AND THE OLD WIDOW GOES TO THE STONE EVERYDAY /
BUT I DON'T, I JUST SIT HERE AND WAIT /
GRIEVING FOR THE LIVING /
Are they tempting fate?
No, she tells herself. No, just you.
Warden looks up and Lilliana follows his gaze by instinct, glancing up towards Leonidas and then above him. The star that appears perched on a tangle of barren branches is not with who her quarrel is with; it is them. The bright, shining stars that flicker in knowing silence against a midnight velvet sky. Her earliest memories are of them, of a night not much different than this one. (It had been another lifetime but it had been winter and the darkest part of the year. What better time of year for the sky to come alive with starlight?)
Her mother had left their Willow and Lilliana, feeling the chill brush against her fine coat went chasing the ache through the snow to follow her dam. She had found Aletta in a clearing, in a spot where she could better see her secret-keepers. It was where her mother had unburdened her heavy soul and it had been there that Lilliana had learned to look up.
They've played a constant role all through her life - from Beyond to Beqanna.
She thinks of Aletta, explaining that it had been them that finally convinced her to leave Beyond and her beloved mountains. She thinks of her brother who worships them in a cove where the sky never sleeps, who it was said, met a fallen star and was trying to help her return. She thinks of Elena the last time they spoke who told her about Azrael, the shed-star: 'I wished for a star when I was little. And by the gods, he was delivered to me.'
Aletta is gone. Jay is gone. Elena is gone.
She is left with Leonidas.
Does she make a wish upon him?
She grits her teeth instead of wishing. She bites back against her anger instead of unleashing it at Warden. He is bitter and she is burning; Lilliana is pushing back against his anguish, is fighting against it and trying not to unleash all her recent sufferings: Brazen's last breath and the way her body had turned to stone, how Reave had huddled against her like he still expected her to rise, the charred remains of a few Taigan redwoods near the Nerinian border, voices from the argument with Yanhua and Leilan ricocheting in that same forest.
Lilliana dams herself up - preventing the memories from releasing - but her nostrils are flaring and she is wide-eyed when she looks back to Warden, barely illuminated in Leonidas' glow. Some parts of him are obscured in shadow and she can barely see the outline of his mighty, curved horns. The jewels that adorn his chest barely catch on the silver-blue light that pools around them, that drapes across their backs and shadows their faces.
All but the eyes.
"Because," she starts but her voice comes out smaller than it ever has before, than it has any right to be. A voice so fragile that even Lilliana doesn't recognize it. Because I am angry, she meant to say, wants to say. But the words are too heavy on her tongue, an unforgiving weight that prevents her from saying the rest. Because it isn't the truth. This is, a terrifying revelation that she finally shares instead. "Because I'm afraid."
ivy - taylor swift
image credit to footybandit
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind