"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
The girl that is meant to be isolated finds herself suddenly surrounded.
She follows the boy that is her nephew and the man that is her brother – her family – to a new place. So new, in fact, that the trees have not even grown in all the places she looks. There is a dark smell to the earth, too, that speaks of its newness and richness. A faint rising scent off the ground that tells a tale of recovery after a fire. Titanya puts her nose to it and inhales deeply. There is a great cleansing quality of fire, a re-birth of land that was once deep and dripping with life. She thinks it is fitting that her own life starts over here. Here, surrounded by family old and new alike. Here, in the midst of regrowth and virgin soil she can put her own footprints on for the first time.
She steps into Taiga and doesn’t look back.
The sabino mare had taken her time leaving the meadow to follow Terran, Ander, and Jinju, despite her desire to stay with them. A part of her had wanted to bolt immediately after seeing the black trio fade into the orange and yellow horizon. That part of her came from the center of her chest, the guilty weight she always wore trying to pull her down again. But Titanya was tired of letting the seal dictate her every decision. Her life had been meaningless in the vast wilderness. She hadn’t found herself, hadn’t saved herself. Only the terrible happiness of seeing her twin again has made her want to stay and do better – be better.
So she had come, in the end.
Her amber eyes peer into the thickest section of rejuvenated trees. It is almost unnerving to be so tightly compacted by the forest when she has grown up in the open Dale. But she imagines she will grow used to it, in time. Then, she hears a twig snap to her left. Titanya visibly tenses and turns, immediately on the offense. She’s poised to pounce because this forest can hold anything, even in its infancy. When she turns, though, it is only a horse (not Conquest or Famine or War). “Oh,” she says, as a smile starts on her face.
Titanya
I've got no roots,
but my home was never on the ground
I can never know what lingers in the darkness of Titanya’s heart. I will never be privy to her secrets or the past we never shared, I’ll never know what it was like for her - roaming all those years alone with so much knowing and no way out.
I can only relate with her on the level I know best: familial. The fact that she’s changed makes no difference (I look and act differently too) because beneath it all there’s still the hint of her, the same sister I left so long ago.
How long ago had it been? Ramiel had ascended, I remember that. I remember feeling that my own destiny was not carved out for greatness and so I’d left; it seemed easier that way. But I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have gone and assumed that in my wake, everything would remain whole and perfect. It was a child’s dream, one I’d held onto for so long that it became a reality. A reality that left me hopelessly alone and close to wild, close to forgetting everything that made me who I am.
So I’m glad she’s back.
“Oh hello to you too.” I mumble, breaking free from the clinging vines and new growth that seemed to inhibit me at every turn. I feel trapped here sometimes too - no space to spread my wings or drift, only winding trails and shadowy thickets. “I was on my way out to find you.” I smile, easing into a halt before ruffling the overlarge appendages on my back. I still can’t seem to shake the feeling of wonder at her being here. Titanya, alive and well. Titanya, here in Taiga and willing to live what remainder of a life I had with my small (and somewhat confusing) brood.
I feel almost whole again. “Ander and Jinju will be excited but I’d rather hold off on informing them for a bit.” I chuckle, curving my bald face away from her to manage some quick preening, “They’ll have a million questions and selfishly, I’d like my own answered first.” I explain, turning back to her with a heavy sigh now that I’m settled for conversation.
I’d rather not scratch at the past, it belongs to memories, the heart, and nothing else but the absence of a lifetime is too tempting to leave alone. “What ever happened to you?” I offer as a way of beginning, unbidden sadness reaching the usually warm depths of my eyes.
All around these golden beacons, I see nothing but black
A smile starts and doesn’t stop once she realizes who has found her.
“Terran,” she says. Not brother, not kid, not even rock-licker (though it takes an immense amount of self-control to keep from saying this last one). She has said his name so many times in her head, all those years wandering alone. She has made it a mantra in her mind, a tether to the homeland she missed but could never return to. But here, in the dark and deep woods, it is like a promise she cannot wait to keep. She says his name aloud and it means that she is here, with him, and she will not face another day alone.
“I’m glad you did the legwork for the both of us, then.” Titanya’s rare smile turns into a less rare smirk as the black stallion settles in. Those overlarge wings of his shake and displace the air around them, swirling eddies of dust in the filtered motes of light. She wonders where they’ve come from, wonders what kind of life he’s lead since they separated. With a tender eye, she sees him as the boy she remembers. The leggy dark colt with a strange hunger in his belly, but no graceful wings weighing his back. Mother had so loved him. She had too, of course. There had been no jealousy on her part, only an aching desire to be with him always, to protect him.
How she has failed.
But the man that stands before her now is likely better for her absence. Besides the danger that had drawn her in like a siren’s song, Terran hadn’t consumed anything terribly deadly without her watchful eye – obviously he has managed. He has a family, at least, which is more than she can say for herself. He mentions Ander and Jinju and she is surprised to find that she’s anxious to see them again. Despite her thus-far well-meaning but selfish life, she’s eager to share it now. Terran unknowingly teases her by diverting the conversation back on her.
“Can’t we just bring the children in and forget about it?” Her brows quirk upwards questioningly. “Fine.” Her shoulders roll in a helpless shrug. If it’s that story he wants, buckle up brother. “I stopped the apocalypse.” She is pleased, clearly, as she says it. “Well, me and a few others. We fought Conquest, Famine, War, and Death to stave off the end of the world. I died, I think, in the end.” Her eyes are unfocused for a moment at the memory of her own death. The phantom pain of His hooves crashing down on her head hits her hard. “Somehow, it didn’t take, death.” She smirks at him then like she hadn’t expected it to.
Titanya fills in all of the details, the memories as sharp now as they’d been the day they happened. She finishes with: “I now hold War’s seal inside of me. It’s why I stayed away for so long, to keep the seals separate and therefore, safe.” She shifts from one side to the other, the heavy weight of her story pressing on her. She’s not even sure he’ll believe her. “See?” The monochrome mare focuses and becomes less solid, fading away in the gloom. She comes back slowly and then turns her attention to Terran. She makes him denser, his skin hardening like self-made armor in response. “You could put a dent in that tree now.” The mare nods at the pine nearby, giving him a not so subtle suggestion.
Titanya
I've got no roots,
but my home was never on the ground
@[Terran]: I used her density manipulation on him at the end. Please let me know if you want it changed and I happily will! <3
01-09-2018, 05:59 PM (This post was last modified: 01-09-2018, 06:01 PM by Terran.)
Terran
I almost consent to her idea of leaving the past alone. It would be easier, of course. Easier, but not worth it. Painful or beautiful as our stories might be, I want the truth of hers in its simplest form. It’s the first request I’ve asked of her in years and even though Titanya’s noncommittal shrug deflates the heightened anticipation, I’m no less enraptured by what she says.
Talk of an apocalypse, her brief mention of dying, all just casual banter when Titanya put her signature twist on it. I should be surprised into silence, I know, but the way she brushes off all manner of conquest and danger with a smirk is just so … her that it makes me harrumph out loud. The cold metal of our mother’s skin seems to have sunk deep into her veins.
Word by word I follow quietly, feeling all the more useless as her tale stretches on until, at last, she finishes by bringing us both into the present. “I now hold War’s seal inside of me.” My twin says and despite what others might think, all I can seem to manage is wondering how it didn’t happen sooner. In my mind’s eye there was no better, more obvious choice for such a task. Titanya had always been the one to wrench objects free of my lips; why should it be any different that she would protect all of humanity?
“See?” She presses again, fading and then returning, “You could put a dent in that tree now.”
I don’t even hesitate to try. One foreleg strikes out to twist my body around and I loosen a wing, stretching it out like a blade as my heavy shape swings the appendage in an arc. The feathers break clean through the crown of the sapling behind me, toppling it over to land with a muffled thud on the ground. “Hot damn.” I breath incredulously, blinking for a moment in shock at the rush of adrenaline that follows. Then I’m cracking up, twisting back around to face my twin, head shaking.
“I guess I should be thanking you for saving all our lives, not playing around with your gift.” I mutter, finally, once the giddiness has cleared. “Though I’ll be the first to admit it’s pretty awesome. And useful.”
And it would explain the rock ordeal he’d been confused about since their initial meeting in the Meadow.
“I wandered North, to the Tundra. Thought I’d find something interesting there but I only found age instead. When the new world came I tried out an Island here, but that was as fruitless as anything else I’d ever done.” I surmise, shrugging away my life as if it were a footnote. “Then I met Jinju, and together we made Ander. After his birth her home - this place,” I say, pausing to glance around us into the mote-spotted woods, “was completely destroyed. She didn’t make it out, but I guess you could say death didn’t take for her either.” I smile, an image that nearly matches Titanya's telltale smirk.
“Now we’re here. Imagine that.” I say, a wistful sort of look glazing over my eyes. “I wonder what Talulah and Tiphon would think?”
All around these golden beacons, I see nothing but black
She is immeasurably glad that he stays silent during her long tale. He has every reason to question her, to ask her to elaborate or explain further, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t bemoan her brush with the Grim Reaper’s blade or pursue any line of questioning on her feelings and emotions at the time or now, years later. Titanya would have little to say, even if he had. She sees her actions for what they had been: necessary and inescapable. There was no time for anything other than her own survival. No future to look towards past the next footstep.
It had kept her alive.
Still, the dark mare doesn’t like to be reminded of her blasé attitude. She knows Talulah had meant for her to be softer (after all, the twins were made of crossed constellations, of a late love that burned white-hot but was violently extinguished). But for all her trying, the metal lady couldn’t climb out of the deep well of grief that had swallowed her. She couldn’t be the mother that she desired to be, the mother that would have loved both of them equally, freely. Deep down, Titanya knows it isn’t her fault. But the walls she’s built for herself are thick and steadying. She can’t afford for them to crack.
When the sapling cracks instead, she lets out a hoot of excitement. Terran’s wing works like a scythe as it topples the young tree over. She grins when the stallion turns back to her, caught up in the rush of destruction. He laughs, and she thinks the sound of it would be enough to sustain her for a long while. Oh, she’s missed him! “Don’t thank me, or I’ll have to swat you with my tail. And believe me, it will feel nothing like a tail at all.” She releases her focus so that her brother is restored to his normal density. Her sides flutter with spent energy. “For now, it is enough to keep the boys away. World domination comes next.”
The forest is too quiet around them. At first, she wonders if they’ve scared off the critters by destroying a part of their home. The noise hadn’t been that loud, though - surely not enough to warrant the silence that creeps like vines through the trees. Perhaps this land is so new that the animals hadn’t filled it, yet. Not for the first time, Titanya is desperately curious to know more of her new home. Everywhere she looks, there are more questions than answers. The silence suits, however, as Terran begins his own story. And she is uncharacteristically eager to settle down in order to listen.
His tale is not extensive, but even in its brevity, it is full of things that shock her. From the Tundra to an island? From one extreme to the other? These are surprising choices for their temperate favoring family, but the next part is far more interesting. Titanya leans back on her heels when he mentions the relationship between Ander and Jinju, and Terran and Jinju. But she is a child? Her face screws up with something like misunderstanding. She’s almost the doubter herself until he fills in the details further. Ah, there it is. Still, it has her grasping. “So that little girl is Ander’s mother, even though he’s older than her? Okay, makes perfect sense.” What a strange world they live in. But it does explain the newness of the land. Fire, had to be. A thought hits her then and her amber eyes widen. “Shit, don’t tell her we’ve been knocking down her trees then!”
The tide of conversation changes then, she sees when it happens in his gaze. What else could they turn their attention to besides the one topic she meant to avoid? “Mother would be happy we are together again, as we should be. And Father – “, she sighs, because there is no escaping it. She’s spent years wondering when she’d have to dissect this last truth that she carried alongside the seal in her breast. A truth that she hadn’t wanted to hide, but that she’d been ordered to regardless. “I’ve kept something from you, brother.” The fading sabino loses all traces of careless humor that had lightened her features before. “Tiphon was not our father. His son, Tiberios, was our sire. He died just before we were born – murdered - as I’m sure you know.” She swishes her tail like chastising whip on her haunch. She should have told him. To hell with what Mother wanted. She should have told him.
Titanya
I've got no roots,
but my home was never on the ground
The pains of our parents are manifold. I don’t know this yet, even as I chuckle lightly in response to Titanya’s mention of Jinju’s ‘trees’. I don’t see it coming when she mentions our mother, (Talulah, the heart of the Dale in so many ways I failed to be) I only smile with saccharine memories, drunk on the sweetness of remembering how things were.
I only feel my face grow heavier when she says, “And Father-”
There’s something so telling about the sigh that accompanies her words. I can’t read her mind, I have no way of discerning her level of emotion or how she might be feeling in this moment, but all the same I’m her twin. I know when something’s amiss. “Go on.” I prompt softly, though I really wish I hadn’t. Titanya indulges my request.
“I’ve kept something from you, brother.” Comes the first blow, a phrase that lifts me clear of the ground and flings my spirit into the gaping cavern of space. “Tiphon was not our father.” She says, but I’m plummeting towards the earth again, the weight of a thousand, thousand lies screaming through my mind while I drop. I’ve gone blank in the face, totally void of any emotion she might have expected. “His son, Tiberios, was our sire.”
And there it is. The blackness. She’s slammed my entire being against the pavement and shattered my existence into an infinitesimal dust. I feel like I’m spinning, like the world is tilting underneath me as Titanya’s black form begins to turn fuzzy at the edges. “Oh.” Is all I can say; that and, “I see.”
Tiberios. The one whose death haunted my parents - no, Talulah and my grandsire?- long after he’d expired. Mother had never liked to linger too long on the subject of him, but Tiphon had been more than proud to tell me about the previous Lord of the Dale when I’d asked. Tiphon… “Did Tiphon know?” I ask suddenly, the spark of life reanimating in my vision like molten gold. I felt … angry. “Did everyone but me know?” I scoff, hardly believing it myself.
The snap of a limb behind me draws the jerk of my ears, but not the turn of my head. I whuff the breeze and find the scent familiar. My little family was as curious as I’d expected. It’ll only be a moment before @[Ander] and @[Jinju] discover us but I refuse to let this die for their sake. Titanya had clearly saved the best for last.
