[private] i had a name but they took it from me

[lilliana]

Her last memory was of the Pass, a rocky plateau that had connected them to the kingdoms of Beyond. Lilliana and her brother, Malachi, stood on a small peak with a range of mountains surrounding them. They had been arguing, she remembers that much, though recalls little else. The dream itself was sporadic, and often the memories were out of place. There was Aletta, her silver brow furrowed; but why? She would blink, and then she would be alone, looking over lonely ledges. Then there would be Elena, murmuring something about Windskeep and Aesop and having to leave. 

And finally, there was Malachi. 

His mouth would move, and though Lilli had known that the words would be sharp and stern, there was no sound. His face would darken like the coming storm behind them - a late autumn gale that would bring torrents of rain and shake the earth with thunder and lightning. And that was where the memory went strange, where the dream would shift. 

She would try to explain, try to speak, but Malachi’s face would darken and darken, like the shadows from the dark clouds above had cast a mask over his once silver face. She remembers trying to tell him something, remembers that she was the reason he was angry. He was taking his family to Liridon, to a place called the Donietas. They would be protected there, and though she can’t remember why she refused, Lilliana had said no. 

That she would - 

What? What would she do? 

Malachi’s face would contort then, and then lightning would begin to strike. The world lit up in a blaze of white, blinding light and as Lilli would look to her brother, the last thing she sees is that his eyes have changed. They are no longer the soul-searching deep that he shared with their dam but a bright shade of electric blue.

***

The dream happened over several nights. Lilliana would close her eyes and try to rest in this strange place, and yet what would happen beneath her shut lids was even stranger. The memory would play itself over and over again, almost like a taunt, teasing her to remember. She would wake with no more clarity than the evening before, and the only thing that Lilli knew was that the mountains behind her were as strange as the dream she had. Her blue gaze would look behind her, and she would stare up at the purple peaks for something familiar when nothing else was. 

Where was she? 

How did she get here? 

Her chance to finally ask comes. Somebody was ahead, and the slender mare moved off into a trot. She was unmarked - no flame on her shoulder, no kelpie bite across her, no cut on her forehead. There was nothing unusual about her; nothing that marked her for the Immortal she actually was. Her coat glinted fire-gold in the sunshine, and she came closer to the other horse, Lilliana tossed her head to brush the curling forelock away from her face to see the stranger more clearly. "Forgive me," she called out when within earshot. Lilli slowed a little then, and exhaled softly, trying to blow out some of her growing nerves she came nearer. "But I'm looking for the Pass. Something is wrong, and I think I must have gotten turned around somewhere. None of this..." Lilli glanced to the mountains ahead of them, and then cautiously back to the stranger, searching their face as she had done to the unfamiliar horizon.

"None of this seems right."

@Ryatah

[Ryatah]

Ryatah

WHEN I WAS SHIPWRECKED I THOUGHT OF YOU

IN THE CRACKS OF LIGHT I DREAMED OF YOU

She shouldn’t be here.

She could not stay in Hyaline forever, she knew this, but she also should not be in the meadow, at least not by herself. There had been a familiar itch beneath her skin, though, the kind that she could not resist. The one that felt like a band being pulled taut, and instead of seeing how hard it needed to be stretched before it snapped she wanted to cut it herself. She had not felt it in a long time, not since being killed by Gale, and she was surprised that upon feeling it she did not feel anticipation, she felt anger.

The tension had brewed like a storm in her veins and immediately she wanted to lash at it, to make it disappear before she gave into it. When the scar across her chest—the one left behind from Gale ruthlessly extracting her heart—began to burn with a phantom pain she knew the tendrils of shadow were soon to follow, and instinctively she tried to find Atrox.

But in the haze of darkness that crept across the edges of her mind she misjudges where she is trying to teleport to, and when she finds herself in the meadow the shock of landing somewhere unexpected jars her even further.

She stands for a long moment, her heartbeat pounding an unsteady rhythm in her ears, and she is suddenly hyper-aware of how loudly her blood rushes in her veins, of how bright her aura is even in the light of day—how she is a blinding white, glittering beacon that seems to scream for danger to look at her.

When Lilliana’s voice cuts through her panic she spins towards her in a shower of stardust, the soft glow of her halo seeming to draw the worry and confusion straight from the depths of her nearly black eyes so that they might reflect clearly on the surface. “What?” She says the word without really thinking, and it takes a moment for Lilli’s face to register as someone familiar, and there is a moment of relief that floods through her once it does. She had never seen Lilliana in the void, which leads her to believe that this is real, because her mind mostly circulated the same faces over and over: Atrox and Carnage.

Only, none of the words that Lilliana says make sense.
She stands there in a heavy silence, the anxiety once more building in her chest as she tries to decipher what she is saying—the Pass, and how none of this is right. None of this seems right, her mind repeats, and she looks around at the meadow; the same meadow that she has been coming to for over a hundred years, the same meadow that remained one of the few parts of Beqanna that was always untouched. The meadow that was now completely not right and not real, but she looks at Lilliana’s familiar blue eyes and forces herself to speak to her as if she is. “Lilli, we’re in the meadow. Where is the Pass?”

