"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
I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.
Please, she had said once and then swallowed it whole.
Once, hope had carved out the cavern of her chest and made its home there where her heart ought to have been.
It is strange to remember these things. In gasps and glimpses, trembling things that she catches like marbles between her teeth. She holds them on her tongue because there is no room left in her chest. Because her ribs ache with the effort it takes to hold in all the hurt. And she hangs her weary head and thinks again about finding someplace else to go. She imagines someplace quiet, someplace warm. Someplace she won’t miss when it’s gone.
She thinks of her father sometimes, even still. Wonders where he’d gone, wonders (foolishly) if she could find him if she tried hard enough. But she is but a girl, idiot girl, and so she stays in one place. Because she does not have it in her to try and it’s all become too heavy to carry. There are stones where her heart ought to be – a whole pile of them, black and smooth, their edges weathered by the sadness she has never been able to shake.
She remembers Velkan saying once that his mother was near, that he had not seen her but he’d smelled her. She caught a breath of something a few days ago, something that tasted like a memory that she didn’t have a home for. A memory that lived, not inside of her head, but outside of it. A memory that had belonged to her once, certainly, but had long since abandoned whatever space it had ever occupied inside of her. Her father, she thought, and then remembered that she was a stupid girl. It was not her father, of course. Merely something that dredged up something in her that she couldn’t remember ever owning.
She wanders now because she feels no desire to return to Sylva. Because Brigade is gone and there was never much of anything for her there anyway. She does not meander down to the edge of the river, though she longs to cast herself into the water and surrender herself to the pull of the current. She is tired, Lilian. So dreadfully tired.
She does not bother to return to the Field. She goes instead to the forest where she had encountered a monster once and not thought to be frightened. Perhaps she will find another, she thinks, something that will spark an ember of something in her. Because she is tired and she is numb and hope had carved out the cavern of her chest once but it left a long time ago, too.
12-29-2019, 09:36 PM (This post was last modified: 12-29-2019, 09:44 PM by lilliana.)
There are so many things that she doesn't understand.
She had tried too, once. She had tried to understand the names that her father whispered while he slept, the ghosts that haunted behind his blue eyes. She had to reconcile the image of the man in the stories that she had been raised on to the reality that presented itself that day in Murmuring Rivers. She tried to reconcile herself to the fact that her home was no longer needed and therefore they could all go to Paraiso, they could be together and they could be happy.
Their story could end that way.
It hadn't.
It seemed that instead of seeing what was in front of him, all Valerio ever saw was what was gone. (If only Lilliana could have known the cries that still echoed in his mind, those two little girls and his niece who had been brutally murdered by Frostbane. How her father had split open his own chest on a sheet of ice to try and save those girls. How he struggled to live with his failure, of why he survived and those fillies did not.) Nobody had told her; the crimson child had grown up sheltered away from those particular horrors.
But if Lilliana had known..
(A sunny day, a golden stallion smiles indulgently down at her while the laughter of her baby sister rings around them. 'Don't forget your wings, Lillibird.')
Living has it owns struggles and she has tried to brace against them. She has pushed and pushed, always trying to keep herself moving forward. (Sometimes she wonders though what she is missing behind her, of the moments gone that might have been beautiful if she had only looked.) The last time she had been in this forest, she had exposed her emotions. Lilliana had laid her emotions bare here, inch by painful inch, fully aware that she could be donning a noose that she would hang herself with. She had known that and yet she had done it anyway.
Lilliana is holding the forest in her gaze. She is looking through the branches that are now almost bare, that gnarl against the piercing autumn sky above and she remembers.
(Branches bathed in moonshine, the light streaks through the empty places where the leaves have surrendered to the season.)
She is remembering and she is trying to understand. Her body is angled away from the woods, an indication that she would be anywhere but that forest. Her slender form, always a touch too lean, has been made leaner still with her attempts at sparring and the hours she spends walking in the northern part of Taiga. She is trying to understand and as much as she tries to, she doesn't find the answers here. The uncertainty, the uncertainty that is her fault, only festers and Lilliana turns to leave.
Against all the brown and flat scenery of late autumn, she sees her. A mare who stands by herself and when has the chestnut ever left a wandering soul alone? She should know better, perhaps. Maybe the brown mare only wants her solitude as Lilliana has wanted hers these last few months. She might inspire the ire of someone else in this forest; she has done it once before and there is a moment where her mind flashes to Brigade in the dark forest, wrapped up in all his fury for protection.
But there is something weary and careworn about this woman. She doesn't cloak herself the way that Lilliana does. There is no humor or anger. There is only the expression that Lilli percieves as tired. As the wind blows by, the copper woman calls to her. "Are you waiting for someone?"
LILLIANA
light me up, i will blaze like a soul you have saved
@[lilian] i know we talked about this ages ago so here we are <3
01-17-2020, 10:30 PM (This post was last modified: 01-17-2020, 10:30 PM by lilian.)
I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.
There, over the din of the forest (birds and critters and muted conversation), she hears a voice.
It is not a question whispered tender in her ear.
It is not something soft that she can wrap around her weary shoulders.
It comes from someplace far away. It is something that has thought better of getting too close. And Lilian, she has never been inviting. She has only ever been ordinary, unremarkable, pitiful in a way that meant strangers turned away from her far more often than they sidled closer. Because there was so little to her that was not somehow tainted by the sadness at the very center of her. Because she had lost something once that she would never get back. Because sometimes she forgot to breathe. Or, perhaps, she merely wished that she did not have to.
