"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
“Heaven-born.”
Maybe she had been once. Maybe she wasn’t anymore, maybe mortality had sunk too deep into her bones. It felt like a lifetime ago, when she had traveled time and space. When she had burst into the purest white light and tunnel visioned through dreams, memories, and lifetimes that she had lived and burned from her shimmering spot in the sky. More and more she wonders if that had all been another lie in that upside down place. One last trick.
She doesn’t answer right away when asked what might be pursuing them. How could she explain what Gale had become when she was still trying to wrap her head around what he was herself? Nashua had called it a Curse that had been haunting his family for a very long time. A curse that had been thought broken. It still sounded incredible to her ears and if she hadn’t experienced it for herself, she probably wouldn’t have believed it either.
In any other situation, she would have been warmed by the other’s defiance and lack of fear. This is not like the monster she had fought with Basilica. This wasn’t like the Leshen in the Underneath’s twisted forest. She had seen, first hand, the things that the creature wearing Gale’s face could do. The lighting and shadows curling in the heart of her anger just one of many reminders he had left her, along with the ragged scar across her chest and the many criss cross ones across her legs where her bones had protruded through.
Still leaning against the chestnut mare, she snarls softly as the bright blur of her metallic eyes find Lilliana. “You will run or you will die.” She says with grit and authority, wincing only slightly as she shifts her weight against the other as they move. Maybe more than once, she thinks with a toss of her star dusted head. She breathes deeply, trying to fight the mounting pressure of her anger that claws at her insides and burns the back of her throat. Finally, with an exasperated sigh, she looks away from her companion as her stars begin to darken in her fury. “You can’t fight this Cursed thing. None of us can.” Not yet, anyways. But she still hopes that whatever he had placed inside her was the key to his downfall. Was the hope that she had been searching for. “That’s why we need to get to the North. It’s banished from there and seems to be obeying that so far.” She murmurs softly, mostly talking to herself as the last of her energy starts to drain.
WE ARE ALL JUST FRAGILE THINGS / SOFT AND SMALL / BUT ALL THE BROKEN CAN FIND / HOPE IN THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES /
She had been somebody else, too, a lifetime ago.
Lilliana had been a bright-eyed girl who had laughed too much. She had been happy and content with her family, and the only thing she had ever wished for was their happiness. The only thing she had ever really wanted was to see her parents grow old, and to see her cousin Elena settled. They hadn't seemed like particularly large dreams, but they had been hers before she learned that whatever dream she had would eventually shatter.
Now she was a woman who struggled to let others close. Who struggled to see the good first in another before assuming the worst. Now, she was much quieter and the laughter no longer left her lips as easily as it once did.
Some things, though, haven't changed.
She had come to Tephra to search for her friend, Neverwhere. Her son said that she had come here (why, Lilliana didn't know but she had never questioned her companion's wandering ways before) and in her search for the former Khaleesi, she had found Ciri instead. Perhaps another horse would have turned tail and run as soon as the word 'monster' was mentioned. Perhaps another horse might have left the injured pegasus behind, but it has never been in Lilliana's nature to leave someone struggling.
That hasn't changed.
The bulk of the other woman shifts against her and Lilliana braces with it, offering Ciri the support she needed from the smaller mare. They moved towards Taiga, and despite the dim light provided by the stars, the impossibly tall trees that guard the entrance to the North were waiting for them. She could make out the silhouettes of a few Sequoias, and the trunks of the trees started to widen as they continued on their journey. She guided them both easily through the trails, familiar with them as she had once been with the paths in her childhood home, Murmuring Rivers.
There is nothing to say when Ciri reveals that she will run or she will die. The slender woman might reveal that she has died once already and that wasn't the worst thing to happen to her. That was something that happened firmly in the past, where it belonged. They hardly pass the border when she catches a glimpse of who the winged mare is speaking of through her memories: a monster who gleams iridescent blue.
He sports a white mane from head to tail and the thing to finally slows her - when nothing else in their quick pace has - are a set of magnificent white wings. There are some differences and it certainly isn't the man that she remembers, but the resemblance is strikingly similar. A Cursed thing, and where her mind had been overflowing with memories, it suddenly stilled and she stopped, feeling as if all the air had been pushed from her lungs.
"No," she says and her voice breaks even as she stands firmly against Ciri. She tries to be mindful of the broken bones and the wing that she had draped over her back, but it makes her voice come out even smaller. "No - no, it can't." She protests with a slight shake of her head. It had been burned away in the fires at Loess. Neverwhere had told her and even more than that, had shown Lilliana the demise of the thing that had tormented so many.
Something she had been unable (and unwilling) to do.