AND IT WAS REAL ENOUGH TO GET ME THROUGH —
BUT I SWEAR YOU WERE THERE

@lilliana

[lilliana]

She knows Ryatah’s face, but somehow, Lilliana knows something is wrong.

For a moment, she simply stands there. Her blue eyes widen - especially when the silver angel calls her Lilli - because the only ones who had ever called her that had been her family. Those outside the band from Murmuring Rivers had always addressed her as Lilliana. It was only when she had gotten away from Aletta’s dark, watchful gaze that the young chestnut had begun to truly blossom; those who encountered Valerio’s youngest daughter then were greeted with a warm smile and asked to call her Lilli.

Ryatah hadn’t been in Murmuring Rivers, had she?
Or had she met her later, after they had ventured to Culloden?

The memories begin to return, brief flashes of insight that make no sense to her. She remembers the doe and her fawn, but the setting remains hazy. There are other memories, something about Ryatah, of looking like an angel and not feeling like one, and so the copper woman peers up to the other mare haloed in an ethereal glow. There had been no angels in the Beyond, and when the familiar glittering light of her halo graces the confused planes of her face, more memories come. She remembers a forest where the trees stood so tall that it seemed like they could pierce the sky.

Her heart wants her to know that place so badly that the sudden yearning in her chest overwhelms her. But the parts of her that remember dying, that remember the heartache and the loss that is buried there, pushes what she might know of it away. Lilliana gets stuck in the middle instead, trying to remember and trying to understand the emotions at war within her. She very nearly forgets the Meadow - the same one where she first laid eyes on Wolfbane, not far from where she had first met Brazen and evaded wolves with Neverwhere - until Ryatah reminds her of where she is standing.

Lilliana closes her eyes because nothing about this makes sense, and there is something about being in the dark that makes all this easier somehow. ”I was there just yesterday,” she murmurs. And yet she knows that isn’t right, because how could she have just been in another place - another land entirely (and how does she know that?) - when she is here now? Bits and pieces of her first, second, and now third life begin to converge together, making no sense to the mare who could only recall fragments of her first one this morning.

”But now I’m here,” she says, opening her eyes and looking at Ryatah again, almost afraid to say more. Tephra, the thought comes. It’s volcano emerges in her mind, and suddenly, there are thoughts about Warden and Wishbone and going to Tephra because -

That doesn’t come.

Only more confusion does.

”Ryatah, what am I doing here?” she asks in a voice barely above a whisper, "I was in Tephra, before the Pass. Before the Night came and it stayed too long."

@Ryatah

[Ryatah]

Ryatah

WHEN I WAS SHIPWRECKED I THOUGHT OF YOU

IN THE CRACKS OF LIGHT I DREAMED OF YOU

They stand there, their own separate realities colliding, and somewhere in the dust there lies the truth. She thinks she can see it—thinks that this time, she knows what is real and not real. As far as she knows the void had done nothing to her actual memories; she remembers everything that has ever happened to her, remembers everyone she has loved and all the mistakes she has made. It’s a gut reaction, a bone-deep instinct that tells her the Pass that Lilliana speaks of does not exist, and never has existed, in Beqanna—this place where she has been reborn and remade so many times that she is sure its dust is now apart of her bones.

But how can she convince her friend of that when she isn’t sure of anything else?
How can she explain that to her when Ryatah isn’t even sure if this conversation is real?

“Tephra,” she repeats after the chestnut mare, still searching her familiar blue eyes, as if she might untangle the confusion if she looks hard enough. “You went from Tephra, to the Pass, and then the eclipse happened?” she says, trying to make sense of the things she says. Tephra and the eclipse, she knows—the relief at being able to remember an event and place it in the correct order of her own life was nearly overwhelming, and she can feel her own confidence surge. She remembers the eclipse; she remembers the beginning and the end of it, remembers keeping Este alive in between. And she knows, with complete certainty, that the eclipse had ended long before Gale killed her.

It also happened years ago, but Lilliana speaks as if it is much more recent.

She can feel her confidence begin to waver, can feel the darkness thread through the light that breaks through; that maybe this is all an elaborate illusion and that is why Lilli speaks of things that make sense tangled with the things that do not.

“I think we need to retrace your steps a bit more slowly,” she offers gently, hoping that perhaps by dissecting the situation more carefully she will keep herself from unraveling into a panic. “Were you at the Pass with anyone?” her tongue snags a little on the name of the place, seeming to stumble over the unfamiliarity of it, and she decides to take that as further sign that this is not a place she is supposed to know.

AND IT WAS REAL ENOUGH TO GET ME THROUGH —
BUT I SWEAR YOU WERE THERE

@lilliana