WE ARE ALL JUST FRAGILE THINGS /
SOFT AND SMALL /
BUT ALL THE BROKEN CAN FIND /
HOPE IN THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES /
There had been so much anger when Lilliana had reunited with her dam, Aletta. The two hadn't meant to cross paths and when what remained of the Legacy clan had bid their farewells on the Pass, they hadn't thought they would see each other in this life again. The young mare that had willingly parted from her natal band was an entirely different being than the one Aletta had found; their Lilli had been quiet and withdrawn in those days (after the loss of their ancestral home, after the realization that her father wouldn't come striding in to save them like some fairytale hero, after learning of the death of Brochturach, and then the separation from Elena, her beloved cousin). The version that Aletta had found drifting in and out of the Taigan fog had been full of fury and grief and loss.
Their Lilli had always been soft-spoken, pensive. The one that Aletta had found had barely said anything at all, and when she did speak? All her words had been full of spite, meant to push everyone away; she hadn't wanted anybody close in the days after Lilliana had lost her daughter. She had wanted what she so clearly deserved: to be alone.
But her mother - Mountainborn and thus unyielding - was always there. Always pushing, always pressing her, never allowing Lilliana to withdraw. Challenging her much like Ciri does now.
"I'm not lying," she tells the dark horse, still unable to look at her. Her blue eyes search through the fog, hoping to catch the familiar sight of one of her children or the other Taigans that she had come to know as family. Her voice catches on the last word, and her dark nostrils flared as Lilliana stood there, trying to quiet the way her thoughts stormed across her mind. "Don't you think if I knew it better -," Lilliana says, "understood it all, that I might have been able to protect my family?"
Ciri's anger sparks her own, but having a decade to learn control over it, the older mare turns to meet the silver inferno raging within the gaze of the other. She knows that the tears have left trails down her copper cheeks, and there is no hiding the pain that flashes to the injured Thane on Lilliana's refined face. She is tired of repeatedly holding herself together, only to watch everything around her fall apart time and time again.
Her slender form stands firm as she offers her shoulder again as Ciri outwardly winces, and the chestnut cranes her head towards the once-star.
The Curse has stolen her grandson. Taken a child of Nashua's. Shock ripples across her lovely features until grief briefly takes hold, and then Lilliana pushes it away. Her broken family is not the only thing torn apart, as the former Guardian glances down at one of Ciri's broken wings. She stares at the odd angle of it, trying not to let herself dwell on how the injury came about.
There is anger everywhere, the energy rising everywhere, and Lilliana thinks instead of all the years she lost to this emotion. It might have kept away the pain, but what else had she pushed away?
Was Ciri using it as a shield, as Lilliana once had?
Lilliana considered quietly, "I don't think it's something that can be defeated, Ciri." Her voice softened, knowing that this probably wasn't what the pegasus wanted to hear. She could hear the want - need - for vengeance quaking in the voice of the other, but that has never been her way. She hadn't been able to go to Loess with Neverwhere, hadn't been able to bring herself to fight against Celina. "Not in that way," she continues. It couldn't be killed by fire, it had lasted generations through Wolfbane's line and still continued on.
Perhaps there was no killing the thing.
Perhaps it would exist as long as Beqanna itself did.
"Is Carnage something that can be destroyed? The Mountain turned to rubble?"
Beqanna is not in her blood, and she does not revere (though she is cautious of them) these things the same way that a native might. But then the things that Lilliana had been taught were concrete and absolute had been shattered long ago. Everything she has known was bound to break.
@Ciri
fragile things (reprise) - megan hilty
image credit to footybandit