[open] It is the nature of dreams to end // pq help needed

[Warlight]

Warlight

Soul as sweet as blood red jam

You owe me nothing at all

Warlight wants to argue, but Lilliana is sliding closer, close enough to touch, close enough to hold. The red mare doesn't feel like a stranger anymore, and when she slips her neck across Will, the gentle shutter that skips across her topline is a pleasant surprise. The intimacy doesn't feel out of place.

Light begins to bathe them and with it strange memories. Elena, Brazen, Nash, Yan, they are names she has never known, but they bring her a comforting and familiar warms none the less. Lilliana's words begin to make more sense as the magic spreads, but soon there is darkness pushing in against the light.

Celina, another name she had never heard, comes to life in her mind, drawing blood that may as well have been her own. Soon enough the memories meld - then she is back in the woodland where she died, and it is her blood that runs down her chest. It is her own heart hammering against her broken ribs, her broken body falling to it's knees, and her baby crying. It hit's her in the gut, the sounds her little boy is making, screams muffled by the blood in his mouth, and the ringing in her ears. Warlight gasps, a gasp that nearly becomes a sob; the memory is so sudden and visceral.

I'm sorry

Lilli's voice is enough to break the scene that Warlight is ready to leave. Her jaw clenches and her eyes shut, as if that will help keep the memories out. She tries to listen, to take the advice of the healer, and she thinks instead of humid afternoons wasted on a forgotten beach. She thinks of Raul and the way he holds her, and the open sky and summer meadows.

Finally, the light releases her. Will feels small and raw as she stumbles backward. Her breath comes ragged but she can tell her lungs fill with air in a way they hadn't since she had met the dark god, and her eyes rise to meet her companion's, the last traces of fear are vanishing.

[lilliana]

Coming this close to another is still something that Lilliana has to process. A step closer is measured now, where it had once come as easily to her as smiling. Reaching out with that dark mouth of hers and touching someone is done with an almost constant presence in the back of her mind to remind her that it was okay, that it would be fine. In the year since she escaped from Pangea, Lilliana has learned all the ways to be aware of another. Where they stand. How they move. Where they go. She has learned to become acutely aware of the space between her and someone else and how to keep it that way.

(The only exceptions to this are those who knew her before and as always, her children because there is nothing she would deny them. Nothing she wouldn't do for them.)

What happens between her and Warlight is the sign of the time that has passed in that year. There is nothing left of her too-lean frame now, nothing of her dull coat or the spark gone behind those blue eyes. Her pelt catches whatever little light there is and gleams fire-gold in Tephra's volcanic glow. Her mane and tail have regained their curls and lovely luster. It's just the moments now when she pauses - the way she hesitates and the way that her eyes turn into endless wells revealing the depth of her fears - that her scars appear.

With @[Warlight], none of that happens. There is no hesitance or reluctance to embrace the painted mare. She wraps around her like she could be Brazen or Neverwhere or Elena.

The only scars that become visible are the ones that gleam and glimmer along the lines of her Healing.

It's the sound of a child crying and somehow it emerges in the present. Lilli cries with him, with Warlight. It's so easy to imagine her boys wandering the Redwoods and finding her gone. It's too easy to imagine Aela's fear as she ran and as it always will, her hearts break for her children and this son of Warlight. Lilliana even allows herself to cling to the woman, adhering to the smell of sulfur and water because she could break further. Her heart once held the ability to be an infinite thing. Now, it feels like there is an infinity of shattered edges in her chest and that her heart will always be bleeding.

Lilliana who (unknowingly) came to heal Warlight finds traces of her gift at this moment in the Tephran.

Because while clasping to the two-toned woman, she clasps onto the hope that there is more to life than the darkness. There is more than loss and grief and despair. There is the sound of wild streams and a view of fields full of wildflowers. There are girlish giggles that come as golden as summer sunshine and contentment that comes as sweetly as the evenings during that season, as two children dream beneath a blanket of stars.

The light between them is bright and blinding.

When they tear apart, they both become swallowed by the dark. They drown in watery shadows.

It's hard to catch the deep blue of Warlight's gaze but she finds it. Something glints in the sheen of them and it makes Lilliana smile. She has always been haunted by the ghosts of others; for a beautiful moment, there are none with Warlight. There is only the distant sound of lapping water around them and, Lilli who finally finds her old smile, feels it streaming from her eyes. The first tears she has shed over a year.

"Give 'em hell."

Remember when our songs were just like prayers
Like gospel hymns that you caught in the air?

<3