Oh, the things Lilliana remembers.
(Those first lovely Lupines that adorned the riverbanks of Murmuring Rivers. Bri’s smile when Lilli had finally learned to angle her shoulder just so during one of their (very) few sparring lessons. Malachi’s laughter, something that could rival the warmth of the daylight and the bubbling of their brooks. Jay and his infinite wisdom, the way he could find a story for every situation and how his gift for telling made it seem like he was generations older than he was.)
Her childhood hadn’t been an unhappy one; the opposite. She had grown up surrounded in love. Lilli had thrived and learned to dream on it. She might not have had the gift of flight but she had learned to soar with their love and she learned how to laugh without fear or hesitation.
A gift and those memories are something she keeps tucked close to her always.
The sunfire mare smiles at her - something wrapped in sunbeams and kindness - and Lilliana smiles back. What the other mare shares with her is an infectious feeling and the chestnut will always catch on to it. The Taigan is rarely seen without a smile but this one softens her face and for a moment, makes her girlish - makes her look very much like the youth who had wandered into Beqanna almost five years prior. (And she doesn’t look much older from those days - something she still hasn’t yet realized.)
Her own blue eyes dance in response to her comment and then they light up with amusement. Lilli’s earlier uncertainty of the traveler has started to thaw like frost and the copper mare comes closer, tilting her own head in reply. "My parents used to compare me to the birds,” her smile curves with the edge of a secret. "Lillibird was what they used to call me.”
Lilliana waits a moment, watching for her reaction and wondering if Shezira had any childhood nicknames. (What does one call a ray of sunshine?) Her ears prick forward and the crimson mare takes another step forward, finding herself growing more comfortable (and sure) in the company of the blonde wanderer.
”Beqanna,” Lilli offers with all the grace and accomplishment of narrating as her mother and brother are. She studies the other mare and then feels her head tilting inquisitively, ”Have you heard of it?” She had grown up with stories of it - of the Jungle that was no longer, of the Falls that no longer existed, of the Dale that her bloodline had once claimed as home.
But there are many worlds besides this one and she wonders what one Shezira has flowed in from. What her story is.
Warmly, she adds with her never-failing politeness, "And you, @[Shezira].”
Her next question causes the red mare to shake her head and Lilli contemplates her next words. "No,” she says gently, "I was born a long way from here. But I’ve been here… for,” it takes her a moment to recount the years and the memories, "going on five years.” Had that much time passed? How had it passed so quickly? It felt as if it all trickled by like those creeks she used to run alongside in her youth.
The chestnut mare thinks for a minute, trying to think of what she would have wanted a native Beqannian to have told her about this place when she first stumbled across her borders. "I’m not sure where you're from, Shezi,” Lilli adds lightly, "but this land is.. unique." Given the chance, Lilliana will elaborate but there is much (almost too much) to say about the wide array of characters who call the land of the Sunrise home. "What brings you here?”
And she finally accepts that there are no words to prepare any outsider for Beqanna - it is an adventure individual to each horse. What Shezira makes of the wild characters, the rampant magic, the political stage is entirely for her to realize and decide.
i didn't proofread this... your welcome XD
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind