"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
a tight-pressed line keeping a wildfire on the inside
The sea that holds and protects Ischia lovingly is more tumultuous today than Halcyon has seen it in a long while. The wind, icy as it departs from the mainland and carries itself across the channel, coaxes the ocean into tall waves that crash against the sandy shores of his home with unforgiving assaults. The roar of the sea and the whistling of the squall makes him feel powerful - he has lingered upon the shore for quite some time now, his large paws sinking further into the moistened sand each time the water crashes around him again.
It's cold, but his pelt keeps him warm enough - and when he finds the moment to be right, Halcyon pounces forth into the spray.
He is submerged beneath the wake but only briefly; the surface is sweet with its sea-salt air as his sharp-toothed maw opens to spit undrinkable water from it. And so he begins to paddle against the strength of the waves, the muscles he has developed in his adulthood doing well to keep him on course. He moves parallel to the shoreline, using his long feline tail as a rudder, and embarks on a refreshingly dangerous exercise.
On occasion, an overlarge wave overtakes him and he is forced to return himself to the surface where he then shakes his head to rid his eyes and ears of the ocean. It's upon his return to the surface after one of these waves that Halcyon's predatory eyes collide by happenstance with a figure upon Ischia's shore. “Titanya!” he calls to her, quite certain, however, that his voice has been lost over the din of the ocean.
Titanya is lost in memories and uncharacteristically vulnerable when she sees the orange blip bobbing dangerously in the angry ocean.
She’s thinking of love and the fragile thread of it unspooling in her life, in her blood. She’s thinking of her parents: the silver once-lady of the Dale and the sabino once-lord of the same place. She hadn’t known her father of course, (her true father, Tiberios, not his sire that she’d been told was her own). But when Talulah spoke of him and of the twin embers of passion she possessed for both men who had stolen her heart, Titanya felt only the raw, empty of ache of knowing neither. She still doesn’t know what to do with this gaping, missing part of herself besides hoping War’s seal inside her chest will be enough to fill it.
Sometimes, it is enough.
Sometimes, she wonders if the wound will fester and spread.
As the violent wind whips her black hair around her face, she breathes in the sharp change in its direction. She tilts her head to take it in, and that’s when she sees the figure buoyed on the raucous waves. The black and white mare races down the shoreline. The sand under her hooves is packed hard by the harsh conditions of wind and water, but she pays no mind to the jarring impact of her frantic charge. Someone is out there, perhaps caught in the unusual currents that are making a deadly underwater enemy of their otherwise happy waters. Then she realizes who it is.
“Halcyon!” When a large wave pulls him under, Titanya decides she’s seen enough. She lurches into the water, shifting into her feline form as she makes the jump. The cold water splashes her sides as she treads it. It’s harder to swim, she finds, harder to keep herself afloat. Almost as if there is an extra weight around her belly pulling her down towards the deep drop-off just off-shore. She struggles to paddle towards the other tiger as the sea seems like it is eager to drag her to her watery grave.
“What – “ she begins, between mouthfuls of salt water, “the fuck are you doing out here?” The last part comes out as a breathless gasp, but an angry gasp all the same. She muses on ways to kill him herself if this little exercise is anything but an accident. She may be more volatile than normal, lately, and that is saying something.
a tight-pressed line keeping a wildfire on the inside
The wind screams and the waves rock, and all the while Halcyon revels in the loss of control. Until this moment, the tiger-shifter hadn't realized just how suffocated he'd felt by the same schedule day in and day out. He loves Ischia and its familiar shores, and he loves the regularity of training with Pteron and protecting the island, but there is not much in this realm that is unexpected.
His head dips below the surface again and when he arises once more it's with laughter that's lost in the roar of the wind. By that time, Titanya has reached him and they tumble near each other, jostling in the waves. Halcyon offers a toothy, wild grin to the other tiger until he realizes that it's not just saltwater she is spitting, but fire.
