"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
The trio has spent a few days on Ischia now - enjoying the tides of Paradise. The sun puts a lovely sheen to the copper hue of her coat and her boys seem to thrive on the difference of the shores of Ischia. For a few days, her boys challenge the winds and dare the ocean waves. They shout and laugh and race and the copper mare thinks that coming to Ischia is perhaps the best decision she has made since they were born.
They all had deserved a break.
"Hmmm?” Lilliana replies but keeps walking, her attention focused on another section of the beach ahead of them. An ear flicks back to Nashua before she turns her head to look back at him. The flaxen colt looks up before briefly glancing at his brother, "Did you know Eugene glows?”
She slows and the expression on her face - while still smiling - turns expectant as she waits for the pegasus colt to elaborate. When she finally stops, Nashua bluntly says: "Well, Eugene glows and Yanhua and I glow.” He means his striped markings, the gold of his brothers' mane. She feels her brows raise as he finally continues, "Is he our brother too?”
An emotion falters across her face before Lilliana picks up the pieces, "Love,” she says with adoring patience. She glances at Yanhua as well, curious if the question lingered behind his blue eyes too. "Eugene’s mother glows.” She can feel his green eyes peering up at hers, more questions that she isn’t able to answer rising behind them as the tide behind them has. The chestnut mare considers an idea, "His mother is a Nereid.”
Nashua’s young face scrunches up in curiosity, side-glancing to his twin to see if Yanhua knew what their mother was saying. "A ne?-,” his tongue catches, "a nenereed?”
She can’t help but laugh, fully stopping to turn and lower her head to the colts behind her. "Neer-ee-id,” Lilliana says slower. Nashua struggles with the word a few more times before he finally conquers it, looking up at his mother with an impish and proud grin. Her boys are still young and therefore their legs are rarely still. Before long, they are back to testing Ischia’s changing currents and playing in the tides. A sea breeze tugs at her crimson mane and the Taigan wonders about @[Aquaria], another tropical Nereid.
What have the tides of Time changed for her, she silently wonders.
LILLIANA
all that i'm after is a life full of laughter (as long as i'm laughing with you)
04-11-2020, 07:23 PM (This post was last modified: 04-11-2020, 07:24 PM by Aquaria.)
aquaria
- THE TIDE IS HIGH, IT'S SINK OR SWIM -
The island unfolded around them in all of its verdant wonder. Beautiful, any time of year. It was dependable that way. White as sea foam, white as pearls, Aquaria fell back into the ebb and flow of island life, a watchful eye and guiding presence to those who wished for one.
The luminous violet depths of her eyes swept the shorelines daily, and if she bothered to examine herself more closely she might have realized that her time in Loess had left lasting marks on her psyche. The hyper-vigilence, the increased patrols, her desire for Halcyon to follow in the path that Pteron had set him on. She wanted to feel safe again, in the place she'd always felt safe before. Watching her friend's son, and then her friend herself be snatched so unwittingly from their home. It shook her. It made her question the security of her own home, the safety of her own children. So she swam in circles everyday, watching and waiting, unwilling to put her guard down.
Hypocritical, really.
Here she touted peace and serenity, and felt anything but in her own heart. Old habits die hard though. Her smile was as brilliant as ever when she came across the copper coated mare shining on a golden beach. She looked too elegant against the island background, refined where Ischia was careless. Her boys though (Aquaria could only assume the pair of colts splashing in three waves belonged to the Taigan mare), they looked as happy as clams at high tide with sand in their tufted manes and salt crusting to a sparkly white where three water dried on them. Wild, carefree little boys, as all little ones should be.
The seamare emerged from the jungle depths with a smile on her finely-scaled lips. "Lilliana!" She greeted in her lilting tone, hooves sinking into the hot sand with every step as she drew close. "I'm glad you haven't forgotten about us here on our little island. Is it business or pleasure today?" She pressed a welcoming kiss to the lady's bronze-bright cheek.
