[private] The Sweet Sting || Lilliana ||

[Wolfbane]

I believe I'd die if I only could

I sure feel strange, but it sure feels good

“She gave them meaningless, rhyming names.” Longclaw muttered quietly. He was a dark songbird, perched on the bough of a tree somewhere deep inside the heart of Taiga, and he peered down with sharp eyes into the hazy rays of summer sun at the family of horses far below. The trio - a mare and her two foals - seemed oblivious to his existence, which suited him just fine. “Oh shut up, You couldn’t have done better.” He hissed to himself, this time in a tone a bit higher and much raspier. The bird shook its head and clutched the branch under his toes, changing color from black to the same reddish hue of the bark.

“They’re perfect. Twin boys.” Wyrm said through a small, glossy black beak. He liked being in charge, pushing the rest of the thoughts away and shifting his skin so freely again. The others inside (he shuddered) did such hack jobs with the ability. No imagination whatsoever.  But they fought each other constantly now and it left them ragged, irritated with one another. His control was only as good as long as no one else contested it, and they contested it constantly.

“Because you’re not meant to lead us.” The bird whispered again, and again his color changed: fiery red with a white underbelly, speckled. A hood of black that covered only the feathered cap and beady little eyes. He stopped his manic conversation and twitched his round head from side-to-side, then fluttered out from his cover.

Instead of a bird, Wolfbane landed with an audible thump and his wings, magnificently white and partially flared, brought a faint breeze with them when they stilled. He looked up slowly and frowned; a bit mystical and dangerously calm. Not remotely concerned about how his appearance might be received. The light seemed more golden when it glanced off his striped hide, the warm green and red tones much more vibrant. Motes of dust filtered away from where he stood but he stayed there, for the moment.

His eyes flashed, turning quickly on the boys. Then they darted back to @[lilliana].

“Break’s over, Love.” He smiled, and the svelte line of his daring mouth twisted up into that achingly familiar smirk. Boyish, impish, terribly lovable. “Daddy’s home.”

For this thread:  Sex: M  ◉  Appearance: Normal  ◉  Mood: Dangerous

[lilliana]

She is oblivious to the conversation overhead because her attention is solely focused at the colts at her sides.

Nashua arches his neck proudly, testing her patience by placing another nip on his younger brother’s flank. His flaxen broomtail twirls before he launches into another sprint, racing from one Redwood to another, trying to engage his twin in another game of chase. It’s what they seem to do most days - run, kick up their heels, run some more.

Their energy is an endless thing and Lilliana can only shake her head at it, watching as they sprint off again.

She brings them to Taiga because their somewhat fresh antics are hard to contain between the moorlands and proud ledges of Nerine. They come from Ischia because her boys somehow seem to have the capacity to make the proud Redwood forest seem small in a way that it never was before. Lilliana, the red mare who could so often be found at the edges of forgotten places, finds new ones for her boys and so the trio drifts in and out of the Taigan forest as the fog does. She never keeps them in one place long and as their first weeks turn into their first month, her nerves begin to ease.

There is only so long she can spend at the brink of insanity before it starts to draw her in. Her first days with them had been wrought with nerves that knotted inside her. Brazen had been so confused; not understanding why her chestnut companion had been so insistent that they never stay in the same place for more than a day. It had nearly driven her mad - looking behind and above and ahead, not being able to trust her eyes, that what she was seeing was exactly that.

It wasn’t a place (for her sons, for the sake of her sanity) that she could linger. So as the time passed and nothing emerged from the mist, nothing swept in from shore, Lilliana let down her guard. Her sons continued to grow and she flourished with each day that passed; peering a little less than the day before into shadows and glancing over her slender shoulder for a ghost that she grew more confident would never come.

How wrong she is.

Lilliana is laughing at something one of her boys tells her. Her eyes are bright and full of laughter when a soft summer breeze blows through the Taiga. She (finally) looks behind her to see the looming presence of glittering blue-and-gold form. @[Wolfbane]. His eyes gleam at her boys, where Yanhua and Nashua have stopped their roughhousing to study the stranger. They are all youthful, brimming curiosity (her fault, she thinks, her fault for teaching her sons to be inquisitive than afraid) - their ears pricked forward, interest shining on their faces.

