This Wen creature is certainly interesting. Fiorina rather likes Brazen and her blunt words and there is absolutely no cause for any apologies from anyone on anyone else’s behalf. It’s going to take a lot worse to offend this mare (not to mention she found the walrus comparison rather accurate to how she felt). The spotted mare’s threat to her bone-decorated cousin, though without any venom to make it really interesting, is odd but Fio just flicks an ear.
Family, she knows, is always a rather odd affair.
A small chuckle does escape her at Brazen’s reply, low and rumbly. She doesn’t care enough to cut it off short so that it does not offend anyone else, a delighted shine in her eyes at meeting someone with a sense of humour she can appreciate.
Her chuckle turns into a bark of laughter when Brazen shrieks about Eurwen carrying four babies - which is exactly what it sounds like. After all Brazen wasn’t about to be an aunt to anyone else’s child except her own cousin, right? When her laughter dies, the armoured mare tilts her head and asks aloud, to no one in particular. “Do walruses always have four?”
She does feel a little bad about dropping the Wolfbane bomb, though, and the tentacle one too based on everyone’s reactions. As far as Fiorina was concerned, the golden stallion was just some random asshole but the name seems to mean something to everyone else here. There’s an apology to be made, probably, but Fio just does her best impression of the grimace emoji instead and, smartly, decides not to comment on that particular subject any more.
Although, she hopes, if Wolfbane is the one who made Lilliana balloon up - that it was not forced upon her. Otherwise Fio would very much enjoy carving out his heart with her tail and finishing what began in the field.
That, however, is not a question for this group.
Someone else joins, and at first glance Fio assumes it’s another walrus - and she’s not totally wrong. She does a rather obvious double take when the new walrus speaks and she realizes it is a boy.
Well. If that doesn’t stink of magic, she doesn’t know what does. She’s seen children crafted from it before but never in the belly of a stallion.
So, naturally, she invokes the first name that comes to her mind when it comes to babies-that-should-not-be. “You wouldn’t have happened to run a foul of Anaxarete now would you?” And, hopefully, the arrival of a new face and a new name in the conversation will help put Lilliana at ease. Caring about the thoughts and feelings of others sure is a time consuming an exhausting affair.
the secret of walking on water is knowing where the rocks lie
”Too bad for you, I don’t have to run to get to you.” The spotted mare grins menacingly ather beloved cousin, having her rocks already lifted behind her, and playfully flinging a pebble towards the back of her head - though without any true malice and definitely without any proper speed to hurt her thick-skulled cousin.
Speaking of, her eyes almost burst out of her head when Brazen asks her as if she’s carrying four on her own. As if that were possible. And how would Lilli otherwise know the exact number? ”Good Fairies, Brazen, I know you have a brain cell in there somewhere. I was counting in Lilli’s.” she chuckles, her mood lightened in an instant at the sight of the roan girl’s face, not at all offended somehow. In fact, the mood swings seem to get to her pretty badly, she thinks, as she goes from smiling to angry for no real reason, to a fit of laughter she can hardly stifle.
Her count becomes more correct every minute, as it turns out the subject of speech in the group is none other than her cousin…though several times removed. ”So it is true! Wolfbane is your family, too, Brazen, and so are the little octopuses.” she adds for clarification, and then nods to Lilliana and her rounded belly - the topic of the day, it seemed.
Grinning widely now, she steps sideways to bump Brazen softly, just as Brennen arrives. The winged bay does not fly, for a rather… peculiar, but obvious reason. The pink-spotted mare looks at him brightly. ”Uncle Brennen! I see you’re making this family even more complicated. Poor Brazen.” She knows, of course, that she is not really related to the man, but he might as well be, what with courting her grammama and still always being a family friend in some way. She probably knows him better than her own grandpappa. Turning around to gaze at Fiorina, the spotted mare blinks a moment - Anaxarete? - but then she figures, Brennen can explain on his own that he is himself a magician.
Perhaps then, he will also explain why he is carrying a child by himself, at all.
