The moment hovers in silence.
A film of silver mist escapes from the lone flare of her dark nostrils, physical proof that he chases the very air from her lungs. Her blue eyes are considering him from where she stands, piercing through the darkness as she takes (drinks) in the sight of him. That quip, that half-curved smile? It all fades in the last glinting rays of winter sun, a few shards of light that contain no real warmth. Not that Lilliana can feel anyways - something in her has suddenly become chilled to her very core.
Or perhaps she is burning.
(Flame or frost, she knows that they both can burn.)
His voice breaks the silence. Wolfbane says her name and she can't help it - the first step she takes is an unconscious one. Larva speaks of seeking a strangers' warmth and that startles Lilliana as she looks to him, a spell momentarily broken. Something is wrong, she knows. Something is terribly wrong and she would look back to Wolfbane if the massive gray stallion hadn't asked her a question. If he hadn't mentioned Death. "Dead?" she asks, not perturbed but the chestnut is puzzled by his implication. "You've been to the Otherworld?" While he looks aged, his eyes are not dull to this life (though his teeth might be). If the scene before her had not played out so quickly - if Wolfbane hadn't proceeded with his rather dazzling display and flare of alabaster feathers - Lilliana might have even inquired what a journey back to the realm of living entailed. (Is it like being born? she might have asked.)
But as it is, Wolfbane unfurls a lone white wing towards Fiorina. There is no missing the command behind that swift motion. Something about the lean mare becomes immediately guarded though none of them can know why - no horse here (apart from one) can know that she is remembering another time when that same wing unfurled. That day it had been an invitation, when the word Taiga had still been unknown one and its Redwoods a mystery. Lilliana's eyes do something similar as they had that day - they trace the pale outline of his outstretched wing in the last glinting rays of light as the world grows dark and cold. Her gaze comes to rest on the space where his command implies for a heavy moment and then they raise to Wolfbane, reflecting a shattering of questions that she can't hide.
His command reflects the very landscape around them. In the dead of winter, Wolfbane exposes the bare bones of a story that Lilliana would rather keep buried. It's a chapter in her story that she keeps closely tucked away in her chest, tangled and knotted around that heart of hers.
He undoes it in a matter of moments.
He unravels everything with a few words.
Twists it all undone with a ring of insanity.
Even lingering at the brink of it, even as she is walking towards it, its the look on Ruth's face that hastens her pace. The girl is looking to Lilliana, this sweet golden pegasus who had reminded her so much of Elena in their first meeting, and the chestnut mare is answering her silent plea by coming closer. But where her cousin once taunted Fear ('Come and get me,' she had dared), Ruth is pleading with the darkness. Lilliana hears it, as chiming as any bell, as clear as Wolfbane's command had been.
The only reason she stops is that she sees the shift of the armored-mare behind Ruthless. She positions herself just slightly closer, a barely perceptible span of space that she encloses between herself and the winged filly. It only takes her a moment to realize that the threat is not to the child. And Lilliana, who still dreams of the Deserts and remembers the life leaving Craft's eyes, who can still hear the break of bones and has felt the fading of a pulse against a dying sun, turns to look up at Wolfbane who has suddenly become so close. Who smiles at her and says his name like she could have ever forgotten it.
The part of her that is recoiling at that memory seeks to prevent another one from playing out now.
"Ruth is my ward," she says. "Thank you for finding her for me."
And because it is him, because this is Wolfbane and he has never made sense at all since that day he descended from the sky, there it is - the barest outline of a smile against the coming night.
LILLIANA
light me up, i will blaze
like a soul you have saved
@[Wolfbane]