Her sides start to heave and then she steps tentatively forward, then another, doing the only thing she has ever known how to do in her moments of grief. She keeps moving forward, staring straight ahead and weaving through the Taigan forest. Lilliana can't bring herself to look at Ciri yet, not when she knows her eyes are full of tears. She remains quiet, following Leonidas until the approaching dawn forces him to fade as her silent tears do, leaving behind only damp marks on her copper cheeks, as she forces herself to emulate the pristine and serene lake in Hyaline that Elena had once compared her to.
"I'm sorry," she says, apologizing for her emotions. "My son - Nashua - is a healer. He shouldn't be far from here, but if you'd like, I can find a comfortable spot for you to wait." She turned her head and peered through the foggy wood, hoping that her eldest was still on the mainland.
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
She jolts forward as Lilliana suddenly halts and she curses under her breath, exhaling a sharp whisper of pain, as she steadies herself against the other. It takes her a moment to hear the broken tone of her voice, the words that follow. She twists her head and the glare that falls on the chestnut mare is something accusing as a realization dawns on her. “You know.” She says quietly, coldly, angrily. “You know what it is.”
Her companion starts to move and Ciri has no choice but to move with her, even as her stars turn an even darker shade of red. The other mare keeps her head turned away (Out of shame? Regret? She isn’t sure) and the dark scarred mare says nothing as well, instead she wallows in a pit of anger and pain and lets the warmth of her rising rage wrap around her. It is strange how she finds comfort in it, this prickly blanket that keeps her moving even as her body screams at her to stop.
Finally the other breaks the tense silence spreading between them and when she mentions Nashua, it is her turn to stumble to a halt. Now it comes back to her, that conversation that feels like a lifetime ago on the burned remains of the beach. “I serve Nashua as Thane of the North. Believe me, it won’t be the first time he’s patched me back together from the Curse.” She snarls softly (aware that these words might wound the one beside her but too angry to care), already on edge at what the chestnut pegasus would say to her this time, when he would see her wounds and recognize the Curse’s handiwork. With a groan, she finally slips from the other’s grasp and lets her unsteady legs give out. Her strength is waning but that black anger keeps her from submerging beneath her pain. Instead, she looks up at the mare, Nash’s mother she reminds herself, and sighs with frustration. “Look. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. Believe me, it wasn’t a pleasant experience for me either when I discovered it.” And she laughs darkly, a cold humor, as she remembers the first time Gale had ripped her apart.
10-02-2021, 09:46 PM (This post was last modified: 10-02-2021, 09:47 PM by lilliana.)
WE ARE ALL JUST FRAGILE THINGS / SOFT AND SMALL / BUT ALL THE BROKEN CAN FIND / HOPE IN THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES /
Keep moving forward, she tells herself, as she's told herself a thousand times.
Lilliana keeps looking ahead, watching for the sunrise. She waits for the trickle of light to suddenly wash them both and the former Guardian tells herself over and over again that the darkness will be behind them. They will return to Taiga, and so she keeps looking North, moving North because every inch of her skin prickles with the sensation of fear and revulsion and an anger that she has now lived and died and been resurrected with.
You know, comes Ciri's cold accusation, and Lilliana nearly stumbles. You know what it is.
"I don't," she tells the injured pegasus, still staring ahead. (She can't look at Ciri. Not now, not when her mind is traveling down a thousand different paths and recalling a different thousand memories. Not unless she wants to drag them both down this path.) "I didn't know it all," Lilliana says, remembering all the ways she had tried to understand it and had failed. Remembering the ways that it had once taunted her, the way that it had mangled and twisted her and all the years it took to untangle the knots.
Of realizing how easy it was for it to become tangled again.
"I am Nashua's mother," she says quietly, a soft voice against Ciri's hard one. "And he'll do what's required to keep you whole."
The winged mare finally relents, and folds her scarred legs well past the Taigan border. Lilliana stands silently, glancing behind them to make sure nothing has followed, and then ahead to look for a face she recognizes. Surely, if not Nashua or Yanhua, there would be Amarine or Borderline. Perhaps even Memorie or Cheri or Reynard. It was the thing she had come to count on in Taiga, that there would be family.
Her delicate ears flick back as Ciri laughs harshly - and Lilliana reminds herself that the Curse is no easy thing to survive or cope with - but the deep inhale she takes emerges as a shuddering sob.
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
Lilliana’s denials do not fall easily on her ears and Ciri snarls softly, unable to look at her just as the chestnut can’t bring herself to meet her gaze. “Don’t do that.” She says with thinly veiled disgust. “You don’t need to lie to me.” As if her stumble hadn’t given that away already.
As she slips down to the ground, Lil’s soft words reach her ears and she looks up at her, the melting pot of her silver eyes flashing. “At what cost to himself?” She says sharply, looking at his mother with open anger. “If you think I’m angry, wait till you see your son.” She snaps and looks away, closing her eyes and trying to focus on her breath. Trying to fight the rising nausea that follows her pain. "It took his son. The Curse." She finally whispers when it momentarily passes. When she opens her eyes again, she focuses her attention on the backside of the mare that had brought her here. What she doesn’t expect from her apology, or her cold bark of laughter, is the sudden shuddering of the reddish mare’s sides.
It takes her a moment to realize she is crying.
Oh great. Bad enough when Nash showed up and found out about her latest run in with the Curse. Making his mother cry? She doubts that’s something he would let go easily. “Lilliana.” She breathes harshly, wincing against the jolt of pain as she brushes against the magic Gale had placed inside of her again. “Tell me how it was defeated before.” Perhaps talking about it would distract her from her tears as much as it might distract her from her wounds. Besides, she needs to know. She needs to find out as much as she can if she is to protect her home and all those in it.
WE ARE ALL JUST FRAGILE THINGS / SOFT AND SMALL / BUT ALL THE BROKEN CAN FIND / HOPE IN THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES /
There had been so much anger when Lilliana had reunited with her dam, Aletta. The two hadn't meant to cross paths and when what remained of the Legacy clan had bid their farewells on the Pass, they hadn't thought they would see each other in this life again. The young mare that had willingly parted from her natal band was an entirely different being than the one Aletta had found; their Lilli had been quiet and withdrawn in those days (after the loss of their ancestral home, after the realization that her father wouldn't come striding in to save them like some fairytale hero, after learning of the death of Brochturach, and then the separation from Elena, her beloved cousin). The version that Aletta had found drifting in and out of the Taigan fog had been full of fury and grief and loss.
Their Lilli had always been soft-spoken, pensive. The one that Aletta had found had barely said anything at all, and when she did speak? All her words had been full of spite, meant to push everyone away; she hadn't wanted anybody close in the days after Lilliana had lost her daughter. She had wanted what she so clearly deserved: to be alone.
But her mother - Mountainborn and thus unyielding - was always there. Always pushing, always pressing her, never allowing Lilliana to withdraw. Challenging her much like Ciri does now.
"I'm not lying," she tells the dark horse, still unable to look at her. Her blue eyes search through the fog, hoping to catch the familiar sight of one of her children or the other Taigans that she had come to know as family. Her voice catches on the last word, and her dark nostrils flared as Lilliana stood there, trying to quiet the way her thoughts stormed across her mind. "Don't you think if I knew it better -," Lilliana says, "understood it all, that I might have been able to protect my family?"
Ciri's anger sparks her own, but having a decade to learn control over it, the older mare turns to meet the silver inferno raging within the gaze of the other. She knows that the tears have left trails down her copper cheeks, and there is no hiding the pain that flashes to the injured Thane on Lilliana's refined face. She is tired of repeatedly holding herself together, only to watch everything around her fall apart time and time again.
Her slender form stands firm as she offers her shoulder again as Ciri outwardly winces, and the chestnut cranes her head towards the once-star.
The Curse has stolen her grandson. Taken a child of Nashua's. Shock ripples across her lovely features until grief briefly takes hold, and then Lilliana pushes it away. Her broken family is not the only thing torn apart, as the former Guardian glances down at one of Ciri's broken wings. She stares at the odd angle of it, trying not to let herself dwell on how the injury came about.
There is anger everywhere, the energy rising everywhere, and Lilliana thinks instead of all the years she lost to this emotion. It might have kept away the pain, but what else had she pushed away?
Was Ciri using it as a shield, as Lilliana once had?
Lilliana considered quietly, "I don't think it's something that can be defeated, Ciri." Her voice softened, knowing that this probably wasn't what the pegasus wanted to hear. She could hear the want - need - for vengeance quaking in the voice of the other, but that has never been her way. She hadn't been able to go to Loess with Neverwhere, hadn't been able to bring herself to fight against Celina. "Not in that way," she continues. It couldn't be killed by fire, it had lasted generations through Wolfbane's line and still continued on.
Perhaps there was no killing the thing.
Perhaps it would exist as long as Beqanna itself did.
"Is Carnage something that can be destroyed? The Mountain turned to rubble?"
Beqanna is not in her blood, and she does not revere (though she is cautious of them) these things the same way that a native might. But then the things that Lilliana had been taught were concrete and absolute had been shattered long ago. Everything she has known was bound to break.
