Only a moment, she tells herself. One moment and she will return to Taiga.

Neverwhere tells her to run, tells her to flee like she is a coward. Lilliana doesn't tell her otherwise because her earlier words still feel like acid on her tongue, burning where she sparked them to life. (But what else was Lilli to do - pinned between the beach and Never's well-aimed  arrow, knowing exactly where the chink in her armor lay?) Even as she escorts the half-blind mare back to the Nerinian border, Lilli feels everything... too closely. The fog that rolls in from the ocean, that same fog she has always likened veils of one realm to another, suddenly hoovers. Taiga's massive redwoods, something she has always prided the northern woods for, suddenly cluster together in a way that feels confining. Even the evergreen scent that has become so familiar, that one she associates with home suddenly cloys and burns at the back of her throat.

So she slips through Taiga's forest as she has done a thousand times before. (She thinks she has the advantage of time; after all, 'later' is such an elusive concept of it.)

She does this appease the silver mare but what Lilli does not say is that she will return. Taiga is her home. It is the longest amount of time that she has spent anywhere and the chestnut mare has rather stubbornly claimed it as her own, haunted forest and all. It is where Lethy and Aten are, where she has brought Smidgen, where Elaina knows to find her. Lilli refuses to let herself be cowed by her emotions, whatever they are for the Taigan Commandant.

But she just needs a moment.
Just one moment for the world to stop reeling.

So it shouldn't be a surprise where Lilli goes. She goes in search of the one thing that has always brought her comfort - the River. She thinks it might steady her, that it might somehow overrule the laws of attraction and she would no longer feel this pull.  Lilliana goes to the River where she can still feel the traces of her old life, of the place she had been born and where she had learned to be a solace for others. It's where she learned to hide behind laughing eyes and a teasing smile, where she learned to be what others needed while never giving too much of herself away.

She always been careful of that.

Its that thought lingers in her mind. She has always been careful of her feelings. Lilli gives her smiles, her laughter, her kindness as easily as she breathes. Anything more than that comes at a price that she has never been willing to pay.

But somewhere between being too careful and not careful enough, she finds herself here. She finds herself weaving through the trees, slipping beneath low-hanging branches and follows an old hooftrail that started somewhere between Taiga and Hyaline. The scents here have gone stale and so Lilli allows herself to follow the pure, clean smell of running water towards... anywhere. She follows the River like it might lead her to an answer.

But it doesn't. It flows too gently, not wild or rampant as she feels inward, and eventually, the sound of the bubbling water next to her falls away.  She leaves the River behind. At some point, the Forest surrounds her and Lilli finds herself in the quiet of the harvest woods. The stars remain obscured from covering branches above but the moon is still full enough that beams of silver light trickle through the bare patches above, an admonition of the coming season. But she isn't alone - his voice cuts through the silence of the night, ringing clear against the shadows. Lilli, not unhappy to hear him, calls back.

"I thought you liked a challenge."

@[Wolfbane]

and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.

starsin

it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted.
( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )

This is insanity.

It is the last shred of logic in her mind - it is a thought she keeps coming back too, a tether that won't completely release her. There are a hundred others, thousands even, if she were to keep dwelling on them. He thinks her reserved but Lilliana stands there bewildered, stunned. It seems that this is a habit of his, this ability he has to shift the very axis of her world. She tries, some part of her tries to hold on so hard to that last thought, to remind her that this is dangerous ground on so many levels.

This is insanity, she thinks again.
But she can no longer feel the ground beneath her hooves.
(With him emerging from the shadows, she questions its existence in the first place.)

His expression is mired with confusion, with desire and Lilliana feels her own soul twist in reply - it wrenches in ways she never thought possible. Those blue eyes stare up at him with a reflection of the turmoil that burns between them. She isn't scared to meet that olive gaze - to level it with her own. If she says she is not afraid then she won't show him fear - but she will show him everything else. 

Let him see her own anguish, let him see the fire that rages within her. 
Let him see how she has been burning from the inside out.

She shouldn't feel this towards him. She shouldn't feel any of this. But Lilliana is no longer in a position to keep denying and under the guarded shadows of night, under the trees that shift uncomfortably in an autumn breeze, under a few strangled rays of starlight, Lilliana gives him her honesty. At the very least, he deserves that. He draws closer and she watches him with dark, serious eyes. 

But he comes closer and when he reaches towards her, she lets him. Legado help her - she lets him.

