- it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger -
we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution?
LILLIANA
There is one piece of her entire world looking down at her and how does Lilliana not smile at that? The expression that touches the edge of her dark mouth turn her momentarily wistful (and like her star-marked child, might make her wish for the days when she didn't have to reach quite so high for him) as she glances up at @[Yanhua].
But he is here for her to reach for, unlike her other two children.
Nashua is all her mother's wanderlust given wings.
And Aela-
Aela had ended up fostered by Kota, tucked quietly away in the Northern Forest like her elder brothers before her. Beautiful, golden Aela who had barely been hers to love. (The girl who seemed to inherit some sort of shifting ability from her notorious father because when the light hit her just right from beneath the Redwoods, because when the fog revealed just enough, Aela would look over her shoulder and there would be Elena. There would be the various shades of gold that Lilliana had known her entire life glimmering there, gilded by the sunlight: Valerio, Arwel, Marcelo, Cherish.)
He teases her for her stature and it makes her smile, one that reaches her blue eyes. When her dark maw brushes against his, they brighten as they glance up to meet his. For a moment, she thinks about asking him to slow down. To spare her an inch for a few more moments like this one. The chance to create a memory - one so filled with love and admiration for the young stallion before her - that would always be easy to recall. (The ones that involve Yanhua and his siblings always are.)
When they pull away, she gives her slender head a slight shake. Nothing to report from her part of Taiga. Nothing unusual came or went in the west. The days and most of her patrols were met with the changing tides, the familiar sound of crashing waves, and a chill in the air that meant autumn was upon Beqanna. Lilliana takes a small step back to peer up at Yanhua, a quick glance to assure herself that there were no new scars, that nothing looked out of place with her youngest son.
(And she thinks of Leilan briefly, teasing her for always worrying about her boys.)
Yanhua was fine, she reassured herself. He looked as healthy and as hale as any young stallion could be. A child of Summer grown, a proud testament to the lineage behind him. It's what he says, that he hopes that the peace will last and something in his mother's expression quiets. "It won't," she tells him. It's almost like she laments sharing this with her son but Lilliana has nothing to hide from her grown children. "It never does."
Standing beneath the Redwoods, she thinks of all the times that she had hoped for the very thing Yanhua had.
Lilliana would have never dreamt that she'd exist in a reality where she had helped name a dragon King of the North. (She had never thought she would have anything to do with kingdom politics at all. But as she watches Yanhua, she remembers all those times that had she had been caught unaware, his father being one of them). There might be repercussions for helping grant Leilan a kingdom but the waiting, the hoping that the peace would stay, was something she would never do again.
Not while her children lived here.
"Where I was raised," she starts, grasping at breaking the silence and trying to offer some of her reasoning to him. "We didn't have territories. Our kingdom was just... one." It was why Lilliana had pushed so hard for unity in the North. It makes the smile return and a teasing gust of air flares her nostrils, "and anyone who thought to disturb it was blown away by your grandsire."
They didn't have a Valerio the Valiant or Ichiro the Fierce. Taiga barely had a reputation at all, besides it murky fog and mysterious woods. Nerine had one, once, and perhaps would again. Neverwhere hadn't wanted the crown that Heartfire had passed to her and had been even less bothered by letting Leilan have it than Lilliana had. And the Isle? They were rebuilding and so that future had yet to be seen; but the look she gives Yanhua offers some insight. Everything was changing.
In the autumn sunshine, it says that he is welcome to share what he makes of it.
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind