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  • 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]  stranger than your sympathy;
    #21

    The thing that lifts them both up and simultaneously tears them down makes her pensive frown rise against the velvet backdrop of this autumn night. She turns her head towards Elaina and regards her beneath the curl of her forelock, not bothering to fight the tide of love that churns in her chest. Every time she has looked at her cousin, Lilliana has felt that. That soul-stirring, that familial warmth glowing between them; a bond that neither have outgrown. That they never will outgrow.

    It’s only looking at the last remaining member of her family (the one that came before Beqanna) that Lilliana catches a glimpse of that other universe - that alternate reality - reflecting out to her from Elaina’s blue eyes (so like her own, like Valerio).

    In that other universe, they were both born children of Summer. They learned to race alongside Paraíso’s shimmering lakeside instead of Murmuring Rivers’ rapids. There was no war; Cazador never tried to conquer Windskeep and so Ramiro never came to Beyond. Benjamin and Beylani would have never died and Valerio wouldn’t have been haunted. Lilliana would have born and raised like the siblings before her. There would be no holes to fill or hearts to heal and so Lilli would be as she was intended - something daring, something wild, something free. (Every bit the descendant of Air that Valerio once claimed she was: 'We are hard to hold, Lillibird.’)

    The alternate reality saw Lilli and Elaina grow up together, much as this one had. A blood bond and then something more; sisters, the Winds would proclaim.

    Maybe in that other world, the two sides of the flame (the gold and the red) found themselves cooling themselves in the shallows of the lake, like they stand in Taiga’s ocean now. Maybe in that place - instead of night, it is day and the sunlight comes glimmering down on the tranquil waters around them. Their ears are distracted with the hum of the waterfall instead of the beat of crashing waves. Maybe - instead of careful smiles and guarded eyes - they are still carefree and Lilli looks over her shoulder to her golden cousin. She playfully kicks a hindleg and water goes splashing over the rounding form of Elaina: 'Are you still so sure it’s a boy?’ The copper mare would tease, 'Benji might not do for a girl.’

    Perhaps, in that other life, Elaina would have let herself be loved and Lilli wouldn't get wrapped up in darkness. Maybe, Lilliana would have loved too; maybe not. (The boys come into existence somehow. There is no reality she will ever consider that does not include Nashua or Yanhua.) In that other life, they are together, always, and that is all that matters.

    What might have been - what should have been - ripples away with @[Elaina]’s anger.

    Lilliana’s eyes dim as the light from that life fades and they return to this one. To Taiga and her fog. To this reality and the chestnut mare steels herself with the reminder that this is the one that exists. There was no point in traveling down the trails of what might have been; it only spurs the anger that is burning across Elaina’s lovely features. Lilli tilts her head towards her cousin and she can only give it a soft shake. "I don’t have that answer,” she laments. (You know she’d give it to you, Elaina, if she could. She’d find it for you, if it was in her power to discover the reason.)

    When Elaina crumbles into her neck, it is a blessing for Lilliana. It is easier to soothe than to be soothed; the guilt in her soul doesn’t want comforting, anyway.

    "Who said you failed?” Lilli whispers, "I’ve told you before that they would be so proud of you, Elaina. And they are. I feel it. In the stars. In the Wind.” She turns her head closer to the palomino mare and kisses the outline of her cheek gently, wishing that her cousin could hear those whispers in the wind and know it in the silence of the stars as she did.

    There are so, so many other things she wishes she could say.

    In the end, it comes to only this: "Does the Phoenix fail? It burns,” Lilliana warns. "But it emerges.”

    LILLIANA

    if i ever get to heaven
    i've got a long list of questions



    but it's all in the past, love
    it's all gone with the wind
    Reply
    #22

    she's a wild wild woman


    It had been frightening without her.

    It had been so terrifying because for so long, Elaina has clung to Lilli when she no longer had her own parents to do so. She has held on so tightly to Lilli that Elaina sometimes forgets that her crimson exists without her, continues her life on an entirely different plane. She grew, she had children, she became a diplomat, an ambassador. Elaina realizes that all this happened after she had left Beqanna. It happened after she was gone, when that hold upon Lilli had finally been released, and Elaina, the careless cliff dancer, had finally leapt.

    It is in this moment that Elaina realizes, once and for all, she cannot stay. She will visit, will meet Lilli’s children, will walk the Taigan forests, a quiet golden ghost to the rest of its inhabitants, her name nonexistent without being said in the same breath as Lilli’s own.

    She cannot stay.

    Elaina would never be so self deprecating that she would say she was a rogue anchor, dragging Lilli down from the bottom of the sea. But she was a line to a kite that had never wanted to be tired down. Without Elaina here, her cousin has soared. (She was never a kite after all she realizes, but a bird.) And my how high Lilli has flown.

    And this thought, it could be this alone that ties a smile on Elaina’s face. And like a proud parent, she watches Lilli take to the skies and thinks, if she can fly on her own, fly much higher than Elaina ever had, than she had done what she could.

    She will soar right out of sight until Elaina can no longer see her, of this, she is certain.

    The land Lilli imagines is beautiful, and had Elaina been able to see it, she would never have wanted to leave. It is a fantasy, but in the end, hadn't it all been close? So close. So damn close. “Well, then I will name her Elliana, and pray she does not have as a poor a sense of direction as her aunt,” she would have retorted. Elliana. For an aunt that would give the world to this child, just as she had given Elaina.

