Lilliana's earliest memories are of the stars.
She thinks of a winter night in a meadow and wide, velvet sky. She thinks of the silent presence that was twinkling down on her mother as Aletta spoke softly - revealing her worries, sharing her wonders, trying to make sense of her anger. It was at the silver side of her dam that Lilliana learned what it was to revere something. Stars were timeless, flickering things that existed far above them. Their presence wreathed the stories and fables of her youth - filled with messages of hope and prophecies, warnings of devastation and curses.
And then her mother had so often said that a horse who follows the stars seldom gets lost; they follow the same paths year after year. They moved across the horizon as the seasons changed. Fall could fade into winter and the sky would shift but those changes could be as expected as the coming frost. Follow the stars, Aletta had said, and your steps will find a familiar trail. Just as the sun rose and set each day, just as the moon illuminated each silvery night.
The chestnut had never thought to question them, to condemn them until she came here (and that had been another of her mother's warnings - that Beqanna was brimming with Magic but also greed. It had been the setting for so many fairytales - mentions of events like the Reckoning - but they followed with a warning: Magic always had a price.) She hasn't known what to think since the arrival of Leonidas. It means something but what? For all that she can claim to not believe that they have no trajectory on her - or her bloodline - there is the young star, beaming brightly above her. A blatant truth that shines down on her night after night.
A small smile plays at the edges of her dark lips as Warden claims he was a poor listener. She doubts it. There is far too much, she thinks, that doesn't escape the Watcher's notice and the image that she conjures in her mind could easily be a memory: a young colt listening to stories about the cosmos and constellations with a too-serious expression that he had yet to master. The chestnut might have teased him more but she senses his reluctance on the subject and that is something she understands. There are corners of her own memories that she would like to keep in shadow.
But she teases him about something - gently, easily to divert the subject - because they both deserve a lighter mood.
There will be more troubles for them to ponder beyond this night.
The sound of his laughter is bright. It breaks the darkness that comes creeping closer the higher that Leonidas climbs and clings to his barren branches. The chestnut can't help but follow the painted stallion and a soft laugh joins in chorus with the Watcher. But then he is gone, left her stranded with only the sense of foreboding to fill the newly-created void. Lilliana turns her head sharply and takes a step towards Warden, searching his face for any shadow or trace of... anything. His souls flees, goes to the Future that always finds them and Lilliana stares into the shockingly-white expanse of Warden's knowing eyes.
It feels as if an age has passed; an entire epic could have been composed across the time that Warden has been gone. "Warden?" she whispers as she takes a tentative step closer, wondering if a voice in the present might call him back. It's only when she goes to lightly touch his shoulder does she catch glimpses of it: the nothing. She is drowning in a sea of black and the vision that comes is fragmented. There is a glimmer of a ring of light that looms insidiously above. There are more images of the obscurity that devours the lands she comes to recognize - Tephra, Nerine, the Meadow.
What is worse is that there are things out there.
They creep and prowl. They linger on the edges of sight so that the viewer questions their existence at all.
And then they return.
The white of Lilliana's eyes are burning through the dark and her dark nostrils are flaring as she tries to regain control of her senses - of her own vision. The pegasus turns to look at her and her light blues find his darker ones through the dark. He looks afraid (as he should be), she realizes from studying the lines of his usually stoic face. The future has cracked something open along the angles of it. "I don't know," she tells him because when has she ever been a match for anything but calamity? She is usually the spark that ignites the disaster and nobody ever asks kindling if it wishes to burn.
But he says we and something in her windpipe hitches; he says we where Lilliana has been left alone with her tragedies, left alone to navigate through the disasters (or those who would help her are no longer there). Her mind is reeling with all kinds of thoughts - what of her children? What of Taiga? Leilan? What of Warden's family? Tephra? "We prepare the others," she says, almost numb with the overwhelming thoughts of an apocalypse swirling across her mind. "We do what we can to help."
She blinks, suddenly worried for Warden. With what the weight of this burden would do to him. "I'm not sure how to help you, Warden." Lilliana admits, "but if I can, I'll do whatever you need." Perhaps because she hadn't been privy to the entire premonition but it had been absent of something. There was that awful dark, that never-ending night that encompassed everything. "I didn't see-," she starts and then stops, unsure of how to proceed. Their earlier shared visions have always been of Death, of terrible things - Brazen fighting for air until her body succumbs to the battle, Nashua falling from the sky in Loess.
Dying, she wants to say. I did not see dying.
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind