[private] Bloodfeather || Lilliana ||

[Wolfbane]

He should be heading to Tephra and he will, he will, just not right now. Not while the weather is turning into the more bearable type, and not while the night is so clear and lovely like this one. Instead of raising his wings and taking to the starlit skies where a heavy moon clung to a black and voidless universe, Wolfbane did away with both bird-like appendages and stalked the open Forest southeast of Loess and Hyaline. His hooves, nearly black except for the twinkle of his iridescent fur, echoed a steady tempo. He had a lumbering gait that crunched dead leaves and took him in no particular direction, and his eyes - shifted to those of an animal that could sense heat and see the visible trail of sweat and scent like a colorful ribbon through the dark - followed the trail of one familiar mare who’d come this way not very long ago.

Lilliana.

Her scent, much like her color, looked to him like a golden-burgundy thread that looped around trunks and sometimes disappeared through tangles of thorn or bracken. Bane paused at one of these passings, lowering his mouth and nose to the glossy little leaves that still tasted like her, and closed his eyes before inhaling.

Why her?
He’d thought this several times before. Initially, looking back on their first meeting in the Field, it didn’t seem that she could’ve drawn him in so suddenly and with alarming strength. Wolfbane had always considered himself a stallion of sound mind and heart, not easily overcome with boyhood crushes or one particularly inclined to risk destroying a happy home and union. But Lilliana was … different. Not by magic and not by any other unnatural sense, just different in the most refreshing and unexpected ways.

He wanted to know everything about her, and found that he wanted to impart his history onto her as well. Lately it seemed that their world couldn’t or simply wouldn’t approve, there’d been too much unrest in Wolfbane’s life and too much promise for Lilliana’s future in Beqanna. Maybe that’s why he’d decided to ask her for more time alone. Maybe that’s why Bane felt emboldened enough to defy what was socially acceptable or morally correct: because the world, Lilliana’s friends, and his own sense of honor forbade it.

He opened eyes that reflected holographic colors in the subtle light of the moon and remembered sharply their last meeting, including Neverwhere. Maybe he was out here because Lilli had said yes when he’d expected a polite no.

Wolfbane slunk past the spot he’d paused at, quieter than before when he eased along the breadcrumb path Lilliana had unknowingly left behind. Without his wings he felt lighter, quicker, and the upright mane that extended from his forehead down along his back looked like one heavy, white dorsal stripe. It stood out against the dulled colors of the autumn woods, already dark from the lack of moonlight able to pierce through the half-empty canopy above.

“When I said I’d come and find you later, I didn’t expect you to go out of your way to make it such a challenging hunt.” He spoke aloud, the words giving away a smile unseen in the night.

@[lilliana] hello i assumed she'd be out-and-about but if you want this moved to Taiga it can be done

[lilliana]

Only a moment, she tells herself. One moment and she will return to Taiga.

Neverwhere tells her to run, tells her to flee like she is a coward. Lilliana doesn't tell her otherwise because her earlier words still feel like acid on her tongue, burning where she sparked them to life. (But what else was Lilli to do - pinned between the beach and Never's well-aimed  arrow, knowing exactly where the chink in her armor lay?) Even as she escorts the half-blind mare back to the Nerinian border, Lilli feels everything... too closely. The fog that rolls in from the ocean, that same fog she has always likened veils of one realm to another, suddenly hoovers. Taiga's massive redwoods, something she has always prided the northern woods for, suddenly cluster together in a way that feels confining. Even the evergreen scent that has become so familiar, that one she associates with home suddenly cloys and burns at the back of her throat.

So she slips through Taiga's forest as she has done a thousand times before. (She thinks she has the advantage of time; after all, 'later' is such an elusive concept of it.)

She does this appease the silver mare but what Lilli does not say is that she will return. Taiga is her home. It is the longest amount of time that she has spent anywhere and the chestnut mare has rather stubbornly claimed it as her own, haunted forest and all. It is where Lethy and Aten are, where she has brought Smidgen, where Elaina knows to find her. Lilli refuses to let herself be cowed by her emotions, whatever they are for the Taigan Commandant.

But she just needs a moment.
Just one moment for the world to stop reeling.

