There are memories nestled here, deep within the cool, swirling depths of this simple river. Memories that draw her over and over again, a butterfly to the vibrant petals of a flower. The soft blue of her coat, dappled by white and sunshine, soaks in the cool refreshment of the eddying waters, the gentle current caressing her skin as she closes crystalline eyes. She inches deeper into the river as the gentle hum of insects and rustling of leaves in a steady summer breeze washes over her.

She loses herself in the perfection of the moment, allowing memory and pain and heartache to fade. For that one perfect moment in time, she is a part of the waters surrounding her, more at peace with the world than she had been since she was the smallest of children.

She had not been made for the harshness of this world. Her soul is too soft, her heart too kind. It bruises so easily. A creature like she is destined only for a lifetime of pain and heartache. Her mother had tried to teach her (to warn her), when she had been young. Had attempted to show the cruelties of the world, to prepare her for savagery she would face. But rather than harden her heart as it should, it had only made her bleed. Had stirred a desire within her to right all the wrongs of the world, to give kindness where she could.

It hadn’t occurred to her that she would be the one to hurt and suffer. Love should only ever beget love, but she has since learned that is far too often not the case.

And so she had retreated, carrying her aching soul with her to mend and repair. For so long now she has lived quietly, refusing to revisit the harsh reality she knows awaits her outside this bubble she had crafted for herself. Instead she slips deeper into the water, remembering. Remembering him, and the suffering he had carried deep within him. She had tried to heal him, but she had been too young, too inexperienced.

That is the day she had learned she is not enough. Perhaps she never would be enough.

there is a pulse that echoes of you and I

 She leaves because it is hard, not because it is easy.

As Titanya slips through the towering trees (literally through them, making them as dense as air and as easily parted) there is no one to hear her.  No one to stop her from leaving the place she’s only recently arrived at.  It is a loud affair, though.  She crunches over the leaf litter and dried out pine needles that carpet Taiga, rolling her eyes at her not-so-subtle escape.  Not that it’s an escape, she reminds herself.  It’s not like she is fleeing the family she’s just found again after years of living in the wild.  She’s not tired of the raucous youth of Ander and Jinju nor the hard stare of her brother, Terran, searching for any more secrets she’s kept hidden on her angular face.  She just needs a reminder of why she’s made that choice in the first place, why she’s come back to Beqanna when it is so risky for her to do so.  She just needs to see all the others she willingly puts in harm’s way in order to be a part of the family she never should have left.

It isn’t easy, but it is right.

The border between the kingdom and the River is hazy and she’s not sure when she crosses it.  Only when the trees begin to fall away and she hears the rush of distant water does she know that she is close.  Close to what, she’s not sure.  There had been talk of a new common land when she first came back to the sunrise lands after the Reckoning.  A demure place made grand only by the river that swept in a wide arc across the ground.  Rivers will always remind her of her first home, of the Dale where she had been raised like a changeling by a sad, sad mother.  Maybe she comes because it is on her mind now.  Now, reunited with the twin she’d cut herself away from forcefully and with a serrated edge, she sees the error of her ways.  Home is with him.  Home is a feeling and not a place.

Her amber eyes spy the glinting water just ahead.
  
She moves towards it slowly, as if the heat is a pulsing, gelatinous mass she’s forced to fight through.  It is crazy that an image can have such an effect on her, but it does.  Titanya snorts and shakes her head.  Fuck this.  And she runs forward with abandon.

She doesn’t stop until she’s into the water ankle deep, until she feels the cool rush of it against her mottled skin.  It is only then that she notices she is not alone.  There is a blue girl submerged in the middle of the river.  She is the picture of peace and tranquility, with her eyes closed to the hot summer light that pools around her.  She looks as if nothing could bother her – like she’s never had a worry that couldn’t be washed away in the rising waters.  The darker woman envies her.  She has never stood still long enough for roots to grow.  Titanya clears her throat, breaking the enchantment.  “Mind if I’m here?”  She has no attachment to the place herself; she’ll move to other brooding grounds if the other wants her to.  Besides, this wasn’t supposed to be an enjoyable trip away from Taiga, even if the water feels nice against the heat.  "Titanya."  

Titanya

I've got no roots,
but my home was never on the ground

She is so very different from the rest of her family. From the day of her birth she had struggled to find her place among them. Her twin had inherited the strength and ferocity of her parents, had been born with war in his blood and strength in his heart. At times she would live vicariously through him. He had accomplished so much while she had hidden herself away from the world (sometimes, though, she couldn’t bear to look, couldn’t bear to watch him through the eyes of her twin).

There is a certain strength in her delicacy, but it is feeble at best. She is nothing like them. Nothing like they deserve. They are so much better off without her there, a useless bauble who could only weep at the injustices of the world.

Rather than feeling lighter, her heart feels like lead inside her chest, an ache she has grown so accustomed to that she almost doesn’t notice anymore. Fortunately welcome distraction comes in the form of a dark mare scattered with white. For a moment, she almost sees her mother in the slightly hazy form, a familiar gray and white that brings momentary comfort to her heavy heart. But a few blinks of her eyes clear her vision and her mother is replaced by a stranger, one who stands ankle deep in the swirling waters as she introduces herself.

For a moment, Rapture simply stares at the woman, head barely peeking above the dusky gray of the flowing river, pale blue eyes wide and almost startled in appearance. After a moment (an uncomfortably long one, though Rapture hardly notices. She had developed the rather unfortunate habit of losing time), she offers a barely perceptible shake of her head before murmuring, “No, not at all.”

Pushing forward, she rises from the river, water sluicing from her blue and white skin, her dual-toned locks plastered to the side of her slender neck, tail slapping wetly against her hocks as she nears the shore. When the water has reached her fetlocks, she pauses briefly to shake herself violently, causing drops of water the spray about her. For the briefest of moments, she is haloed by rainbows, the sunlight reflecting off the scattered droplets around her.

Shifting her gaze once more, she fixes her blue, blue eyes curiously upon the darker mare. "I am Rapture," she finally says, offering her own name in response to Titanya’s introduction. Another lengthy pause follows before she ends simply with, "You look familiar."

there is a pulse that echoes of you and I

 She is more like her family than they’d like to admit.

Titanya is the obtuse embodiment of all the violence the rest of them tried to lock away.  While they had crowns and titles to consider, she had only her freedom once she left the mountainland.  And freedom allowed her to do whatever she wanted, to be whoever she wanted.  She lived for a rush of adrenaline.  She thrived on the chaos that her parents tried so hard to control and confine.  So what if they denied their true natures?  She would forever embrace it.

It came at a high price, though.  It came at the cost of her family’s respect and good graces.  Her mother didn’t understand how she couldn’t fit into a neat little box for their sake.  Ramiel had been king then, of course.  There were foes and allies alike to consider.  But he never seemed to mind her wildness overmuch.  Not as much as their mother claimed he would, anyway.  Titanya thinks that a small part of Ramiel envied her, not the part that took her far away from the Dale, but the ability to say exactly what she was thinking at any time - freedom of an entirely different kind.
  
She’s never been quite able to follow the rules.

But now, in this new place of shifting water and edging forest, she follows decorum.  She waits (rather a long time) for the other woman to give her permission to stay before making a movement either way.  The blue girl’s eyes watch her for such a spell that she wonders if she’s scared her into absolute silence.  Finally, the stranger grants her asylum.  Titanya is about to wade into the water herself (already she feels the phantom cool relief it will bring to her sun-soaked skin) when the blue suddenly evacuates.

“Rapture,” she echoes as the mare pulls herself out of the mid-river depths.  What a badass name.  I wonder if she lives up to it.  “You didn’t have to get out on my account.”  Her amber eyes watch as the water rolls down the other’s blue sides, almost transfixed by the motion.  Rainbows pop into existence around Rapture, painting her ethereally and otherworldly.  She realizes she’s staring and looks quickly back at the churning water ahead, the water she had been so determined to get into only moments before.  She tries to get back to that place, to that mind-set (wash, rinse, repeat, go forth clear), but it has nearly escaped her.

“Familiar?” Again, she’s echoing.  Why the fuck is she repeating everything all of a sudden?  Is she a goddamn parrot?  Anger flushes her cheeks suddenly, violently.  Because she’s sure what the girl will say next.  Did you know Tiberios?  Do you know you look just like him?  And yeah, she’s come here to remind herself of all the bad things, but this isn’t one of them.  Not him.  Her real father was never meant to be a punishment.  The speckle-bellied mare licks her lips once, nervous.  She hates to ask, but she does anyway.  She can’t help herself – ever.  “In what way?”
  

Titanya

I've got no roots,
but my home was never on the ground

It is clear from even first glance that Titanya has a strength and power Rapture simply lacks. In perhaps one small way, they are similar. Similar in the way they cleave from their families. The blue mare loves hers dearly, but she holds no similarities to them. She and her twin had shared a womb, as close as two can be without physical connection. Her mother and father had loved her, protected her, even if they were not so demonstrative of it. But that is where the familial connection ends.

Truth be told, she is far more a product of her grandparents than of her parents. Of her grandmother, the woman Titanya so reminds her of. If in appearance only.

Perhaps she is not so very out of place as she has always supposed. Only a generation misplaced.

If Rapture only cared to take a peek, she could see into the Titanya’s past, could find her secrets and the ways in which they are similar despite their obvious differences. But Rapture is not her mother. The guilt of prying into secrets not meant for her is too much against the regrets she already carries heavy in her heart. She would leave such things where they were meant to be, lost in time and forgotten by those for whom they were not meant.

The blue and white mare offers only a faint smile to the woman’s admonishment. Truth be told, she might never have found the strength of will to rise from that current had she not come along. So she is happy enough to stand upon the river bank, water trickling down her flank as a subtle breeze begins the stiffen the mottled locks pressed against her damp neck.

