[private] all that i'm after is a life full of laughter

[lilliana]

Was she waiting?

She stands still (or at least as still as one can stand with a humming heart and blood that refuses to slow down in adrenaline-fed veins). Her blue eyes are searching, scanning the shadows where the previous night still lingers. What was waiting in the darkness? Once, she might have found that thought captivating. She might have searched the dark as she and Orani once searched the moonless sky when it vanished (and how she had loved that story, that Jay had been gifted wings crafted of stardust and starlight, that he and Carpo had traveled to the cosmos to help bring the moon back cycle after lunar cycle).

The mare steps from the shadows easily enough and Lilliana wonders how she missed her. She is a drop of sunlight, a sunbeam that has been crafted into a citrine form of supple and lovely curves. She holds the radiating glow of every sunrise and sunset that Lilli has ever known and her blue eyes sweep over the mare with open admiration. The wanderer has caught the Taigan mare off her guard and there is no time for her to catch her reaction, for her to guard it.

When she sees the pale trojan-like mane of the mare, she wishes she had.

(When had she learned to be afraid?)

Lilliana remains poised where she stands and the chestnut mare follows the stranger with her eyes, waiting and suddenly made unsure of herself. The fever that had been in hooves flees and instead, she is rooted to the soil. It’s only the reassuring (familiar) touch of the wind that reminds her to move. Something,  her ancestors whisper in her copper-tipped ears, do something.

”I can’t fly,” she says. It’s a rather distinct truth that can be confirmed by the lack of wings on her back. That had been one of her greatest fillyhood sorrows, that she couldn’t take to the skies like her friends the bluejays and sparrows had. They would spend a whole springtide and summer with her but come autumn, they had always left her for places unknown. It hadn’t been the faraway places that had called her but still.. Lilliana had wondered. She wondered and dreamed and tried to imagine if the world would look different from the clouds.

The copper swallows, realizing that she hasn’t elaborated on what she was trying to say.

"I like to run.. to-,” she cuts off, still feeling uncertain. And then she shakes her head, swallowing her explanation.

"Are you not from here then?” Lilli asks, swiftly coursing the conversation away from her running and her dreams of flying. Her blue eyes study the figure of the sun-kissed mare again and her mind wonders if she had been like Broch, wandering the world with a travelers’ desire. Going wherever they might with no clear destination in mind. "Lilliana,” she finally smiles before adding, "But please, call me Lilli.”

@[Shezira] <3