[open] positively glowing

[lilliana]

When she had returned to Taiga, Lilliana had tried to resume her life as if nothing had changed. Her home was quieter than it had been but once she had discovered that Ruth was safe and that her home was no different than she had left it, Lilli did what she always had - she buried her burdens and tried to ignore her dreams of burning and fire. There are ghosts in every corner of Taiga, ones that hide in the fog and some that hide in her mind, and the chestnut mare has found it far easier to come North. Lilli manages to patrol the northern border of Taiga and she keeps to the southern part of Nerine, a compromise in her mind. The flames lessen and though her burdens don’t, there is a sense of camaraderie to be found in the mares who call Nerine their home - in Neverwhere and Brazen and Eurwen. Those ‘fairytales’ that Lilliana had been raised on of the Jungle and the Queens of old like Asylum and Prague are different from the open moorlands and the Queens that she has come to know of - Heartfire and Neverwhere. Perhaps they are different because Lilliana never thought that her ties to an ancient kingdom would ever become so personal; one is about to become a blood tie through her children and the other is a dear friend. It is a far cry from the girl who had been tucked into her mother’s side and listened as she regaled her daughters about a kingdom where its women were impossibly fierce and proud, skilled fighters and dedicated to their bonds of home and hearth. The woman that sleeps alone atop that soil imagines it is the resurrected bones of those legends; that there is some circle drawn somewhere that brings the child back to where those fables were born. Where her own children might be born. (Not one but two, Kagerus had told her. Lilliana might come to Nerine in hopes of easing her mind but that number has planted itself very firmly in her mind regardless of where she goes.) Her rounding form is not one she feels comfortable with. For each autumn day that passes, as these days grow shorter, she grows rounder and rounder with an inevitable truth that there will be children come spring. It terrifies her. But when she smiles at Fiorina (once she can swallow the memory of their last encounter), there is no sign of that. Lilli smiles as carefree as she ever has, with a smile that tugs towards the clouds and a crisp blue sky. At the sight of an obviously pregnant Eurwen, it takes everything in Lilliana not to laugh. "@[Brazen] was just telling me the other day that Nerine will soon rival the walrus colony on the Isle.” LILLIANA and its harder than you think telling dreams from one another

art by the day of shadow