"Aela,” she tells him, hating the way that the word comes out so much softer than she intended. Lilliana had wanted it to be harder, firmer. A more definitive shape, one that @[Wolfbane] couldn’t take. The chestnut mare keeps a guarded gaze on him, unsure of what to expect. But he ignores her earlier taunt and instead focuses on the child pressed tightly against her side.
Aela’s head remained turned away up until the moment that the girl heard her name spoken and with both ears flicking back, she lifted her petite head to glance up at her mother and then behind her, feeling a presence there. Lilliana is looking down and Wolfbane is looking on with their daughter caught in the middle.
It’s a mockery of the moment but to any other horse that might have spied them on this lonely end of Beqanna, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. A mare and her foal with a curious stranger glancing in their direction. Like a calm before a summer squall, there is a lull as both parents study their daughter (and foolish of Lilliana for doing so). There has never been a moment that he comes that doesn’t upend her world in some way.
When Lilliana finally looks up to carefully regard the shapeshifter, he seems to lose himself in studying Aela. The filly has taken her time to crane her neck around and peer up at him, even if the expression she wears is an apprehensive one - perhaps an echo of the one her mother wears. The red mare is reminded of a tale about a horse who fell in love with a river for the reflection it gave and she wonders if his madness is like that, if he is searching for reflections of himself in the children he sires.
He uneases her and Lilliana shifts her weight to the opposite shoulder, trying to better protect her daughter. The action seems to break the spell as Aela looks back up to her dam and Wolfbane looks at Lilli, wearing that same look of hatred burning in those eerie eyes. It catches her off-guard; it shouldn’t but it does and the red mare feels the anger that blazes in response lighting her veins.
"You’ve lost your mind,” she seethes back at him, finally saying what she has assumed out loud. Her delicately tipped ears pin as she feels her daughter slip beneath her. What use did he have for a child? And more importantly, what made him think that she would just hand over her own? "After what you did to Nashua and Yanhua?” Lilliana baits, bewildered and exasperated. Nashua had looked and asked for Wolfbane; Yanhua became more solitary and quiet.
She’s fighting to keep it in control - that anger and that rage has been smoldering the last few months. Emotions that could threaten to craft a hurricane or summon a gale, had she been born with the traditional gift of her ancestors. However, it’s just the little red mare on the beach with her child tucked protectively beneath her girth and the summer winds that whistle around them, deaf to any call she might have given.
"You didn’t kill Neverwhere,” she tells the splayed stallion though she remains unaware of the punchline to Ghaul’s joke. Lilliana just knows that (thankfully) the Queen of Nerine lives.
The wind whips angrily around them and the Taigan mare turns her neck, allowing the zephyrs to tangle and part her mane to reveal the still healing wounds there. Bite marks from another predatory equine. "Might as well finish what the others started.” What the River should have done, she thinks. What her pregnancy with Aela should have succeeded with.
A trait that she suspects she shares with her golden daughter.
Aela - wide-eyed and overwhelmed by everything she feels electrifying (echoing) through the air - slips to the opposite side of Lilliana, slowly moving towards an angry ocean and away from the blazing mare.
LILLIANA
if i ever get to heaven
i've got a long list of questions