She can feel Yanhua (her father's blue eyes) peering up at her, can hear the soft baby hoofsteps of Nashua as he takes a couple of (bold) strides forward. He is looking at the newcomer again, admiring the impressive width of wings. What he implies, however, is far more interesting than the feathered appendages that he flew in on. Nashua tilts his head while one copper ear flicks back towards his mother, fully expecting her to say something. She always does - she is always greeting and smiling and laughing with newcomers and friends alike. 

But she doesn’t. She says nothing at all.

"Mama?” he asks, watching her from where he stands. It’s his expression, the warmth of Yanhua nearby, that jolts her own reply - so eerily quiet against the glow of Taiga in summer. 

"What are you doing here?”

LILLIANA

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

art by vhitany

[Wolfbane]

I believe I'd die if I only could

I sure feel strange, but it sure feels good

Was she being purposefully dense? Wolfbane eyed her briefly but with a careful smile. Lilliana, he refrained from saying. The look in his glare relayed the message well enough. “you know why I’m here.” Then he came full circle again, staring back at the twins and their uncanny differences. Both were chestnut and male, each with a flare of shockingly golden-white hair to accentuate their necks and flow down from their rumps. One had wings; Wolfbane couldn’t help the flare of pride that tweaked his smile into a smug grin when he looked at them. The other one kept farther back, but the distance did nothing to diminish the stark color of Lilli’s eye’s reborn into their son.

They were lovely. He and Lepis had hatched a fine brood, a very fine brood of powerful stallions. All of their boys had an obvious presence wherever they went. Their girls had been a mix: Marni and Celina had a wicked beauty about them, and so did Eyas but she alone took the most after Wolfbane’s mother, Femur. Small and sly, with very little sense of self-preservation.

What he and Lilliana have made is different, but beautiful all the same. Yanhua and Nashua seemed to have been crafted rather than molded; they stand on long legs and their features are sharper, more defined. “I’m not very patient.” He shrugs away her quiet apprehension. “I only stayed away because of Taiga’s new… restrictions” He meant the obvious feeling of magic that seemed to permeate this place as thick as the fog it produced. He doesn’t doubt that his being here has already set off some kind of warning, but he’s kept his distance long enough.

Watching her many trips to Nerine. Watching her wander into the Forest. Watching the twins grow inside of her, waiting for @[lilliana] to slip back into the false comfort of normalcy. When they’d been born it took everything he had to keep away, and that thin barrier hadn’t been very strong then, much less so now. Bane leaned forward onto his toes and lowered his big head without moving forward, overcome by a feverish desire to touch his colts. His body quivered, visibly.

“I’m your father.” He briefed, stealing the opportunity before Lilliana could be given a chance to explain. He preferred to have the upper-hand from here out. They were boys and they needed a father-figure, and that was the end of a discussion he and Lilli wouldn’t have. Period. “Your mommy doesn’t want me here, but I don’t think that’s very fair of her. Mommies can be like that.” His voice dropped to whisper. The way he leaned toward them made it seem like Bane was imparting an ominous secret.

“But I bet -” Bane spoke up again and his head rose. The way he smiled now was false, all wrong on his face. The expression never seemed to touch his eyes. “- if you ask real nice she’ll let me stay. We could play games...”

The way he said ‘games’ made the idea sound terrifying rather than exciting. “Please, Lilliana?” Wolfbane begged, mocking her. “Pretty please, can I stay?”

For this thread:  Sex: M  ◉  Appearance: Normal  ◉  Mood: Dangerous

[lilliana]

How utterly foolish.

Somebody had called her that once and Lilliana hears it again, standing there as something smiles at her from behind dead eyes. She sees the message clear enough, hears it as loudly as if he had spoken it out loud and yet she can’t help the chill of disbelief as it creeps up her spine. All those months and she had thought-

That’s the problem with insanity. There was no reason for the madness, nothing of predictability in it. It went against the very nature of the word; chaos is the turbulence that comes from the unexpected, the unknown, the unprepared. She still can’t quite grasp that she is struggling in the downfall of it.

