give my all to watch you fall
The first thing she notices when she wakes is that it is still dark out.
She thinks perhaps she has woken early, even if it feels like she’s had a full night’s sleep, so she closes her eyes and tries to drift off again. But sleep – a challenging task on most nights - eludes her. Titanya rises and shakes the sand off her back. The tell-tale squawk of the parrots in the morning is replaced by an eerie silence that is challenged only by the breaking surf in the distance. She follows the sound of it, traces a well-worn path through the jungle.
On the beach and out from under the clustered canopy of trees, she cranes her head to the sky. What had started as an eclipse has lingered and evolved into something more, something strange. There is a sliver of light high up past the hazy clouds that swirl through the inky black, but nothing else. There are no stars, no moon, no sun. No way to tell what time of day or night it is. But her body knows, at least, that it is day. Should be day. Her gut tells her something else; it isn’t right, whatever celestial event is transpiring around them, and she should be worried.
Titanya goes to the edge of the low tide, feels the water start to suck at her stationary feet. She can’t see anything beyond the water’s edge eddying around her ankles. But she knows what is out there without having to look. There is the sandbar that becomes their bridge to the mainland when the water is low enough, like now. Beyond that is Beqanna proper, meadows and fields and rivers and all. She wonders if they are dark, too, wonders if Ischia is all alone in the gloom.
So much of her wants to go find out. One hoof is lifted in consideration, even, as she teeters on her indecision. But there’s a swift kick in her belly that makes her decide to stay.
“No,” she whispers, to the dark, to herself, when she realizes. There’s a flash memory: (a woman at the end of the River, framed by the trees and the gentle, golden light of sunset. Titanya pulling herself out of the water, sated on the good company of Nashua, not eager for another interaction but soon helpless in the face of it. Spending time late into the evening both laughing and crying with the stranger. Her telling her they only had this night. How they hunted together. How she wore the tiger stripes even after the kill - )
What will she do? She hasn’t committed to Halcyon, of course, and the reverse is true, too. It’s not like they have promised each other anything besides caring for their children and each other along the way. He knows that she never wanted it, a family made of her own blood, a legacy. So how will she explain what grows inside of her now? Why does she care so much what he thinks, anyway?
But she does.
There will be no moving forward for her today.
There’s a sharp crack of driftwood breaking underfoot. She spins around but the dark is everywhere, all around. She marvels that it is inside her now, too, seeping in like a poison. “Hello?”
She thinks perhaps she has woken early, even if it feels like she’s had a full night’s sleep, so she closes her eyes and tries to drift off again. But sleep – a challenging task on most nights - eludes her. Titanya rises and shakes the sand off her back. The tell-tale squawk of the parrots in the morning is replaced by an eerie silence that is challenged only by the breaking surf in the distance. She follows the sound of it, traces a well-worn path through the jungle.
On the beach and out from under the clustered canopy of trees, she cranes her head to the sky. What had started as an eclipse has lingered and evolved into something more, something strange. There is a sliver of light high up past the hazy clouds that swirl through the inky black, but nothing else. There are no stars, no moon, no sun. No way to tell what time of day or night it is. But her body knows, at least, that it is day. Should be day. Her gut tells her something else; it isn’t right, whatever celestial event is transpiring around them, and she should be worried.
Titanya goes to the edge of the low tide, feels the water start to suck at her stationary feet. She can’t see anything beyond the water’s edge eddying around her ankles. But she knows what is out there without having to look. There is the sandbar that becomes their bridge to the mainland when the water is low enough, like now. Beyond that is Beqanna proper, meadows and fields and rivers and all. She wonders if they are dark, too, wonders if Ischia is all alone in the gloom.
So much of her wants to go find out. One hoof is lifted in consideration, even, as she teeters on her indecision. But there’s a swift kick in her belly that makes her decide to stay.
“No,” she whispers, to the dark, to herself, when she realizes. There’s a flash memory: (a woman at the end of the River, framed by the trees and the gentle, golden light of sunset. Titanya pulling herself out of the water, sated on the good company of Nashua, not eager for another interaction but soon helpless in the face of it. Spending time late into the evening both laughing and crying with the stranger. Her telling her they only had this night. How they hunted together. How she wore the tiger stripes even after the kill - )
What will she do? She hasn’t committed to Halcyon, of course, and the reverse is true, too. It’s not like they have promised each other anything besides caring for their children and each other along the way. He knows that she never wanted it, a family made of her own blood, a legacy. So how will she explain what grows inside of her now? Why does she care so much what he thinks, anyway?
But she does.
There will be no moving forward for her today.
There’s a sharp crack of driftwood breaking underfoot. She spins around but the dark is everywhere, all around. She marvels that it is inside her now, too, seeping in like a poison. “Hello?”
ooc: any welcome! <3