So it shouldn't be a surprise where Lilli goes. She goes in search of the one thing that has always brought her comfort - the River. She thinks it might steady her, that it might somehow overrule the laws of attraction and she would no longer feel this pull.  Lilliana goes to the River where she can still feel the traces of her old life, of the place she had been born and where she had learned to be a solace for others. It's where she learned to hide behind laughing eyes and a teasing smile, where she learned to be what others needed while never giving too much of herself away.

She always been careful of that.

Its that thought lingers in her mind. She has always been careful of her feelings. Lilli gives her smiles, her laughter, her kindness as easily as she breathes. Anything more than that comes at a price that she has never been willing to pay.

But somewhere between being too careful and not careful enough, she finds herself here. She finds herself weaving through the trees, slipping beneath low-hanging branches and follows an old hooftrail that started somewhere between Taiga and Hyaline. The scents here have gone stale and so Lilli allows herself to follow the pure, clean smell of running water towards... anywhere. She follows the River like it might lead her to an answer.

But it doesn't. It flows too gently, not wild or rampant as she feels inward, and eventually, the sound of the bubbling water next to her falls away.  She leaves the River behind. At some point, the Forest surrounds her and Lilli finds herself in the quiet of the harvest woods. The stars remain obscured from covering branches above but the moon is still full enough that beams of silver light trickle through the bare patches above, an admonition of the coming season. But she isn't alone - his voice cuts through the silence of the night, ringing clear against the shadows. Lilli, not unhappy to hear him, calls back.

"I thought you liked a challenge."

@[Wolfbane]

[Wolfbane]

Wolfbane always knew which steps he’d follow in. There's never been any question about it: his father had been a warrior and so had his grandfather, meaning that he would do the same when adulthood came. He didn’t though. Bane left Tephra and wasn’t sure what he wanted, then he was handed an empty Kingdom and hungry, expectant faces who looked up to him. He spent his youth forging alliances and abandoning desires for a family and stability. He’d loved other mares before Lepis; nothing had ever come of those unrequited loves.

But he could feel himself shaking now, hearing Lilliana call back. For all his worldly knowledge and experience the shapeshifter felt stirred to an almost nervous, tangible excitement in her presence.
He loathed it.
He loved it.

Bane kept his gait casually heavy and his expression warmly neutral, still trailing Lilli from a short distance. He glanced around at the wood and watched her disappear between a cluster of trunks and smaller saplings, only to reappear again when thin slices of moonrays glided over her pelt. The night was illuminated through his eyes. Lilliana gleamed in a ring of silver every time her path led her into the light and Wolfbane followed, weaving closer and closer without saying much in response.

Eventually he found himself to one side of her, stretching his legs like a wildcat and slinking along as a predator would, totally at ease in this dark place. He kept his head turned and his eyes on her, irritatingly adept at maneuvering the leaf-covered trail without needing to look ahead, and the way he walked kept them apart comfortably. Now and then he’d duck and weave, disappearing himself before sliding out into her line of sight again.

“I do.” He surrendered at last, feeling the ground level out. Another pause as he considered something, then, “But I’m not so sure you’d like being the object of my conquest.” The shifter practically growled. Something in his voice, (maybe the way it sounded like a velvet warning) made the idea almost sound appealing.

“Lilli.” The way her said her name sounded like Wolfbane was suffering. He stepped from the cover of twisting shadows and out into the moonlight, stopping dead in his tracks underneath the gnarled branches of a completely bare oak. Though silent and still, his chest rose and fluttered. An early winter breeze moaned through the Forest, disturbing the dry leaves until they swirled around his gleaming fetlocks, the rest of his stripes gone silvery-black. Bane stared at Lilliana, “Are you afraid of me?”

Was Neverwhere right to hate me for wanting you? He needs to know.

@[lilliana]

[lilliana]

She should look over her shoulder, she knows. Despite how still she is, there is nothing she wants more than to send her blue eyes searching for him.

But then her heart flutters like butterfly wings on a wayward breeze and Lilliana stops herself. Despite the ache that builds, that beautiful warmth that she has begun to associate with him, she can't bring herself to look at Wolfbane. In the darkness around them, a few silvery rays of moonlight hang down from where the branches are exposed above. There isn't much but enough to see by and for a shapeshifter like Bane who has the ability for any sense or any form under the sun, it would be enough. It would be enough for him to see those cracks that Lilli desperately tries to hide.

It would be enough for him to see that she has already let him in, that he has slipped through the last of Lilliana's barriers as easily as he might take another shape.

If she doesn't look at him, there is a moment that she still thinks that everything she once thought for her own future would be enough. There is a reason that she has never known the touch of a lover, that there are no foals at her side. It has never bothered her before - it was something she had resigned herself to long before she met him. It was something that she had imagined for herself even in Taiga - she could put her love there and watch the redwoods prosper. For anything else, there had been Elaina. For whatever want of family that the northern redwoods would have failed to provide, Elaina had been and would always be her family. It would have been enough.

But then Bane had disappeared over the winter and Lilliana found herself longing for a glance of gold, just one look of the familiar gilt-and-blue stallion beneath trees. Just one, she had told herself, and it would be enough.

So Lilliana had thrown herself headlong into everything, anything to ignore the question that had started to form in the back of her mind: Is this it? Is there all there is? Her healing, recruiting, even throwing her efforts in with diplomacy, had been an attempt to fill the days with a solid understanding that yes, this was enough. This would have to be enough. And for Lilliana who had seen both her parents sacrifice their hearts for the good of others, for Paraiso, she had thought it was best that she kept hers to herself. The plan had sounded so easy, so simple.

Until it wasn't.
Until she was here, with her pulse rising to a crescendo and her heartbeats coming faster with each step closer he came.

His ability to disappear should unnerve her. Each time he slinks in and out of the shadows, an ear flicks or her head tilts slightly as she follows the sound. It will be there for a moment in her peripheral vision - a moon-shaded flash of gold, jagged edge of blue - and then gone before her gaze can locate him. A crimson ear swivels and she catches the depth of his baritones, can feel the way it reverberates through her. Lilli does turn her head then, searching the shadows in hopes of finding him. "A conquest?" she asks lightly, "Is that what this is?"

What else could this be?

But then he says her name with something that sounds like agony and now she does feel that pain wrap around her rapidly-beating heart. She would never want to inspire suffering in anyone, least of all Wolfbane. Never Bane.

Lilliana softens and when he steps from the shadows, he is bathed in moonshine. The fangs, those marvelous wings she has always admired are gone. Her blue eyes rise to meet his and she knows that a moment she has both needed and dreaded has arrived, that there is no going back from this now. Lilli tries to find some shred of fear, some part of her that balks in terror or even wants to run from the emotions she has always hidden. She searches for something in her that tries to tell her to be afraid but Lilli can't even summon that. She searches the shadows of his green eyes, studies silver-black of his mask before giving him his answer, "No."

A quiet exhale and then she considers something, not feeling the bite of coming winter in the air as it dances around them, "Are you scared of me?"

@[Wolfbane] my turn to not sleep..

[Starsin]

and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.

starsin

it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted.
( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )

just a friendly Starsin drive-by idc if you pretend they saw/heard something weird, or don't know she crept by at all. I can also delete this if it ruins the aesthetic of your thread but it's here for now lmao

[Wolfbane]

This was wrong.
When Wolfbane looked down at Lilliana he knew that all of this was wrong. Wrong to hold her stare and then let it go so that he could roam over the fine, distinctly feminine structure of her cheekbones. Those sharp curves held up entire oceans, and for fear of drowning himself again Bane softened his own expression while he continued to adore hers. Strong; a bold look that Lilli gave to him in the silence after his question, searching for something he won’t keep hidden away. The pain of confusion and desire tearing him apart - they swirl together in his soul and leap out at her from where Bane watches and waits.

He consumes himself with her presence, happy to be quietly observed so that he could return the favor. She looked as lovely in the dark as she did at any other time, as lovely as she ever had. To her it may have felt as if the future came slowly in Beqanna, or that her duties were a monotonous means to an end, but to Wolfbane the changes were drastic. What he’d witnessed on the beach and what he sees now in the still-youthful marks of her skin (skin that radiates a perfume he no longer wants to resist) are the marks of Beqanna on her.

If Lilliana was taking root in this world, then this world had begun to take root in her as well.

“Not at all.” Wolfbane breathed back, intoxicated.

