- it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger -
we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution?
LILLIANA
"I’m fine,” Lilliana lies.
Her blue eyes sweep over the young Amarine again before they come to rest on the face of the jewel-touched girl. She let a deep breath - one that came cavern-deep from her aching chest - and reached out for Ama, moving to brush away a clump of muddy Nerinian soil that clung to girl’s teal mane.
It’s a small thing. But this small thing, this one small action, removing the debris from the earlier catastrophe, is something she can control. Lilliana can use this as a bedrock for the motions that come next.
Turning her shapely head, she regards @[Yanhua] from the proud ram-curl of his horns down to his cloven hooves. There’s a flash of anxiety behind her gaze as she carefully studies Yan, looking for any cut, scrape, or injury. She wants to ask him if he’s alright, wants to make sure he’s fine. But then Lilliana reminds herself that he is no longer a colt that needs his dam’s pressing or prompting.
He’s a stallion grown, willing to fight his own (and others) battles.
The trio that stands soaking in Straia’s rain becomes a quartet and the ensemble continues to grow. Fechin receives the same greeting that Ama and Yan had. Lilliana studies the girl (and remembers happier times, when the moorlands had been green and it had felt like spring could have lasted for eternity) and doesn’t need empathy or healing to know the expression on the face of Eurwen’s daughter. The Taigan mare angled her body closer to the painted girl, realizing that there was a very real chance of shock.
"Fechin, love,” she murmured, sidestepping closer, "come over here.” Wishing that she could do more than offer her own shivering girth.
Sad, sad, sad. You all look lost. What are they supposed to look like, she wonders. Most of the horses gathered here are so young and to witness the devastation that they have, what are they supposed to look like? "Popinjay,” Lilliana warns the bay mare (the one who had never learned her name, had called her ‘Lolly’ over the years in Taiga and Lilli never had the heart to correct her). A nip is placed towards the tattered flame on her shoulder and her ears flick back into the sodden mess of her mane as she tenses.
Amarine rises to answer Poppy and the conversation shifts. They had all been tested today and a rather maternal instinct in Lilliana wants to bare her teeth as the other mare. But she refrains because short of danger to her children and a failed mock with a Loessian, she has never been one to use them or her hooves. And she reminds herself that if the North is to rebuild, it will not happen if they tear themselves down, if they bicker amongst each other.
"Are you here to help or to goad? If it is the latter, you’ve unfortunately missed the Pangeans. If you are here to help us ‘wake up’, perhaps you could assist me with standing on the other side of Fechin,” she indicates the spotted filly next to her, "to help her keep warm while we talk about what comes next.”
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind