WE ARE ALL JUST FRAGILE THINGS /
SOFT AND SMALL /
BUT ALL THE BROKEN CAN FIND /
HOPE IN THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES /
She had been somebody else, too, a lifetime ago.
Lilliana had been a bright-eyed girl who had laughed too much. She had been happy and content with her family, and the only thing she had ever wished for was their happiness. The only thing she had ever really wanted was to see her parents grow old, and to see her cousin Elena settled. They hadn't seemed like particularly large dreams, but they had been hers before she learned that whatever dream she had would eventually shatter.
Now she was a woman who struggled to let others close. Who struggled to see the good first in another before assuming the worst. Now, she was much quieter and the laughter no longer left her lips as easily as it once did.
Some things, though, haven't changed.
She had come to Tephra to search for her friend, Neverwhere. Her son said that she had come here (why, Lilliana didn't know but she had never questioned her companion's wandering ways before) and in her search for the former Khaleesi, she had found Ciri instead. Perhaps another horse would have turned tail and run as soon as the word 'monster' was mentioned. Perhaps another horse might have left the injured pegasus behind, but it has never been in Lilliana's nature to leave someone struggling.
That hasn't changed.
The bulk of the other woman shifts against her and Lilliana braces with it, offering Ciri the support she needed from the smaller mare. They moved towards Taiga, and despite the dim light provided by the stars, the impossibly tall trees that guard the entrance to the North were waiting for them. She could make out the silhouettes of a few Sequoias, and the trunks of the trees started to widen as they continued on their journey. She guided them both easily through the trails, familiar with them as she had once been with the paths in her childhood home, Murmuring Rivers.
There is nothing to say when Ciri reveals that she will run or she will die. The slender woman might reveal that she has died once already and that wasn't the worst thing to happen to her. That was something that happened firmly in the past, where it belonged. They hardly pass the border when she catches a glimpse of who the winged mare is speaking of through her memories: a monster who gleams iridescent blue.
He sports a white mane from head to tail and the thing to finally slows her - when nothing else in their quick pace has - are a set of magnificent white wings. There are some differences and it certainly isn't the man that she remembers, but the resemblance is strikingly similar. A Cursed thing, and where her mind had been overflowing with memories, it suddenly stilled and she stopped, feeling as if all the air had been pushed from her lungs.
"No," she says and her voice breaks even as she stands firmly against Ciri. She tries to be mindful of the broken bones and the wing that she had draped over her back, but it makes her voice come out even smaller. "No - no, it can't." She protests with a slight shake of her head. It had been burned away in the fires at Loess. Neverwhere had told her and even more than that, had shown Lilliana the demise of the thing that had tormented so many.
Something she had been unable (and unwilling) to do.
Her sides start to heave and then she steps tentatively forward, then another, doing the only thing she has ever known how to do in her moments of grief. She keeps moving forward, staring straight ahead and weaving through the Taigan forest. Lilliana can't bring herself to look at Ciri yet, not when she knows her eyes are full of tears. She remains quiet, following Leonidas until the approaching dawn forces him to fade as her silent tears do, leaving behind only damp marks on her copper cheeks, as she forces herself to emulate the pristine and serene lake in Hyaline that Elena had once compared her to.
"I'm sorry," she says, apologizing for her emotions. "My son - Nashua - is a healer. He shouldn't be far from here, but if you'd like, I can find a comfortable spot for you to wait." She turned her head and peered through the foggy wood, hoping that her eldest was still on the mainland.
If not, Yanhua was bound to be nearby.
@Ciri
fragile things (reprise) - megan hilty
image credit to footybandit