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
@[Rapture]