    Elena would give her life for anyone that asked and do so without question. Not because she has nothing to live for, or because she is so caring, she just knows that, when push comes to shove, some things are required of her. She has only one lifetime to give away, but she would do so gladly - for anyone.

    But especially for Lilli. Elaina would steal the very breath from her own lungs  and pass it over fields of flowers until it found Lilli’s lips.

    She is crumpled into Lilli, bowing her head to her with silent confessions and Lilli is her sanctuary. She only raises those blue eyes when her cousin speaks. “Lilli,” she says so softly, her tears beginning to dry. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful your heart it?” It was stained glasses of churches, colorful gemstones, and glistening snowcapped mountains. “And thank you for always finding me amongst the ashes.”

    “Kensa, from Hyaline.” Such a simple introduction.

    “Hyaline is more home to me than the land to which I was born.” But, it never became that for Elaina. It had always been Lilli, it had been Lilli that had given her that. And Elaina realizes it now, that it is Lilli alone that can take it away from her.

    Elaina; there's a voice calling me back
    tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me
    Reply
    #23

    Elaina is a tether. And perhaps it would be a kinder, gentler thing for them both if one of the girls were to cut it. If they could break or twist or snap the string that kept them both tied together, maybe they could stop tugging on it when the inevitable happened. Leaving Murmuring Rivers and not being able to meet Valerio’s eyes? Tug. Trying to adjust to life in Paraiso and feeling like she never belonged? Tug. The Pass? Broch and Culloden? Beqanna? Tug. Tug. Tug. And as the years have passed, Lilliana has tugged her end of the tether more and more frequently.

    Maybe it would be better if they didn’t answer the call because their hearts might have had a chance at healing in the silence. At knowing that when the inevitable came, they would have to face it alone.

    Lilliana is as dangerous as her cousin in this moment; the cliff-dancer and the wind-walker are dreaming together. Dreaming of realities that don’t exist. Creating memories in their minds that will never happen. There might be a universe out there where the pair of them laughed and giggled with flowers in their manes by Paraiso’s magnificent shores with the waterfall echoing in their ears; there might be one out there where the story ran true and the heart of it stayed intact.

    For now, however brief this chapter is, it runs whole.
    Because this is a universe where Elaina and her boys collide, it makes her whole world light up.

    Her cousin is crumpled into her crimson form and Lilliana finds it again, her courage. It’s always been borrowed from Elaina’s flame but with the frigid water breaking past her pale ankles, Lilli doesn’t feel the cold. More importantly, that numbness she wanted, that void she wished for, doesn’t come and all she finds is the comforting warmth of her childhood confidant. The Taigan mare draws it in, basks and revels in the flame they make.

    She, the spark, and @[Elaina], the flame. Together, they burn in the darkness and Lilliana finds she no longer cares who might notice the soft glow that emanates from the gold marking she carries on her shoulder.

    It’s so easy to be brave here. It always has been.

    The palomino mare turns to look at her and Lilli smiles, finding it easily. It’s so easy for her to misplace it these days. "It gets me into more trouble than you know,” she tenderly whispers. Too little, too much. A fragment here, a shard there. Turning her head towards the mare she cradles, she says: "But I will always find you. Never fear.”

    The tether remains strong and Lilliana thinks, just maybe, she could be too.

    The bond remains whole and though she is broken, Lilliana finds herself clutching those pieces closer in an attempt to keep it all together.



    LILLIANA

    if i ever get to heaven
    i've got a long list of questions



    but it's all in the past, love
    it's all gone with the wind
    Reply
    #24

    she's a wild wild woman


    Maybe, it all would be easier if she forgot them, all of them, but they tether Elaina with colorful ribbons tied with bows at the ends. She thinks about them each as she drags them through her hand, the same silky smoothness can be found on each and every one. She has held Marcelo’s in her grasp, and tied her her hair back with Alvaro’s. She has wrapped Ori’s around her wrist, and draped Aletta’s on her shoulder. She can sit there for ages, letting her fingers run through them, not even realizing it, but she will not let them go.

    They are simple things and they might be far more precious to her than they are to many others, but they are hers to love and cherish, and that she does.

    Maybe it is these same ribbons that crawl over her blue eyes and make her blind to the reality of the world and instead those colors, those vibrant colors, send her into a dream that feels entirely too real only because she cannot see anything else in front of her.

    There has not been as many orphans as lucky as Elaina. So many sit with a broken kite devoid of any colors, as Elaina races by, those radiant hues streaming out behind her. She can almost forget that she was so very close to never being able to fly in the first place.

    It’s easy to breathe with Lilli beside her, well easier than she has found in quite some time. (She thinks her breath may have caught on that cliff side with that boy of shadows and it never returned to her.)

    ‘We will burn brighter still.’ Elena and she had said.

    Brighter and brighter.

    Burn, burn, burn.

    “From the ashes grew a new world,” comes silver words. It is a sentence stolen out of a story her mother told her once. “And everything was beautiful, and only tears of joy were wept so that the flames should never return.” The bruises of her eyes trail softly across her crimson face. “You’ll stay with me tonight?” She asks her, in such a way that makes Elaina seem small, impossibly young. “The dark has frightened me lately,” she admits. The same dark she has flirted with, has danced with, has thought about kissing on those sinful lips. “But never when I am with you.”

    Elaina; there's a voice calling me back
    tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me
    Reply




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