Maybe it’s coincidence that the clean, pristine scent of Hyaline lingers sweet in the summer air; maybe it isn’t.
Still, it’s a scent that she knows. It’s one buried and burrowed into the very core of her. Hyaline had been for moonless nights and saving graces. Hyaline had been girlish laughter and the very last vestiges of her youth, of her old life. Hyaline had been the last stronghold on a heart that had very much wanted to deny that it had broken some time ago.
Maybe that’s where Lilliana learned to hide the last of her childhood hurts and smile instead. ('Can we pretend, Lilli? Please? Just for a little while?’)
Taiga smells very much of deep, damp Earth in summer. Fog wraps its fingers around the Redwood forest in the mornings and Lilliana (who has spent what? Four? Five years in this place now?) knows the sunshine will chase it away just like the tide will eventually go out, just like the moon will eventually pull it back again.
It’s only the unnerving silence that causes her to look down. Against the verdant leaves is one boy and not far is other - gold stripes and green eyes, a star and blue eyes. Her boys show the slightest movement - a lazy witch of an ear, the flickering of a copper eyelid as they start to wake. She can’t help but smile because though she has tried to teach them to contain it, they still glow when they dream. And who is she to gainsay a dreamer anything?
This cloistering part of the Redwoods is a new spot for the trio. It’s a futile effort against masked smiles but Lilliana has always been a mare of quiet defiances. She might not stamp her hoof or bare her teeth but the chestnut woman likes to linger too close to the edges Nerinian cliffs, likes to languish near the Taigan undertow simply for the thrill of the pull.
(There had been a night that she shouted out to the empty waters of Hyaline, a night that she slipped free from watchful Brazen and protective Ruth. Lilliana had tried to shout her seething anger across that black expanse of still water; she had lost her voice. The anger stayed.)
When the boys are awake, when they are rearing and clamoring to leave her behind, the Taigan mare shakes her head with that ever-patient smile she reserves just for them. "Don’t go too far,” she says, her slender head pointing towards the Nerinian border. "No further than the Three Guards,” she mentions the triumvirate of gray, granite boulders that keep watch just on the outskirts of the seat of the Northern kingdom.
When they are gone and it is only her wrapped in the wisps of trailing fog does she move away from their newest resting place. She’ll scout another one out today.
(It’s a stupid, trivial game but there is always some small part of her that enjoys never being where he left them. That when he comes to Taiga, he at least has to look for them.)
It’s a flash that catches her abrupt attention. It’s the scent of Hyaline and hope blossoms inside a dormant place in her chest. For a moment, she thinks -
No.
The glow is more ghost than gold and she knows.
Still, the aura is unfamiliar. This isn’t a phantom (that she knows) that has haunted these Redwoods before. Lilliana stops her searching and waits, forcing herself to be still while her mind races North. Where are the boys? An ear flicks to the side and a swish of her tail gives her away (as if an ochre shadow could hide even in the densest part of the Taigan fog). Unsure of herself, both ears flick back and burrow themselves into the copper of her fire-bright mane.
"Hello?” she asks in a voice that sounds much braver than she feels - her confidence apparently gone to the Nerinian border with her sons.
Still, it’s a scent that she knows. It’s one buried and burrowed into the very core of her. Hyaline had been for moonless nights and saving graces. Hyaline had been girlish laughter and the very last vestiges of her youth, of her old life. Hyaline had been the last stronghold on a heart that had very much wanted to deny that it had broken some time ago.
Maybe that’s where Lilliana learned to hide the last of her childhood hurts and smile instead. ('Can we pretend, Lilli? Please? Just for a little while?’)
Taiga smells very much of deep, damp Earth in summer. Fog wraps its fingers around the Redwood forest in the mornings and Lilliana (who has spent what? Four? Five years in this place now?) knows the sunshine will chase it away just like the tide will eventually go out, just like the moon will eventually pull it back again.
It’s only the unnerving silence that causes her to look down. Against the verdant leaves is one boy and not far is other - gold stripes and green eyes, a star and blue eyes. Her boys show the slightest movement - a lazy witch of an ear, the flickering of a copper eyelid as they start to wake. She can’t help but smile because though she has tried to teach them to contain it, they still glow when they dream. And who is she to gainsay a dreamer anything?
This cloistering part of the Redwoods is a new spot for the trio. It’s a futile effort against masked smiles but Lilliana has always been a mare of quiet defiances. She might not stamp her hoof or bare her teeth but the chestnut woman likes to linger too close to the edges Nerinian cliffs, likes to languish near the Taigan undertow simply for the thrill of the pull.
(There had been a night that she shouted out to the empty waters of Hyaline, a night that she slipped free from watchful Brazen and protective Ruth. Lilliana had tried to shout her seething anger across that black expanse of still water; she had lost her voice. The anger stayed.)
When the boys are awake, when they are rearing and clamoring to leave her behind, the Taigan mare shakes her head with that ever-patient smile she reserves just for them. "Don’t go too far,” she says, her slender head pointing towards the Nerinian border. "No further than the Three Guards,” she mentions the triumvirate of gray, granite boulders that keep watch just on the outskirts of the seat of the Northern kingdom.
When they are gone and it is only her wrapped in the wisps of trailing fog does she move away from their newest resting place. She’ll scout another one out today.
(It’s a stupid, trivial game but there is always some small part of her that enjoys never being where he left them. That when he comes to Taiga, he at least has to look for them.)
It’s a flash that catches her abrupt attention. It’s the scent of Hyaline and hope blossoms inside a dormant place in her chest. For a moment, she thinks -
No.
The glow is more ghost than gold and she knows.
Still, the aura is unfamiliar. This isn’t a phantom (that she knows) that has haunted these Redwoods before. Lilliana stops her searching and waits, forcing herself to be still while her mind races North. Where are the boys? An ear flicks to the side and a swish of her tail gives her away (as if an ochre shadow could hide even in the densest part of the Taigan fog). Unsure of herself, both ears flick back and burrow themselves into the copper of her fire-bright mane.
"Hello?” she asks in a voice that sounds much braver than she feels - her confidence apparently gone to the Nerinian border with her sons.
LILLIANA
all that i'm after is a life full of laughter
(as long as i'm laughing with you)
@[Ryatah]
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind