She is not expecting such a warm welcome. Peatree swoops down to greet her first, and she gives the adorable little bat a wide grin. But the splashing of the watering can catches her attention and she turns in time to see Tilney charging toward her with a hug. She lets him, his neck wrapping around hers, and she finds the gesture strangely comforting. She has many friends in the Edge, she knows, but there’s still a part of her that always feels alone here. Not because she doesn’t have anyone, but simply because she misses her family. Because that is the one thing she does not have here. And now, with a crown on her head, she’s afraid the herd will always look at her from an arm’s distance, making her that much more alone.

But here is Tilney, treating her differently yes, because she’s not sure they’ve ever greeted quite like this. For but a brief, glorious moment, he doesn’t treat her like a Queen. He treats her like a friend he is afraid to lose, a feeling Lyanna is all too familiar with. It is oddly reassuring in a way she never could have predicted, and can’t quite explain. “I came to work. I hardly expect you to tend the garden and the greenhouse with little help.”

There healer ranks were woefully small lately. Though she doesn’t fault Yael for choosing her own path, Lyanna wishes the golden mare had picked the healer ranks. They would have had a least one other Moon Doctor in that case. Then, suddenly, Tilney pulls away, stepping back and bowing and the words that slip through his mouth as like daggers. “Oh, don’t you start with that nonsense too. My title changed, nothing else.” She is still Lyanna, and she doesn’t want to be anything else. She is not the Elephant King and she cannot pretend she can even live within his shadow. The best she can do is be herself, and do what she can for the herd. As she has always done, and always plans to do.

But she remembers Akumi calling her ‘My Queen,’ and the reaction that elicited from Noxia. She didn’t want that for the rest of her life. She follows him as they talk, finding herself mildly confused by the turn of conversation now. Though soon she finds herself laughing instead at the ideas of matters of the heart. “Matters of the heart?” she says with a coy little smile.

“What sort of matters are we talking about?” Secretly, she wonders if he knows something she doesn’t, a particular relative of his coming to mind all too quickly. But more likely, he meant that far more generally. Not that she ever talked about the ghosts that lived in her heart. Perhaps she should, perhaps they would hurt less if she did. But for now, they are quiet and buried, and she is content to leave them there. “I truthfully, I don’t even know how I am. Trying not to fail, I suppose.” She doesn’t admit aloud that she’s desperately afraid of failing, of the fact she’s somehow supposed to follow Tembovu. But anyone with half a brain would know she’s afraid of following in his shadow. Who wouldn’t be?