Nodding to the long legged foals dashing in the surf, she let one hip hitch in a relaxed pose. Cormorant would love them, she could already tell. "When did that happen?" She asked with a cheeky toss of her head. They were beautifully made children, a credit to the mare Aquaria was conversing with.
04-17-2020, 08:25 PM (This post was last modified: 04-17-2020, 08:28 PM by lilliana.)
('Let’s pretend, okay?’ a little blonde girl had once asked and Lilli agreed. Of course, she agreed. She is much very like her father that way. It had all started out as a game; their own version of hide and seek. Here I am!, a smile would say, and here I hide.)
Funny, how the years change things.
And funny how they don't.
It’s such an odd thought and it only occurs to her now when the salt-air is tangling her copper mane.
There had been a time - a time before Taiga and her fog, before Nerine and her imposing ledges - that she hadn’t seen the ocean. She remembers asking and wondering and dreaming about what an endless expanse of water could look like. She had known her laughing creeks, her trickling streams. That there could be a meeting place - a place where the Moon and Sea might embrace like lovers and then break their own hearts by coming apart - had amazed her.
She loves Taiga for the trees that reach for the stars; she stays for the Sea that churns out to worlds unknown.
Or she thought she had known love.
From where she stands, a whole new world is encompassed by the two little boys in the surf. There is Magic in this. In watching the two flaxen colts experience new things, in taking them new places. She has seen the Ocean many times now - in Nerine, in Taiga, and in Ischia. But like this? Through the eyes of her children? Never like this. It gives the chestnut a whole new way of seeing.
The tropical sun dapples her skin and eases her mind (though she is still plagued by dreams, still lingering remembrances of something Elena once said: that happiness and hurt look the same when buried beneath layers of smiles). The surf engages her boys and each day they grow a little stronger, a little more fearless of the waves and bolder in the presence of the surf. It’s how they play so easily in it today.
It’s her name on the sea breeze that draws her attention away from the rambunctious pair. The motherly smile on her face turns into a grin, pleased to finally spot the lovely Ischian (are there any horses in this tropical paradise who are not as beautiful - if not more so - than their alluring island home?). "Aquaria,” the copper mare exhales, dipping her head in greeting before turning her cheek into the warmth of her breath.
She smelled of the flourishing jungle behind them, of secret pools of water and of the lovely fragrant flowers that Velkan loved to adorn his antlers with.
Lilliana leans into her touch and returns the gesture, placing a kiss of her own on the curve of her cheek. "Forget about you? About this place?” Her head gestures around them, "I’m surprised anybody ever leaves.” It was hard for her to even imagine the diplomats wanting to leave their island utopia.
”A friendly visit,” she teases. "But if you have news, I don’t mind a little bit of both.”
Her eyes glance anxiously out at the crashing waves again before she calls: "Remember the undertow!” The trio had scouted it out the days before and the twins were only allowed so far, in certain places to avoid it. She watches - waits - before they race down the beach, coming closer to the shore than they had previously been. Lilliana snorts gently before turning her attention back to the champagne mare with a light-hearted grin, "Colts.”
It falls away easily though, Aquaria’s question cutting through her as easily as the Handmaiden must slip through the waves.
Her attention drifts away, watching the two distant figures dancing in the waves further along the beach. Her expression turns apprehensive, almost as if she was afraid that they might hear. (Of course, they can’t. She knows this and yet the words themselves are still so hard to say.)
”It’s-,” she starts as her heart recounts every beat, "a long story.”
"Or perhaps,” Lilliana says with faltering grace, "not that long. A foolish mare. A handsome face.” Shaking her head, she pushes away memories of tentacled monsters and masked smiles. She came to Ischia to forget, not remember. But it’s never been that easy. She knows better than that.
Wistfully staring down the beach again, she poises a question. (Remembering those games from before, needing the familiarity it provides - a crutch and a vice both), "If you could pretend just one thing - anything at all @[Aquaria] - what would it be?”
LILLIANA
all that i'm after is a life full of laughter (as long as i'm laughing with you)
04-17-2020, 09:13 PM (This post was last modified: 04-17-2020, 09:13 PM by Aquaria.)
aquaria
- THE TIDE IS HIGH, IT'S SINK OR SWIM -
The copper mare seemed lost in thought as Aquaria approached her, eyes cast out to sea as though she were seeing something miles past it. It felt almost rude to interupt, but she had and Lilli didn't seem upset about it.
And for a moment, all was light hearted as they exchanged greetings and pleasantries, kisses and grins. Where the sea mare's sons were now well on their way to self sufficiency, the pair romping in the water seemed very young, babies from the current year. With a gentle push, she reached for the water, stilling it in a little hoop like a looking glass. There. Now the boys could see what lay beneath the normally restless waves. That should buy she and their mother a few minutes at least.
Her eyes swept between Lilliana and the playing colt's, reflexively aware of them after a three years raising her own boys. They'd been so sweet at that age, so open to every new thing the world had to show them. A soft sigh exhaled, wistful. "Nothing terribly exciting. We're only recently back, actually. I have two boys of my own now, did you know? We spent a year in Loess, on accident more or less." She shrugged, knowing that really didn't even begin to cover the reality of that situation. What else could she say, though?
When her companion's demeanor took its own downturn, it became clear that more had passed in the time since their last meeting than one conversation could say. In her unwitting way, she'd cut straight to the heart of things and now she had to deal with it. Chagrined, she found herself relating more than she would have liked to her friend's brief story.
When Lilli's own unguarded question came, it was all too easy to answer. With false breeziness, she laughed, fractured sound. "Oh, well, that's simple." She shrugged, eyes bright. "I pretend he's coming back. I used to pretend he loved me when I knew better and now I pretend that he's coming back. For his sons, if not for me. But-" the words that had spilled out like blood from an artery cut off on a sharp hiccuping breath. "I know. I know he's not. Not for me, not for them."
Feelings tight in her chest, words she'd barely allowed herself to think, let alone speak poured out. A deep, shuddering breath rattled her from head to hoof as she looked back to her friend with a pained smile. "Your turn." And she meant it. If she could spill her guts, then so could Lilli. Then maybe, finally, the island could begin it's healing work.
04-18-2020, 05:23 PM (This post was last modified: 04-18-2020, 05:29 PM by lilliana.)
Aquaria has all the practiced ease of a parent, the chestnut realizes, watching the way she calms the waves. More than calms - she creates a window for them to peer into and fascinated, her colts take the opportunity. No longer running and bucking in with the whitecaps, they stand still and the Taigan mare releases an appreciative breath.
The sea mare’s skill isn’t missed by Lilliana who by now realizes that the Ischian has surely occupied a child or two of her own by now. (How far away their last meeting seems - that winter day in the Meadow with Aten and Popinjay and the Chamber mare, Straia.)
"Thank you,” Lilli murmurs, well aware that she must look like the overwhelmed mother she so often feels. Her earlier inclination is confirmed and it reveals Lilliana’s sweet smile. "I didn’t,” she says, feeling guilty for not knowing these details about Aquaria’s life. So much time had slipped between them. "Though it shows,” and her head inclines towards the direction of the two colts.
Unable to keep her curiosity at bay, especially when it concerns @[Aquaria], she asks: "But tell me, how did you end up in Loess?” Her mind travels back to that earlier thought as the shadows of worry darken her eyes. Had she been held as a prisoner? Ischia’s loyalty was to Tephra - to the Magician queen Isilya - so why would an Ischian be kept in the red foothills of the South?
An accident, Aquaria says.
"And your boys? How are they coping with being home?” Her eyes drift out towards her own sons, remembering upheaval of her own youth (though that wouldn’t come until much later. She had been a yearling when they started trading homes like the seasons.) Something, she had promised, she would never do with her own children and yet here she is - dragging them about Beqanna as if they were some kind of nomadic band.
Listening as Aquaria speaks, the worry never leaves her eyes and it kindles a different kind of flame that burns behind them.
While she has always known the champagne mare as one who always cuts to the heart of things - a spear of directness in her words that should always be appreciated in politics and friendship - it still catches her off guard. Where the rest of Ischia is all around them in beautiful shades of Eden, Aquaria laughs. There is nothing of Paradise in it - it feels nothing like the sunshine that warms their backs, shimmers their coats.
Where Lilliana had been ready to go - to let herself blur against the lines of this tropical sanctuary and her haze of dreams - the Ischian keeps her grounded to the white sand they stand upon.
Aquaria has the grace to fall on her own sword. Does Lilliana?
"You don’t think he will?” she asks quietly - something she silently chides herself for as foolish. Still, the idealist in her wants it for Aquaria, still hopes it for her, if that's what she wants. All those stories and here she is - still searching for that (thin) silver lining.
If she says she is sorry, would that equate to pity, she wonders? Whatever the sea mare pretends (like her own earlier admission), there are wide cracks in the words - enough to be swallowed by an incoming tide, enough for a tidal pool to be left behind.
"My turn?” she repeats, finally able to look at the finned mare beside her.
Tell me something lovely.
Show me something real.
Pain writes its story in so many ways, on so many faces. It shouldn’t shock Lilliana to find it waiting for her on Aquaria’s. It shouldn't but there it is, eclipsing the sun above them.
"I don’t know,” she admits, realizing that she had been withholding the words. "I just-,” anguish peaking like the crashing waves surrounding them, "don’t know.” She has nothing of Aquaria’s slicing ability, no way to carve the words out other than the barest ones she offers. She simply stares out to where her boys play. "And I should, shouldn’t I?”
Her tongue, her words, remain as mercurial as ever - and the sword?
Beyond reach.
LILLIANA
all that i'm after is a life full of laughter (as long as i'm laughing with you)
04-20-2020, 10:32 PM (This post was last modified: 04-20-2020, 10:32 PM by Aquaria.)
aquaria
- THE TIDE IS HIGH, IT'S SINK OR SWIM -
It seemed impossible that so much time had fled been their meetings, and yet here they stood, Aquaria with two half grown sons and Lilli with new babes and the world on her slim shoulders. Her token of parental solidarity seemed to be just the ticket, the tiny fish and glittering sand enough to keep the flaxen boys fixated on the world beneath the waves. Her world, when it really came down to it.
"Nothing you won't get the hang of," she replied, smiling with equal measures of exhaustion and satisfaction. That was motherhood, wasn't it? Being pushed to the edge of reason, only to be brought back with a darling smile and a heart-melting "I love you!". It was more than she'd ever bargained for, in the best ways. Her only regret was that she'd done it alone. Sure, she'd had family and friends to lean on, but it wasn't the same as standing with your partner and watching your child play, whispering "we did that, we made this!" with that kind of glowing pride she wished she could share.
The subject turned, as it always does in good conversation, and Aquaria found herself searching a year back to the events that led to the long absence from the island. "It was only supposed to be a trip of a few days," she began, feeling almost defensive. What else could she have done though? "I made a friend, Oceane of Loess, and I and the boys were to visit, and then she and her own son were to return here with us for their own visit." If only it had gone that way.
She blinked at the vast horizon, at the dark ripple of land that was the mainland. She'd missed it here so badly. And still the conflict of her choice dogged her.
"Her son was stolen the night we arrived. I couldn't leave her there to worry by herself, and my youngest-" she bit her lip. "The foolish boy followed them. We got her son back, but they retaliated by taking Oceane and we couldn't leave her son on his own. He and Cormorant became good friends over the year we were there. By then, I-" she blinked hard, the debate seemingly not over inside her own head.
"It was either come home, or call Loess home, and I chose Ischia, for all of us. Cormorant is still angry over it, I think, but I couldn't turn my back on this place. Not forever." And still she wondered if she'd made the right choice. If Oceane were still rotting in Pangea, if Alcinder still looked for her on every dawning sky. If she'd betrayed them by leaving. Cormorant certainly seemed to think so, and she was deeply grateful that Halcyon seemed to have a broader view. So much of their childhoods had been intertwined with that far away kingdom, and it seemed like she'd done then a disservice by returning them home. To her home.
