10-26-2021, 02:07 AM
Leilan
Is he alright - Yanhua? Leilan pauses before answering, allowing the brief silence to introduce what he must report now. It isn’t a quick confirmation, because how could he lie about something so big, how could he lie to her at all even if it made her feel better? Still he hesitates to speak and the heaviness of that silence is more than he could tell her - but also more than he likes to endure, and he smothers it. ”I don’t know,” he tells her, and in that, he tells her just about all that he knows about the subject. ”He’s disappeared. All I know is that he let a chicken nest on his head and Ama has followed him to make sure he’s okay. I haven’t seen either for a while.” She’d better hear about the chicken from him - but it should be some sort of consolidation that Amarine hadn’t given up. What had become of Borderline, he doesn’t know either.
And it’s not that Taiga was failing as a whole; Nashua was looking after it and Reave as well, though both had other priorities too. Leilan himself, well - should he have seen this coming? He has never really experienced this kind of madness, only assuming that the young male needed time. His mother reappearing might have helped, so he feels like he failed in his task by not finding her on time. Still, at least he had tried to fulfill Yan’s wishes - but in doing so he knows he has avoided the responsibility for the north, ungracefully dumping it with Nashua.
But he doesn’t think he could have done it differently, so however she wants to, she will have to deal with it.
Taiga? ”I don’t think anything will ever end those trees. I’m sure your other sons are keeping an eye on it.” He hasn’t checked in much, he knows - it’s just the whole Gale-thing that has occupied everyone. Does he dare move the conversation thataway? No - first he wants to see how she handles the first part of the bad news; he moves the topic forward.
She responds coldly - perhaps due to the earlier message, perhaps she truly believes Bane to be what he ended as. For a moment, the magician’s grin freezes on his face, then falters into a more stoic grimace. ”I’ve known him as a yearling,” he confides in her. It sounds like an excuse and maybe it is. Wolfbane was never this cruel monster - not until he got cursed. Wasn’t that why she had fallen for him in the first place?
The subject goes as quickly as he had touched it; a short quip was all he had given, and she brushed it aside. The ice mage lets it slide, too; in the end it is not his business to correct her feelings for a man who’s long gone and happy where he is. It is her, who needs to decide what she wants and it clearly isn’t him.
For a moment he wonders if he meant Bane or himself with that thought - but when she says she doesn’t know which home she wants, perhaps she doesn’t know either. She is an indecisive mare, and he starts to question his own heart too. Is this her likeness with the spotted mare? Is this truly what he keeps falling for?
Lilliana has a way of entering his mind, asking just then if he wants it to return to what it once was. The image, a memory of Breckin presses to his mind, or perhaps rather the emotion that comes with it.
He doesn’t have to open this package to know what it contains. He shakes it, knows what he will find, and softly sets it aside. A mental ice mirror sends her a set of memories in return; a very young Breckin in a creek, her head held up haughtily as she tells him she does mind sharing the water on that summer day, though her eyes sparkle; two golden-maned fillies in the snow, one chocolate-coloured, one spotted, her roaning pattern barely visible beneath; Breckin in the River, following a sapphire and gold tobiano kelpie into the waters. The latter memory comes with the feeling of a shattering icicle on a frozen cave’s floor, but also with a mental pull-out. He shakes his head when he mentally and physically turns away. ”Not anymore.” There was someone able to take that place, once - but she hadn’t tried and he hadn’t asked her to. ”I think I’m done now.”
Saying it out loud closes a chapter. The sound of it echoes through an empty ice-walled cave, not too unsimilar with the one he had sheltered in in Hyaline, once. Where Kensa had allowed him respite, and distraction (though not of the kind one might assume - neither he nor her had wanted consolation of that sort from the other).
And so it had been her whom he had pulled out from beyond, because he didn’t want the hassle with his former wife any longer, and the new girl hadn’t stepped up, in fact she had turned the other way. It was only then that he realized he didn’t long for those things any more.
He would always be a loose projectile at best, when it came to love.
And it’s not that Taiga was failing as a whole; Nashua was looking after it and Reave as well, though both had other priorities too. Leilan himself, well - should he have seen this coming? He has never really experienced this kind of madness, only assuming that the young male needed time. His mother reappearing might have helped, so he feels like he failed in his task by not finding her on time. Still, at least he had tried to fulfill Yan’s wishes - but in doing so he knows he has avoided the responsibility for the north, ungracefully dumping it with Nashua.
But he doesn’t think he could have done it differently, so however she wants to, she will have to deal with it.
Taiga? ”I don’t think anything will ever end those trees. I’m sure your other sons are keeping an eye on it.” He hasn’t checked in much, he knows - it’s just the whole Gale-thing that has occupied everyone. Does he dare move the conversation thataway? No - first he wants to see how she handles the first part of the bad news; he moves the topic forward.
She responds coldly - perhaps due to the earlier message, perhaps she truly believes Bane to be what he ended as. For a moment, the magician’s grin freezes on his face, then falters into a more stoic grimace. ”I’ve known him as a yearling,” he confides in her. It sounds like an excuse and maybe it is. Wolfbane was never this cruel monster - not until he got cursed. Wasn’t that why she had fallen for him in the first place?
The subject goes as quickly as he had touched it; a short quip was all he had given, and she brushed it aside. The ice mage lets it slide, too; in the end it is not his business to correct her feelings for a man who’s long gone and happy where he is. It is her, who needs to decide what she wants and it clearly isn’t him.
For a moment he wonders if he meant Bane or himself with that thought - but when she says she doesn’t know which home she wants, perhaps she doesn’t know either. She is an indecisive mare, and he starts to question his own heart too. Is this her likeness with the spotted mare? Is this truly what he keeps falling for?
Lilliana has a way of entering his mind, asking just then if he wants it to return to what it once was. The image, a memory of Breckin presses to his mind, or perhaps rather the emotion that comes with it.
He doesn’t have to open this package to know what it contains. He shakes it, knows what he will find, and softly sets it aside. A mental ice mirror sends her a set of memories in return; a very young Breckin in a creek, her head held up haughtily as she tells him she does mind sharing the water on that summer day, though her eyes sparkle; two golden-maned fillies in the snow, one chocolate-coloured, one spotted, her roaning pattern barely visible beneath; Breckin in the River, following a sapphire and gold tobiano kelpie into the waters. The latter memory comes with the feeling of a shattering icicle on a frozen cave’s floor, but also with a mental pull-out. He shakes his head when he mentally and physically turns away. ”Not anymore.” There was someone able to take that place, once - but she hadn’t tried and he hadn’t asked her to. ”I think I’m done now.”
Saying it out loud closes a chapter. The sound of it echoes through an empty ice-walled cave, not too unsimilar with the one he had sheltered in in Hyaline, once. Where Kensa had allowed him respite, and distraction (though not of the kind one might assume - neither he nor her had wanted consolation of that sort from the other).
And so it had been her whom he had pulled out from beyond, because he didn’t want the hassle with his former wife any longer, and the new girl hadn’t stepped up, in fact she had turned the other way. It was only then that he realized he didn’t long for those things any more.
He would always be a loose projectile at best, when it came to love.
told you I'd change
even when I knew I never could
even when I knew I never could
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
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