It's an easy enough thing to fall into step beside Leilan.
It's an easy enough thing to walk and it is far easier for her to just talk instead of to linger in the silence next to him. Lilliana fills the shadow-filled air with mentions of Taiga and how the Redwood fares, of the antics of their shared children and the ones he watches over regardless. She mentions Tephra and Wishbone and Warden and the chestnut keeps a delicate ear tipped in his direction for anything he might wish to add. The North is his, after all.
Lilliana, like her father before her, merely considers herself a caretaker of these woods. And as she tilts her refined head towards the Freyr, she thinks that the ice-breathing stallion might be of a similar mindset.
"I haven't ventured much outside of Taiga," she admits and peers curiously up at the Northern leader. "How bad is it outside our borders?" Lilliana finally asks. Yanhua had told her of some things, of how dire the situation was becoming.
Had Leilan seen worse?
She flares her dark nostrils when the roan says that everything needs to change. (And while Lilliana doesn't disagree with him, she wants the sun to return as badly as he, something becomes guarded about her expression when she glances at him.) "I'm not very good at it," she murmurs. Lilli and her Echoes that contains whispers of the past. Lilli and the way she searches every stranger's face for a glimmer of hope, of knowing what had happened to her family. Lilli who almost lost herself in the present because she kept looking over her shoulder, behind her towards a past that she can never change.
But maybe this is evidence of their healing. Leilan, who can finally bring himself to mention Breckin, and Lilliana who can finally attempt to brave the future, whatever it brings.
Her lips tug upward in a slight smile. She'll consider it a compliment.
"She knows of Eurwen," Lilliana adds. She had mentioned the twin of her Nerinian friend. It is the maternal sister - a daughter that she shares with Wolfbane - that the copper mare has never mentioned (though the Freyr would know something of the stripped palomino filly). Her lost daughter always causes her steady smile to falter but she recovers it, enough to tease @[Leilan]. "Do you mean to tell me you have more?" says the Taigan leader, with the laughter light on her tongue. She had grown up among a large brood of half-siblings. The idea isn't a foreign one to a girl who once resided in Paradise. She clicks her tongue playfully, feeling hopeful in his presence for the first time in months. This is banter is reminiscent of the bond they used to share.
For Lilli, this feels like the start of forgiveness.
"You rogue."
