white rope marionette; arthas & any

[lilliana]

She had always been taught that home was a feeling more than any physical place could be. Something substantial like Murmuring Rivers, like Paraiso had been - well, things like that could be taken from you. Despite how Lilliana's young heart had protested at the loss of them, there had always been the constant reminder that family was the thing that could ground you. They could be the stars to map a chart by, a guiding light in the darkness. 

What happens when the compass has been lost and those things that you once measured yourself by, those stars you used to chart your course, vanish? Lilliana has been learning that this world is a wide, wild one (full of so many things - loss, laughter, anger, hope) and that if there is nothing to anchor you, you drown. 

So Taiga has become her anchor. 

The auburn mare smells of windswept places - she smells of where the sea and sky greets the forest on Taiga's western shore. Lilli watches the tides and charts her stars, listens to the wind and lets the winter season pass her by. She even lets herself wonder about places unknown, about those untamed and unclaimed places of the world that roll in the ocean's artic bite. She is content to spend her days there - could have spent many more days there. Leilan, a stranger on Taiga's northern border, had reminded her that she couldn't keep hiding away. No matter if she willed her eyes open or shut, the current events of their world would continue on to rectify itself or spiral out of control.

After that conversation, she had no desire to keep herself in the dark. 
Elaina wouldn't have wanted that. 

But despite what Lilli feels, whatever her thoughts and her own emotions are, it is the sight of the pale woman that gives her pauses. The copper mare pauses her own attempt to dissolve between the trees and the way that Breckin stands - a way that tugs so violently against her own heart - as if she is waiting for someone who never comes. How could Lilliana leave her here among the emptiness and the veil of obscurity that are the Taigan shadows?

Whoever the mare is, she doesn't deserve the desolate company she has found beneath Taiga's trees.

One crimson ear pricks and another swivels to the side, listening for any other echoes that come from beneath the forest canopy. The only sound that echoes are her hoofsteps as they carefully tread above the generations of pine needles beneath her. The spotted mare isn't so far away, close enough that Lilliana is rays of fire-gold beneath the few illuminated rays of light that weave their way through the trees when it catches her.

For Breckin, as she draws near, Lilli tries to summon a smile as she comes to stand a few feet away from the pale mare. "Are you looking for something?" she queries with an inviting tilt of her sculpted head and a spark that she summons behind those blue eyes. "Taiga has her share of secrets but she can give them up if you know where to look."

@[Breckin] hi yes sorry i couldn't help myself<3