She is oblivious to the conversation overhead because her attention is solely focused at the colts at her sides.
Nashua arches his neck proudly, testing her patience by placing another nip on his younger brother’s flank. His flaxen broomtail twirls before he launches into another sprint, racing from one Redwood to another, trying to engage his twin in another game of chase. It’s what they seem to do most days - run, kick up their heels, run some more.
Their energy is an endless thing and Lilliana can only shake her head at it, watching as they sprint off again.
She brings them to Taiga because their somewhat fresh antics are hard to contain between the moorlands and proud ledges of Nerine. They come from Ischia because her boys somehow seem to have the capacity to make the proud Redwood forest seem small in a way that it never was before. Lilliana, the red mare who could so often be found at the edges of forgotten places, finds new ones for her boys and so the trio drifts in and out of the Taigan forest as the fog does. She never keeps them in one place long and as their first weeks turn into their first month, her nerves begin to ease.
There is only so long she can spend at the brink of insanity before it starts to draw her in. Her first days with them had been wrought with nerves that knotted inside her. Brazen had been so confused; not understanding why her chestnut companion had been so insistent that they never stay in the same place for more than a day. It had nearly driven her mad - looking behind and above and ahead, not being able to trust her eyes, that what she was seeing was exactly that.
It wasn’t a place (for her sons, for the sake of her sanity) that she could linger. So as the time passed and nothing emerged from the mist, nothing swept in from shore, Lilliana let down her guard. Her sons continued to grow and she flourished with each day that passed; peering a little less than the day before into shadows and glancing over her slender shoulder for a ghost that she grew more confident would never come.
How wrong she is.
Lilliana is laughing at something one of her boys tells her. Her eyes are bright and full of laughter when a soft summer breeze blows through the Taiga. She (finally) looks behind her to see the looming presence of glittering blue-and-gold form. @[Wolfbane]. His eyes gleam at her boys, where Yanhua and Nashua have stopped their roughhousing to study the stranger. They are all youthful, brimming curiosity (her fault, she thinks, her fault for teaching her sons to be inquisitive than afraid) - their ears pricked forward, interest shining on their faces.
She can feel Yanhua (her father's blue eyes) peering up at her, can hear the soft baby hoofsteps of Nashua as he takes a couple of (bold) strides forward. He is looking at the newcomer again, admiring the impressive width of wings. What he implies, however, is far more interesting than the feathered appendages that he flew in on. Nashua tilts his head while one copper ear flicks back towards his mother, fully expecting her to say something. She always does - she is always greeting and smiling and laughing with newcomers and friends alike.
But she doesn’t. She says nothing at all.
"Mama?” he asks, watching her from where he stands. It’s his expression, the warmth of Yanhua nearby, that jolts her own reply - so eerily quiet against the glow of Taiga in summer.
"What are you doing here?”
Nashua arches his neck proudly, testing her patience by placing another nip on his younger brother’s flank. His flaxen broomtail twirls before he launches into another sprint, racing from one Redwood to another, trying to engage his twin in another game of chase. It’s what they seem to do most days - run, kick up their heels, run some more.
Their energy is an endless thing and Lilliana can only shake her head at it, watching as they sprint off again.
She brings them to Taiga because their somewhat fresh antics are hard to contain between the moorlands and proud ledges of Nerine. They come from Ischia because her boys somehow seem to have the capacity to make the proud Redwood forest seem small in a way that it never was before. Lilliana, the red mare who could so often be found at the edges of forgotten places, finds new ones for her boys and so the trio drifts in and out of the Taigan forest as the fog does. She never keeps them in one place long and as their first weeks turn into their first month, her nerves begin to ease.
There is only so long she can spend at the brink of insanity before it starts to draw her in. Her first days with them had been wrought with nerves that knotted inside her. Brazen had been so confused; not understanding why her chestnut companion had been so insistent that they never stay in the same place for more than a day. It had nearly driven her mad - looking behind and above and ahead, not being able to trust her eyes, that what she was seeing was exactly that.
It wasn’t a place (for her sons, for the sake of her sanity) that she could linger. So as the time passed and nothing emerged from the mist, nothing swept in from shore, Lilliana let down her guard. Her sons continued to grow and she flourished with each day that passed; peering a little less than the day before into shadows and glancing over her slender shoulder for a ghost that she grew more confident would never come.
How wrong she is.
Lilliana is laughing at something one of her boys tells her. Her eyes are bright and full of laughter when a soft summer breeze blows through the Taiga. She (finally) looks behind her to see the looming presence of glittering blue-and-gold form. @[Wolfbane]. His eyes gleam at her boys, where Yanhua and Nashua have stopped their roughhousing to study the stranger. They are all youthful, brimming curiosity (her fault, she thinks, her fault for teaching her sons to be inquisitive than afraid) - their ears pricked forward, interest shining on their faces.
She can feel Yanhua (her father's blue eyes) peering up at her, can hear the soft baby hoofsteps of Nashua as he takes a couple of (bold) strides forward. He is looking at the newcomer again, admiring the impressive width of wings. What he implies, however, is far more interesting than the feathered appendages that he flew in on. Nashua tilts his head while one copper ear flicks back towards his mother, fully expecting her to say something. She always does - she is always greeting and smiling and laughing with newcomers and friends alike.
But she doesn’t. She says nothing at all.
"Mama?” he asks, watching her from where he stands. It’s his expression, the warmth of Yanhua nearby, that jolts her own reply - so eerily quiet against the glow of Taiga in summer.
"What are you doing here?”
LILLIANA
all that i'm after is a life full of laughter
(as long as i'm laughing with you)
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind