[private] and i know its long gone

[lilliana]

I SEE THE LIGHT BUT NEVER FIND THE SURFACE /
I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN SWIM NO MORE /
WHITE KNUCKLES AND WILD HORSES /
ONE DAY WE'LL WASH UP ON MERCY'S SHORE /

The meeting between herself and Nashua had been (painfully) brief.

Once learning that Yanhua had gone missing, and that the Curse roamed again, she had known that she couldn't stay in Taiga. The reasoning she had given Nash had been simple enough; if it had been the same family Curse that Wishbone had told her about - that same way that possessed Wolfbane - it would be better if she didn't remain in the North.

If she became anything more than just a passing thought, Lilliana didn't intend to remain where It knew to find her.

She had told Nashua it would be better for her to return to Ischia. They had been protected there once. Or, she admitted, she might stay in the Common Lands. They all seemed better options than staying in Taiga, and after some time, Nashua reluctantly agreed. ('I hate this,' he told her, and Lilliana had hugged her son as she had done when he had been small, trying to ignore the creeping feeling that this family was falling apart as hers had done in Beyond.)

But she didn't return to the Common Lands. The grove that she had shared Broch would remain empty. She didn't go to Ischia, but the fire-marked mare did travel towards the West. A few days after delivering an injured Ciri to the Northern King, the chestnut took a similar trail towards Tephra. Her thoughts were oddly quiet as she traveled, as she forced herself to focus on one thing.

Wherewolf had told her that his mother had come here. And now, all her months of searching for Neverwhere made sense. She hadn't found her because she had been here, and as the truth unraveled across Beqanna, Lilliana learned that the kingdom once ruled by her friends Warden and Wishbone was now lead by Gale, a son of Wolfbane and Lepis.

And that connection was too coincidental for her to ignore.

Lilliana has never been particularly gifted at anything. Her gifts have been quiet ones that never gave her any renown and in a land where horses could be a wide variety of colors, she relies on her simple one to hide her as she slips into Tephra to look for her friend. Her marking - the one gifted to her by Anatomy and Craft - remains hidden beneath a river of curling mane and her only other attribute - those startling blue eyes - are kept carefully cast down.

@Gale

marcy's shore - needtobreathe
image credit to footybandit

[Gale]

@lilliana

i hear the wicked get no rest, but when you do ---------- i hope you dream of me The thing that lives within Gale recognizes the woman with the golden face, but it is not immediate. First his eyes narrow, for he can feel the magic within him reach toward her even as his conscious mind still struggles to make the connection. The shadow that had taken the earlier generations of his family had died in Loess. It would have remained dead, writhing in an endless void, had it not been for the Eclipse, and the Monsters, and the flippant whim of a Dark God. The thing that had driven Wolfbane, that had ravaged the north years past, that is only the smallest fraction of the monster it has become while wearing Gale. Nashua is creeping closer to the truth. (The Curse feels him, a brightness where he would prefer shadow; a body pacing the distant shore of the Isle). Cobbled together from magics that it gathers, the Curse irreparably alters itself with each new ability it steals from dead hearts. It is no longer the creature that had first possessed Gale. He is prying into Lilliana’s mind even as he makes his way down the jungle path toward her. His forelimbs are feathered, and the curved talons dig into the rich earth of the jungle floor. He finds Nashua in her mind just as he sees Aela in the lines of her face, and the brindle stallion’s lip draws up over teeth nearly as sharp as the glittering tines of his black horns as he comes to a sudden halt. There is no good reason why a victim would seek him out alone, and the thing is immediately on edge. His blue eyes cast to either side of her, finding only shadows and frustration that begins to show on his face. It tightens the thin line of his mouth, and the face that is usually so much like his sire’s is suddenly quite like Gale’s irascible mother instead. “Why are you here?” He asks abruptly, already quite certain that he will not like the answer. GALE

[lilliana]

I SEE THE LIGHT BUT NEVER FIND THE SURFACE /
I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN SWIM NO MORE /
WHITE KNUCKLES AND WILD HORSES /
ONE DAY WE'LL WASH UP ON MERCY'S SHORE /

Lilliana had told no one what she intended.

To Nashua, she had only said that she couldn't remain in Taiga. The former Taigan had gotten herself trapped there, thinking that she and her children were too inconsequential for the Curse to come seeking them out. And that was a truth; after learning about the disappearance of Yanhua and his family, after coming to know that whatever had afflicted Wolfbane in another life had returned in this, she knew that she couldn't stay in Taiga.

Trapped was the only emotion for it, because she had left one fresh hell (to learn of the death of her brother, to have come so close to being reunited with her family) to return to this one.

She couldn't stay in Taiga when Ciri's accusations kept ringing inside her mind. You know, she had said, you know what it is. As if Lilliana was somehow responsible for the horrible things done to her - the torn skin, the broken bones. As if there might have been more that she might have done to prevent it from coming back, from preventing what had happened to her. The Thane's voice had replayed across her memories in the days after and each time that she heard Ciri's voice, Neverwhere and her deep scars would appear.

Something else that was her fault.

Those images are still in her mind - as well a heavy sense of guilt - when she hears a voice behind her. She had hoped that her quiet demeanor - an ability to go unnoticed in a crowd - might have offered some aid in her search for her dappled friend. Lilliana lifts her blue eyes to the strange creature and despite his horns or the talons, he so strongly resembles two of the horses that have haunted her most. It's easy to find the bold lines of Wolfbane in his shimmering blue face when she had found him so often in Nashua and Yanhua, and that had been something that she had expected (especially after knowing his other sons, Pteron, Tiercel, Elio, and Wherewolf).

Lepis stares sternly out at her, and Lilliana swallows, hard.

"I'm looking for someone," she tells the strange beast, determined to calm her racing heart.

@Gale

marcy's shore - needtobreathe
image credit to footybandit

[Gale]

@lilliana

i hear the wicked get no rest, but when you do ---------- i hope you dream of me The horse she is looking for is in the Pampas, and as Gale Looks at the bald-faced little filly through the eyes of pegasus stallion he does not recognize Neverwhere. He is too focused on what he is sure is not a coincidence, that in the distance there had been a deep blue filly with familiar black stripes. Gale had assumed that the girl had died, and to see her alive is unexpected. He almost has a Feeling about it, and quashes it just before he might have Seen a bruise appear on the distant silver-haired filly. “She isn’t here,” Gale tells her, and takes another step closer. He can hear the racing of her heart, and the tempo of it draws him near enough that he can feel the heat of her body even in the humid air. The dark shadows of his magic draw closer still, twisting up the length of her near white foreleg. Does she know, he wonders, that he shares more with his host’s father than the way they look? That the first rotten part of it is the very same darkness that had torn her world asunder? The dark shadows of his magic shift and grow, and Gale adopting the same shape he had once worn to show their daughter. Or had that been Gale’s memory? He cannot keep them straight anymore, and there is no need to bother trying. Not when there is fun to be had while wearing the shape of Wolfbane “Do you think Aela will recognize your headless corpse?” He asks, sliding magic nearly as cold as his smile around the bones of her hindlegs, an easy magic to keep her in place if she thinks about running. “I want to leave your head in Taiga for Nashua to find.” GALE

[lilliana]

I SEE THE LIGHT BUT NEVER FIND THE SURFACE /
I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN SWIM NO MORE /
WHITE KNUCKLES AND WILD HORSES /
ONE DAY WE'LL WASH UP ON MERCY'S SHORE /

Something in her simultaneously sinks and rises when Gale says that Neverwhere is not here.

So much of her worry had come from that the dappled woman was here because of the Curse. But her friend is not here, and though she remains wary against the way that it spoke so easily of the former Nerinian's new location (why the Pampas?), there is relief in knowing that she is not here. Lilliana is, though, and being acutely aware of that fact, the flame-marked mare takes a careful step back as Lepis' son draws closer. A shadow begins to twine up her copper leg, and she freezes as the magic captures her.

Before, Gale had been close enough that Lilliana could see a striking likeness to both his parents. There was something of Lepis' austerity when his electric blue eyes first met hers. And she had caught something of Wolfbane across the bold lines of his angular face. But she watches in silent horror as those angles become more and more familiar, until she is staring up into the face of a man that she had never thought to see again.

(And her mind floods with so many memories: the day he had taken Aela from her, his sneers and ultimatums; and then more recent ones: Ciri and all her fury and vengeance insisting that Lilliana undersood the thing now before her, Leilan and his messages from the Afterlife while she wondered why Wolfbane would have said anything to her at all.)

She can feel the evening chill creeping up her hind legs, and Lilliana does her best not to shiver. Her red-gold tail twitches against her flanks, and that's when she realizes it is not fear that has her paralyzed in place. She is unable to take another step back and there is nothing for her to do but stare up at a ghost. Nothing about this makes sense, but Lilliana has long abandoned trying to find reason in anything that surrounded the masked face that she glances up at.

Lilliana knows there is no arguing with the thing before her.

It will kill her, like the monster during the Endless Night, but there is no death for her.

There is only this purgatory known as living, so she might as well try to combat her fear and desperation by asking a question.

"What do you want?" she asks Gale-now-Wolfbane, unable to do anything else. All this pain, suffering, death; what was the point of it all? 

@Gale

marcy's shore - needtobreathe
image credit to footybandit

[Gale]

i hear the wicked get no rest, but when you do ---------- i hope you dream of me It has been some time since the creature has last worn this shape, but it takes him no time at all to adjust. It is not so different from Gale, after all, a bit slimmer with long limbs that make short distance of the space that separates him from Lilliana. She cannot run, and he smiles, white fangs flashing nearly as bright as his glittering olive eyes. What do you want, she asks. The Curse doesn’t answer at first, and instead the myriad strands of his white tail become instead a scythe-ended thing, sharper even than the obsidian edges of volcanic obsidian. It cuts at even the faint pressure when he places it against her copper neck. Only when he is beside her, his breath warm against her skin, does he answer. “Everything.” And then he cuts her throat, keeping tight the magic on her bones that holds her still. The creature has never seen someone bleed out from the jugular while standing upright. He is curious what it might look like, and how long it will take. After, he will rip her chest open and devour her still-warm heart. GALE

@lilliana