Lilliana leaves little Reave with new-mother Amarine and asks the bejeweled mare to listen for her twins that sleep in a nearby grove. Just in case they wake. Please, she says, as she always has, as she always will.
And then, because her mind is as fractured as her heart with grief, she goes.
She does something that she hasn't done in years. She runs. Lilli finds one of the many trails that take her out of Taiga and she flies. Her hooves hit the frozen ground at a breakneck pace (because there is no fighters heart beating her chest and she can never bring herself to intentionally harm another so all her anger hits the Earth instead; because she knows that death wouldn't come so easily as breaking that pretty neck of hers). If horses are traveling this way, they know to keep out of the way of the mad galloping woman.
(If she were in the right frame of mind, she would have wondered what they thought of her, if they had paid her any mind at all. What did they make of the maddash runner? Did they wonder if she was running away or towards something? Did she run to remember or to forget?)
Lilliana, who had been praised as fleetest and swiftest girl of her generation (and some of the generations before, because none had come after the loss of Paraiso and the fall of Culloden), reaches for the wind in her stride again. She beats against the ground harder and harder - something that echoes her racing (aching) heart - as the mighty trees of Taiga fade into the shadows, as she takes the old trail towards once-beloved Hyaline and then flees from it, as she bolts through the Forest and then forcefully into nature where the River averts her path south.
When the horizon is blazing bright with a sunset as Lilliana is burning with her grief and anger, she finally crashes. The Taigan shatters against the shoreline when she realizes where is. This is where she had brought Aela into the world. And the thought of her lost flaxen-haired daughter makes her think of a little blonde boy in Taiga - orphaned - and it seems like a cruel reminder from her Gods. That like Aela, Brazen was someone else she was bound to lose.
Dusk bleeds into the dark. The slender chestnut with a jagged flame on her shoulder stands silently. The thought of even moving is exhausting and so she stands, staring out across the moonlit sheen on the ocean waves imagining what it must be like to drown. So absorbed in her thoughts, Lilliana doesn't notice the pale shape cradled in the snow and shadows.
A glow comes soft, at first. Where it comes from is unknown until a little ball of light comes hovering down, floating tentatively above his companion. Leonidas shines blue-silver above her and asks: Did you know that even stars die?
Remember when our songs were just like prayers
Like gospel hymns that you caught in the air?
@[Agetta]