[private] you used to be such a lion

[Elliana]

I knew her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.

There is a legend, told in the scriptures of constellations, that the end begins in a rain so bright, so furiously full of flame, that nothing after the sight of it will ever be considered beautiful. The legend is told to the new-gods and the newborn stars. It is brewed into the ambrosia upon which galaxies feast. Battlefields are so thick with an echo of it that a million armies cannot dim the way it turns itself not into language but into dragon form, and snake form, and shark form.

She is running, but she does not feel it.

Her hooves are carving moons into the frozen earth.

Running from the end, from the beginning, from something.

Her mother? Or at least thoughts of her.

She was Elena’s crutch when she needed one. She was the one Elena coddled. She was the one she loved, because she was—is—the first, and because she had a special kinship with Elena’s soul-brother, Po, just as much as she did… if not more. She had gone out of her way to accept Nicnevin into the family when Elena brought her home, and she was the one who, when she needed her most, abandoned the empathetic queen because she could no longer hold her up, not when she was just as bruised and lonely and tired.

So, understandably, Elliana tries not to think about her mother
The worst part is that Elena is getting better, and she’ll never know.

Elliana and Lilliana have more in common than just a name and blood relationship. They both walked into Redwoods and found that the tighter the trees around you, the greater amount of freedom you felt. She slows her running only when she reaches the Taiga. Sometimes, to her, the entire world feels like a garden in a low-fog and a sickle moon. The night is no longer young; the moon hanging nearly full high in the skies above the slumbering land. A silver ornament amongst the backdrop of the beautiful shadows; the inky black and subtle indigo the most lovely between every bright, shining star.

She doesn't find her, to find her would suggest she had been looking, and she hadn't been—not for her. But there she is all the same.

Suddenly, she doesn't know what to say. She tilts her head to peer at the red-haired woman. The dusk streams through the canopy in long beams of light, emphasizing the stillness that surrounds them. The world holds its breath- or is that just Elli?

There is a moment in which her heart seems to hold its breath.

And with a patience she did not know she possessed, she waits.

And moment by moment, the stars gleam brighter.


"Speaking."

☾ | ℂ

@lilliana
picture colored by star <3

[lilliana]

Lilliana had never considered the end.

When she had been young, she had imagined what her future might look like many times. (There were different versions but all of them contained Elena.) And then they changed one home for another, separated from each other when her cousin went to the Woodlands and she to Culloden, before coming back together again only to drift away in the vast realms of Beyond; they had reunited in Beqanna, only to lose each other again and again. Valerio's red-gold daughter had considered so many things, but even in her wildest daydreams (or perhaps they were nightmares), she had never considered that there could be so much loss.

That she would lose Elena, and then Brazen, and then Neverwhere.

That she would lose a child.

She is considering her end as she stares out over a calm sea, where the winter gray sea barely breaks above the rocks. Lilliana knows what she has to do next; she had come to the petrified forest and exorcised one of her ghosts. Wherewolf had said that Neverwhere had gone to Tephra, and if what Ciri had claimed was true, there would be another waiting for her there. Her friend might consider venturing there as reckless, foolish, and unnecessary, but her mind was already made up. If she was to be immortal, better to use that infinite amount of time for something than waste forever doing nothing.

It might not even be an ending she finds in Tephra, but after losing track of Neverwhere and after her last conversation with Leilan, she doesn't want to think about what might come after this. So she closes her deep blue eyes and listens to the cadence of the surf, choosing to listen to it rather than her own thoughts. She had spoken to Nashua, made sure that he understood the (very) few things of what she remembered of Paraiso so that if the need ever arose, they would know how to search for the ancient valley. It was where Yanhua might have taken his own family, and she had to believe that.

When the damp had finally penetrated her copper coat, and the moon had risen high enough to gleam silver through the bare Taigan branches, Lilliana left her spot along the coast. She left behind the rocky beach and made towards the Nerinian border, a spot that she had often frequented when her children had been small.

It is nearly dawn by the time she reaches it, and when she arrives, Lilliana finds that she is not alone.

Her eyes flick first to the familiar heart on the young mare's forehead (how foolish Lilli was to think she had broken her own heart when it always waiting for her - safely kept - on her cousin's golden brow), but what should be gold isn't. Those expectant eyes peering at her are blue like her sons, like her father, and something twists in her soul at seeing something so familiar on an unfamiliar face.

"Oh no," she says softly, knowing who the girl is immediately, and shakes her head. "You shouldn't be here," speaks the flame-marked mare. "You should be with your mother, where you will be safe."

@Elliana

---

 
disclaimer in case anybody actually reads this: this thread is from ages ago, and i am just very slowly, slowly catching up