[open] love still binds us, family finds us

[lilliana]

WE ARE ALL JUST FRAGILE THINGS /
SOFT AND SMALL /
BUT ALL THE BROKEN CAN FIND /
HOPE IN THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES /

She doesn't understand.

There is some disconnect - something that has gotten lost along the years - of where she should realize why Leilan would have been looking for her. But nobody else has. It's a precedent that had been started by her father and all the men in her life have all taken the same path; Lilliana has seen far more of the backs of those who have claimed to love her than anything else.

"Nashua?" she manages to ask and then, "Yanhua?" It wouldn't have surprised her if both of them had asked after her; if she had died and perhaps they were more like her than she ever knew, that even after she had gone, they had continued to look for her face in every stranger that crossed their path.

Leilan had always known her as a worrisome dam - and had even chided her for a time or two with their own twins - and the corners of her blue eyes crinkled anxiously. How were Oren and Roselin? How much had they grown? Could they forgive her, for not returning with the light? What of her youngest, Reave?

"I died, Leilan." She confides, quietly revealing what had happened to her. "And then I found my - ," she pauses, struggling against the weight of the memory. Malachi had been dark with his handsome dapples when he should have gone as pale as the moon, as their mother had. "My brother was waiting for me." He had told her no tears, that his death had been on his own terms. He had died protecting Kalina and their children. He had lived and died as only a Legacy could aspire to, in the service of others and those they loved.

"He told me I could - I could go home."

That clearly hadn't happened, and she has to glance away from Leilan as she admits this. Those that have come to know her, knew that her heart had been searching a long time for what had become of those who had been left behind. "But then I found Neverwhere and something went wrong." Turning her slender head towards the dragon mage, her blue eyes glittered with worry, refusing to think of the tentacles that had come grabbing towards them and shattered the little peace they had found. "I woke up here, alone, and I've been trying to find her ever since."

@Leilan

fragile things (reprise) - megan hilty
image credit to footybandit