His iridescent mouth traces a line on her face and she finds herself leaning into his touch, letting herself fall into it as easily as she might draw a breath. She feels the warmth of him, of his touch and it comes unbidden, the edges of her lips turn upward as she closes her eyes. This might be insanity but it feels like bliss. Euphoric, a drug she could lose herself in if she isn't careful. The line of fire he draws against her temple is a myriad of emotions that her mind can't even find words for; they come out in the telltale form of a smile that unfolds against the corners of her dark mouth.

His mouth lingers near hers when he speaks and there it is again - that ability he has to send her spiraling, to take the air from her lungs. Her eyes open, try to adjust against the darkness and Lilliana admits against the warmth of him that she can feel hovering so close. "Do you know how you make me feel?" asks a silver voice in the dark, the steadiness in it vanishing with each syllable, a challenge. "You left," she admits quietly, something that she has long been familiar with in life. So many have left and Lilliana has always forgiven their departures, accepted it and kept moving forward. "And I kept wanting just a glance of you," she admits, longing clouding her words. "Just one," she breathes as if that would have been enough. In a moment of bravery, she reaches out hesitantly to brush the corner of her mouth against the outline of his golden jaw.

Of all the things, meeting him, that trip to the Pampas, it had been her worry for him in his absence that had been the most damning thing; she hadn't the right to worry for him and yet she had. She had torn and ripped herself apart on it, that knowledge and that fear for him, almost as much as she does in his presence now.

If she could destroy him then he could tear her apart.

"Wolfbane," she tries, as if the full use of his name might put a barrier back up between them. But it's a futile attempt on her part - Lilliana knows it as soon as his name leaves her mouth. The words drown out in an undercurrent of yearning. 

"I know," Lilliana struggles, words that feel choked and come with feeling the full weight of them as they turn to lead in her chest. They are heavy and she doesn't know what to do with them - they offer no solution. She has none. She has nothing to give him but the truth and what that even offers, she doesn't know. It might be a mistake to speak these things out loud, to give them life against the chill of the autumn air. Then quietly the chestnut mare admits, "That... that scares me too." 

And that's when she realizes her fear - that she was more afraid to be without him than with him.
Insanity.

She is trying so hard to explain herself.

Lilliana is laying herself bare, inch by inch with a rope that she expects to hang herself by. She doesn't know what she hopes to achieve by exposing herself so much, by revealing so much of herself against the forest shadows that would otherwise render them into obscurity. The chestnut mare is determined that Wolfbane sees her very much for who she is - someone who is riddled with faults and flaws.

Perhaps he already does.
(And that knots in her chest - does he think less of her already for agreeing to meet him here?)

The thought makes that frantic heart of hers writhe and twist in protestation, fills her with emotions that she shouldn't have but does. Oh but she does.

He agrees with her and for a moment, she wants to tell him that he is missing the point. His absence brought about the revelation that she didn't want to be without him and that.. that realization has perched precariously on her mind. Lilliana wants to tell him how hard she has tried to rid herself of it - how she has tried to drown it out with recruiting, with attempting to be a Diplomat, with shackling herself with so many other responsibilities and thoughts that he possibly couldn't remain in her thoughts.

She has tried to bury him, as she does so many other things. A roguish smile that hints at a secret she so badly wants to know. The softening of his navy-masked face as the green eyes that look to her break walls that he couldn't know existed. The warmth that floods her veins, a spark that has turned to an inferno burns and leaves only the sensation of him in its embers. Lilliana has tried to bury him and instead has planted something, something that his kisses against her crimson forehead breathes life into. It shines light into something that she would have otherwise kept in darkness and it blooms as he breathes his next words into her neck.

It is the hope she sees in his eyes - shining and bright against what otherwise is a dark thing. What she feels for him shouldn't be; this is illicit. It goes against the very core of who she is and what she is - the thought that this happiness she has found comes at the price of someone else rankles through her soul like the chill in the bitter autumn breeze. It shouldn't be and yet it is the want for his happiness that settles around her heart, that places itself at the very forefront of it.

Her heart catches in her throat as he speaks again.

"If I let you," she murmurs into the warmth of him. He speaks of flaws and she could laugh. What of her sins? What of her faults? There is a long moment she says nothing at all and it is only the silence of the night that moves in on them, the depth of it that could bury them if they let it. "Bane," comes the heated sigh of his name, hot and breathless as she presses it into his muscled neck. "Is this what you want?"

"If it is," she whispers because there is still time for him to change his mind. She won't begrudge his decision if he does, he has so much more to lose. Lilliana won't ask him to risk hellfire and damnation for something he isn't sure of. 

But she will risk it for him.

"If it is, then yes. My answer will always be yes."

@[Wolfbane]