Lilliana has never known whole.
If the question was poised to her, the concept would be a foreign one. Lilli, in some way, has always known broken and fragmented, flawed and cracked. But she has known happiness too - it is warmth and laughter mingling together with a girl of sunflower yellow. It is her ribs aching trying to contain it all and her heart so full to bursting that it overflows into the places where loss has left ridges along her soul. It is the deep mocha brown of her eldest brother, Malachi, as he watches Kalina lead their boys into the open for the first time - the love that illuminates every feature of his noble face light the midnight mare has just risen and set his sun, has become every star in his sky. It is her mother, silver and fierce against blazing cosmos, refusing to be made small in the face of something so large. It is a stolen glance of her family through the veil of their willow tree, as much together as they would ever be.
It is the feeling of quiet mornings like this - where the dreams still linger so close around them because the world hasn't fully woken up yet.
Lilli has never known whole but she has known love and she has known happiness. She carries the light with her because she knows that eventually the world always goes dark.
So as she watches the deer vanish into the undergrowth, as the last leaves still from their retreating forms, Lilli hopes the best for them. (What future awaits such a creature, she wonders?) But then the chestnut mare has wondered about the stories the trees might tell if they could whisper them, what memories dance on a spring breeze, what secrets a star might reveal if she only had the means to listen. Its not such an unusual thought for her - so whatever path lays before them, Lilli hopes the sweetest grass for them and that they grow up to be swifter than anything that might chase them.
Perhaps something in Lilliana should have changed by now. Perhaps she shouldn't dream and hope as she does. But here she is - still as much a dreamer and a wisher as she has ever been.
To change means to accept defeat, that darkness has finally found a way to snuff out the light and that is something Lilli refuses to do.
The soft voice behind her is one of a mother. The chestnut turns her head to the side and finds a silver mare coming beside her. Together they look at the empty spaces where the doe and her fawns had been, where the shadows and few rays of stray sunshine come together. The young mare feels a gentle smile dawning, one she hopes is an understanding one for the mother who stands beside her. "We all have to learn to let go in the end," she muses, "but a mother is always remembered by her children. A little piece of immortality."
The mare turns her dark gaze to Lilli and she meets it with her bright blue one, studying the lovely stillness of her face. "No," she smiles, "I don't believe we have. I'm Lilliana."
@[Ryatah]