[private] stranger than your sympathy;

[lilliana]

Lilli presses her face into the curve of her cousin’s neck, lulling herself with the soothing warmth that came radiating off Elaina in waves.

She has a moment where she thinks that if she presses hard enough, that if her eyes remain closed long enough, maybe she’ll wake up. Maybe they had laughed too hard with the bubbling brooks and they had fallen asleep with aching sides in their favorite clearing. Maybe Lilli, growing so proud and sure of the wind in her stride, had raced the rapids too far and had fallen asleep with the sun dappling her red hide. The chestnut mare buries herself into the silver comfort of Elaina’s fine mane.

Wake up.

Salt lingers on her cousin’s blonde skin and the brine keeps her from falling too far into that dream. Elaina (whose scent, most importantly, smells like home) mingles with the cold and the fog and Lilliana breathes out, finally opening her eyes after many silent moments. She doesn’t pull away yet, just stands in the waves and huddles against her cousin’s tangles. "It’s terrifying,” she finally admits, "I feel like I’m scared for them all the time.” It makes her feel cornered; a tightness in her chest she can never alleviate.

"But,” the copper mare says as she pulls away with a breathless (loving) admission, "They are perfect, Elaina. The first time I saw them... it was like I had waited my whole life to meet them.” It’s as close to the truth as she can say - while there is so much chaos and darkness that brought them into creation, they are her beacons. Much like the golden mare who stands beside her. Tenderly, she turns her head to regard the blonde mare. "I want you to know them,” Lilliana says quietly, fierce against the autumn chill.

Her heart and her head can hardly contend with each other, imagining something she would have never dared to have hoped for, so it just hammers in her chest instead. But oh, if her boys could know Elaina.

"Celo was always so impossibly brave,” Lilliana remembers as her cousin plays with her mane. The Taigan mare reaches out and lightly traces the line of Elaina’s cheek. It’s a comfort to know that he had nightmares too; just like her, just like Valerio had. Lilliana is tempted to share hers: that Malachi emerges from the veil of their willow, that he teases her for sleeping in again. The dream turns sour quickly - Ostere’s shadows grab his legs as tentacles and then the silver outline of her brother turns to nothing but sifting smoke. Sometimes it isn’t Malachi at all who comes but Frostbane - his white coat pristine as new-fallen snow - has eyes that are the wrong shade of green and the hatred burns rather than freezes.

(Did her cousin know this? That Valerio's daughter leaves her sleeping sons because she is like him - waking up with demons instead of daylight.)

"You would have been a good leader,” she says matter-of-factly. It’s something that Lilliana has always believed. Something, she wonders, if maybe Kensa had seen in the palomino too. Elaina exudes a natural air of control, even if she can no longer command the wind around them. "Ours is missing,” Lilliana finally says the truth out loud, "and we have to do something.” Her voice drops, "I just keep thinking of Mama.. and I -," another shuddering breath. Another tight smile, "Any advice?” 

They talk about Windskeep and they talk about future dreams. A trip to the still-standing kingdom, someday. To this, Lilliana nods. Someday, they’ll go. The how or the when aren’t important; it’s just the knowing that someday they will go and Lilliana will see for herself the place that her father had almost died for. That Benjamin had died for.

Elaina might forget this moment, let it become blurry like the Taigan fog around them but this one will forever be sharp in the mind of the chestnut mare. She had been searching for a sea tonight and found a savior instead. Her compass takes a turn and it is Elaina who spins her that way. "How do you pick just one?” she quips lightly before burying her face against that golden neck again, slightly muffling her last words. "Can you?”