“I wanted to go for a swim!” He laughs again and plunges beneath the icy water, letting the force of the waves roll his feline body slightly closer to the shore. He paddles to the surface and looks over his shoulder at the source of his recent heart palpitations before motioning his head in the direction of one of Ischia's smaller, more private grottos.
“Let's head that way,” he calls to her over the din, his feline eyes watching for her reaction to his afternoon romp.
He confirms his absolute insanity when he admits to jumping in the roiling sea of his own accord. Titanya wants to pounce on him but loses her chance as he ducks his head beneath the waves another time. She thinks he is probably safer there under the violent water than here on the surface with her.
Instead of holding his head under when he comes up for air, the tigress simply follows his lead when he nods in the general direction of land. There is something like anger kicking around in her belly and the extent of it surprises even her. But wait, is that really anger fluttering away in her abdomen? Or is the motion of the ocean just making her nauseous in a way that it’s never done before? She settles on anger because she can’t make sense of it otherwise. Anger to her is like cool, dewy grass tickling her belly on a hot summer morning. Anger is the security of a shared secret that will not be spilled. Anger is comfortable, knowable; mysteries have no place in her head.
So in retaliation, she reaches out to bite his serpentine, trailing tail with a decent amount of force.
The grotto opens up along a quiet stretch of the beach. The tigers duck into the safety of the covered space. Here, they are protected from the worst of the trade-winds that whip the sand up like a rising curtain around their island. It is beautiful, this forgotten hollow carved by water and time that is seemingly lit from below. It is quieter here, too, almost too quiet. The constant drip-drip echoes around them and the din outside is a mere fraction of what it was before. She feels her anger evaporating in the calmer waters, but the unknowable mystery in her belly still remains.
“I was worried about you,” she admits, not knowing why she is doing so. Here, in this aquamarine sanctuary, the words seem to have a life of their own. But she was. And she is, all the time, she finds. She sinks the tip of one fang into the meaty part of his haunch and growls low in her throat. She remembers the time their playful romp had turned into something more, something new. She wonders if he will indulge her again here and now. She wonders if she will tell him about the mystery growing inside of her.
~ ~ ~
It is a sunny, hot spring day on Ischia with fair skies and a pissed off feline stalking the shores.
The mystery had been solved and her anger had only grown alongside the child within her. A part of her wanted to run, to leave Ischia and those she had come to know. It would mean raising the child or abandoning it with someone else. It would be a step backwards in her own growth, using her once-slippery feet to slide away from this place. But she remembered Hal – sweet Hal who had tolerated her when few else would. How could she break his trust?
Titanya stays even when the contractions begin and make her shudder and shake. She shifts, thinking the tiger will be able to handle this better (after all, it’s a different kind of violence). Then she walks the beach because her body tells her to keep moving. After a time, it doesn’t feel right to wear her shared skin. She rises as a horse with her black and white speckled belly stretched and taut.
“This is bullshit!” She screams out to the uncaring, ceaseless waves or the parrots startled from the trees as her knees tremble and buckle beneath her. As she watches the rainbow blur of feathers disappearing, she has a sharp stab of remorse in her gut for not following suit. Or maybe it’s just another contraction. Wow, this fucking sucks. Titanya sinks into the sand right in the middle of the beach.
It is there, with the water lapping at their feet, that the twins are born. First is a pale girl with hair touched by the influence of both Halcyon and their family’s angelic blood. The next is a darker boy speckled like her. He has his father’s sheen of blue sparkling under the tropical sun. Titanya can hardly see much else about them, because there is a wet sheen in her own eyes that she blinks furiously away. She thinks that this is what her mother must have felt, looking down at her and Terran curled together, this stabbing in her heart instead of her belly just after the birth. She knows she will gleefully separate the body from any heads who might look at either child the wrong way.
a tight-pressed line keeping a wildfire on the inside
Halcyon is already heading towards the shore, having abandoned his efforts to catch fish for he and Titanya, when suddenly her resounding curse fills the springtime air. It's followed by the flapping wings of startled parrots and then the rhythmic beat of Halcyon's large paws as they collide with the warm sand beneath his sprinting feline frame.
He has never run faster.
Titanya, as private as she preferred to be, had opened up to him. She had allowed him close, to know her true nature, and then he had gone and done something that he could only imagine made her feel more trapped than she'd ever felt before. Halcyon had stood by her side when she needed him and watched her go explore the mainland whenever she needed her space and her freedom. And she needs him again now, as she expels the growing child that he had placed inside of her.
But as fast as he runs, feline sinew flexing and contracting with each massive bound, he is not quick enough. By the time Halcyon arrives at the shore, he spots the black sabino mare with small companions at her side. Surprised to see her in equine form, Halcyon swiftly shifts to match - he grows taller, sheds his feline tail and rounded feline ears. He approaches them as his cremello dun self, the blue sheen of his coat shining bright in the springtime sun.
Everything feels surreal as he drops into the warm sand beside Titanya, his bright orange eyes heavy with unshed tears as he gazes upon the twins they have created. “Titanya,” he whispers when he is finally able to tear his gaze from the miracles in front of them, “They are... so precious. So perfect.”
He reaches out to her with his muzzle and brushes it gently against her cheek but retracts swift enough to allow her to maintain her space if she needs it. “How are you feeling?”
As she lays on the beach with the two little lives pressed in close with her, she feels the first inkling of belonging creeping into her psyche.
She’s never truly felt like she should stop moving: not when she left the Dale, not when she fled Beqanna, and not when she came back and found her brother and his clan. She had moments of crystalline clarity, sure. She was sure she loved her parents, sure she loved Terran and Ander and Jinju, even. She was sure she was happy in some form or fashion with each of them. But never happy enough, never satisfied. Ischia and her time within it had been much the same. She enjoyed the island and her people but it didn’t soothe her troubled soul, not like fighting in the Alliance had. She began to think that the problem was more fundamental, all her own fault. Began to think maybe she was never meant to fit in anywhere, after all.
But now, with her muzzle pressing tenderly and alternately on the twin’s brows, she wonders if that is true.
Titanya hears the dull pounding of paws on sand. It is a comforting sound that she has grown to know like her own reflection. So when she hears it, she doesn’t turn her gaze away from the foals until the sound changes into a harsher staccato. The sabino cranes her head around sharply, fangs already poking from between her lips in case they – and more – are needed to stop the threat. But her fierce, protective eyes land only on Halcyon as a horse. It is strange to see him like this, wearing his soft cream and blue coat instead of his black and orange fur. She finds her eyes lingering on him long after she realizes that there is no threat.
They are in the sand together, the four of them, as the seagulls wheel in the air above and the tide marches steadily out to sea. Titanya lets him take in the twins, lets him see what they have unwittingly made while she takes a moment for herself. It is surreal, nothing she has ever wanted or expected, and she doesn’t know what comes next. All she knows is there is a tightness in her throat when she looks at the filly and the colt, when she looks at their father. She knows that she loves them all in their own ways, unquestionably. She knows that there is also a part of her that wants to run from it all and never look back.
Fear, she tells herself. Fear of not knowing what she is doing. Fear of being a terrible mother, a terrible partner in raising the children. Fear of wanting to want it all so desperately but not knowing if she really does want it.
Titanya banishes her thoughts, pushes them down deep into her brain where the spring-sunshine and warmth can’t reach. She smiles when Hal touches her, does not shy away. She has to want it all or she will get nothing. “I’m exhausted down to my bones and I never want to do that ever again.” Her amber eyes slide to the two foals. “But they are pretty damn perfect, aren’t they?” His skin is warm and close and she leans into him. Her eyes flutter sleepily. The embrace doesn’t last but a moment and she rushes to her feet, wobbling only a little. “They need to stand, right? To feed right away?”
~
When their bellies are full, the twins sink right back into the sand. Titanya gives Halcyon a relieved look over their prone forms. She flicks her tail as if to flick away the nagging doubts that are the real threat. She will do this. She will overcome. And she’ll have help. Speaking of, “I guess they need names, too?”