The teasing affection between Eurwen and Brazen softens Lilliana’s expression as she laughs at the antics of the spotted mare. They display an almost sibling-like warmth of foals who had been raised together. When her blue eyes rest on Brazen again, there is a happiness that blossoms in her chest. She hadn’t been completely left alone. She still had her cousin.
And if anyone knows how deep the bond between cousins can run, it is the mare from Murmuring Rivers.
Their antics make Lilliana shake her head before she teasingly addresses Fiorina, "Perhaps walruses have litters?”
Her gaze laughingly looks to a similarly-sized Eurwen and Lilli smiles, "There could be an extra. How uncommon are triplets to Beqanna?” Twins, it seems, are fairly common. But there is comfort to be found that she isn’t going to be the only mother to multiples. In truth, she is glad to share that with another friend in Nerine. The Taigan mare brushes her girth against the bone-armored Brazen before grinning, "Oh, there is more than one in there. She had to put two and two together to make four, didn’t she?”
It’s the almost admission of a name that changes the course of the conversation and Lilliana does change then (perhaps its hormonal, perhaps its years worth of being silent on that particular subject). There are many worries that Lilli has in regards to the former Commandant - in this moment, however, her most immediate worry is @[Brazen]’s reaction. Her mother had been the Wolfbane's grandmother and therefore… therefore that made her an aunt to the boys that Kagerus had revealed.
What will Brazen think?
Where Lilliana expects condemnation (a strong grimace from Neverwhere comes to her mind), there is a curse and then the roan mare laughs. That eases the pregnant mare but there are lines around the corners of her eyes, lines that have formed in the worries that have come rolling in like crashing waves on the Nerinian coast. Brazen’s shock dissolves into her laughter that is joined in with Eurwen - it is only the dark mare and Lilliana who don’t follow.
The emotion is too strong emotion on her face for her to laugh.
There is no laughing about something that has haunted her for years.
The laughter is a relief to her burdened ears but Lilli can’t bring herself to echo the sound.
She exchanges a look with the dark mare but before she can say anything, another pregnant mare comes to join their band.
Only it isn’t a mare. Her eyes widen as they take in the larger form of the Magician, Brennen. He looks to them curiously and Lilliana takes him in with an equally (and openly) intrigued gaze and pricked ears. A pregnant stallion is not something she has even heard of, let alone seen. Magic, she reminds herself. Magic manifests itself in many ways and apparently in the case of Nerine’s Champion… it had made him pregnant.
The water (though a different variation) seemed to be particularly potent this year in the North.
The chestnut mare tilts her head, eager to move the conversation away from the blue-striped stallion. "Immortals keep track of age?” the Diplomat teases.
LILLIANA
all that i'm after is a life full of laughter (as long as i'm laughing with you)
cold in the violence after the war hope is a fire to keep us warm
As if the shock of the quickly dispelled notion that Eurwen were having quadruplets weren’t enough, while the small group is laughing at her comical error, Brennen strolls idly up to the group. Or, well, perhaps stroll isn’t the right word. Because, as it turns out, his belly is also quite round. Honestly, were it not for his amused quip about Wolfbane, she might have tactfully not mentioned anything about the weight he’d gained.
Talk about a spit-take moment though.
She blinks rather dumbly at him for a few moments as she tries to wrap her brain around the revelations they keep blithely tossing at her. After a moment, without a word, she cranes her head to narrow a suspicious glare on her own abdomen. One that is, blessedly, still very slim. But, given how events had played out thus far, one couldn’t be too certain. If a stallion could have a child, who’s to say she couldn’t have a kid without a stallion?
Still, she was definitely not going to embarrass herself further stating her sudden and frantic alarm aloud.
Luckily, the discussion of twins brings her back to the conversation at hand. Chagrin fading, she eyes Eurwen then Lilli with a critical eye before offering Lilli a half apologetic grin. “Mom is a twin. And she had two sets of twins. So, um, runs in the family I guess. Oops.”
Abruptly it occurs to her that, Brennen being a relation and all, he might too have the misfortune of carrying twins. Wisdom keeps her mouth shut however. Instead, grin widening cheekily, she turns her gaze to Fio. “Hopefully you’re not going to reveal now you’re some relative too. If so, uh, my condolences?”
