Whatever she had been planning, he cuts it in half as he paces back and forth. She looks, briefly, above and past him to the treeline that lingers in the distance. To the rest of Beqanna that now seems unreachable. The sound of the raging surf behind her reminds her of what waits there - the open ocean. Currents that could easily drag her infant out to sea. Wolfbane wouldn't have to do anything at all. The angry tide could do it easily enough for him.
Wolfbane accuses her of being a liar and Lilliana bares her teeth at him - a brilliant, gleaming edge of white that flashes against her dark mouth - but she doesn't defend herself. How could she? Not when the shapeshifter could personally attest to it. How wonderful.
So she bites her tongue and watches him carefully as he goes back and forth. As he wanders his crazed mind while he walkss the corner of beach that separates Lilliana and her daughter from the rest of the mainland. The wind whips bitterly past Wolfbane towards the pair, making the chestnut mare wish (not for the first time) that she had the gift of her ancestors. She wished she could summon a hurricane. A monsoon. A typhoon. Anything. Anything at all that could blow Wolfbane far away. But the copper mare doesn't have that kind of ability. Her 'gifts' have never been a match for his; that has always been made abundantly clear.
The best she can manage is trying to stay ahead of him, ahead of the puzzling (manic) thoughts that he sometimes mutters and mumbles.
His accusation that this is all her fault is the very thing that cripples her. How often has she thought that? Lilliana has known for some time that she and Wolfbane should have never crossed stars. They should have stayed firmly put in the heavens. It's been the thing that has paralyzed her in the past. Lepis. A guilt that has kept her stationary, a sin that has kept her still. Because she remembers at one point, that she had wanted him. That she had once wanted his approval, craved his affection.
That she had once been a star-struck Diplomat.
The warmth of Aela beneath keeps her quiet. He condemns her for the fire-gold of her once lustrous coat and Lilliana pins her ears again, burying them into the curls of her matted mane. Her fault. The red mare might have stood quietly before but the slight warmth that had settled underneath her small frame vanished and when Lilli looked sharply towards the waterline, her daughter was already racing towards the surf. To the edges of the inching waves, like she had taught her. Because the pair of them could vanish on the fringes of the tide.
There was no vanishing, not now.
And as the golden form of Aela grew smaller on the horizon, Wolfbane galloped after her with all the rage of a thunderhead. The crimson mare was already gone as soon as she registered the cadence of his foreboding hoof-beats. Charging after them, spurred on by a dual dose of adrenaline and instinct, she follows. His white tail whips out like a banner behind him and Lilliana decides then that if she can get close enough, that if she can find a gust of wind to spirit her ahead, she'll snake her head out and grab on to whatever part of him that she can.
Anything for Aela.
"NO!" she yells.
LILLIANA
if i ever get to heaven
i've got a long list of questions