Slowly, as if he were drawn to the heat of her mouth, the smartly dressed horse lowered his head and smiled. He wanted, needed to touch her. On the bridge of her slender nose he could rest his lips perfectly and inhale the comforting warmth she never ceased to radiate, and if she let him (god he hoped she let him) then Wolfbane would trace the line up to her forehead and plant a soft, eager kiss against each of her eyelids.

“But I’m absolutely terrified of how you make me feel.” He admitted when the moment had gone and his mouth hovered nearer to her than before. Almost protective, somewhat possessive. He wondered if she’d ever considered that: what power she possessed over him. Lilliana may have questioned her own ability to hold steady against their obvious affection for one another, to Wolfbane she seemed reserved anyways - for good reason - and yet he hardly thought she knew what kind of absolute hold she’d already cast over him.

It’s because of his past that Bane knew he’d be in danger now. It's because of the way he lingered close and let the shadows underneath his round jaw cast a dark veil over Lilli's silver-gold face, like he meant to stay there, that Wolfbane knew he'd gone beyond reason or merit. He’d never once turned away from Lepis or been anything more than platonically interested in other females aside from his own brood, and here was Lilli aglow in the haze of fairy light, shattering those foundations without so much as blinking her eyes. She could destroy him if she wanted to.

“I don’t think I can be without you, Lilli girl. And that scares the shit outta me.”

@[lilliana] ffs I can't help myself with them

[lilliana]

This is insanity.

It is the last shred of logic in her mind - it is a thought she keeps coming back too, a tether that won't completely release her. There are a hundred others, thousands even, if she were to keep dwelling on them. He thinks her reserved but Lilliana stands there bewildered, stunned. It seems that this is a habit of his, this ability he has to shift the very axis of her world. She tries, some part of her tries to hold on so hard to that last thought, to remind her that this is dangerous ground on so many levels.

This is insanity, she thinks again.
But she can no longer feel the ground beneath her hooves.
(With him emerging from the shadows, she questions its existence in the first place.)

His expression is mired with confusion, with desire and Lilliana feels her own soul twist in reply - it wrenches in ways she never thought possible. Those blue eyes stare up at him with a reflection of the turmoil that burns between them. She isn't scared to meet that olive gaze - to level it with her own. If she says she is not afraid then she won't show him fear - but she will show him everything else. 

Let him see her own anguish, let him see the fire that rages within her. 
Let him see how she has been burning from the inside out.

She shouldn't feel this towards him. She shouldn't feel any of this. But Lilliana is no longer in a position to keep denying and under the guarded shadows of night, under the trees that shift uncomfortably in an autumn breeze, under a few strangled rays of starlight, Lilliana gives him her honesty. At the very least, he deserves that. He draws closer and she watches him with dark, serious eyes. 

But he comes closer and when he reaches towards her, she lets him. Legado help her - she lets him.

His iridescent mouth traces a line on her face and she finds herself leaning into his touch, letting herself fall into it as easily as she might draw a breath. She feels the warmth of him, of his touch and it comes unbidden, the edges of her lips turn upward as she closes her eyes. This might be insanity but it feels like bliss. Euphoric, a drug she could lose herself in if she isn't careful. The line of fire he draws against her temple is a myriad of emotions that her mind can't even find words for; they come out in the telltale form of a smile that unfolds against the corners of her dark mouth.

His mouth lingers near hers when he speaks and there it is again - that ability he has to send her spiraling, to take the air from her lungs. Her eyes open, try to adjust against the darkness and Lilliana admits against the warmth of him that she can feel hovering so close. "Do you know how you make me feel?" asks a silver voice in the dark, the steadiness in it vanishing with each syllable, a challenge. "You left," she admits quietly, something that she has long been familiar with in life. So many have left and Lilliana has always forgiven their departures, accepted it and kept moving forward. "And I kept wanting just a glance of you," she admits, longing clouding her words. "Just one," she breathes as if that would have been enough. In a moment of bravery, she reaches out hesitantly to brush the corner of her mouth against the outline of his golden jaw.

Of all the things, meeting him, that trip to the Pampas, it had been her worry for him in his absence that had been the most damning thing; she hadn't the right to worry for him and yet she had. She had torn and ripped herself apart on it, that knowledge and that fear for him, almost as much as she does in his presence now.

