BUT IT SINCE IT FELL UNTO MY LOT /
THAT I SHOULD RISE AND YOU SHOULD NOT /
I'LL GENTLY RISE AND SOFTLY CALL /
GOOD NIGHT AND JOY BE TO YOU ALL /
SO FILL TO ME THE PARTING GLASS /
Brazen is still out there, somewhere. Lilliana doesn't doubt that. Her clan had a different name for it, the place where souls go when they leave a body dormant; she doesn't care about the name, about the legends, about that they said that it was a place free of pain and suffering. Her blue eyes are peering down into the shape of a little boy - of darling Reave (who has already stolen her heart as well; but then that was inevitable). She loves him - something already burning bright, furious, fierce in her chest.
Reave rises and Lilliana stands, letting the little boy find his legs. When he has taken his first steps, she smiles despite the ache that she feels. He should be sharing this moment with Brazen, not her. She feels like a trespasser, an intruder, as much a thief as Reave might someday be with his sight.
But when she looks back at Brazen again while she waits for the tobiano colt, her friend doesn't stir. The flames have slowly started to extinguish and soon there will be nothing left of the Nerinian. There will be nothing left but the memories that she and Neverwhere and the others will carry around with them.
He struggles to find the ground, falling a few times before he finally reaches her (how she wanted to catch him each time!). But as a mother five times over, she knows that the resiliency of the young needs to be tested in the beginning. They will be tested over and over again - especially here in the North where the winter months can be so unforgiving. She nearly makes it to the end, waiting for her little boy to find his hooves. The last time @[Reave] falls, she steps forward with her slender head lowered and uses it to help him rise again. The colt stumbles into her side and Lilliana softens against him, using herself to prop him up. She traces the slope of his shoulders with her mouth, up to the soft newborn tuft of his flaxen mane before repeating the gesture.
I've got you, she thinks to the little boy - her son. Brazen's son. Their son, she decides.
I've got him, she thinks to the specter her imagination creates. A rift between this life and the next, it has to leave something behind. A soul can't fly so far, so fast, so soon. (Can it?) Brazen's death leaves a void in both of them and echoes to the empty places within both of them: We're still here.
It's a thought that will echo between heartbeats in the days to come. It will come as Reave learns to run. It will come as his sister places bluebonnets in his flaxen mane and his brothers envelop him into the fold of family that defines their very identity as Northerners. It will come in the quiet moments when his breathing will fall in tandem with Oren and Roselin while they dream, when she thinks on Aela and watches her eldest sons, Nashua and Yanhua, continue to grow.
We're still here.
the parting glass - peter hollens + lindsey stirling
image credit to footybandit
why you got to gut kick me in the feels
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind