Lilliana listens as Neverwhere explains all the falsehoods of this existence. There is no trusting the moon, no pull or ebb of tides to explain the passing of time already gone. There was no pattern in the stars, no discernable future to be found in the way that spread themselves across the cosmos. Even the sun was a lie, with a warmth that a soul couldn't feel.
And perhaps because this place was existence between worlds - of things that had been and would be, things that had never been and never could be - it makes it all the easier to fall into a memory. Her dear friend tells her to guard thoughts and as Lilli's eyes move away from the pale scars along Neverwhere's sides - scars that had taunted her for years - those blue eyes fall into the past.
But instead of looking down to the ground, there is a river and as it trickles by, a voice calls out: "Lilli," her sister Brielle says, "would you stop thinking of someone who thought so little of you?" (This part of the memory never happened; it never will because Lilliana will never bring herself to speak of him to her family.)
Her gaze continues to look down and study her reflection, to peer at the angles and planes of her face like they might reveal an answer from the distorted image that mirrored back at her. It is Lilliana as a yearling who looks up and away, towards the champagne youth that approached her. "I know," she told her older sister. "It's just that he...," and the chestnut bites her bottom lip until the pointed stare of Brielle drew out the rest of her words, "he looks so sad." Bri had sighed, "Well, you would be too. He came back from a war, Lil." It had been that war that Lilliana had seen still shining in his blue eyes, the battle is still raging on somewhere in the back of his thoughts.
"I'm not a fighter, like you." She explains, "And I'm not a healer like Elena." Lilliana looks back down to the river again, where the current continues to lazily flow by them. "I'm not going to be a Guardian, like Malachi. And I'm not going to be a Shaman, like Jay." A troubled reflection stares back at her, revealing a truth that will always be a present in Lilliana's life - regardless of where she goes. "I just want to help," she tells Brielle.
When looks glances up again, the riverbank and her sister are gone. The fog swirls more until it reveals a desert. The herd ahead of them is unfamiliar to Lilliana (though perhaps its a trick of the mind but they seem to shimmer gold for a moment and when a head rises to look at the pair of mares, Lilli thinks they are being watched by a pair of blue eyes; she blinks and it is gone) and so she turns her slender head to look at @[Neverwhere]. Had this been her home once upon another life? It had been so easy to step back into her past and it makes her wonder if because the past and present and future might tie together here, if they have found themselves at some sort of cosmic knot of time.
She watches the horses uneasily and it is clear when she speaks that she doesn't like this idea. Her dark lips purse together at the thought. She doesn't even know if is something worth considering - perhaps Nev can dismiss it as easily as she has done with so many of Lilliana's other worries. "What if we have to go back to the beginning?" she asks quietly. What if to go back to the past was the only way to find their way ahead?
![[Image: 58x0pn.jpg]](https://i.imgflip.com/58x0pn.jpg)