Living had become so dreadfully painful without anything to live for.
But the question is not unfriendly. Lilian lifts her weary head, tries for a smile that lists and fades. A clumsy, half-hearted thing as she shakes her head. “No,” she calls back. And still, despite the storm cloud that has taken up residence in the cavern of her chest, there is some warmth to her voice. It is not honeyed, not even sweet, but at least she has not lost this.
And because she is starved for conversation, companionship, anything to distract from all the static in her head and the occasional hitch in her pulse, she wanders closer. There is something in the mare’s body language that indicates that she’d been on her way to someplace else and Lilian thinks that she should let her go, thank her for her concern (or whatever it had been that had inspired her to ask in the first place), and resume her ruminating. But she is alone, Lilian, and so dreadfully lonely. So, she moves to swallow up some of the space between them.
She feels a faint flicker of embarrassment as she settles in closer. Such a needy, desperate thing she is, she thinks, but she has never been able to help it. She has always looked for a sense of worth in others. “Well,” she says, the brow furrowing in a faint, contemplative frown, “not someone,” she continues, “but something, maybe.” She rolls a shoulder in a kind of shrug and then shifts away her focus with a sheepish smile.
“I’m Lilian,” she says, unprompted, dragging her gaze back to the mare’s face with that same bashful grin.
lilian
@[lilliana] i'm so sorry for the delay my lilian muse took a nosedive but! yay!
02-15-2020, 10:53 PM (This post was last modified: 02-15-2020, 11:02 PM by lilliana.)
There is something world-weary about the brown mare that makes her heart ache. Something about her that doesn't quite want to leave her alone here.
The Forest - and whatever Lilliana had thought about it, whatever she was hoping to accomplish or overcome here - fade back into the shadows of her memories and the chestnut mare draws herself closer to the other wanderer (she doesn’t come too close, not until there is some visual cue from the mare).
Only when does her new Forest companion smile (one that seems to lean, like she might need some help propping it up) does Lilli come closer. The brown mare does as well and Lilliana’s crimson features relax as they close the distance between them, happy to close it. For each step that she puts between herself and the Forest at her back, the smile brightens and her blue eyes come to warmly regard Lilian.
When she is close enough to see that the brown mare has furrowed her brow and seemed to be considering the question that Lilliana had asked of her, the Taigan tilts her head to one side as her ears come forward to better hear her reply. There is a flicker of concern (because nobody she is alone and because it can sometimes hurt to wait) before she finally takes her last step and comes to a complete stop before Lilian.
"Perhaps you were waiting for me,” the chestnut teases while flashing a surreptitious smile. It lasts only a moment before it softens to something else, something mixed along the lines of kindness and curiosity. "Would you like help searching for it?” Whatever it may be, whatever something might be out there waiting. Perhaps it might be easier to find with two pairs of eyes.
The other mare shrugs her shoulders and Lilliana can’t help but give an honest smile in return, "Lilli.”
Lilliana is tempted to follow where the bay mare looks, to see if she what she might be searching for is out there but Lilian returns her attention to Lilli and the copper mare dips her head. "A pleasure, Lilian." A silence lulls, one that Lilli finds herself unsure of how to fill and so the birdsong above them does it for her. A copper ear flicks and the chestnut mare contemplates their earlier question before she regards Lilian again, "I could show you something, if you'd like?"
LILLIANA
light me up, i will blaze like a soul you have saved
02-20-2020, 01:52 PM (This post was last modified: 02-20-2020, 01:52 PM by lilian.)
I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.
There is some small part of her that wants to shrink.
To recoil from the unsolicited kindness of this stranger.
Because she will sully it, she thinks, damage it in some way. Because she does not deserve it. But the chestnut mare smiles at her and, for the first time in a very long time, there is a warmth that reaches outward from the very center of her. It buoys the tired heart, pools heat in her limbs and in her cheeks. It is very much like standing in the light of her own personal sun, she finds, and she tries to savor it before the inevitable guilt snakes its way through her veins.
“Perhaps,” she agrees and her own smile takes on a new shape. Something a little more confident, something that does not slip at its edges.
The mare offers her help and it twists something sharp in Lilian’s chest. She does not know what to make of this kindness and hopes that it does not show on her face. The things she is looking for are not tangible things, she knows, not the kinds of things that can be found with the naked eye. But Lilian does not know how to explain this, doesn’t even know how to try. So, she says nothing.
Lilli, the mare says, and Lilian’s expression lightens. She could point out the obvious similarity in their names, but she almost immediately feels foolish for having noticed it when Lilli does not seem as delighted by it. So, she merely nods and says, “it’s nice to meet you, too, Lilli.” Because it feels like the right thing to say. It’s true, certainly, but she has not always known how to say the true things.
Lilian is still trying to work out how exactly to politely decline help in finding the things that she’s spent the vast majority of her life searching for and will likely never find when Lilli saves her from this train of thought, coaxes her back to the present. She lifts her head a fraction and nods.
“I would like that,” she murmurs. And perhaps she should be grateful that this kind stranger has rescued her from the stranglehold of her loneliness, but she does not know quite how to react to Lilli’s goodness. She finds herself at odds with the feelings thrumming in her chest. The body wants to reject the kindness, wants to cast itself into the darkness of the wood where it belongs, while the heart yearns to stay here in the light Lilli provides.
