01-18-2022, 04:43 PM
Lillibet
Lillibet has always been an early riser. She’d always favored the break of dawn, especially on the days that Link had awoken with her and they’d snuck off to cause trouble or see what adventures they could pursue before Oceane and Ledger coaxed them back to Sylva for whatever teachings their parents thought most important. Oceane had usually leaned towards diplomacy ─ peace was her guiding light. Peace, safety, equity. It was interesting enough, but Lillibet had not taken to it the way their mother wanted. She could not see herself creating a safe haven in the midst of Beqanna the way Oceane and Lepis had; she could not fathom subscribing the entirety of her existence to public service.
Ledger’s teachings had always been the more interesting ones, though they had helped to foster a particular bitterness deep inside the young glowing girl. Ledger taught her how to protect herself. But he had also taught Link to do the same ─ and it was when their conversations turned to the mutual magic they shared that Lillibet would slip away and remind herself that it was no one’s fault she hadn’t been born with the same magic Link had.
The silent reassurance usually didn’t help, though. Being able to shift into a bear and roar with all her might would have.
Her thoughts linger on these memories, bittersweet as they are now, as she meanders quietly through the Meadow in the early morning. There are a handful of others, though none who she’d go out of her way to speak to, and once the expansive verdant sea grows livelier, Lillibet makes for the treeline to hide her ethereal glow amidst the trunks and boughs.
Her stride is graceful as she navigates over roots and stumps and foliage, having spent the first years of her life securely in the golden forest of Sylva. It’s only when her honeyed eyes spot the frame of a vaguely familiar man unfurling himself from his nest in the Meadow that she falters, a gold striped hoof catching on a bulbous root just as he moves ─ now a silver-eyed stag ─ into her path at the treeline.
”Oh!” she exclaims just as she catches herself, narrowly avoiding a collision with the shifter stallion. Her thoughts slither momentarily to Herrin, to Link, to Ledger ─ so many in her life had been graced with the magic of transformation and yet here she stands, glowing.
A silver beacon.
”Bolder?” she asks, the uncertainty apparent in her voice. They’d only met once, just after the falling of the South, and she doesn’t trust that she’s remembered his name correctly despite the moments over the past season that the image of his face has risen, unbidden, in her mind.
Her gold-striped face flushes with embarrassment at the memory, and Lillibet can only hope that he takes her abashment at face value instead of reading into whatever else might be playing in her head.
