• Logout
  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    [private]  oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream... [lilli]
    #1

    K

    oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream...

    My health returns in increments, it swells and swallows with the phases of the moon. The turbulence of the latest Beqannan change (something about the dead coming back to life -- my connections in the afterlife whisper about strange happenings... I wonder, often, why Warlight's voice no longer finds me in my sleep) passes me by with nary a nod in my direction. For one once so involved in the wellbeing of this land (did I not participate in every quest to heal Beqanna of her plague?), I find myself carefree, unaffected.

    There exists one to whom I owe unending gratitude for my newfound peace: Lilliana. Much like Insignificance before her, the sweet mare saved me when I wavered on the cusp between life and death; she, in her angelic perfection, stayed by my delirious side as I faded in and out of consciousness for days. Why she stayed with me I cannot fathom; sometimes in life, it's impossible to deny the genuine kindness of absolute strangers. Beyond the literal life-saving she did, Lilliana also reminded me of the good in the world, of the hope that we each ought to cling to. She reminded me to be soft and open, when before I would have been cold and hard... Leadership changed me, and I'm only now reacquainting myself with the vulnerable little girl who lives, and always has lived, nestled in my breast.

    Not to mention that she played a pivotal role in reuniting me with my wife. I smile to think of Solace, golden and blue and beautiful. My wife. To raise another young one with her leaves me whole and with a purpose once more: I love my grandson, Clegane, with everything I am. My failure with Abysm still stings, still motivates me to go above and beyond for the young ones in my life now... Nothing I do can heal the childhood trauma I instilled on my firstborn son, but my demeanour now can still shape the future generations. (Gods only know how Solace and I's comas hurt our youngest daughter, Oriash. I yearn to find her).

    Today, however, I come in search of she who most recently saved me.

    During my Caretakership, I never once entered this land. Taiga. The fog greets me before I can even find the border, thick and reminiscent of something that can be lost be never found. I toss my head, part the clouds; they swirl and amass into a tangible leopard-of-cloud, which comes to stalk by my side with a sassy flick of her tail. Why hello, cat, I muse to my creation, a smirk upon my lips. Panthera's voice answers in my head. Hello, horse. Not much else needs to be said between us, familiars as we are.

    The border finds me. My obsidian hooves pause there and sink into the heady pine needles below; raising my head, I call for Lilliana.





    [Image: kag]
    dreamweaver
    Reply
    #2

    It shouldn't be so surprising that of all places in Beqanna to call home, Lilliana has chosen Taiga (perhaps Taiga chose her, who knows).

    It might not be a realm full of wildflowers or fierce warrior women. It might not be the Dale, the setting for so many of the stories she had been told as a filly. It might not be the rolling foothills of Loess or Ischia with its heavenly beaches and even lovelier nereids. Even though Hyaline has a tender spot (for several reasons) in her beating heart, it is Taiga that is held firmly within her chest. Time has nurtured a loyalty in the auburn mare and Lilliana intends to repay this forest in every way she possibly can. 

    It had been a girl who had stumbled across Kagerus lying in the river; it is a woman who wanders through the mists now. The curves have fulfilled the promise of the lovely creature she would become and the light in her eyes burns a little brighter, more determined to drive out the shadows that a flame creates. The girl who had found Kagerus hadn't known her place yet, hadn't yet discovered her bearings on a world that remained shrouded in mystery. The woman who walks through the fog of Taiga knows exactly where she is in this place, knows exactly the ground she walks on and knows this is precisely where she belongs. 

    It shouldn't be surprising that Lilliana, who cradles a dreamers' heart beneath her ribs and who sees the world with wishing eyes, calls the Taiga her home. In this fog, it blurs the lines of the outside world. It softens all of those angry, jagged edges that life would otherwise drag along all of their hearts. (Bleeding hearts can be eased and comforted inside this forest. Serrated edges will find no purchase in this territory, at least that is what she dreams). The world doesn't need to be so hard in Taiga, so complicated

    Ah, but those are certainly lofty aspirations and Lilliana knows that. She only needs to look inwardly to know how convoluted life can become. 

    So it's much easier if she doesn't look inward. Instead, she focuses all her energy on the outward, on the physical because Taiga is a tangible thing and that counts for everything in a world that can shift so quickly - where kingdoms crumble and allegiances shatter and life changes too fast for a soul to really recover. (It is entirely too easy to drown when the waters of change go from a trickle to a torrent.)

    Lilliana likes to wonder in the fog. She likes to imagine the iridescence of Smidgen's wings as they hit sunlight; the silver light that pools of Tyr's star as he shares a secret. In this in-between place, Lilli likes to go between the trees and tries to find the places where sunbeams intertwine with the mist. There is magic in the places they meet, she has always thought. Light and unknown coming together to make their own dawn, creating possibilities where there had only been uncharted and undiscovered shadows before.

     It's fitting that this is where the dreamweaver and the crimson woman discover each other again.

    It is a call, a familiar one that she has heard in the illusions and softness of her dreams, that parts through the fog. Lilliana stops her imagining and turns her attention towards the direction that the cry had pierced from. "Kagerus?" comes a hopeful answer, dancing through the clouds and the pines. Her crimson ears prick ahead and Lilli continues forward, propels herself through the swirling mists towards the overo mare. When a bay shape illuminates through the fog, her features brighten with recognition and a pleasing sensation presses against the shadows of her soul, floods it with light: relief. 

    The Kagerus she had encountered had been sick, troubled. This version who stands here is healthy, is whole and Lilliana feels happiness as it brushes and pulses against her tender heart. She has found Solace then; they are two halves of the same circle again. Despite the pale light, Lilli beams against it. The crimson woman smiles whole-heartedly. "Kagerus," she breathes. "I've missed you," the Taigan admits. "And your dreams." Her elation crinkles at the corner of her blue eyes, curves the tenderness of her heavenward smile as it lifts towards those dreams that the dreamweaver creates. "You are well? And Solace?"

    @[Kagerus]

    but it's all in the past, love
    it's all gone with the wind
    Reply
    #3

    K

    oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream...

    Ah, how I remember my years of land-based loyalty -- the years of political jousting (though years of peaceful sanctuary-keeping preceded those) and of wearing a crown of antlers. My fidelity to Hyaline never wavered during those years, starting from when I met Solace at the lake to the day we stepped down as leaders of the Eastern empire in order to ensure a safe birth for our youngest daughter. How fierce my love for Hyaline and then the Silver Cove had been, how vehement my protection of those places... And yet, as I look back upon them now, I can't help but to wonder if we made the right choice. Life without the stress of the kingdoms seems so much simpler, now that Solace and I live our nomadic life.

    But some flame of pride and of political lust flickers inside of me as I stand, waiting, upon the Taigan border. An ardent smile tells the tale of my throat as it swallows the feeling down and stores it away somewhere deep inside of myself. I am here to see my friend, I remind myself, a glance spared Panthera's way for moral support. Not to reignite my passion for politics. The cloud-leopard nods at me with one brow cocked, as though to say, do you even need the reminder?

    At that moment, a voice calls my name -- my ears prick up and my right hoof strays across the border. I call to her again, this time with more excitement colouring the crystal of my voice. When the crimson woman bursts through the fog to stand across from me, my smile stretches and parts. "Lilli," I laugh, head tossing. Another step closer closes the space between us; with a tender gentility, I wrap my head around her withers and hug. "I've missed you, too. Hah!" My laughter reverberates from my chest to hers, the friction comfortable and warm. "I'm sure you have, dreamer that you are."

    As I extricate myself from the beautiful mare (fuller around the edges now, I notice, and womanly instead of girlish), I catch sight of her effervescent smile. I can't help but chuckle; I can't think of a single other person who could smile the way she does, so starblinded and carefree. I hope that that light never fades from her eyes.

    "I am well my friend, and consistently mending. Almost everything about me is back to normal." The leopard beside me bursts into fog, floating a moment before reassembling into a new kind of matter. With my eyes trained on the place which I direct my magic, I shape the bone-tissue into a pair of elk antlers before raising them and placing them atop my skull. The connection process takes me longer and causes me to grimace as I pinch nerves here and there, not yet ept at this sort of thing (though I've learned from experience that trying to make myself grow them hurts much more). With the antlers attached, I return to the conversation and grin. "Getting more myself every minute, it would seem."

    "And Solace -- well, she is the love of my life, and she fared well in my absence... That woman knows no end to her might, I swear." My grin stays steadfast as I speak of my gold-and-blue angel. "She and I are very happy to be together again, thanks to you."

    "And speaking of you -- how have you been?" I lower my head to gaze at Lilliana from beneath brows that are furrowed in jest. "Staying out of trouble, I hope?"







    @[lilliana]
    [Image: kag]
    dreamweaver
    Reply
    #4
    Kagerus laughs as an offering to their friendship and it leaves Lilli breathless with joy; only the dreamweaver could do this to her. She might have pulled a half-drowned mare from the river that day but Lilliana has long considered that it was Kagerus who had saved her. Grief had rendered her numb and she had been hiding beneath a frozen smile. It was Kagerus who pulled out all those aching places of her soul and had shown Lilliana that things could be okay.

    That worlds could collapse and fall apart and come together again. 
    That sometimes what rose from the ashes was stronger than what was incinerated.

    What Lilli sees now as she is embraced by the bay overo mare is proof of that. Kagerus had been half a soul then, a partly weightless thing that was missing some essentiality (her heart, she had later learned). The dreamweaver had been forced to be corporeal when it would have been so much easier to remain as something abstract. This dimension, this plane of living, can be so hard. Too hard.

    As the copper mare buries herself into the touch of her friend, she is so glad to see that Kagerus had fought back.

    The sound of her laughter ripples underneath her copper coat and it radiates warmth to every corner of her. It brightens her gaze as they pull away and Lilliana takes one step back to soak in the presence of the painted woman before her. Kagerus tells her that she is mending, getting stronger by the day; her returned health is blessing and Lilli smiles in appreciation of it. She is about to tell her again how good it is to see her, how pleased she is that she is doing well when the presence of another draws her attention away.

    The chestnut mare looks to see a feline creature come beside Kagerus before it shifts. Like a cloud, it changes shapes and concern lines Lilliana's features as she looks back to her companion. Kagerus is crafting something and the Diplomat watches, mystified. Beqanna and her magic - it seemed something so infinite to her still. A proud set of antlers are crafted in the mist and the overo mare adorns them like a crown; fitting, Lilliana thinks, for as noble a woman as Kagerus.

    The painted woman grins and Lilliana stares, momentarily astonished. "So you don't just make dreams then?" she asks before the shock clears away from her blue eyes and the planes of her face light up with amusement. "Is there anything you can't do?" (Honestly, the Taigan mare doubts it.)

    She listens with rapt attention, her ears forward and holds her attentive gaze on Kagerus before it softens. "I'm glad you found each other," she murmurs before subtly shaking her head. Whatever part she played in their reunion, she considers it a small one. Her weight shifts from one side to the other, unsure what to do with such a direct statement. (When does she ever know what to do with compliments?)

    At the playful jest that furrows Kagerus's brow, Lilliana merely grins: a wild, daring curve to her dark mouth. "I'm always in trouble," she teases, one of those half-truths she has learned from Leilan that comes out with a lilting laugh. Her copper head then inclines to the shadows of the looming trees that attempt to reach the sky, primordial giants crafted by the old gods of Beqanna. "I've been here.. learning Beqanna politics and trying to do what I can for Taiga." Recruiting. A few diplomatic missions. Anything to distract herself from the confusion she has created. "Is it always so.. precarious here?"

    And to think, she had missed the Plague and the Reckoning.

    @[Kagerus]
    but it's all in the past, love
    it's all gone with the wind
    Reply
    #5

    K

    oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream...

    So you don't just make dreams then? My sides ripple with laughter at sweet Lilliana's unbarred shock. How apparent her emotions! So different from stoic Solace, yet as loveable, as precious. A wave of tomfoolery urges me to shock her more, to splash her with water made from air or to craft sunsets on her hide, but the conversation at hand bades me act civil. Nonetheless, a mischievous smile adorns my face, it which wears the shadows cast by my crown above. Is there anything you can't do?

    "Between you and me, Lilli," I whisper, leaning in towards my coconspirator, "I haven't found anything to stop me yet." A wink sends me back to my upright position, brutal in its suggestivity and vagueness. And yet it's true! Ever since reawakening from death, I've had a grasp over this... power. Not magic by nomenclature, but by definition...

    As the mare opposite me lifts her head to consider the exact nature of the trouble she finds herself in as of late, I study her. Her countenance (regal and sloped, beautiful in its transparency), the rise and fall of her dreamer's chest, the way she studies the skies as though she might one day paint them herself. What she says lends itself to this understanding I have of her. A misguided, motherly part of me feels proud to hear that politics become her; I had no hand in shaping her personhood, yet I glow to hear of her development.

    "Ah-hah," I chortle at her last question. "You have no idea. I could talk your ear off about the history of political and fantastic oscillation that is Beqanna, that has made her from the ground up and back down again - but, to put things concisely, I will only tell you this:" My ears perk, voice lowering. "Keep your loved ones close and remember that you may remove the expectations you have placed upon yourself at any time. Whatever precarities Beqanna may throw at you, escape exists... if you choose it." A booming laugh and yet another wink break up the solemnity of my spiel. "But who wants that boring of a life, anyway?"

    Chuckling, I close my eyes and absorb the warmth of this moment. My emotional sun basking goes on for a moment too long and I doze off by accident (you would be surprised how easy it is to dream without meaning to when dreaming becomes almost indecipherable from reality). In the golden haze of my momentary slumber, two threads of consciousness brush against mine. Dreamers? But Lilliana is awake --

    My eyes snap open.

    "Lilli," I murmur, wondering if she caught the changes in my expression which took place as I registered the meaning of what I'd just felt, "I think there may be more going on in your life right now than you realize..." I step closer. "I can show you." The ground shifts with me as I approach, bending, demonstrating its will that we be gone to another realm. Images of the family she'd shown me in a dream so long ago bob to the surface of my mind's eye; the words you may expect more family soon sizzle tangibly on my lips but remain unspoken, awaiting input from the mother-to-be.





    [Image: kag]
    dreamweaver
    Reply
    #6
    Kagerus leans into her and Lilliana smiles easily, reassured by the familiarity of the former Caretaker and finding herself relaxing more for each moment spent in her company. It has always been uncomplicated with the dreamweaver and this time is no different than the others - Lilliana falls into a familiar stride with her, eager to show off the wonder that is the Taiga (where the fog rolls into play during the warmer months, where the trees are the proudest, where its rocky shore boasts a coastline that brings new secrets with each tide).

    Beqanna boasts many beautiful places, holds many treasured spots but for Lilliana this is home. And there is something special about sharing this place with Kagerus - perhaps one of the closest bonds she has made here. It’s a moment of pride - to show her the future she has been working towards and the place that she poured so much of herself into. The overo mare winks at her and Lilli laughs, girlish and blithe. Affection softens her gaze and warms the luminous smile that beams back at her.

    She looks very much like her old self - the one who wasn’t complicated and tangled and torn. For this moment, she is bright and vivacious and vibrant.

    Lilliana merely shakes her head, mirth illuminating behind her blue eyes. ”May the Winds help Beqanna if you ever decide to take up politics again.” There is a flash of something mischievous there, knowing full well of Kagerus’  history and the heights  that she and Solace once accomplished. If they ever aspired too again, there is no doubt in her mind that they could. It’s a lingering thought that hangs in the back of her mind - wondering what Kagerus might have made of the current state of affairs in the East. (Another conversation for another day, perhaps.)

    Still, the thought of Hyaline twists at her heart. A longing writes itself on her face, a remembrance of what that place had once meant to her.

    It doesn’t last long and instead, Lilliana looks earnestly to the mare she considers a mentor, a maternal figure in her life. Kagerus - much like Neverwhere and Brazen and Velkan - is the closest thing she has to a semblance of a family and what the two-toned mare has to say is something that Lilliana heeds closely. Her companion laughs and Lilli feels the smile pausing a moment, wondering how much more of trouble she should allude to - both political and personal. She doesn’t mean to softly ask, ”Escape to where?”

    The chestnut mare shakes her head, still teasing, still playful but there is a hint of seriousness (and ache) when she adds, ”I’ve been running my entire life. I came to Beqanna to stop.”

    Beqanna had been her escape.

    And then there it is again - the axis of her world shifting. It's different from the way that it has happened before and yet familiar. She has been to this dimension before with Kagerus and Lilliana had illuminated everything she had ever loved to the dreamweaver. Whole cosmos and realities had been opened to her, a whole realm of possibilities and Lilli had only wanted the riverbend that taught her to laugh. The place where she had learned to trade secrets with the clouds and learned that a horse didn’t need wings to see the world from above.

    When the world shifts again, it is a fierce and empty ache that rips through her soul.

    It’s a haze and the figures haven’t yet been molded - they still wait for the command from Kagerus. But one, one doesn’t need to take shape. He is brave and noble and silver. He needs no shape or form - Lilliana would know him anywhere. The curve of his cheek is proud, the arch of his neck is august and even though the piercing darkness of his mocha eyes haven’t yet taken hold, Lilli can see them. Dark eyes that have sparkled with amusement. And his smile - it is a mirror shared between siblings, his had been so similar to her own. A lopsided grin that could ease the weight of the world on anyone’s shoulders.

    Malachi.

    The brother who had saved her so many times - who had taken her on patrols when there had been no playmates her age, who had told her ’keep a ready ear and easy smile’  when a yearling Lilliana hadn’t yet understood that those who had suffered might have barriers and walls to hide behind and who had comforted her when she had tried to understand why someone had hurt her beloved Orani, when someone took something she wasn’t ready to give. It had been him she had leaned into when she hadn’t understood the darkness. 

    And there had been so much of it then.

    The world refuses to fully immaterialize and yet Lilli knows he is there, can feel it with every certainty that Kagerus uses to craft and create and dream.

    There is something else she knows too - another certainty she can feel with the weight of a gravity that keeps her standing in silence until she can no longer bear it. "What if you forget to dream?” she asks the creator, ”Does this still work?” And then she nearly chokes, her eyes shining with unshed tears and so many worries. With all the things that Lilliana realized she has been so terrified of.

    @[Kagerus] hi you get a novel and perhaps the most emotional i have ever seen her. enjoy. 
    but it's all in the past, love
    it's all gone with the wind
    Reply
    #7

    K

    oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream...

    Escape to where? I've been running my entire life. I came to Beqanna to stop.

    Change hurries my answer away in the form of churning cosmos; from above, everything becomes clear... yet the drop consumes us.

    Malachi. His name rings in my mind's ears to the tune of Lilliana's voice; what remains of me here flinches. Svedka, I hear a different voice say. The part of Solace that lives in my heart churns at the connection she feels between the silver stallion and the liver mare: if anyone understood the strength of a sibling connection, it was Solace. And yet I find myself thinking of a brother, too. Khaedrik. The name of a shadow, father, uncle, grandather in one: Khaedrik. His childlike figure flits across our eyelids as gilded darkness across the night sky. The triumvirate of brothers suffocate my original purpose in bringing us here.

    What if you forget to dream? A light snaps on for a split second, a lightning strike's beam followed by the swallowing darkness once more. The shadows continue, the brothers hum. Lilliana's afterimage burns where I saw her standing: Girl-like: Swollen. I'm reminded of my own first pregnancy and I vomit into the abyss. Does this still work?

    (Does this still work?)
    You don't need to be here.
    (Does this still work?)
    I've been through worse before.
    (And yet it would be nice to be one with the nothingness.)
    Maybe so but death could not hold me once.
    (Abandonment of oneself is the essence of transcendence... The lines you've drawn to identify yourself are erasable. We are one.)
    That may be so but I have no story there.
    (...)
    That may be so but I HAVE NO STORY THERE.
    (...)
    (...)
    (...)


    Choke-wet gasps greet my remerged consciousness. As the darkness recedes and the cosmic seizure subsides, I feel for Lilliana, unsure of what she experienced as I'd sunk into my own dream; nothing, probably, or else so much that her mind reset to the last tangible thought she had. Either way. As my heaving chest slows, I bring about a pale blue and green backdrop for us to exist in. Watercolor. A weight bestowed with my essence comes to rest on my friend's heart, warm and benign.

    "Please don't ask me that again."

    Deep inhale.

    "Lilli," I start again, removing the weight be leaving the warmth, "The past is tantamount here and the future infinite. But we are now, as much as our hearts call to the abyss..."

    I shake my head. The darkness clears from around my eyes and again I see her; she sticks this time. "Lilliana -- there are two people I think you'd like to meet. They are fixtures of the present and of the future." I find her gaze and bend my will to keep it. A ground materializes beneath our hooves and the green and blue separate accordingly. "Are you ready for that?" A hazy blue and silver figure looms close to her shoulder; he leans across and brushes his sister's shoulder. The other brothers have left, barred from this dream as I remaster my control of this alternate reality.

    I cannot guess at what Lilliana's dream has been like since entering this place; I can only hope that she has joined me here, grounded despite our suspended existence.







    This is a MESS Evangelion has srsly been fucking me up and it shows......... enjoy @[lilliana]
    [Image: kag]
    dreamweaver
    Reply
    #8
    She had been terrified of thunderstorms.

    (There is a memory here - a memory of a copper child burrowing herself into the side of her silver mother. “Mama,” she had asked, “are the Gods angry with us?” Her mother had laughed at that - whatever the Gods had thought of her, Aletta had never cared. She had courted their anger before, perhaps inspired it. What other explanation was there for the events that came after? ”It is alright, sweeting.” The silver mare had whispered and then remembering speaks low before another rumble of thunder can interrupt them, "There are some things, Lillibird, that can only be learned in the unrest of a storm. Hold fast and it will pass.”)

    Lilliana hasn’t been scared of storms for a long time but when the lightning strikes, the copper skin on her quivers in anticipation for the barrel roll of thunder she knows that must come. But it doesn’t come.

    It does not come.

    There is only the hum - a triumvirate of shadows that sing in the shadows.  The chestnut mare watches for a moment, fascinated and captivated by who the others might be for Lilliana only knows one. Her heart only knows the imprint of the one who stands by two of the others and in her heartbreak, it pulsates in sorrow. She could weep at the sight (not sight, for he isn’t really here) but even a figment of his ghost could bring her to her knees.

    She takes a step forward but the world cracks. It fragments in pieces and where Kagerus once stood is broken. There are shards of her around, a shell of the painted woman before the whole world goes black. Before there is only nothing. "@[Kagerus]!” she breaks, her voice finally collapsing against the void. In this place - in this abyss - Lilliana does the thing she doesn’t know how to do in the waking world.

    Some part of her breaks with Kagerus.

    She panics. She can’t breathe. There is a vice around her throat and it grips. It tightens and tightens as Lilliana tries to put herself back together. (How?) It is only the essence of warmth that pulls her back together; a gentle touch of her childhood home, Elena’s laughter, the memory of Jacob’s first wobbly steps, of screaming trees and Neverwhere, of pulling Kagerus from a river, of an armored girl as lost in this world as Lilli was. These things pull her back and her sides heave, gasping for air in a place that doesn’t exist.

    The world exists again and Lilliana leans into the form that solidifies beside her. She leans into an embrace as the world turns blue and green, as it regains shape under Kagerus’ masterful brushstrokes. "I’m sorry,” she chokes. She is finally asking questions and they are the wrong ones - in the wrong place. "I won’t.” And for as tentative as Lilliana is with her promises, she is not with this one.

    Her heart.
    Oh, her heart. 
    When will she learn? Is there ever tempering Lilliana’s wildstorm heart? It rages and rampants; it burns and blazes.

    Are you ready for that?

    Her heart thunders. It hammers and she wonders if she is. She could choke herself on the truth of this, of where Kagerus wants to take them. She almost says no. She almost shakes her head until a silver and blue haze touches her shoulder. "He never let me make my own choices,” she murmurs gently. "He was always so adamant on keeping us safe but all I ever wanted was to make my own choice.” Those days are long gone. They are misty memories in her mind and yet as the haze lingers, there is precious little at that moment that Lilliana would give to bring him to life. To let the dreamweaver see and know him.

    There is, and only ever will be, one Malachi.

    Kagerus has a brother too. One of the humming men.

    "One of them was yours, weren’t they?”

    For a moment, she says nothing. This is all wrong. She wants to tell Kagerus that this is all wrong.

    But as Lilliana has known, for a long time now, there is no going back. There is no undoing the past. There is only ahead and that infinite future that lays waiting.

    "Will you stay with me? I don’t know-,” she stops herself with a breaking voice, "I don’t know how to do this, Kagerus.” And into the swirling world of color, where those two souls lay waiting in a future that is coming regardless, she looks to the painted mare.

    She is still waiting for the crack of thunder, she realizes but this time there is no terror. 

    Lilliana takes a deep breath and the world changes, into hazes of pinks and purples. It fades to a place between twilight and dusk and how she knows.. how does she know? She holds her breathe because in the haze, not as phantasmal as the silver-blue ghost had been, but she hears them. Her heart knows them and she cradles it gently in her chest. Lilliana only catches herself by leaning into the former caretaker again because through the fog are the shades of two. Like the North and South of the River she follows, like the eternal pull of the tides (in and out), like a sun and moon, there is a balance playing before her eyes in the form of two foals. 

    Her eyes are fever-bright as she takes in the retreating forms of the two boys. And as always, in response to so much emotion, Lilliana can only find a single word, "Oh."

    this post was brought to you by Guster and half a bottle of pinot. enjoy.
    but it's all in the past, love
    it's all gone with the wind
    Reply
    #9

    K

    oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream...

    Her shoulder against mine brings a gust of breath from my lungs to the world - an exhale I hadn't intended to hold. I meet her apology with a firm press of my muzzle to the underside of her quivering jaw, a reassurance, wordless yet undeniable. In the aftermath of the storm, all seems still for a moment.

    He never let me make my own choices. He was always so adamant on keeping us safe but all I ever wanted was to make my own choice.

    The protective part of me clenches, exercises her control over the phantom Malachi at her shoulder, imagines sending him away as she had the others. Yet she pauses. Relinquishes her power. Recognizes that here, Lilliana has pure choice: that she has the tools necessary to facilitate the mare's basest wish.

    I exhale again.

    One of them was yours, weren't they?

    "Yes," I murmur, casting my gaze into the blue and green of this world. "His name is Khaedrik. I haven't seen him in years. But... I know he is well." I smile. "I am blessed to have something of a connection to all the ones I hold dear."

    And despite how greatly she feels that this is all wrong, Lilliana looks to me and asks for support - the most vulnerable act. Again I reassure her, pooling the valor that fills my breast into her own. A communal courage. It's okay to not know, comes a voice in her mind. You will never be alone. Your best will always be good enough.

    Pinks and purples sweep into this realm and dance in the abyss until a twilight settles around us, deep and warm. The presences I had detected what seems like years ago on the Taigan boarder step through the fog on wobbling phantasmal legs. Less physical than spiritual: the cosmic elements which combined to form them, the duel quantum soul before us: vibrating, casting their aura unto our senses, revealing sons to mothers.

    Oh, Lilliana breathes.

    "Yes," I murmur, inviting the spirits closer. Memories of times like these shared with my own children as they grew inside of Solace bring a sense of comfortable, joyously sad overwhelm. A concoction of the here and now and also the before and the after, the zero and the infinite, the constant unweaving of an expanding and unknowable universe. With care, I allow the lines that make up my being in this realm to dissolve - not as they had during the storm but in such a way that I can truly be one with the children. "You can embrace them, here..."

    And although I do not know the specifics of how the twins came to be within Lilliana, I do not ask. Instead, I close my eyes and welcome the dream. The embryos are only old enough to dream at this point; yet I take solace in knowing that our consciousnesses here with them is a form of attachment that few ever get to experience. Yet a part of me stays behind - overseeing the process, attentive to Lilliana - hoping that she will join me in this celebration of life.







    @[lilliana]
    [Image: kag]
    dreamweaver
    Reply
    #10
    The world swims in a haze of blue and greens; shimmers with an evanescence that reminds Lilliana of the gleam of spider webs in morning dew. Like them, Kagerus crafts a web of things that aren’t and are, that could and will be. The overo mare manifests and commandeers the unknown with an ease that Lilli has never known.

    (There is a price to pay for that, she will later realize. Experience is always the currency for navigating the foreign and unfamiliar.)

    "How do you know?” she asks with an ache that ripples through the dreamscape. For the chestnut mare, it is the thought she always comes back to regarding her family. There is no way for her to know if they are well or healthy or happy. There is no way for her to know anything of them and the stars have long fallen silent with their secrets.

    There is a small smile on her dark mouth (and it is heartbreak with an upward curve) - another apology for asking so many questions. "I don’t know,” she finally admits, "and sometimes I wonder if the not knowing will kill me.”

    It’s okay not to know, says a voice that caresses the troubled spaces in her mind. It is a moment full of admissions but Lilliana is glad to share them with Kagerus. Family, her own voice echoes back to the mind of the dreamweaver.

    A look of love illuminates Lilliana’s copper face and her blue eyes light up with it, swirling the world around them in similar, wavering shades. (It fluctuates from the iron-grey of an angry Northern sea to the brilliance of an open Beqanna sky.) It is only the movement ahead of them that calls her away; her first maternal instinct regarding Nashua and Yanhua. There is still a battleline of fear drawing across her face - to embrace them to accept everything that has happened.

    For them, she has too.

    @[Kagerus] begins to dissolve into the infinite and for the first time since that day in the Field, Lilliana doesn’t feel afraid. Her mind doesn’t rush to assume the worst. Her pulse doesn’t rise to panic. They are suspended here and instead of resenting the lingering, Lilliana embraces it. Their shapes are hazy and she feels them more than sees.

    Still, she knows them. They are as much hers - as much a part of her - as those she has loved before. The chestnut mare moves closer to them and despite the chaos that created them, she is filled with a surreal sense of calm. Before she dissolves herself into the essence of emotion that dreams around them, before the painted mare can completely evaporate and vanish into the magic of her craft, Lilliana smiles into the glow.

    "Thank you.”

    For reminding. For remembering. For family.

    LILLIANA

    all that i'm after is a life full of laughter
    (as long as i'm laughing with you)


    art by vhitany
    but it's all in the past, love
    it's all gone with the wind
    Reply




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)