It comes as a flash - just a glimpse.

Lightning strikes have made more sense to Lilliana. The image that comes unbidden in her blue-eyed gaze makes sense in only the way that she has seen that place before. The chestnut mare who had spent another quiet morning succumbing to the Taigan fog finds herself suddenly invigorated. Was it a sign? A message? Lilliana turns her head to carefully regard the Nerinian border to the north, as though she might see that invisible boundary through the cover and density of her beloved Redwoods.

The border has diminished less and less these days. Where Heartfire had given Lilliana pause, the warmth and comfort of Neverwhere and Brazen pull her frequently to their world's edge.

The Taigan feels torn as she continues to stare through the density of the forest, past the shadows that the trees cast and past the sunbeams that come dancing down from the branches above. All there is silence. There is no knowing. The air around her is absent of any kind of feeling at all. Waves crash in the distance and the native seabirds can be heard crying out their impatience with the days' catch from where the slender mare stands. She keeps waiting and the only sign that the mare is a living creature at all is the way her daintily-tipped ears swivel, alert as they attempt to catch any source of the unusual.

If it is a sign, who would it be from? And would they have intentionally sent to Lilliana? She doubts it. She fervently hopes not.

When enough time has passed that the tide has gone further out and the seabirds that cry have faded with it, when the sun has risen higher, Lilliana has decided that she has waited long enough. She decides, for a moment, to ignore the vision. It would be for the best, she tells herself. Perhaps it was rogue magic, something wild. Perhaps it was something ancient. Perhaps, even better, the vision wasn't intended for Lilliana at all and her feigning ignorance of it would be in the senders' benefit.

It could be so easy to do.
It should be easier.

But then she remembers the day tucked away on a misty Nerinian beach with Brazen and the images that came that day about Dovev. What if it was her friend? What if Brazen was honing some kind of untapped skill, something that might help in answering the questions that came in the aftermath of the disappearance of the former Nerinian queen? Heartfire had been the one skilled in "seeing" and had seemed almost omnipotent to Lilliana. There isn't a doubt in her mind that the Seer's daughter might be any different.

So Lilliana, despite the apprehension that spreads in her veins and sinks her soul, goes North.

She follows a path she knows well and it is with an experienced eye that observes the way her forest falls behind her. The imperial Redwoods become sparser the further she goes and though the fog doesn't quite burn away in Nerine the same way it does in Taiga, sunlight does manage to trickle down through the silvery haze of the morning as it dissolves to midday. There is a good amount of searching involved (because this is Lilliana, because she has never been good with direction or navigation) and the sun has risen to almost its highest zenith by the time that a sense of familiarity creeps down her spine. The crimson mare slows and studies a quiet meadow, a place where the mist hangs as a veil and Lilliana stops.

Her blue eyes scan the shapes and shadows from where she wearily stands. Perhaps it doesn't want to be found, whatever it was.

Still, she can't pull herself away. A rather stubborn inkling of something keeps her here, determinedly searching through the afternoon fog. Lilliana walks forward though it seems like the haze blurs everything. What was so definitive only a few steps before suddenly becomes shadowed and the lithe mare finds herself fighting waves of panic and fear the more steps she takes. (Where is she? What if she gets lost? Is she already lost?) Nothing around her feels familiar. It all gets lost in the obscurity of the fog.

Until there is a shape. A silver silhouette. A spotted specter in all this gloom. (Why is she so afraid?) Lilliana has to swallow it, her fear though it widens her eyes and makes her heart race. (Run, run, run, her pulse hums.)

This ghost is the only solid thing she can sense. And she is more afraid of being alone than she is of the apparition. The chestnut comes closer until relief floods her voice and breaks the silence as warmth radiates from the stranger, "You're not a ghost." She comes closer until the form becomes more definitive. It takes on a recognizable one because who could ever forget those remarkable spots? "Roz?" Lilli prompts, remembering the name that the silver stallion had called her and the one that Lepis had inquired. "Or Breckin?"

LILLIANA

light me up, i will blaze
like a soul you have saved