[private] sunrise never waits

[lilliana]

There’s something wrong.

She’s known for a while now that something is wrong. Lilliana is far too slim, lean to be this far in pregnancy. Her ribs show at the top of her copper frame and while her last pregnancy had been with multiples, this child she carries doesn’t settle. It sits wrong on her bones, where her hips have started to point. There is something wrong and the only thing she can do is let her gift drain itself. 

(Not that she can see the way the light pools within, not that she can see how it cradles her unborn child.)

As she enters the latter stages of her pregnancy, she moves to Silver Cove. She moves away from the wasteland of Pangea with its angry, fractured ground and turns her eyes towards the north. If she can’t go home, she becomes determined that she will not drop her child on the red dirt that coats her throat and lungs. At least in the Cove, there is a view that lets her see an evergreen glimpse of the Taigan forest. 

Not home, but close. 
(So, so achingly close.)
And then there is the ocean. 

By the ocean, there is always the chance to send a hope out on the waning tide. 

Winter here is still bitter. It bites against all the sharp angles of her body, the wind growls its bitter anger in her ear. When the days (despite this one not being so bad - if she wasn’t so lost, Lilliana might have admired the pristine beauty of winter here, of frost sparkling on the black pebbled beaches) seem too frigid and long, she tries to warm herself. The chestnut mare tries to protect herself in the divots of the land, staying in between the gentle hills where the surf is only a soft murmur in her ears.

But Lilliana remembers the days of dreaming of oceans while she lingered by rivers and it doesn’t take long to call her back. The song of the sea calls her again and again and Lilli becomes as regular on these beaches as the tides.

When the winter wind comes racing off the ocean, when a clean blast makes her flare her nostrils, the copper mare tries using her craft (even if she won’t call it a gift) to keep herself warm. She remembers the last lessons she had been teaching her youngest son, trying to pass along what she knew of the storyweaving to Yanhua. Don’t focus so much on the picture as a whole, she had shared. Think of the softness of the grass as it danced. Think of a delicate curve of an ear. Touch helped pass the memories along, especially when a bond already existed. An emotion tied to the memory made it more vivid, more vibrant, more beautiful - something easier to paint with the mind. 

So as she walks with the wind calling her someplace wild, that’s what she does. Lilliana paints with her mind.

@[Sid] for you, voila