She had tried to understand it. Lilliana had tried to find a source or logic or reasoning for it. In the end, though, it hadn’t mattered. Neverwhere had finally disclosed (much too late, after the madness had already descended) that the former Commandant was unwell. It all clicked into place then - revealed a picture (or so she assumed) with a clarity that hadn’t been there before.

Lilliana had gone searching for a reason and there was none. It was senseless and as meaningless as anything else she had ever known and yet she had smiled at this. She had grinned and beamed and glowed at this when she had known to leave well-enough alone every other time; he had been something different and everything in her had wanted to know why.

So, of course, she asks the question now, willing herself not to shiver and then hating the way that her body refuses to listen.

Wolfbane plays a game. He creates the rules and rigs the cards, shuffles the deck and then throws it out altogether. This is very much his playing field and the copper mare is left to quietly consider why even create the game at all. It always comes back to that infuriating question: why?

Because, a cool voice haunts from the back of her mind, you are utterly foolish.

And because this is his game, he fixes the rules again.

She isn’t given a chance to say anything. He takes away her right to explain. Worse, he creates another ring that Dante himself might be proud of. Lilliana had never been given the chance to know her father at their age. Her father had been gone, assumed that he would never be coming back and Lilliana had been raised in a home that sometimes felt more like a mausoleum than a sanctuary. An altar to everything that had been lost, a shrine to what had been and she had been so often reminded that she was the one he left behind.

His head rises and she takes a step forward, noting where both her boys stand. "I didn’t say that,” she states forcefully with a voice that chokes on the emotion. "I never said that.”

But maybe she should, she realizes.

Nashua is frowning; his young face looks from his father to his mother, not understanding why she wouldn’t want him to stay. Not understanding why she suddenly looks like that - it’s an expression much worse than the time he had accidentally snuck out of Taiga or had called his Aunt Neverwhere a rock.

His mother looks like that and Nashua is staring up into a masked face, wondering why it seemed so different than when Velkan had smiled at him. Nash, still uncertain, regards his twin before asking with an upward tilt of his head, "what kind of games?” They had played games on Ischia, perhaps this wouldn’t be so different.

Perhaps the stranger would stay, and as he glances back to his mother, he wonders what could be so bad about that?

Wolfbane taunts and torments. He has one son staring up at him while the other she can feel behind her, watching the scene unfold. Piece by piece it unravels much as his dark smile does, one that Lilli had once thought known all the answers - how else could confidence curl around his iridescent mouth as it had?
 
She is about to say that Aten wouldn't like it. Aten wouldn't want him here. But she suddenly can't remember the last time she saw the champagne Guardian - that could be her fault too. It isn't as if she had purposefully sought Taiga's leader out recently. Not when the sons at her hips look as they do - Yanhua with his flaxen, glowing mane and Nashua with his wings. Perhaps not outwardly recognizable to the Taigans who had come in the quiet years after but Aten would know. Lilliana didn't doubt that.

Neverwhere wouldn't tolerate it. Not him, not anywhere in the North. Rank brings privilege and that would be one she would afford herself and those under her care. (Nerine would have to crumble into the ocean first.)

The chestnut mare feels her jaw clench. She feels the tension tighten underneath the curve of it as her head lifts and her red ears flick back. One son stands at her haunch, another is ahead and Wolfbane makes a game of it. 

(Of course he does.)

Nash is looking back at her again while Yan still seems to stay at her flank. Their presence softens her. (But then Lilliana would always cut herself open for her boys, would drain the blood from her body if she thought it ease the sharp edges.)

Wolfbane seemed to enjoy this - always changing the odds, constantly raising the stakes.

"And if I let you?" she challenges airily, lifting her gaze from her son to his accursed father. She asks likes it's in her power to give (it's not). 

But that doesn't matter. He tossed out the rules long ago. 
And in the case of her sons, for Lilliana, there are none.

