Did he do something? The look in Lilith's corrupted eyes as she slid her gaze to Ellie wasn't directed at Ellie, which was both obvious and likely a relief. Because it was full of fury, a black hatred only fed further by the magic that had tainted her.

He was the cause of it, and the architect of her death--if that's what it had been. Of all their suffering. "Tamulus abandoned us," and her anger was so great that her voice was choked into a whisper. Her hand tightened around her staff, so strongly that her knuckles paled. Her lip curled, and she looked as though she were about to continue.

But weariness struck her, and she stumbled--down to a knee, pausing to breathe, before shoving on and continuing as though animated purely by stubborn anger. "Instead of helping us-... he ran. He hid." The whispered word, 'Coward,' seethed from her lips into the tainted air.

She might have gone on, might have gone on a tirade, even--about Let, about death, about leaving one's entire people and children to die--but exhaustion tugged at her. It was easier to reach for Ellie. To hold her hand, to settle the black flames licking at the edge of her temper just there--just beyond her conscious mind--and focus on her beloved, instead.

And it was soothing to hear of Adam. To listen to how he'd grown, how he had managed to turn his fury aside and to create, instead of to destroy. A smile even touched her grayed lips, then. "I'm glad. I am-..." She sighed. "Oh, Ellie, to hear he's helped so much..." Patrols and defenses? Organizing their very people-? She paused, lips pursed as she hobbled onward, thinking. "-Did he become a leader?" she asked, glancing curiously at Eleanora. "It sounds-... like he became a leader." A champion, even, of their people, of the lost, of those who needed him. She smiled again. "I could not be prouder. I hope... he knows. Somehow." He couldn't. She knew he couldn't. But she sent the thought to him, regardless, a heartbreaking ache to know him again, to see all Ellie was describing, but... he was lost.

Everyone was lost to her. Everything. Except-...

Except Ellie.

She closed her eyes for a moment, sighing, deeply bittersweet. "Will you show me?" she asked, at last, still keeping that flickering, corruptive rage at bay. She is my talisman. My protective amulet. So long as she is here-... "How to... care for plants. Maybe--is there a place here, among these... talking animals? To make a garden..?"

Ahh, but that brought another question--one she asked with a sense of dread, her eyes sliding once again--a touch of fear in them this time--to Ellie's own. "Is there--no way out of here? Out of this place?" she asked.

@Eleanora

She felt the force of Lilith's anger and for a second she almost shied away. Perhaps at one point, she had blamed Tamulus, she'd pointed a finger at him, but she had done that to everyone. She'd been in hysterics when Lilith had gone, she'd been broken, one half of a whole, screaming and cursing the world, and blaming everyone, including herself, for the loss of her beloved. But it had settled, gone away, because she'd understood that it wasn't Tamulus that had caused it all, it was the Empire that was to blame. Always the empire.

But...she could admit. Tamulus could have helped somehow. Was he not powerful? Did he not bring magic to Let and give the witches their stones and power? Did they mean so little to him that at the first sign of danger he abandoned them? She could understand, now, Lilith's anger, thinking of it in a way she had not before. Yet still, she couldn't be truly angry at him. He must have had a reason.

But she didn't want to dwell on the topic. Lilith didn't seem to want to so she let it go without anymore comment, smiling at the praise for their son. "He did," she whispered, feeling a slice of pain thinking about what a great man he'd become. "Don't worry. He knows. I always told him that you would be. Because I knew you would. He never became a leader, not officially, but he is in the ways that matter. So many people look up to him and respect him. I think, if the time comes to choose a new leader, the witches may choose him."

She hoped that the day would come, but also that it would not. Because it would mean that they were in danger once again and they needed strong, fiery leadership. They needed his will and his passion. She hoped he would lead them well, but that he would never have to.

"Oh, of course!" She couldn't be happier to hear those words and the question. "Many places, in fact! I have something of a temporary setup in a cave - Pegasus, you must have passed it to get here. Open meadows and a forest, right next to the cave you were in before. It's peaceful there, kind of like the hillsides of the Vaa. We could make ourselves a home there - and a garden."

And then she squeezed Lilith's hand, feeling her dread and suddenly wishing that she could have a better answer, but it was a deep sadness that she had still not fully come to terms with yet. "...No. No, there's no way out. I'm sorry, Lilith." She didn't say it, but the longing for the sky returned, for the wind and the stars. But they were gone and they would never see them again.

Lilith listened. Eleanora's voice was soothing, a lifeline--a shining thread to hold onto even when this foul magic seemed to crash in all around her with a constant roar. This magic was an ocean whose tides were formed of violence, and she feared already that it would begin to erode away her shores, her sanity, her patience.

But Ellie's voice kept that at bay, for now. She held Ellie's hand, brushed her fingers over the back of it over and over, a small gesture that soothed her even more.

Still-... she did hear everything that Ellie said. Her lips quirked softly at the tale spun of the surface world and of their son--and his place in it. When Ellie had finished--had answered all her questions, and when the silence descended like a shroud--Lilith forced the quiet back away. Silence was... bad, she was learning. It invited too much in. "I couldn't have hoped for more. Is he-... a good man?" she asked, but it almost felt like her voice was somewhere far away, because the rest of what Ellie had said threatened to shatter her composure.

Trapped.

They were trapped here. It was as if their lives were over: no more chances to change things, no effect on the world at large. And yes, this was their traumatizing afterlife; to be stuck in... wherever this was. Lilith was faced with a choice: to accept their captivity, or to determine to look for a way out, with all the obsession and even madness that might follow--that of a beast tearing at its cage. She closed her eyes against the sudden threat of claustrophobia, though the cave around them was spacious, its ceilings almost as towering as the sky. Nothing threatened to close in, yet... "It feels stifling." She paused and leaned back, catching her breath against a boulder, and turned, eyes fixing on their path. Lilith was about to ask how much farther it would be when an echo of that question rose instead, in her mind, and her gaze shot--blinking--to Ellie.

"How long has it been?" she asked, abruptly. Her gaze ranged Ellie's features--but was there any way to tell..? Weeks... years? Decades..? "How long have I been... gone? How long have you lived down here?" That corruption rose fear in her--fear for her beloved, for her being alone down here--and rage. Rage that she had been alone, thanks to all the bastards of their world, thanks to awful circumstance-...

But how long had it been..?

@Eleanora

The took notice of Lilith's discomfort, how she seemed far away, her mind divided. Eleanora couldn't blame her - she'd changed a lot, her circumstances had changed, everything was different now. She could feel her fear, her anger, she could feel how the contact between them kept her here and now, the storm at bay threatening to swallow her. By the sky, she wished she could hold it for her, shield her from whatever madness threatened to overwhelm her. But she could do nothing but watch and do what she had in her power.

"The best man," she answered, quietly. "We couldn't have had a better son. Perhaps...there will be a way to see him again." She doubted it, but these caves held wonders she could barely imagine. Perhaps there would be a way through magic to speak to him, or even just to see him. How desperately she wished to revive the memory of his face that threatened to fade through the cruel streams of time.

She squeezed Lilith's hand again. "I know." The caves were big, yes, but the claustrophobia afflicting her love were familiar feelings. Looking up and seeing nothing but stone, knowing that there would always be a wall stopping her from going any farther, it had always made her feel so trapped. She had grown used to the feeling, always there and never quite fading, but the reminder of the situation they were in made her skin tingle with discomfort.

She stopped walking when Lilith paused, patiently waiting for her to catch her breath. She glanced off into Eridanus, wondering what had even happened here - the white fungus clutching to every surface, the web-like strands hanging from the trees, and the strange smell that permeated everything. She was lost in a mix of curiosity and anxiety when Lilith asked That Question. She had hoped she wouldn't, not immediately at least, but it was inevitable. She took a deep breath and turned back to her, the sadness so deep in her eyes, the apprehension for how she would take it making her feel light. "I've only been down here for a little less then a year but you..." she swallowed. "You've been gone for over 200. I lost count a long time ago." She waited quietly for Lilith to process that sheer amount of time, knowing that if she had been in her shoes, it would be near crushing to know she had left her other half alone for all those years.

"Two... hundred."

The words were a breath, Lilith's eyes fixing on the nothing of middle distance as she tried to comprehend. Two hundred years. No, 'over.' That's what Ellie had said. 'Over' two hundred years.

Things spun, swam, dizzying with their intensity. Two hundred years. She tried to refocus, to think, but all she got was that refrain.

Two hundred years.

She wasn't thinking of anything in particular, in that moment. Just the sheer breadth of time, a span she could hardly fathom. It was only after a few moments that her mind began to catch up, to try and fill that gap that she had missed. And what had she missed-? Everything that had changed in the world (a world to which she was no longer relevant), the growth of their-

Ellie.

Her gaze shot to Ellie, and she blinked.

Ellie's been alone all this time. Maybe not truly 'alone,' but-

And she's been waiting for me..?

There was that moment of twitching rage, a fury half-driven by corruption that threatened to swell and overwhelm her with hatred for all that had done this. Instead, Lilith turned and threw her arms for Eleanora, an attempt to draw her into a too-tight embrace with a sharp gasp.

"Ellie-... I am so sorry," she gasped.

Two hundred years.

@Eleanora