But then the mare asks “In what way?” and Rapture blinks. She hadn’t expected the question, though she supposes she should have. They had never met before, so it would only stand to reason she would be curious about the reason for her statement. Of course, she had barely recognized the words even as she’d said them. It is a plague of hers, to speak her thoughts so plainly and without forethought.

She does not see the girl’s distress, does not recognize the dread at what she believes her answer to be. Instead, her blue, blue eyes grow distant, a bit hazy as a wistful smile touches her lips. “You look like my grandmother,” she finally answers, her voice a mere thread of sound.

Suddenly she comes to her senses once more, blinking her eyes rapidly the clear the hazy sense of longing. “But I suppose it is only fancy,” she continues, her voice louder now, lyrical against the the sounds of the river. Her pale eyes focus on the other mare once more, soft understanding in their depths. “You are troubled though, I think.”

Not truely expecting a response, Rapture turns to face the river, features taking on a contemplative cast. “Only the troubled ever seem to seek the river,” she adds more softly, truth and confession in her tone.

there is a pulse that echoes of you and I

 She knows what it is like to be stuck.

She had been on the Outside looking In, desperate to return to Beqanna, but damning herself to stay away.  It was a self-exile, of course, but there hadn’t been anyone to reach out and tell her it was okay to come back.  To come home.  She had been stuck like Rapture had been in the river; her feet were fastened tight to a land that did not make sense to her, but was safe, while her head was already making plans back in her homeland.  For a long time, her feet held steady.  They never crossed that great divide that would mean she was going to go against everything she believed – putting lives at stake – in order to live her own life, to be where she thought she was meant to.  But finally, her head became too heavy with its own fantasies of Beqanna.  Titanya felt the weight of it lift the moment she stepped into the Meadow.  Nobody had freed her from that in-between place that held her fast for too long.  No one had come along and released her.  She had done it all herself.

So, she is responsible for all of it, all that comes after.

Guilt is what brings her here, but not what makes her stay.  No, she has abandoned all pretense of morose sulking.  There are not enough horses around to count up as potential casualties, not nearly as many as she’d hoped.  Instead, it is only this one blue girl.  It is funny that they find each other, these two girls with so much in common that is hidden from plain sight.  She can’t know about the tendrils of power buried in the other’s breast, power that could bare her of all her secrets.  If Rapture were so inclined, she could finish the dirty work Titanya had come to do in the first place, could tell the entire world what a crappy savior she’d turned out to be after gamely canceling the apocalypse.

Fortunately, neither of the manipulators feel like doing much manipulating at present.

But she’s on edge when Rapture tells her she looks familiar.  The sabino stiffens further even as the other takes a moment to think (she can see the wheels turning, and she’s sure she’s right what Rapture will tell her).  The world goes fuzzy at the edges as a wave of panic rolls over her.  She’s only just told Terran who their real father is, only just relived the nightmarish murder of a parent they would never know.  “You look like my grandmother.”  “Oh,” she says, as the world comes back into cold, clear focus.  Sure, let’s turn it back on you sister-friend.  Let’s get the focus off of my shit for a hot minute.

“She must have been a looker, then.”  The words fly out without abandon.  It appears they are similar in that they have no filter.  Zero.  Zilch.  Titanya realizes her mistake the second the words leave her lips.  “Jesus,” she breathes, barely audible.  Then, “sorry,” louder.  The hum of the cicadas grows in the trees stretching up on the far bank.  She looks at them for a long while as she waits for Rapture to forgive her or walk away.  She wouldn’t blame her if she did, she guesses.  She totally misses the faint smile that ghosts her lips.  Maybe all families weren’t batshit crazy where the mere mention of a dead relative stirs up panic.  Maybe her grandmother wasn’t even dead yet.

The blue mare continues on, apparently undeterred by the uncouth barbarian she’s conversing with.  Titanya lets out a sigh of relief that seems to blow across the river’s berth and shake the branches she’d been studying earlier.  Troubled?  Understatement of the four seasons.  But sure, we can roll with that.  “I am, I guess.  Troubled that is.”  She looks at Rapture looking at the River.  “But I just have to push through it, work through it.  I just wish I knew if they are worth the work or not.”  She wishes, more than anything, that she could see Tiberios.  Because she keeps telling her brother of the infallibility of their father, of his greatness.  Is she telling the truth?  Or is she lying, unintentionally, to soothe the ache of her secret?

Titanya shakes her head and takes another step into the water.  The coolness reaches her shoulders and belly where the white starts to splatter up her barrel.  It’s just as refreshing as she’d hoped it would be.  She closes her amber eyes for a minute, trying to reach the same serenity Rapture had appeared to.  But her impatience wins out and she looks back at the other.  “Then why are you here?  What troubles keep you?”  She tries to sound as lofty and wise as the blue woman has.  It falls a little flat, even to her.  


  

Titanya

I've got no roots,
but my home was never on the ground