AND YESTERDAY, I TRIED TO PRAY /
BUT I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY /
I'M TOO SAD TO CRY /
They learned to walk with their ancestors.
As wobbling foals, they are told that their first steps are not taken alone but with Legado. That the Wind guides them forward and will help them find the balance in their stride (and in life) to keep them steady. When they found the ground beneath them - when they finally learn to run - they are told that they are communing with their Gods. The Wind always carried the answers; echoes from the past, premonitions from the future.
And the present had always been for running so fast - for being so deft and fleet of hoof that moments suspended above the ground could be interpreted as flying. (There is no outrunning the past or the present or the future, she knows. But sometimes insight came easier when a heart hammered so hard against a ribcage that it pounded away all doubts. When lungs filled so full with air that they felt like they were burning, that the flame from them could burn away a soul's dark troubles.)
She wishes she could look at Warden.
Lilliana can feel the gaze of the pegasus on her but she merely looks up Leonidas. The star hovers above in the canopy, content to observe the pair from above without interruption (for the meantime). The cycle can't be broken, he says and her delicate ears pin into the wild curls of her windswept mane. There is a finality in his voice that reminds her so much of Aletta that she simultaneously aches and rages at the same time. Lilliana, who was said to be descended from summer gales, rails against the iron certainty that she also carries in her blood.
The anger that blows through her is like the cold front that precedes a storm, that brisk rush of air that foreshadows the bellow of thunder to come.
Leonidas' light continues to bathe them in shades of silver-blue. Lilliana's eyes are flashing lightning strikes - of pain, of sadness, of anger - when she finally does turn to look at him. The emotions linger together before receding to reveal her torment of late: "but would you bend it?" She asks him.
For as deeply as she feels things, her emotions have always been the hardest part of herself to share. Lilliana has always struggled with them inwardly, battled, and fought her own demons. Her sadness would swallow her if she allowed it. She was terrified of her anger, of the way that she sometimes felt the rage echoing between heartbeats like a war drum. (How does Warden do it? How does the see the endings come and not rise against it?)
The Taigan closes her eyes because it's the only way she knows how to contain it.
Quietly, she asks, "Does it ever make you angry?"
too sad to cry - sasha sloan
image credit to footybandit
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind