She’s frowning as Lilliana looks up at the taller stallion. Ghaul is certainly talking. She can feel the rumbling of @[ghaul]’s words in her chest and feels his conviction stirring in her own firebrand soul. How many times has she thought that: that for those she loves, she would let the world burn and blaze if it meant their happiness? Their safety?
It’s a thought that has terrified her since her youth and has made Lilliana always vigilant with her emotions lest they blow too strong.
Ghaul shrugs away Neverwhere’s existence as if she is a leaf that falls away in autumn, as if she is another tide that washes away from shore. Though the copper woman has never said it - apart from her sons and her golden beacon back in Taiga - it is something she has never told anyone else. Neverwhere and Brazen and Eurwen all belong to that fire that burns in her chest. (And perhaps the dreamer and the monster are not so different; maybe fanatical is not so different from whimsical.)
The Nerinian Queen - her friend - is alive and a breath wrestles itself free. She hadn’t realized that she had been holding it, not until he said it.
"You found him?” she asks with the air burning her lungs. Neverwhere is alive but the demon still lingers about. Lilliana takes a step back from him as if the mere mention of Wolfbane implicates that he could be nearby. That thought sends a shiver rippling down her spine and the Taigan mare takes a small sidestep towards Eurwen, seeking out her warmth with the way that Ghaul has made her world grow suddenly cold.
He is thinking - pondering? - thoughts aloud as he looks towards his Cove where his brood grows and Lilliana glances to that horizon, listening to his words as he imagines aloud of his own fires and blazes. An ear flicks in his direction as she tries to find a way to dream away this nightmare.
(Is such a thing possible, Kagerus? she wonders.)
Her ears go back at the mention that Pangea will allow them to choose their ruler. "The North will decide which way her Winds blow,” the chestnut says, "just as the North would never presume to tell Pangea where to light her Fires.” She doesn’t need to push that point further when they both know that Nerine or Taiga or the Isle aren't in the position to tell any kingdom anything, not as they currently are.
Still, it doesn’t mean it will always be that way.
"I am but one voice in Taiga’s woods,” the blue-eyed mare cautions Ghaul. Though the way she says that means she hasn’t disregarded his proposition, that she isn’t already picturing the redwoods filled with black smoke instead of silver mist, of flames embracing the proud trees instead of sunlight beaming down through its dense canopies. "And the forest is filled with many.”
Lilliana nods to Eurwen, "Let her take this message to Lethia and the residents of Taiga. If they agree to your trial by flame then by all means, burn it to the ground.” The Redwoods have stood through many tests of time and perhaps a part of her has always known there would be others. She does not doubt Taiga’s roots. Whatever Ghaul meant to do is nothing that Time herself couldn’t undo; the Redwoods would heal. They would regrow.
"Keep your armistice,” the chestnut mare responds with a voice that brings to mind rolling thunderheads. "Just keep Wolfbane from the North.”
LILLIANA
if i ever get to heaven
i've got a long list of questions