[private] Nothing burns like the cold, but only for a while; Lilliana

[Leilan]

When Lilli closes her eyes literally, he muses if perhaps she does this often; feel the pain, keep it inside, afraid to let it go. A moment passes in which he wonders if she has no-one else - and realizes the he certainly hasn’t - to do this with, not right now. The first time they met she had been looking for Elena - she needed her. Now Elena had not returned that he knows of, or at least not permanently. But Lilliana still needs her mirrors.

I never meant for anyone to get hurt. ”I know. Everyone knows.” He follows up so easily, so quickly, that he almost surprises himself. It is true though - nobody would believe she did anything intentionally wrong. She is too kind for that. ”So stand for it. You can trust your decisions, Lilliana. Better than mine.” he compares. He isn’t always ... entirely good, not the way she is. Sometimes he wants to tease, to even hurt (seldom though), to put his finger on the sore spot, pour some salt into open cuts. She never does. She always has her vision of what is right played out in her mind’s eye.

She just has to accept that no matter one’s intentions, another can run with it. That other people have minds of their own, and maybe other intentions.

”Izora and I didn’t get into that level of detail,” yet, he says and tilts his head. Lilli might understand from his phrasing, something else was shared instead, though he doesn’t go into detail about their intimate conversation and tests of limits and trust right there and then; that’s so ething to resolve between themselves. ”She said a conversation with you would be interesting.”

nothing burns like the cold

Leilan

@[lilliana]

[lilliana]

- it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger -
we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution?

LILLIANA

She wants to ask him if everyone knows, why doesn’t she? If everybody is so sure of who she is or what she intends, why isn’t she? Lilliana wants to tell him that she has always prided herself on her ability to adapt. She’s always told herself that it was a sign of strength, a measure of resilience.

It’s been said that your best trait is often your worst.

This isn’t adapting, what she’s talking about with Leilan. Lilliana doesn’t want to adapt anymore. She doesn’t want to brace or soften the blows. The dragon stallion tells her to trust herself - her decisions - and while she doesn’t fully agree with that, the chestnut mare reminds herself that she spoke her peace to Leilan. She told him the truth and it was up to him what he made of it.

He has, she thinks. So she’ll start here, with this decision. With this moment.

"You’re capable of great things, @[Leilan].” The Taigan murmurs quietly and Lilliana does believe that. He - like so many she has encountered in Beqanna - has a touch of destiny about him. An aura that he carries around with him like the Isle burns the night sky with. He is capable of great hurt or great joy, like any of them.

An ear stays with him as he speaks about Lethy and Lilliana does turn her head then, taking her gaze away from the gray winter breakers. They didn’t get into that level of detail and it feels like he leaves something hanging, though Lilli is unsure of what. Something had transpired between the Matriach and the Freyr but their conversation gets deflected back to the present, back to the task at hand. She shakes her head gently, a softer expression coming across her refined features.

"I keep hearing that,” she manages, sounding something like her old self. A smile tugs on one side of her dark mouth as a brisk arctic wind pushes past them, freezing in a thin line on her face. "A unified North,” the red mare finally says. "A North where the territory lines don’t matter. A North where the marauders of the Isle know they are welcome to what Taiga has. A North where if a mare is stolen from Nerine, her captors will be met with the swift anger of an entire realm.” She grows still as the fog billows past their hocks, rolling in off the tide.

"I’m not entirely sure how to go about all of this,” she finally says, half-laughing. "But when Neverwhere was... gone and I was in Pangea, you were who I thought of.” Lilliana exhales and continues on, "Taiga needs numbers. Nerine needs a reputation again. Those are things that take time and I’m not sure if…,” fear knots in her throat and cuts off her last words.

Lilliana doesn’t think he’ll come back. It’s been quiet of late - almost too quiet. She doesn’t want Taiga (or the entirety of the North) to wait for a blow that may or may not come. She wants them ready. Even if it isn’t him, there will be another. There is Ghaul. There are other monsters who roam Beqanna and she wants her home to be ready for them. She wants her children protected.

"If Neverwhere and Lethia and I were to agree to it, would you take up the mantle of the North?”

image credit to rigardatta

[Leilan]

She doesn't reply for a little while after his statements - he's so sure of her, but it doesn't surprise him she doesn't immediately respond. The Lilliana he knows is one who processes her thoughts internally, and has a hard time accepting a compliment about herself. Modest to the point of being... meek? Yes - she might not agree with the word, but she self-sacrifices so much, others might take advantage of it - others had taken advantage of it. Surely she could have escaped from Pangea, but someone might have threatened someone she loves. Anything she cares about - and she would have stayed. Willingly, thinking it's the best thing to do.

However, when she speaks, she changes the topic - reverses the conversation until it is about him, instead. He blinks at her once, twice, taking in her... was it a compliment? He does not counter - that seems pointless. He does mull over the (almost shy?) comment she made, ears moving back and forth a few times. "Aren't we all, given the chance?" he muses - but his heart isn't in it; this is not a discussion, this is a conclusion she had made long before, and only now speaks it aloud. Whether she is right about it, remains to be seen, of course. But that's not for him to decide.

Great things - but he is certain that this could be either for good, or for bad; or perhaps in his case, both, should he go in that direction.

There are a few directions he has not gone into yet, and he steers clear of them for some reason.

He remembers Straia's challenge - your deepest desire? King in the north. Had it been? At the time, yes, but really, really really, he just wants his old life back. Icicle Isle was just one part of that old life - his wife had been the other half that he cannot seem to find again. Lilliana might be the closest thing he has - a friend who challenges him similarly. Eurwen might do it too, but she has too many of her mother's looks for him to be completely comfortable with that.

When he continues the conversation, almost skipping over Izora Lethia and moving on to this talk supposedly being interesting, she shows a little of her mischievous side, and he smiles at that. But then she starts on politics, and he knows their playful banter is over.

A unified North - at that, he nods. It had been more unified when Breckin ruled and was his wife, and when Aten and his predecessor ruled as friends of the northern kingdom. "Taiga was always the independent one," he interjects with a touch of humour to his eyes. That it is Taiga's initiative to try to unify the north is an irony not lost on Leilan.

For a moment, just a small moment, it seems like this conversation is becoming a personal one. You were who I thought of - a phrase that could have been as suggestive as meet me in the fall - but he knows now that is not the way she thinks of him, or at least, he is pretty sure that's not it. So he waits, still as a glacier, still as the lake in the northern part of the Isle - still as the mirror he has been throughout this whole conversation. Taiga needs numbers - warriors, she means, and guardians; they have more children than they can protect - Nerine needs a reputation again - it had relied on Heartfire's reputation, but she was no longer the face that represented them. He nods, agrees - he knows this. Many things are wrong in the presentation of Nerine these days - they're not acting like a kingdom, but as three separate ones - not even allied ones, as they don't usually stand up for one another; but rather like it's some sort of truce.

That he doesn't usually get himself involved, doesn't mean he hasn't seen it, too. Even though that makes him a part of it, just the same.

It is her question that baffles him, that makes his still-face fall in surprise, dropping the mirror and becoming... he's not sure. He tilts his head, for a moment wondering if she is joking, but no, she would not joke about a thing like this. So then he starts to wonder. Would he? Would he want the responsibility to act against any enemy they have - to attack Bane if he shows his face? To steal from Pangea or Loess if they made the wrong move? To find a replacement leader to fill the hole that another might leave behind?

He wonders if he could - but could any of them, right now, do better?

He chuckles a bit. "I had appointed a council on the Isle once before, just in case I made stupid decisions." Thankfully it had never come to that; his authority had never needed to be undermined. Nowadays, it seemed one wasn't needed, not so much anyway.
Then, his eyes grow serious once again, and he nods to Lilli. "Your wish is my command," and he bows his head to her in what's perhaps better described as a slow, low nod. "I will serve wherever you decide is best." Though when he rises, the twinkle is there in his semi-green eyes again. "But I do expect you to act as my conscience."

nothing burns like the cold

Leilan

@[lilliana] sorry worst typo/autocorrect in the world

[lilliana]

- it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger -
we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution?

LILLIANA

Her eyes remain steady on the horizon. Lilliana watches the waves as they come crashing in and she becomes aware of how long they have standing here. The salt tangles her mane and she knows will continue to smell the brine on her skin for hours after. The chestnut mare has done a fair amount of her thinking beneath Taiga’s tall canopy but most of it has been done here. Even from the very beginning, Lilli has always found it easy to dream beneath the open sky by the coast. It’s easier to send thoughts out (and up) with the turn of a tide.

"You’ll have to tell me more about what the North was like then,” she murmurs. From Aten, she had pieced together the history of the Redwoods to a reign of a stallion called Ruan (and sometimes she thinks she’s caught a glimmer of a patrolling wolf echoing from the primordial ferns). Still, Lilliana isn’t Beqanna born-and-bred. The fine red pelt that shivers against the brisk winter cold tells a story of another place - a much warmer one with a waterfall that rivaled Tephra’s, with a valley so deep that it would have made the Redwoods behind them small - despite the tragedies that have shadowed it.

There hadn’t been an ocean in Murmuring Rivers. There hadn’t been one in Paraiso, either or Culloden. Of the many things that had lured the copper woman to Taiga, the ocean is one of the few reasons she stayed (the other two are tucked safely away in the forest at her back).

Lilliana, though chilled, is relaxed and at ease next to a stallion she considers a friend. She has known @[Leilan] for years and perhaps that’s why these words slip so easily between them. He had been one she thought of (in terms of Crowns while she considered Curses in Pangea). So that’s why she thinks nothing of it when glances sidelong at him and peers up at from beneath her dark lashes when he laughs. Even though the winter day is fair, there is something brighter than the daylight in his rolling laughter.

It makes her smile.

Leilan tells her that he’s appointed a council - like they have done in Taiga, like the half-formed idea she still has in the back of her mind - on the Isle before. It baffles her, that like Neverwhere and Eurwen and Lethy, the silver roan acts like sovereignty is something she can give. (She is the daughter of a King, though Valerio had been too modest that call himself that, if bloodlines and histories mattered at all here.) That quick smile falters because there is a memory of someone who seemed to agree with her.

But this day is pleasant and there is warmth twinkling back at her from the green-eyed gaze of her present companion. It makes it easy to smile again. "You tell me,” Lilliana says. He’s been a leader before. He’s been in the North longer than she or Lethy or Neverwhere have. If there is anyone who might know it or what it needs, it should be Leilan. And when he tells that he expects her to act as his confidence, well, "I doubt you need me for that.” She banters with him and beams that impish grin. A lack of confidence is not something she would attribute to the Freyr.

The winter wind blows past again, reminding her of the hours passed and the ones left. Lilliana tilts her head towards the towering sentinels behind them, "If your feeling indulging, perhaps you’d be willing to keep me company while I make my rounds.”

image credit to rigardatta