Meadow

Lirael?

She turned automatically towards the sound of her name, before the masculine tone of the voice had even registered. Expecting to see her mother standing there, dark-coated and pale-haired, with those curious swirls of white on her neck and sides. Instead, there was a pale chocolate stallion with scars flecked across his dappled coat like snowflakes.A dim spark of familiarity flared in Lirael’s chest, but she remained rooted where she stood even as her thoughts began to chase the answer in ever-diminishing circles. Without knowing why, her emerald-green eyes began to trace the edge of one of the male’s white markings, the breath pushing from her lungs in a soft, wordless sound when she recognized the shape.

Is it really you? His words echoed the voice of her mind, the question seeming to hang in the air between them for an eternity. Lifting her gaze to his face, the spotted mare began to tremble, her throat burning with unshed tears. Above all else, it was those eyes that stirred the pool of her memories. Eyes that had often held a spark of mischief, which had crinkled at their corners whenever he smiled. But that smile was absent now, the light of his younger years shadowed by doubt and pain. And if she’d had any doubts that the Sephiroth standing before her was real, and not a ghost such as the ones that haunted her mother, those doubts dissipated then. If she’d been imagining her twin, she would see him as he had been — laughing, carefree — and not the half-broken creature who faced her now.

“Sephy?” She breathed, slipping automatically into the smaller body and voice of her childhood self. Feeling like her legs were just as long and awkward when she coaxed them into motion, terrified that at any moment that would tangle up in themselves and spill her onto the ground. But with a creeping stride, she gradually made her way to the tobiano and extended her muzzle to touch his neck. Her lips were trembling when they made contact and Lirael gave a strangled sound that was half-laugh, half-sob, her breath gusting against the warm brown skin.

“It is you,” the coal-and-ivory woman said, her voice growing stronger with that assurance. “I thought—” She’d thought that he was lost to her forever, that she’d spend the rest of her life as only half of a whole. She’d thought that it would feel different if she ever saw him again, knowing that Sephiroth did not share the same sire. But the pieces fell just as neatly into place now as they had those years ago, and Lirael reached up to tug his forelock with a watery smile, eyeing the stallion critically. “— I thought you would never grow into those gangly legs of yours. You were like half a stork when we were foals, and always tripping over yourself.”

Despite the seemingly-harsh words of her teasing, there was a gentle note of affection in Lirael’s voice. She pressed her head into the hollow of his throat with a warm sigh, letting her jade eyes fall closed and listening to the steady sound of Sephiroth’s breaths.

“I missed you,” she admitted, regret and sorrowing lacing those words. It had seemed so important when she’d left, finding the piece of herself that had gone with Bondurant. But now she could see that everything that she needed — everything that she was, was right here.