been a piece of her, but her magic—that had a mind of its own. That acts as it wishes sometimes.
Not that she minds the way it rejoices to be around like.
Her chain of thought is interrupted though by the mare’s admission and her smile dims slightly, grows a touch softer on the edges. She reaches out to press her nose against the mare’s neck. “It does,” she thinks of how the heat threads across the volcanic land, “but it’s not everywhere, and it is relatively contained.”
She glances up at the trees that are beginning to populate Tephra again, the flowers that blanket the curves of the land, and the water that twists and rushes as much as the fire.
“And there are plenty of places where there’s nothing but green as far as the eye can see.”
it's only you and me there until the darkness calls
let's face the dawn together; we'll brave whatever comes
@[Isilya]