lepis, comtesse of taiga
RUN AND TELL ALL OF THE ANGELS; THIS COULD TAKE ALL NIGHT
i think i need a devil to help me get things right
When Lilliana responds to Lepis’ good natured teasing in equal measure, the pale-eyed mare’s grin widens. The trip to Ischia, its success, and the prospect of a friend brings to the Comtesse a brightness she had not been aware was missing. She still isn’t, not really, but there is a subconscious lowering of the shield she so often carries with anyone that is not family. The memory of the white sands and the warm sun are at odds with their cool, damp home, but the knowledge that it is not so far away – and that they are free to visit – might be enough to get her through the winter. The tropical paradise had been almost – almost – as wonderful as a Loessian hot spring on a midwinter night.
The copper mare’s sober face as she accepts Lepis’ thanks is followed by more amusement and a compliment paid in kind, and if Lepis’ smile had faded it returns. “That is good to hear,” she says lightly, a rueful shake of her head at the memory of her youthful naiveite is followed by: “I certainly spent enough time trying to get better” and an easy grin. It had taken the better part of two years to make Lepis into even a passable diplomat, with the weight of doing so falling on a doting but childish mother and an uncle as likely to set fires for her amusement as to teach her politics. Of course, teaching a girl is different than teaching a woman, and perhaps if Lepis had been given a childhood rather than a kingdom to rule she might have been a little quicker to learn the ropes.
Regardless of speed or method though, Lepis had caught on to diplomacy eventually, and even after her adolescent fall had risen from consort to queen to empress once already. It does not seem so impossible that she might do so again.
Lilliana answers that it had been her mother who had thought she would make a good one, and Lepis feels a parallel to her own experience, one that brings an expression that is almost wry. She has done her best to keep her children free of her own expectations, knowing all too well the weight it places on young shoulders. Their mothers are lucky Lilliana and Lepis did not rebel, the dun mare thinks with a lighter expression; who knows where they might be today if they had? The sense of comraderie grows at the thought, and though Lepis has never had a sibling, she wonders if perhaps she might have felt this ease around a younger sister.
The pause the follows is not uncomfortable, and though Lepis gaze drifts to where a wren flits overhead, she looks back when the other mare begins to speak. “Of course not,” she replies with a curious raise of her striped brow. “Ask away.”
@[lilliana]
|
