resurrect the saint within the wretch; lilli

[lilliana]

AND YESTERDAY, I TRIED TO PRAY /
BUT I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY /
I'M TOO SAD TO CRY /

Warden's eyes widen in surprise - mirroring a reaction that Lilliana had worn when Leonidas first shone down on her. Her blue eyes had widened in shock and then fear. And when it became obvious that the star meant to stay, they had darkened with anger. Why? She had wanted to know. It was just one more thing in her life that she didn't have an answer for.

But Leonidas didn't seem to mind creating more for her. Just as the young star didn't seem to mind creating more problems, either.

The horned stallion lowers his head and Leonidas remained perched above, hovering over Lilliana and 'glowering' down on the painted stag as well as a faceless entity could. Lilli sighed, still reaching out through the tendrils of their bond to calm the little ball of light, and then smiled apologetically to the Watcher. She had spent many nights awake with Leonidas and the weariness of those hours are revealed underneath his blue-white light that pools between the pair. "Sort of," she tries to explain. Leo had finally stopped dancing until Warden had looked up and at the mention of him, the glowing orb descended from the bough again.

Ask him why somebody bothered to name him. Leonidas chirped in her mind, wanting to taunt the pegasus. I could think of a few things to call him. The star thought before he received another pointed look from his bonded. He hovered before racing back up to the bower where he continued to glow defensively.

She can only smile apologetically beneath their shared starlight. Warden tilts his head inquisitively towards her and Lilliana peers up at him through the shadows. Had she said something wrong?

Until he asks her: how are things?

Lilliana attempts to hold herself together. She steels herself, as she always does when a question like this is poised to her. The chestnut mare has gotten good at smiling, at slipping somewhere away behind her blue eyes, where nobody ever to wonders (or dares to follow) where she goes. There are only three souls who might know the moment that it happens; one dwells a world away from Beqanna, the other has left this life and the last bares scars that will burn in Lilliana's memory long after that friend is gone as well.

"Brazen," she starts, and then the name hitches in her throat. "Brazen died." Saying the name of her fallen companion unleashes a dam of emotion that had been leveed in her chest. Once she starts talking, the words (and emotions) come pouring out. "Taiga burnt. And Nerine. The Pangeans came, just as you saw and-," and there is nothing to keep the rest at bay. Lilliana is simply too exhausted. "There was nothing I could do." She had found a way to spare Brennen during the attack but the price she had paid with her healing had cost Brazen her life.

Tears are burning bright in her blue eyes and she has to turn her slender face away, afraid that Leonidas' shine might reveal it.

"The knowing wasn't the worst part," she confides softly to the Tephran. "It's this," she admits.

Existing in the After. Existing after the End.

too sad to cry - sasha sloan
image credit to footybandit