There is a memory in Taiga for @[Ori], if the gold champagne ever reaches the Northern forest.
There is a memory, left buried beneath the finely-ground sand on a beach that doesn't ebb or fade with the tides. Lilliana buried it there a long time ago, because those who would have understood it were long gone. 'Their never coming back,' she had told Elena on a star-filled and lonely night. 'No matter what happens,' she had said, her voice nearly choking on the confession. Because what else could it feel like to a Legacy residing outside of the ancient valley than some kind of sacrilege? 'They are never coming back.' Her palomino cousin had stayed within Taiga for a time after that, looking after her eldest sons when Lilliana had been whisked away to Pangea as a captive.
When she had returned from the sandstone kingdom, there had only been an apology. The name of a place called Terrastella (a place full of sunshine and sunflowers) and the name of a goddess that Lilliana had never heard of. Her beloved cousin was gone again and the chestnut was left alone.
She doesn't expect to see her again. She certainly doesn't expect to see any other of her kin. They are all in Paraiso, safe and protected. For the ones who weren't there, they were in Windskeep. That was all that mattered to Lilliana; her remaining family was together and they were safe. For years, she has told herself that is all she needs to know. There is a family here that needs her: children and grandchildren, deep and lasting friendships have been made. She adopts the title her valiant father once held and calls herself a Guardian like her sire and grandsire before her. This, she tells herself (much like her mother before her), is all she needs.
It's been years since she has last seen her prophet-cousin Marcelo and his younger sister, laughter-loving Ori.
This story begins as it so often does for Lilli. A breeze that tugs on her windswept mane. She doesn't often give in to the Winds like she was apt to do when she was younger but this one is incessant; it pushes past her once, twice, thrice until the Taigan moves away from the familiar borders of her protected Redwood home and into the Common Lands. The River bubbles over a generation's worth of smooth stone, beckoning the flame-marked mare towards it. She follows the hum of the current, wishing for the light of Leonidas and hoping that her bonded was safe (wherever the stars had gone during this Eternal Night). Hyaline and her mountain range loom on one side of Lilli. The hills of Loess roll away from her on the other.
She only stops at the edges of the Forest, where the shadows behind her eyes darken. Lilliana contemplates using the last of her glow to venture in but decides to turn away from it. The wind blows again; urgent, relentless, insistent. The chestnut tosses her slender head against, letting her curling mane tangle more and her ears flick forward and then back. She does turn away but then the wind carries another message: a sign. It is a scent (not like Elena but there is a familiarity in it) that she knows. Lilliana pushes off towards the direction of the smell, no longer feeling the tug of the breeze or the song of the River. Her steps come faster and faster until -
Until there is a shimmer of gold, a shade that they all seem to carry in some hue or another.
"Ori?" she disbelievingly asks the gilded silhouetted, illuminated only from the silver-blue glow that comes shining from Valerio's daughter.