That was the story though, and she couldn't take back what was already done. She would have to live with these consequences, as she did with the others that haunted her.
What she said in answer to Lilli's question was nothing not truth, and it was truth that was drowning her. Her finned head shook with slow deliberation some moments after the copper mare replied, tone as neutral as she could make it. "No, I don't. And I think I've finally learned enough self respect that I'd send him off again even if he did." Oh, she hoped that was true. She hoped that if he ever did turn back up on her shores that she could look him in the eye and say enough was enough. What it cost her in happiness, at least let it save her in peace.
Her head was beginning to hurt behind her eyes, the weight of unshed tears demanding release. It wouldn't do though, not today. Not when her job as hostess and island hostess demanded she see to her guest's peace first and foremost. A sad little smile curved her pearly lips when Lilliana finally spoke, and it gave her grounding to know where they stood. To know what she could do.
Her muzzle reached to the burnished woman's shoulder, resting in light solidarity of the ache that pulsed through them both. Lovelorn, drifting, she could work with that when it wasn't her own heart on the line. "Stay here until you do." She murmured, eyes shut and still dreaming. "Eat good food, sleep in the sun, let your boys roam without worry. The world will be there for you when you return. And you don't have to return until your ready to face it." She chanted the words like a healing mantra, hoping Lilli would take them to heart. The island could heal, she believed that whole heartedly. It could heal anyone who wasn't already apart of it.
04-22-2020, 05:10 PM (This post was last modified: 04-22-2020, 05:11 PM by lilliana.)
The faith Aquaria has her in still developing parenting abilities feels misplaced, like so many other things about her, but Lilliana just smiles. It seems impossible that there will come a time when she doesn’t feel so exhausted, when the days don’t stretch for hours and hours and the dark nights don’t hang long and looming.
(She always worries if she is doing right by them. It’s almost a paranoia with her, another festering thing that sits poisoning in the back of her mind.)
"Maybe,” she finally relents though the doubt lingers behind the word.
Her colts are occupied but it doesn’t mean she takes her eyes off them. They are fascinated and absorbed in the window that the Ischian mare has so kindly offered them. Nashua nearly knocks his brother into a wave, eagerly looking down. Yanhua gives him a brotherly shove back. The practiced smile she wears softens, edges with something wilder - something closer to Nerine’s stormy seas and proud cliffs. Lilliana’s real one - the true one that flickers in and out these days - is unmastered; a wild spark that still has the ability to burn.
Recognition of the name Oceane pulls her away from children and Lilliana feels the start of a frown. Oceane, the opalescent mare from Loess? Her sparring partner had been the one stolen? Worse, it had been her young son who had been stolen first. The chestnut mare feels an old companion, an awful fear, creep along the tired lines of her face. It’s an apparent one as she gazes at the two flaxen colts.
Life with them, when they had only been fluttering heartbeats and Kagerus had crafted them out of dreams, had seemed unimaginable.
Life without them? Impossible.
The red mare can’t offer much. What she can give is something similar to what she gave that day with Straia - a gentle press of her shoulder against Aquaria’s, a touch of reassurance against the doubt that was straining her voice. "Duty to home can be a hard lesson to learn when so young,” comes her quiet answer. It’s easy to imagine that her son - Cormorant - might feel angry for leaving what felt like the only home he had ever known. She had been. Her blue eyes linger on her two rambunctious boys, visibly torn.
"Cormorant will find where he belongs,” Lilliana says, attempting to comfort the fellow mother. There is something in her words that imply that it might not be Ischia, might not even be Beqanna where he finds it. It sounds like something that Aquaria, the more experienced mother, already knows that though.
It’s a lesson that Lilliana is still apparently learning.
She blinks, wishing she had even an ounce of Aquaria’s hardwon confidence. It’s easy to project and Lilli knows the comparison is made often enough. Calm, collected, composed. The firebrand part of her soul longs to rage, wants to rail, and beat against the facade. It’s a question she asks herself enough times and she finds herself sharing it with the nereid, "And for your sons? You don’t think they’d benefit from having their father in their lives?” She turns her head to look at the champagne mare, studying her because she doesn’t know the answer to it herself. How does somebody else possibly answer that?
Lilliana catches herself, quieting her voice. "I'm sorry... if that was too personal,” she adds. "I just,” she pauses, apprehensively watching the shadowed outline of Beqanna beyond them. "I want so much for them,” her voice finally breaks. "I want the world for them and then some,” that practiced grin comes back, the one learned from years of diplomacy and hiding away all those stolen parts of herself.
It looks far too brittle on her face. Something prone to breaking.
Kagerus had told her that her best would always be enough but the way she watches them, with a look that kindles hope and doubt alike, give away her fear: that she will never be enough for them.
"You are so strong, @[Aquaria].” She swallows her fears back down, blinks away the shimmer that catches on the Ischia sunlight in her blue eyes. Lilliana has said this once before but the Handmaiden deserves to hear it again and again. "Ischia is fortunate to have you. And your boys.” Lilli - not Lilliana - reaches out towards her as Aquaria grazes her shoulder. "Thank you,” she murmurs.
LILLIANA
all that i'm after is a life full of laughter (as long as i'm laughing with you)
04-28-2020, 06:53 PM (This post was last modified: 04-28-2020, 06:54 PM by Aquaria.)
aquaria
- THE TIDE IS HIGH, IT'S SINK OR SWIM -
The doubt, anxiety and just general exhaustion that setting across her friend's face pulled at the nereid's heart. Lilli had been through so much already, and so much else she was holding back. Now she was apparently raising twin colts on her own. Aquaria couldn't even begin to guess at who their sire might be. She only hoped that the beautiful boys had been conceived in joy, if not love.
She let the simple reply of the other mare fall soft between them. There was nothing else she could add that she was sure Lilliana didn't already know. Her quiet acceptance was rewarded by a glimpse of her companion's radiant, reckless grin as her sons romped in the surf. It was the kind of smile that turned a beautiful mare into something truly breathtaking, and Aquaria couldn't help an odd little smile of her own.
It was funny, but in that moment she was jealous of the copper mare. Just a bit. Lilliana was beautiful. Really, truly, from the inside out, beautiful. And it was painfully obvious when she smiled that way. For all her own beauty, the nereid felt a little fakeness about her own looks. They were preternatural, otherworldly, and very much only by virtue of her water-tied magic. Without her aquatic guise, there was only a plain little grey mare beneath. Thoroughly unexceptional. It was a face she kept hidden, and only now she realized it was out of a kind of vanity.
They had more important things to discuss, however, than the sea mare's identity issues. Lilliana listened well, as a diplomat must, and Aquaria told her an abridged version of the previous year's events. Her touch was a comforting anchor in the tumultuous currents the experience had brought. The tone of her voice hinted at more experience with the matter than most horses would know. The pale mare nodded thoughtfully, gazing unfocused out to sea as she considered her friend's reassurance.
Speaking with a kind of resignation, she had to agree. "I know he will. He's too stubborn not to find his way. I only wished I hadn't been the one to throw his path into question, is all." A gust of hot breath shifted the dry sand at her feet as she tried to release some of the guilt she'd been wearing. It helped to hear another say the things she'd been trying to convince herself of.
A crease of absent confusion furrowed her brow briefly, only to smooth again as she refocused on the current topic. "I'd like to think an absent father is better than a bad one," she murmured, hoping she was right. She would, she realized, never know if Pteron was a bad father or a good one. Or if he even knew he was one, to more than the little Adarra he had told her of once. A shiver of coarse emotion thrummed along her spine. Her head tilted to Lilli, smiling helplessly.
"No, no, you're alright. I'd be more worried if you didn't. Just," she paused, collected the thoughts rolling around in her mind. "I know it isn't fair, to me or to them. I'd just rather get on with giving them the world instead of hoping some handsome stallion is going to show up and do it for me. If I have to work twice as hard to do it, so be it. They're worth it." She shrugged, dissipating the heaviness of the words as best she could.
Lilli's touch on her shoulder was a kind one, and the smooth scaled mermare tried to return the gentle embrace. Her neck bowed over the burnished mare's shoulder, felt the warmth of her, the strength. "I think you're just as strong, and your boys are going to grow to be a credit to you. With or without a father in the collection." She tightened her grip and then released it, hoping her friend would see herself the way Aquaria saw her some day.
you got a cold hard truth i got a bottle of whiskey but i got no proof
”Maybe you didn’t,” Lilliana replies with a small curve of a smile. It’s tentative because what they are speaking of is sons and fates and the winding currents that life tends to take. Maybe there was a reason that Aquaria needed to be in Loess; maybe there was a reason that she and her sons needed to be away from Ischia.
It’s a hard thing - to be cut adrift and swept up in changing currents. Harder still to see where the tides are tugging, the places that they are pulling from.
Lilliana stares out into the bright blue - the vivid cerulean of the sky, the stunning azure of Ischia’s tropical waters. She can hear Neverwhere in the back of her mind, reminding her that sometimes horrible things happen for the sake of simply being horrible. She isn’t so much of a fool to believe that every ending of her stories are happy ones. She herself has been on the receiving end of that - knowing that sometimes things make no sense at all.
Sometimes the hours are just that - simply dark.
Still, stars illuminate the night sky for a reason, don't they?
Her eyes spark with that and she glances back to the champagne mare, her blue-eyed gaze softening on the lovely curve on Aquaria’s cheeks, of the way her mane glistens and gleams in the seashore sunshine. "Given his freedom, he’ll figure it out.” She hasn’t met the Handmaiden’s son but Lilliana thinks that if he has an ounce of his dam’s good sense, it will be hard for him to stray far from where he was meant to go. She doesn’t need Lilli to ease her mind at all, but the chestnut still offers: "But maybe,” she attempts because there is a part of the Taigan mare that will always need her balance, "you helped point him towards a current he didn’t know he needed to swim.”
Nashua is testing his weighted wings, grazing the tips of them against an oncoming wave while Yanhua continues to watch the fish that swim, the coral and a glimpse of a world that they wouldn’t otherwise see without Aquaria’s gift.
Lilliana turns her attention back on them, keeping an ear flicked towards the nereid. She listens about absent fathers and about working twice as hard to compensate for the lack of one. ”I never knew my sire growing up,” she admits. It doesn’t excuse or explain anything; she is certainly not the first foal to be raised by a single parent. Aquaria affirms this.
There are many things she could add with this, though. That her elder siblings had been raised with him. That the sister who came after had. In the rolling memories of mind, she wonders if perhaps she would have been better off never knowing Valerio. Maybe it would have been better to know what she had missed.
Her boys, she decides, will be better off without theirs. What good can come of a man who uses the very things she loves against her? Wolfbane hadn’t given her a choice when it came to Ruth. She could go with him or he and Fiorina could keep fighting. Worse, Ruthless could have flown up into the dark, winter sky and there are still nights that Lilliana wakes up in a cold sweat at that thought.
There would have been no following her little lioness into the stars and against a flyer like the former Commandant? There would have been no chance for her, either.
No, her boys would be better off. Like she had told Aquaria, she wants every chance for them. Every possibility. If she is all they know, then they can't miss the absence of a father. If he hasn’t shown himself by now, if he’s left her alone all this time, then perhaps it's safe to go home. They can return to Taiga and get on with their lives.
The chestnut mare has lost her family once and that almost destroyed her. As she watches her boys play in the surf, she knows there will be no bearing it a second time.
Aquaria reaches over her shoulder and Lilliana leans into her touch, feeling the strength emanating from her. Like catching fire, she softly glows against the seamare’s embrace. She doesn’t know what it takes to stand so solid - so firm - but she could learn from her friend. "I don’t know how you got to be so wise,” the Taigan mare says quietly, "but whoever taught you, tell them thank you.”
