[private] oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream... [lilli]

[Kagerus]

K

oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream...

Her shoulder against mine brings a gust of breath from my lungs to the world - an exhale I hadn't intended to hold. I meet her apology with a firm press of my muzzle to the underside of her quivering jaw, a reassurance, wordless yet undeniable. In the aftermath of the storm, all seems still for a moment.

He never let me make my own choices. He was always so adamant on keeping us safe but all I ever wanted was to make my own choice.

The protective part of me clenches, exercises her control over the phantom Malachi at her shoulder, imagines sending him away as she had the others. Yet she pauses. Relinquishes her power. Recognizes that here, Lilliana has pure choice: that she has the tools necessary to facilitate the mare's basest wish.

I exhale again.

One of them was yours, weren't they?

"Yes," I murmur, casting my gaze into the blue and green of this world. "His name is Khaedrik. I haven't seen him in years. But... I know he is well." I smile. "I am blessed to have something of a connection to all the ones I hold dear."

And despite how greatly she feels that this is all wrong, Lilliana looks to me and asks for support - the most vulnerable act. Again I reassure her, pooling the valor that fills my breast into her own. A communal courage. It's okay to not know, comes a voice in her mind. You will never be alone. Your best will always be good enough.

Pinks and purples sweep into this realm and dance in the abyss until a twilight settles around us, deep and warm. The presences I had detected what seems like years ago on the Taigan boarder step through the fog on wobbling phantasmal legs. Less physical than spiritual: the cosmic elements which combined to form them, the duel quantum soul before us: vibrating, casting their aura unto our senses, revealing sons to mothers.

Oh, Lilliana breathes.

"Yes," I murmur, inviting the spirits closer. Memories of times like these shared with my own children as they grew inside of Solace bring a sense of comfortable, joyously sad overwhelm. A concoction of the here and now and also the before and the after, the zero and the infinite, the constant unweaving of an expanding and unknowable universe. With care, I allow the lines that make up my being in this realm to dissolve - not as they had during the storm but in such a way that I can truly be one with the children. "You can embrace them, here..."

And although I do not know the specifics of how the twins came to be within Lilliana, I do not ask. Instead, I close my eyes and welcome the dream. The embryos are only old enough to dream at this point; yet I take solace in knowing that our consciousnesses here with them is a form of attachment that few ever get to experience. Yet a part of me stays behind - overseeing the process, attentive to Lilliana - hoping that she will join me in this celebration of life.

@[lilliana]