She should be afraid. This place is wrong somehow, tilted and skewed in a way that the waking world isn’t. The world had fallen away, had melted and shifted. It had been an effortless thing, as simple as breathing, to follow Kagerus here. But the how and why of it are hazy, blurred lines that have receded to this place.
She should be scared. Lilli knows that fear should be claiming her mortal mind. The River, the place where she and Kagerus had been just moments before is gone. Somehow the world has fallen away and the chestnut mare finds herself here, in this place of everywhere and nowhere. Her mind tries (and fails) to grasp for a reason, trying to find a thread of thought that will be able to turn this reality into something logical.
But for as much as she reaches for it, it slips past her, refusing to be explained.
Peace. This is all she knows. It wraps around her like the security of Elaina’s golden form under Hyaline's night sky, like the enveloping embrace of her mother.
Stars fall around them both and it takes Lilli a moment to realize that Kagerus is here and that she no longer struggles. She searches for the lovely painted mare, blue eyes gazing and glancing through the veil of dream. She thinks she feels her beside her but when the crimson mare can finally make out forms and shadows, Kagerus vanishes into the mist around her.
She should be afraid but she isn’t.
Kagerus speaks but she isn’t speaking, not in the normal way. The gentle incantation of her voice comes from within the walls of Lilli’s mind, from the place where her own hopes and fears guide her. A touch, featherlight and redeeming comes on her shoulder. The muscle doesn’t flinch and the girl finds herself welcoming it. She relishes it instead of unease or worry. Lilli can’t feel those emotions here; she feels freer, lighter than she has been in.. since she can no longer recall.
”You owe me nothing,” she whispers, mystified and still searching through the haze of this place. And then she smiles, a hopeful thing that graces her features. The expression on her face changes as she feels the laughter of Kagerus around her – a wonderful, bubbling thing that wakes the joy inside Lilli. ”Will you tell me?” she asks in a quiet tone, awed and marveling at what wonderful thing Kagerus might be.
Goddess? Deity? Divinity?
The seam splits and Lilli feels like she is being told a secret, that she is being shared something sacred and special. The young mare sees Kagerus as she had known her before the dream, in the form of a mortal equine. Love touches Lilli’s face. She warms with it and it expels the last of her shadows, takes away the last of her doubts. Everything about her is bright and surges with joy, is overwhelmed with happiness for Kagerus and this golden mare, for their family.
Love, after all, is the great illuminator of life, able to drive out all darkness.
”Kagerus...” she murmurs, repeating the name softly to herself. She clings to it, some part of her afraid that this really is a just dream and she will wake up to remember none of this beauty.
Somehow, in a way that she isn’t sure of (and much like the magic of the Mountain), she is able to conjure images for Kagerus. Had this been anywhere but the dreamscape, the chestnut might not have revealed so much. (It is, after all, much harder to put emotions and memories and lives led into words than to simply show.)
So Lilli reveals her most beloved of memories, pours them out in a torrent of love – scrawny and wild Elaina at their first meeting, amber eyes blazing with fire. Aletta, her silver mother, bathed in moonlight and star shine in such a lonely way that made Lilli’s heartache. She shows her golden Valerio with his stoic blue eyes, her father so impossibly sure and brave in a changing world. She shows her siblings, her family when they had been thriving and unbroken. Each memory rolls along and Lilli revels in it, a ferocity that builds in her chest with the ache of missing and loving them.
”I’m Lilli,” she says to the dreamweaver as the seam fades. On the edges of twilight, she looks again for Kagerus, searching for some particle of her. ”What are you?” comes her voice again, hushed with wonder. ”And what is this place?”
@[Kagerus]
She should be scared. Lilli knows that fear should be claiming her mortal mind. The River, the place where she and Kagerus had been just moments before is gone. Somehow the world has fallen away and the chestnut mare finds herself here, in this place of everywhere and nowhere. Her mind tries (and fails) to grasp for a reason, trying to find a thread of thought that will be able to turn this reality into something logical.
But for as much as she reaches for it, it slips past her, refusing to be explained.
Peace. This is all she knows. It wraps around her like the security of Elaina’s golden form under Hyaline's night sky, like the enveloping embrace of her mother.
Stars fall around them both and it takes Lilli a moment to realize that Kagerus is here and that she no longer struggles. She searches for the lovely painted mare, blue eyes gazing and glancing through the veil of dream. She thinks she feels her beside her but when the crimson mare can finally make out forms and shadows, Kagerus vanishes into the mist around her.
She should be afraid but she isn’t.
Kagerus speaks but she isn’t speaking, not in the normal way. The gentle incantation of her voice comes from within the walls of Lilli’s mind, from the place where her own hopes and fears guide her. A touch, featherlight and redeeming comes on her shoulder. The muscle doesn’t flinch and the girl finds herself welcoming it. She relishes it instead of unease or worry. Lilli can’t feel those emotions here; she feels freer, lighter than she has been in.. since she can no longer recall.
”You owe me nothing,” she whispers, mystified and still searching through the haze of this place. And then she smiles, a hopeful thing that graces her features. The expression on her face changes as she feels the laughter of Kagerus around her – a wonderful, bubbling thing that wakes the joy inside Lilli. ”Will you tell me?” she asks in a quiet tone, awed and marveling at what wonderful thing Kagerus might be.
Goddess? Deity? Divinity?
The seam splits and Lilli feels like she is being told a secret, that she is being shared something sacred and special. The young mare sees Kagerus as she had known her before the dream, in the form of a mortal equine. Love touches Lilli’s face. She warms with it and it expels the last of her shadows, takes away the last of her doubts. Everything about her is bright and surges with joy, is overwhelmed with happiness for Kagerus and this golden mare, for their family.
Love, after all, is the great illuminator of life, able to drive out all darkness.
”Kagerus...” she murmurs, repeating the name softly to herself. She clings to it, some part of her afraid that this really is a just dream and she will wake up to remember none of this beauty.
Somehow, in a way that she isn’t sure of (and much like the magic of the Mountain), she is able to conjure images for Kagerus. Had this been anywhere but the dreamscape, the chestnut might not have revealed so much. (It is, after all, much harder to put emotions and memories and lives led into words than to simply show.)
So Lilli reveals her most beloved of memories, pours them out in a torrent of love – scrawny and wild Elaina at their first meeting, amber eyes blazing with fire. Aletta, her silver mother, bathed in moonlight and star shine in such a lonely way that made Lilli’s heartache. She shows her golden Valerio with his stoic blue eyes, her father so impossibly sure and brave in a changing world. She shows her siblings, her family when they had been thriving and unbroken. Each memory rolls along and Lilli revels in it, a ferocity that builds in her chest with the ache of missing and loving them.
”I’m Lilli,” she says to the dreamweaver as the seam fades. On the edges of twilight, she looks again for Kagerus, searching for some particle of her. ”What are you?” comes her voice again, hushed with wonder. ”And what is this place?”
@[Kagerus]
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind