WE ARE ALL JUST FRAGILE THINGS /
SOFT AND SMALL /
BUT ALL THE BROKEN CAN FIND /
HOPE IN THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES /
The stars and Lilliana have a long history.
She had been born beneath a twinkling blanket of them. They had been the only things that wrapped around her and her grieving mother when there should have been a whole family behind them. But instead of Paraiso, instead of her father and a multitude of aunts and uncles and cousins and other relations, it had only been her and her siblings. A few of those who had been left behind because they had been like Aletta: either carrying a child, too young like her other children, or simply too old to fight.
(There are memories that Lilliana holds of sneaking away from the willow where she and her brothers and sister were supposed to be safely sleeping. Memories where the copper filly would follow her mother to an open field where the only thing to do was bare yourself to the stars above. Lilliana had grown up listening to her mother rage and grieve, laugh and mourn in their silence. She remembers sneaking out once and being seen, remembers the way that her silver mother had once whispered into her dainty ears when she drew her close: "Look up, Lilli, and know you are so infinitely loved.")
Lilliana remembers Orani, a girl who had been one of her dearest friends during her childhood. She had been a child crafted out of her mother's dreams (a dreamwalker is what Beqanna would have called Keav) and conceived from the stardust of her Immortal father. They had laughed together, and it had been that celestial girl who had taught Lilliana how to dream.
It had been that girl who had taught Lilliana how to listen to the stars.
And then after meeting Wolfbane, Lilliana had given it all up. She stopped asking the heavens for guidance; stopped looking above for help. They were the ones who had remained silent while she had pleaded every prayer she knew, while she begged for some kind of sign.
They had been as silent as stars.
After the fight with Leilan, she had stopped dreaming completely. Had begged Orani (wherever she might have gone) to take them away because Lilliana didn't want to remember any of it. Nothing of the torment, nothing of the pain, but most of all, she had just wanted to be stripped of her wretched hope. The light in her that kept trying to stay lit, remind her that the darkness never stays. The light that had once hoped she might have been worthy of being loved.
Leonidas came soon after that. She had tried to hide him from the rest of her family, because what could she say? Her heritage had been rich with stories from the stars. But then there had been another night in Tephra - another dark period that came across Beqanna - and a strange stallion had flared his white, wide wings and Lilliana - tired of recoiling, tired of the anger, the pain and the sadness - had renounced them alongside Warden.
Then she had died, and learned that the stars had been the only way that her family knew of her. How Jay - a Mystic in another realm (alongside that old friend - Orani) had known to send a star to remind Lilliana that she had never been left behind. That she had never been truly alone.
I don't know, this startalker says and despite the way that her companion keeps warning her, Lilliana steps forward.
We can't leave her, she thinks to Leonidas and he hovers above, stilling his glow so that it offers enough light for them both to sea by. She says that she doesn't know, but her first answer had been yes, and in a land that has always seemed so stranger to Lilliana, this answer feels familiar. The water lapping around both their legs glows as the chestnut mare begins to share hers with the other, glancing over the obvious injuries that need healing. They will need a Tephran for this to work. Between the shining stars surrounding them and the way that the former Taigan begins to chase away the dark, somebody will come.
"Why don't we start with your name?" she asks gently, somewhere to start while they waited for help. "I'm Lilliana."
@Ciri
fragile things (reprise) - megan hilty
image credit to footybandit