LILLIANA

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

art by vhitany

[Wolfbane]

I believe I'd die if I only could

I sure feel strange, but it sure feels good

He doesn’t particularly like the tone of her voice. How dare she? Correct him? Accuse him of speaking falsehood when her own conflict was so obviously readable? She stepped toward him and Wolfbane laughed, more of a throaty scoff if anything. He wouldn’t bother engaging in such an offensive display, not while Yanhua and Nashua were here. Not when they both knew the truth: @[lilliana] couldn’t run or scream or ‘fight’ fast enough to save her own life. And with her out of the way, who was there to stop him from taking exactly what he wanted?

For a second that knowledge passed silently from his eyes to Lilli’s own, and then they fell with a beaming smile down on Nashua. For his son he was angelic, smoothing away every hard line and dispelling any possible hint of a shadow from over his face, blowing a sweet gust of his own scent - a breath of air - in the colt’s direction.

“If?” He questioned absently, not exactly ready to give the slender chestnut mare any semblance of his attention while she was behaving so... immaturely. Well, the way she was acting almost made him think… No! It almost made him think she didn’t want him around, but that couldn’t be the case, could it? “Not at all,” his father laughed inside his head, remembering their star-crossed courtship, and Wolfbane couldn’t help but feel giddy despite the resentment coming off Lilliana’s skin.

Abruptly, his attention moved and so did he. A faint shimmer of what looked like light but was merely a trick of the eye passed over Bane’s body, leaving him entirely changed - nearly instantly. He’d shifted so fast and so completely that every cell jumped simultaneously at the command. The pigment in his skin had flashed all at once, giving an illusion of reflected light. He was suddenly gone and the space he’d occupied empty, but not because he’d left.

He was standing there, waiting. Waiting for the mother and her boys afterward to see that nothing scary or terrible was about to devour them. No looming demon with rows of jagged teeth, no tentacle monster (thank the gods). They blinked or moved or what-have-you, and in that brief millisecond of time Wolfbane had re-shaped himself into a miniature version. An adorable, cheeky little foal with his dimensions and color and wings, just standing there quietly and patiently with a positively devilish smile. A smile far too old for the younger face it inhabited.

“If you let me stay we can play tag!” His voice erupted out in a shrill, youthful laugh that bounced eerily off the redwoods. He tilted his blue-gold head and slapped his short, stringy tail. “Or we can practice with our wings,” his flexed and fluttered uselessly, “or we can play my favorite game!” Bane’s eyes sparkled with genuine childlike joy; he stamped his restless hooves and looked up at Lilliana, daring her to go against instinct and lash out at a child while Yanhua and Nashua looked on.

“We could play hide-and-go-seek.”

For this thread:  Sex: M  ◉  Appearance: Normal  ◉  Mood: Dangerous

[lilliana]

The skinwalker gives Lilliana a message that she swallows down with despair.

He isn’t completely wrong. There is nothing on her lean frame - save for a few scars from her spar with the Lady of Loess, save for a few jagged markings from her time on the Mountain - that marks her a fighter. Her voice is kin to a late summer breeze - warm, soft, gentle. There is nothing in it made for terror; nothing in it that ever indicates she has known it.

But she can run.

If Lilliana had spent all her mortal days in Beqanna growing ancient and old, if her skin finally gave way to lines and her bones finally became brittle and wearied, she could still run. The chestnut mare is a daughter of the Wind - the gales and gusts still race through her bloodline, in her veins. Even if she remained traitless and as she often thought - ordinary - Lilliana knew herself to be swift and fleet-footed. She could outrun Wolfbane.

If she was alone, it would have been a certainty she would have hastily taken.

The Taigan mare isn’t alone though. There is a son at her side and another that clamors for his father’s attention, basking in it like sunshine. The striped stallion is smiling down at him without his earlier malice. Wolfbane is adept at cutting her again and again, putting her between all those sharp edges she has always tried to smooth out. If this is intentional, it's just another sign of the shapeshifter’s (mad) genius.

It’s a glimpse of a life she might have known in another time, in another place. If she had chosen differently. It makes her heartsore in a thousand different ways; an acute and clear ache of all the mistakes she has made.

And then, he is gone.

