Every Guardian knows a dark hour.
If Lilliana could conjure ghosts, she could have summoned the champagne leader with such vivid clarity that even Leonidas' light could have shimmered on his fiercely golden coat. She hears him at that moment (from some old forgotten lesson, one most likely meant for Malachi or Alvaro or their sons) speaking from another time. Some part of her breaks a little at the memory because if he were real, Lilliana might have asked: only an hour? What if they bled into days? What if the darkness stayed?
The winter wind is not the only bitter reminder that chills between the Watcher and Taiga's leader.
She doesn't know what to do about the coming darkness. Lilliana will do as she has shared with Warden. She will do what she can to prepare her family and whatever she can to safeguard them. She is not a bringer of prophecies or an ender of them; she is just a mare from Taiga who does what she can so that others without might have something, whatever it is they need. Having had nothing has made it so much easier for her to share.
So an apocalypse looms ahead.
Lilliana lifts her head, studying Leonidas' carefully like the heavens might reveal something about the future that Warden has seen. The flickering star is quiet, ominously so. If he knows anything, it is beyond his power to share more. (And yet Lilliana wonders if there has been a reason for the star's wanderings. If coming across the Watcher had been his intent all along. If his fierce protectiveness might have come from the fact that Warden will see and Lilliana will know and they can do nothing to prevent it.)
Except this.
"Not yet," she murmurs after Warden, from someplace far-off, like a dreamworld that Kagerus might have created (only that would have been so much brighter than the future). The winged stallion keeps his emotions quiet but she can feel them stirring in the air: grief and sadness and guilt. Lilliana doesn't have the curse of knowing the awful tragedies that wait, she just knows the struggle of having them behind her. She battles with it now before telling the Watcher, "It will come." The future always comes. "But it will pass."
At what cost, she doesn't yet know.
She just knows it will not be faced alone.
Leonidas drifts down and moves away, floating north and Lilliana knows dawn will be breaking soon. She will slip back into Taiga and back to the little copse of trees she shares with her youngest children. Leilan would head back to the Isle and so would start another day in the North. It's not the life she has ever imagined (the one where she had imagined her family and Elena and endless summer days by their river-bend) but it's a peaceful existence and the knowledge of what lays ahead will make her treasure these fleeting times even more. The pegasus flares his wings and the Taigan looks over her shoulders with her blue eyes shining beneath her bonded's silver-blue glow. "Until next time."
Despite the insidious things that @[Warden] has seen, something is still flickering (dim, faint, weak) in her copper chest near her aching heart.
Hope.
just a closer for them - thank you for such a lovely thread <3
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind