resurrect the saint within the wretch; lilli

[Warden]

resurrect the saint within the wretch

He feels as though he’s drowning - his chest is heavy and barely moving despite the desperate need for air to fill his lungs. He closes his eyes momentarily, the vision seared into his mind and still vivid behind closed lids. When he opens them he is looking through the canopy, through the forest, and into the night sky, where the stars twinkle and a half-moon greets them solemnly.

Lilliana speaks with an eloquence that he struggles to find. Perhaps it is because even though she can feel the emotions and memories that wrack him, the second-hand experience gives her a clearer mind. He glances to Leonidas, wondering what would become of the star once the eclipse happened - would he disappear like in his vision? Or would he remain in Beqanna, clinging tightly to the tendrils of Lilliana’s mane?

That familiar weight holds him tightly, cold, and unforgiving. He exhales in a shuddering sigh through clenched teeth, turning his ivory face towards Lilliana again. Once again he is powerless in his knowledge; there is nothing he can do to prevent the oncoming wake of disaster. It reminds him so much of the plague but he had only been a child then. Now he is grown and the ominous truth remains the same: he is powerless.

“Thank you, Lilliana.” His voice is not strong - it is not heavy as it normally is and seems to tremble, one moment away from breaking. “Truly.” She offers him her assistance because that is all she can do for, like him, she is also powerless. Her next words point to a suggestion that Warden had yet to think about. He visibly stiffens, turning from her after a brief moment of realization. The bones in his wings bend as he stretches the feathers out from his sides, readying himself for flight. He swallows hard, all of the sadness and grief and guilt is written obviously on his face. “Not yet,” he replies, not needing for her to finish her thought to know what she was thinking. He turns his face upwards to the forest canopy, once again looking to the stars.

“Not yet.” He repeats, though he knows that the coming days will mostly be filled with them as darkness and demons crash all across Beqanna.

Warden

@[lilliana]

[lilliana]

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.

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just a closer for them - thank you for such a lovely thread <3