Lilliana can see the bewilderment on Nashua’s face and she can sense Yanhua come closer, seemingly intrigued by the now empty space as his brother was. The copper mare only feels a sense of thunderous dread. He can’t be gone. Not so easily. Not so simply. Wolfbane had already admitted he was done being patient. Whatever security this cloister of Redwood might have offered them no longer does. It is no longer a sanctuary. 

Nothing happens.
Nothing reveals itself.

Only the eerie sense of being watched remains in the space that he once occupied. Invisible eyes haunting the hazy light.  

('What kind of monster would I be if I was uncomfortable with daylight?’)
(Stop, she begs her unraveling emotions with a fear that flickers through her.)

He reimagines himself a foal and so he becomes reborn. The gold, the iridescent blue, it's all there in the form of a much younger @[Wolfbane]. One not much older (or bigger) than her boys. Nashua, her eldest, her bold boy who has never met a stranger is thoroughly enthused with this one - his father. His pale face lit up, clearly delighted with the change.

Nashua looks back to her, throws her a lopsided smile that becomes dented by the one behind him. "Please, Mama?” her flaxen sons asks. "Please, can he stay?” It’s a guilty glimpse of his brother that makes him reconsider something, "Yan can’t fly, though. But maybe later?” Her boy is beaming, already recalling the full span of those proud and majestic white wings. His attention is already back on his father, already dreaming of all the things he could learn. "You could teach me?"

It’s the mention of hide-and-seek that turns her blood cold. It freezes in the depth of summer, chills despite being in the heart of their home. 

The only way she can keep it flowing is by reaching down for Yanhua (who thankfully) remains solid to her touch. She ruffles his mane lovingly, comforting him as much as herself.

It’s not such a hard thing to look up with those eyes (or so she tells herself). Perhaps she might have been a priestess in another life with luminous eyes that look as radiant and reverent as hers do. Eyes like that are made for worship. They rest adoringly on her eldest when she raises her head before regarding the golden colt, as if the idea she considers is nothing but a pleasant one. Lilliana smiles, "Perhaps we could show Daddy how we play hide-and-seek in the fog?”

LILLIANA

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

art by vhitany

[Wolfbane]

I believe I'd die if I only could

I sure feel strange, but it sure feels good

Deep in his subconscious, Wolfbane knows that somewhere, out there, some horse is able to see what he’s seeing unfold in front him, and he still can’t help himself from staring at @[lilliana]’s face. Watching her was giving too much of himself away - to Lilliana, to whoever was watching - but he kept staring. He liked watching her face fall into a mode of despair. The way the light in her seemed to dim, especially when their sons were coming closer and closer towards the edge of a great divide, was like a heaven to him. He was getting his revenge through staring: by watching her helplessness and feeling her bitter anger, Wolfbane felt vindicated for ever having fallen in love with her in the first place.

Temptress, sorceress, siren! He thought, not childlike at all. But his face was young and unbothered, and in the moment he could turn his focus away from Lilliana and back where it belonged: on Nashua and Yanhua, who’d finally begun to come out of his shell.

“Uh, yea, of course I can teach you later!” The young colt Wolfbane rolled his eyes with a pssh sort of sound. No big deal. “And don’t worry ‘bout Yan. He’ll be plenty good at other stuff.” Baby Bane sounded very sure of this fact, closing his eyes for a second while he nodded his blue-and-yellow head. His stiff little mane waved. He knew better than most what lurked under the skin, even if he had no way of knowing what Yanhua was fully capable of.

There were bones his wingless son hadn’t yet grown into, like baby teeth waiting to sprout. Wolfbane looked up and watched the way Lilli moved, carefully and calmly towards their younger boy, and the envy of not being able to join her flared hot inside of Bane’s chest. They both struggled, in different ways, and both won out for control. In the end her suggestion left him gloating anyways, and that sensation was quick to drown out the other.

“Yes!” He crooned, triumphant, even if his voice broke at the end there. Again Lilliana is the reason he doesn’t resort to bloody violence, and for that Wolfbane skipped forward on shimmering blue hooves to greet the other horses. He paused eagerly near Nashua, his wings tilting with his unsteady but youthful confidence in balance, and waited to exchange that first touch, asking, “Who’s gonna be the seeker?” before turning to entice Yanhua forward with an eager, playful grin.

For this thread:  Sex: M  ◉  Appearance: Foal, but normal  ◉  Mood: Subdued

[lilliana]

It’s a rare vintage that he’s been given, the wine of her despair and agony that he seems to gulp down. There might be other things lurking behind his green eyes - madness, curses, multiple personalities - but Lilliana only sees the way that he drinks down her pain like some well-won reward for all the turmoil they’ve brought each other.

And he’s right. She is angry.

It’s a gut-wrenching blow, to realize that he’s been a part of her life longer than her family had been. Even Elena. Their outlines grow hazy, the sound of their laughter, the precise golden shade of her cousin blur with time and it’s @[Wolfbane] who stands before her. It’s him - even in the disturbing shape of a child with archaic eyes - that has outstayed the rest of them.

He’s blue-barred her precious memories, masked their sweet smiles.
In some skewed, asinine way - he becomes family.

Yanhua smells like deep pine and damp soil. She grounds herself with that, with her youngest son steadying her. Her eldest remains out of reach (and how she wishes she could call him back, wishes she could gather him to her as easily as she does this colt). She’s hiding behind another smile but it’s horrifying, realizing how like Nashua is to her. How he smiles at something that he doesn’t understand and he simply trusts.

How he just warms and gives his all with that boyish, lopsided smile. He sends it over his shoulder, hoping to encourage his brother to come closer.

Yanhua is her quieter one and it shows, though Wolfbane is able to assuage his more tentative nature.  She can already feel him pulling away.

"I’ll do it!” Nashua volunteers, excited and eager to partake. His tenor voice cuts off anything his mother might have said, might have offered. Nash’s auburn wings press confidently against his sides and he comes closer, feeling the warmth coming off the golden colt. Suddenly curious (and somewhat abruptly as Nash is often distracted), his eyes study the pale feathers of his new playmate longingly and the flaxen colt reaches out with his nose to touch one.

He can’t wait to learn, can’t wait to see what his Father has to show him.

That thought makes him frown as he remembers something. Looking up, he glances back over his shoulder to where his mother and approaching twin stand. His mother is reaching out to Yanhua again, quietly tracing her dark mouth down his topline as he moves away from her. ”Mama,” he calls her out, knowing exactly what she is doing.

”You and Yan can’t do that.”

He's felt like the odd one out for a while now. It's Yanhua who has her blue eyes, who has her gift. The two of them communicate in ways that Nashua can't comprehend and if they're gonna play a game, "Play fair."

LILLIANA

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

art by vhitany

[Wolfbane]

I believe I'd die if I only could

I sure feel strange, but it sure feels good

That’s fine if she wants him to be the bad guy. He is. Wolfbane is the worst thing to have happened to @[lilliana] since she first came here, and vice versa. Lilli was a catalyst - just as bad for him as he was for her, but at the time any sort of consequence for falling into her intelligent eyes and warm smiles had only been a reason for Bane to dive deeper. He’d wanted to deny the truth back then like he did now, focusing his thoughts on blaming her, hating her for leaving a similar red-gold haze over the memories of his marriage to Lepis and the bright web of a life he’d lived before resigning himself to the shadows.

But at the heart of it all was the truth: that He and Lilli were horribly, terribly perfect. It seemed that she’d brought some sort of magic as well when she first stepped onto Beqanna soil, and with it came Neverwhere, Elena, and a change over everything Wolfbane had ever known. Maybe, if they hadn’t met later on in Bane’s life after so much tragedy and darkness, they could’ve been wonderfully happy. If he wasn’t cursed, or if she’d been in Beqanna during his youth they would’ve been great. Perhaps greater than… well, no. He wouldn’t think it.

But now they’re forced to live out this ill-fated scenario of wrong place, wrong time and the balance is that he gives her these beautiful treasures; the boys and their gifts and their love that he cannot bring himself to give anyone. He made those things with her - Bane’s turned to eye them both and he listens to the way Nashua eagerly leads their game.

Their father reasons that he’s fucking entitled to their love as well, and he’ll surely kill for it. The only limitations to the slaughter were the boys and his other children… perhaps. “What’re they doing, Nash?” Wolfbane asked his son, curiously. He was done contemplating Lilliana for the moment - she had an irritating way of invading every single one of his thoughts when she permeated his awareness. “Lilliana?” He gave the chestnut mare time to explain, keeping himself calm by reaching out to pluck at the feathery tips of Yanhua’s speckled wings.

For this thread:  Sex: M  ◉  Appearance: Foal, but normal  ◉  Mood: Subdued

[lilliana]

Of all the ways to wring her heart out, she never thought it would be around him.

It’s a pointless thing to wonder but sometimes her thoughts take her back there. Back to that first moment when she remembered looking at him, looking at Beqanna and thinking: this has been a mistake. When her self-loathing hits a particularly low point, she likes to wonder what would have happened if Elena stayed. Would the pair of them be in Hyaline, changing the world together like they always planned too?

What would have happened if she had just lived in the Common Lands - would the solitude have eventually eaten away at her soul like this has?

(She doesn’t even consider the day with Neverwhere; some ill-fated part of her knew by then that whatever this was had gone too far.)

Watching closely as Yanhua moves away from her, she knows it doesn’t matter. None of that matters, now. What does is where her eyes go, moving from her youngest to her eldest, trying not to betray how on edge she is. How even though Wolfbane is small, that he mimics what he might have been at the beginning, she knows it isn’t the truth.

He could shed this skin for a much more terrifying one.

Nashua’s normally bright gaze turns stormy, "Telling stories.”

Lilliana stiffens.

The flaxen colt swishes his tail, raising his head slightly at her reaction. It wasn’t one that he was expecting but nothing about this interaction has been ordinary. Yanhua doesn’t share the same expression, which is somewhat comforting, but his confused face goes from his mother back to his foal-Father. "She and Yan tell stories.”

Remembering parts of them, he happily elaborates with a rising grin. "There’s a man with a feather in his mane. And an owl. And a sky! The biggest one I’ve ever seen.” The pegasus colt lists off the things his mother has shown, the way she has used them to illustrate her stories. ”Sometimes when Yanhua and I play hide-and-seek, he shows me where he’s hiding while I look.”” A fallen log. The Three Guards at the northern border. They had been able to spread their game further out across the Taiga that way, a new way of  remembering the trails and landmarks.

Nash looks to his brother, hoping that he might actually add something. That he might say something. Or if like he’s just described, show something. He’s waiting, his green eyes expectant on the lean copper build of his twin. The golden foal reaches out for one of his auburn feathers and that distracts him. Never one to leave a horse out, Nash returns the favor and playfully lips at one of the pale ones on Wolfbane’s wing.

Lilliana takes another step closer, wanting to close the distance between herself and Yanhua. He’s already gone a few steps ahead of her and the chestnut stops, agonizing over an explanation. Her eyes drop to her youngest boy before watching Nashua, "It’s-” nothing. She means to say. She means to tell him that it’s nothing. Apart from the few times that it has manifested (healing Brazen, Juice’s rage, the portal with Elena), it feels like a cheap parlor trick she has no control of.

It either consumes her or is radio static, much to the disappointment of her twins who have come to expect it during their nighttime stories.

So she chooses a memory. She has to be careful - one not too strong (though most memories he inhabits are just that) or one too weak, otherwise this won’t work. It still might not.

But she picks a safe memory (maybe he saw, maybe he already knows) of the night they were born. Enough that her heart swells recalling their newborn perfection, of how Yanhua had been the more careful one and had found his hooves first, of how Nash had brazenly toppled over several times before he could. Recalling their first moments softens her, easing through her apprehension that had been tight in her chest.

It’s only when she lets the memory go does she look up, watching the coltish Wolfbane]. Something touches at the edges of whatever it is she’s done - a flash that's there and then gone - a residue that gives her pause.

Nashua's baby teeth take a firm hold on a particularly lovely white feather, completely unaware and gives a playful tug.

Whatever passed between Lilliana and their youngest son stayed just that - between them.

LILLIANA

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

art by vhitany