If she could destroy him then he could tear her apart.

"Wolfbane," she tries, as if the full use of his name might put a barrier back up between them. But it's a futile attempt on her part - Lilliana knows it as soon as his name leaves her mouth. The words drown out in an undercurrent of yearning. 

"I know," Lilliana struggles, words that feel choked and come with feeling the full weight of them as they turn to lead in her chest. They are heavy and she doesn't know what to do with them - they offer no solution. She has none. She has nothing to give him but the truth and what that even offers, she doesn't know. It might be a mistake to speak these things out loud, to give them life against the chill of the autumn air. Then quietly the chestnut mare admits, "That... that scares me too." 

And that's when she realizes her fear - that she was more afraid to be without him than with him.
Insanity.

@[Wolfbane]

[Wolfbane]

Somehow lovers always began to nurture a language without words. Unspoken thoughts or feelings, belied through winking expressions or half-tilted smiles. They begin hesitantly like the moment he’d wanted to help her cross the river, then they strengthen when reciprocated. Time cultivated the best of those hushed exchanges: the two of them have spent ample time with one another now that Wolfbane interpreted Lilliana’s feelings as a strange, mirror-like reflection of his own. The chill of the night didn’t begin to touch his skin or settle into his thoughts. He met her out in the open, face-to-face, a robust stallion unadorned by wings or long teeth who stoked her blazing inferno with a heated grin.

And he took those flames, dousing Lilliana with sensational fire, touching his sparkling mouth to the proud, smooth line of her head with fervent kisses that spoke volumes about his adoration concerning her. Bane pressed one kiss to her forehead, for leaving her, one above the right eye, for not telling her sooner, and then one above the left, for the joy she brought into his life.

He felt a wholesome, slow burn in place of the all-consuming flame. The ashes left in the wake of his physical touch simmered again, pouring into all of those empty places he felt could never be filled. That blackness inside of him receded for the moment and Wolfbane, not one to question his luck in this particular instance, almost marveled at the bodily weight lifted off his thick, muscular shoulders. Lilli was a guiding light, ironically aglow (and he wonders how he could make her understand, or how he could turn the mirror and let her see how she looked in his eyes) aside from the dark web of shadows cast by the gnarled branches above them.

“Yes, I left.” He agreed, though there really wasn’t anything to disagree about. She was telling him facts, and he was replying with the insinuation that he would have to leave again. “But you were always with me.” Bane explained adamantly, the seriousness of having said it etched painfully into every line on his face and into the backwards tilt of his ears. He caught her explorative mouth with the adept edges of his forelips, grasping gently (passionately) at her. Don’t, he wanted to tell the dark chestnut - hearing his name spoken so formally.

But he wouldn’t stop her, if that’s what she wanted. It would be right to try and keep distance between them. It would be honorable and expected.

And yet, she says more. Bane’s head shifts aside and the gleaming hope in his eyes betrays his innermost thoughts; he waits, baited, and feels moved beyond passion and into purpose at her brief exposure. “This is as real as anything I’ve ever felt.” The stiff-maned horse expressed, husky and breathless as he hovered closer to the crook of her neck. As real as the pain of being ripped apart by his own grandfather, as real as the pain of losing Gale, which was how he knew that this was love… or the tender beginning of it. He felt agony! Like lighting strikes, like awakening from death itself.

Only the torment of love could move him to say what he said to Lilliana.
“I’m not an ideal hero. My flaws are manifold,” He refused to mention Lepis by name just yet, “but if you let me — I will make the wrongs right. If this -” He meant them, the way he ducked his nose and head into the scented curtain of her gossamer, copper mane, “- is what you want. If I’m who you want, I won’t let fear or the Gods themselves come between us.” He promised, the curling heat from his words rising in ferocity with each uttered syllable.

@[lilliana]

[lilliana]

She is trying so hard to explain herself.

Lilliana is laying herself bare, inch by inch with a rope that she expects to hang herself by. She doesn't know what she hopes to achieve by exposing herself so much, by revealing so much of herself against the forest shadows that would otherwise render them into obscurity. The chestnut mare is determined that Wolfbane sees her very much for who she is - someone who is riddled with faults and flaws.

Perhaps he already does.
(And that knots in her chest - does he think less of her already for agreeing to meet him here?)

The thought makes that frantic heart of hers writhe and twist in protestation, fills her with emotions that she shouldn't have but does. Oh but she does.

He agrees with her and for a moment, she wants to tell him that he is missing the point. His absence brought about the revelation that she didn't want to be without him and that.. that realization has perched precariously on her mind. Lilliana wants to tell him how hard she has tried to rid herself of it - how she has tried to drown it out with recruiting, with attempting to be a Diplomat, with shackling herself with so many other responsibilities and thoughts that he possibly couldn't remain in her thoughts.

She has tried to bury him, as she does so many other things. A roguish smile that hints at a secret she so badly wants to know. The softening of his navy-masked face as the green eyes that look to her break walls that he couldn't know existed. The warmth that floods her veins, a spark that has turned to an inferno burns and leaves only the sensation of him in its embers. Lilliana has tried to bury him and instead has planted something, something that his kisses against her crimson forehead breathes life into. It shines light into something that she would have otherwise kept in darkness and it blooms as he breathes his next words into her neck.

It is the hope she sees in his eyes - shining and bright against what otherwise is a dark thing. What she feels for him shouldn't be; this is illicit. It goes against the very core of who she is and what she is - the thought that this happiness she has found comes at the price of someone else rankles through her soul like the chill in the bitter autumn breeze. It shouldn't be and yet it is the want for his happiness that settles around her heart, that places itself at the very forefront of it.

Her heart catches in her throat as he speaks again.

"If I let you," she murmurs into the warmth of him. He speaks of flaws and she could laugh. What of her sins? What of her faults? There is a long moment she says nothing at all and it is only the silence of the night that moves in on them, the depth of it that could bury them if they let it. "Bane," comes the heated sigh of his name, hot and breathless as she presses it into his muscled neck. "Is this what you want?"

"If it is," she whispers because there is still time for him to change his mind. She won't begrudge his decision if he does, he has so much more to lose. Lilliana won't ask him to risk hellfire and damnation for something he isn't sure of. 

But she will risk it for him.

"If it is, then yes. My answer will always be yes."

@[Wolfbane]

[Wolfbane]

Yes, oh yes he wanted to reply to her immediately. The answer leapt to his tongue but teetered on the edge for fear of coming off too quickly. He wanted to shout it, really. Yes! A thousand times yes! he could’ve said but he doesn’t. Instead he drinks in the sound of his name on her breath until it tickles the back of his mind and sets his spine ramrod straight from tension, the good kind. Gods it was something else to hear her say his name like that, to have her so close that he could open his mouth and run the blunt edges of his teeth down the line of her prettily curved neck. Maybe… maybe it would be best to answer her question without words at first.

Did he want her?

Let him show her that uncapped desire. Since the moment I spotted you from the sky, Bane thought. She smelled like pine sap and evergreen needles, and her skin was cold to the touch whenever Wolfbane lowered his head to her withers. The plane of his bare shoulder fitted itself to the curve of her girth, pressed itself into her willing flesh until the blend of blue-slashed-gold was indiscernible from the ruddy chestnut color of Lilliana’s pelt. I want you more than a perfect day, I want you more than titles or honor. He closed his eyes and wished it would come true.

That slow heat was building again. “I want us, Lilli. Together.” He rumbled, gliding down the length of her body with his mouth, touching the rise of her hip bones with his tongue and then pulling away, panting, face contorted into a mask of pain - the good kind.

He could see them together in his thoughts, felt them together in his dreams late at night. Wolfbane wanted nothing more than that, nothing more and nothing less. To be with her and be happy with her, to just try and Lilli was willing to give him that chance. Hungrily he closed the gap again though he hadn’t gone far, only retracted his greedy lips from the source of gluttony. Now they return with feverish advances, whispering her name and wanting to taste everything about her that reminded him of forbidden fruit.

The base of her neck near her breastbone, where her back arched up to meet her smooth topline, or perhaps the sloping rise of her flanks that lead down to her curved, sinuous legs. Whatever she liked or however she liked it; he’d deliver so long as she was willing. “I want so many more nights and days like this,” The ragged, uncouth suitor gasped with a laugh, coming up for air, “whatever you want Lilliana. Just name it.”

@[lilliana]