[private] and i know its long gone

[lilliana]

I SEE THE LIGHT BUT NEVER FIND THE SURFACE /
I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN SWIM NO MORE /
WHITE KNUCKLES AND WILD HORSES /
ONE DAY WE'LL WASH UP ON MERCY'S SHORE /

Something in her simultaneously sinks and rises when Gale says that Neverwhere is not here.

So much of her worry had come from that the dappled woman was here because of the Curse. But her friend is not here, and though she remains wary against the way that it spoke so easily of the former Nerinian's new location (why the Pampas?), there is relief in knowing that she is not here. Lilliana is, though, and being acutely aware of that fact, the flame-marked mare takes a careful step back as Lepis' son draws closer. A shadow begins to twine up her copper leg, and she freezes as the magic captures her.

Before, Gale had been close enough that Lilliana could see a striking likeness to both his parents. There was something of Lepis' austerity when his electric blue eyes first met hers. And she had caught something of Wolfbane across the bold lines of his angular face. But she watches in silent horror as those angles become more and more familiar, until she is staring up into the face of a man that she had never thought to see again.

(And her mind floods with so many memories: the day he had taken Aela from her, his sneers and ultimatums; and then more recent ones: Ciri and all her fury and vengeance insisting that Lilliana undersood the thing now before her, Leilan and his messages from the Afterlife while she wondered why Wolfbane would have said anything to her at all.)

She can feel the evening chill creeping up her hind legs, and Lilliana does her best not to shiver. Her red-gold tail twitches against her flanks, and that's when she realizes it is not fear that has her paralyzed in place. She is unable to take another step back and there is nothing for her to do but stare up at a ghost. Nothing about this makes sense, but Lilliana has long abandoned trying to find reason in anything that surrounded the masked face that she glances up at.

Lilliana knows there is no arguing with the thing before her.

It will kill her, like the monster during the Endless Night, but there is no death for her.

There is only this purgatory known as living, so she might as well try to combat her fear and desperation by asking a question.

"What do you want?" she asks Gale-now-Wolfbane, unable to do anything else. All this pain, suffering, death; what was the point of it all? 

@Gale

marcy's shore - needtobreathe
image credit to footybandit