It is morning and it is quiet. 
 
Well, relatively quiet anyway.  The jungle teems with life and movement, always, but the parrots haven’t woken in the treetops yet and begun their endless stream of chatters and calls.  The children are gone, having left her side to start their own adventures elsewhere, without her.  The world is easier for most everyone, now.  There are no monsters waiting in the dark to snatch young and old alike.  There is no dark, even.  No dark besides that which follows the day.  No endless night to keep one awake, wide-eyed and listening for anything other than one’s own racing heart.

She can’t stand the quiet.

Titanya gets up and goes until the dirt gives way to sand under her feet.  She goes until she feels the spray of salt on her face, breathes in the scents carried to their shores on the tradewinds.  She goes to the beach because each crashing wave is its own chaos-in-miniature; it is one of the last refuges of guaranteed violence in their suddenly complacent and benign world.  And while she could just go out and kill something, she likes to think that some urges can be controlled.  Should be controlled, for someone as old as she. 

Instead of hunting, the dark mare stands and lets the unspent energy flood her veins and pool in her limbs as the water eddies around her ankles.  While she misses the excitement and danger of the recent past, there are things to be glad for, reasons to rejoice that they are over.  She knows her son had something to do with the downfall of the monsters, but he stays tight-lipped and brushes off her questions.  There is a deep hurt she cannot pull from his gaze and take on as another scar herself, so she stops trying.  He is whole and safe.  His sister and the twins are whole and safe.  Halcyon –

Halcyon is a part of her as much as she is a part of him, not completing each other but still making each other more.  They’d made their own promise built on chaos and connection, and it makes more sense than anything else has in her entire life.  After that day, the desire to run had been stamped out of her completely.  Ischia became a place of opportunity for her and Hal rather than merely a prison.  She feels whole, herself. 

There is a secret smile on her lips as she regards the ocean.  And whether it is from the crashing waves or the deep happiness like a warmth in her belly, even she isn’t sure.