There is a gust of air that comes from within the chest of the russet mare as she pushes her thoughts out with a passing breeze. Her refined head lowers as Lilli's thick mane is gently tousled by a passing breath of air that makes it way from the bluffs above down to the crashing waves below. Freedom had been her first impression of Nerine and now she wonders if that was just the wind echoing in her ears, telling her that there was nothing to hinder its travel here. That above the rest of Beqanna, it could be as wild and untamed as it liked. That it could taunt the waves and sing against the cliffs.
Whatever its intent, with each journey into in Nerine it takes a piece of Lilliana's soul and lets it soar.
Since the disappearance of Heartfire, there have been many visitors to Nerine. Some have come by way of Taiga and some are just figures that pass by the chestnut mare. Her ordinary colors and her easy-going demeanor make her just another face in the crowd. Someone they might not take notice of but she certainly notices them.
Lilliana has ideas of why they come. They come in search of the missing Nerinian Queen. They might be curious about the new one - the silver dapple left in command - and come to see for themselves about the one that Heartfire has left as her heir. (When has Heartfire done anything that was not intentional?) They come seeking answers to a question that the former queen has left behind.
Lilli comes only seeking her friend.
She comes seeking the one who knew how afraid she had once been of dark, of the one who had seen her grief and her anger when Lilliana would have much rather given the illusion that she had neither. The one who knows more about her than most do and still calls her friend, despite all her failings. The others might come seeking answers but Lilliana comes because the visits are overdue and she already knows.
Her blue eyes spy her against one of those cliffs that the rocky landscape was known for. (The wind rips past her and towards her friend, a blustering push towards Neverwhere. Lilliana walks forward because she has never been one to ask questions of the Fates or the Gods of her ancestors.) She comes alongside Never, where she stands looking out to a grey and endless sea. Where the tides carry things to other realms and existences that only one of them might even fathom.
Her shoulder is light brush against the other mare and Lilliana stares out with her, two windswept creatures blurring in a biting breeze. The chestnut mare listens to the way that the waves crash against the rocks beneath them, appreciating the consistency of the tide below them. There is a moment of silence between the pair but Lilli doesn't keep her waiting long, "My mother and sister never agreed on much." The edges of her mouth lift fondly and something on her face almost gives way to laughter against the sharp and frigid cold around them. Softly she adds, "But Brielle begged for stories about the Amazons. There was nothing that could captivate her like the stories of the old Queens and their Jungle." As time goes on, she finds it gets easier to speak of them - the family that she aches for.
Brielle, the fire of their family, the golden girl who had been born fighting and was always out to prove some point or another. She had clashed against that cool exterior of their mother, unbendable Aletta who had the mountains in her blood and refused to bow to anything. Together they had been nothing but constant discord throughout her youth. As Lilliana stands here with Neverwhere, it seems fitting though that they had bonded over this - over the sisterhood that had claimed the names of Antarda, Prague, Asylum and Twinge for their history.
Her mother and sister had always seemed so impossibly fierce to Lilli.
Standing here, it seems fitting that it is Neverwhere who now wears that crown and inherits all those legends.
"Do you think when the magic remade the land that it gave Nerine these views because it knew what heights the Amazons might aspire too?" Her mind wonders, as it always does, and those thoughts go with another winter gust that passes by them. She remembers the impossible heights that they climbed to in the stories of her youth.
The warmth of Neverwhere calls her back from the wind and the unknown places it travels. A familiar press of her shoulder into the Nerinian mare beside her and then the chestnut turns to study her with a careful gaze: "How have you been?"
@[Neverwhere] rosé Lilli wanted to say hey
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind