They aren't so different, the shadow man and the fire-gold mare.
Lilliana had been born like him, untraited and ungifted, to a passel of siblings who seemed to range with their abilities as the winds blew in different directions. Her only talent had been a smile that drew out their warmth like sunshine, that eased their conflicts and allowed them to momentarily forget their struggles.
It had only been in Beqanna that it had all changed (and she remembers joking about it once in Beyond, remembers laughing and saying 'I'm more likely to be struck by lightning to be given a gift.') The Mountain had given her the ability to heal and then the ability to catch the glimpses of the past, to see what memories that others might wish to keep hidden. Lilliana, who preferred to keep her past neatly tucked away, found her own making its way to the minds of others.
She has spent years with her Echoes now. It's been years since Craft and Anatomy have returned to the Realm of the Living. Lilliana no longer projects her memories like lightning strikes (though certain emotions certainly make her more prone to do so). She holds on to her memories - keeps them close and wrapped around her beating heart - so that they don't overwhelm another. Her father's curse had been his haunted eyes, a sadness that permeated from him because of those he couldn't save when Windskeep finally succumbed to the war.
For Lilli, it was that same sadness that sometimes a stranger might glimpse. A kind of sorrow that happened when her blue-eyed gaze would linger on the scorched remains of a Sequoia. When she thought of Aela. When she lifted her slender head and stared to the east, towards mountainous Hyaline, and remembered her girlhood. Remembered all those nights laughing and trading secrets with Elena like they had been back in Murmuring Rivers.
Sometimes, she thinks she would give anything for another night like that.
She thinks she could endure the Dark with more grace and bearing if there was something bright like their laughter to break it.
But Elena is nothing more than a memory.
And Lilliana has a territory to worry for.
The sensation that someone is nearby - a prickling feeling - becomes her foremost concern. The chestnut mare searches through the obscure shapes of wilting ferns and looming redwoods, waiting to see if whatever is out there will reply. It's the fierce red glow of his ember eyes that attract her attention first as she tries to make some shape of the stranger. He is harder to discern than Wishbone had been but there is something about him that she recognizes. He isn't a monster, that she much she does know (or at least she thinks she knows).
"No," she says, in an equally hushed voice. The slender mare even gives her refined head a small shake. "I just wasn't expecting anyone," Lilliana explains quietly. This part of the forest normally seems so empty but now she wonders if this was because of the shadow-dwellers, to Leilan's brother and his family. The supposed safest place to be in Beqanna. Her head tilts curiously, momentarily forgoing introductions, "is this your part of the wood?"
@[Torryn]