All around these golden beacons, I see nothing but black
@[Titanya] thought we might as well throw the kids into the mix!
Before things were mostly awkward because he remembers, but now she remembers too. Not only the things that either Father or Ander himself have told her, little by little Jinju has started to remember things herself too. It makes the black and golden young stallion rather uneasy to be around her, and yet, at the same time, it enables them to bond on a different level than before. He no longer is the brother figure in her life, not yet her son either, that they both knew that now only made their interactions more awkward.
It hadn’t stopped them from exploring Taiga together. Not only Taiga, but also their strange family dynamics. Ander still avoided some certain subjects, like his grandfather and aunts, but he had soon learned that he enjoyed showing her around, and tell about their past adventures.
Today they had finished the cave they’d camped at, when the white wolf had claimed Taiga as his. Back then he had been too young to understand, and Jinju had never told him or Polaris why they suddenly went camping. It had been fun nonetheless, and Ander tells her just that. It is on their way back to a more central part of Taiga that they come across aunt Titanya’s scent. ”Aunt Titanya is finally here!” he exclaims excitedly, red eyes sparkling in enthusiasm. And, when Ander turns to look at his mother’s reincarnated form, it is hard to miss hers shine equally as enthusiastic. ”Let’s go!”
He doesn’t miss his father’s angry voice, though Ander cannot say whatever it was that Terran had said. Did he and aunt Titanya have a fight? He sure as well hoped not, not now she had finally found her way home. ”Dad?” he calls out, golden tipped ears swirling forward.
Red eyes focus on his father’s black and golden form first, studying him curiously, though he doesn’t dare to question what all the moping was about. It doesn’t keep his attention for long, the black sabino and golden mare next to receive his curious – and enthusiastic – gaze. ”Aunt Titanya! You’re finally here” he greets her, his golden lips curling up in a wide grin as he crosses the last distance between himself – and Jinju – and the two siblings ahead. ”Are you staying in Taiga with us?”
Nobody has told her that Ander is her son, but is no longer a child. One and one is two, and Ander wasn’t mistaken as her sibling for nothing. They couldn’t have been more wrong, but honestly, Jinju still cannot wrap her own mind around the idea.
Terran has told her they were loves, are lovers, in some sort of fucked up way. She’d witnessed Ander calling the golden winged stallion father a lot of times, and if Terran was the colt’s father, well, that made her his mother, right? It also made sense why both black and golden stallions had been there upon the moment of her first memory. They had looked after her like it was the most normal thing in the world and they soon had become the father and brother figure in her life.
This knowledge – when she started mulling over it – makes her extremely confused. She cares for both males, even dares to say as much as she loves them, but it’s different. Jinju doesn’t know how to use this new information, but as any child, it’s not very hard to distract her from it. The exploration of the camping side does so perfectly, even though Ander tells her about this event that she no longer remembers.
The next distraction is offered by Titanya’s scent. Ander is quit to take off and Jinju is right on his heels. Together they reach the part of Taiga where they find them. ”Terran!” she happily exclaims. Jinju doesn’t waste time to settle herself against his side, her muzzle trailing over his shoulder ever so slightly before glancing shyly in Titanya’s direction. ”Hi..” she says, only meeting the sabino’s gaze for a sort moment. This was Terran’s sister, and that would make Titanya sort of her sister-in-law?
The truth spills out of her like air from the popping of a bloated balloon.
It doesn’t feel good, though.
It doesn’t feel like the release she’s craved after endless years of weighted traveling. Because even if it appears she’s been alone, she hasn’t. The heavy truth had been her always-companion, pressing its footsteps onto the soil alongside her and onto her conscious as well. She had tried ridding herself of it many times. She screamed the words into a sunset colored canyon that only echoed them back to her, mocked her. She whispered it in the hush of twilight like a prayer before sleeping, but she never felt absolved afterwards. The truth stuck to her like a burr, just as stubborn as she was, and made her restless.
Now, as it leaves her lips, she sees why it pulled her down so.
In the eyes of her brother, reality and truth collide and collapse under him. Everything he knew about their family was a lie, and here she is revealing it to him. Titanya wonders if he’s defined himself in some way by his parents – who he thought were his parents. She wonders if he’s found parts of himself in both Talulah and Tiphon: their faces, voices, and essences. Now, he never will be able to map out the other half. He’ll be lost at the blank space of his sire. Who was the half-burnt sabino stallion? What was he like? What strength (or weakness) built up his bones?
The sabino sees the loss written in the lines of Terran’s own face. A part of her wants to fling herself at him and wrap her dark neck around his own in comfort. But the other part of her (the part of her that binds the twins together, inexplicably, immortally) feels like she should stay her feet. There is an anger that is leagues wide like a chasm between them, and she is loath to fall in. Let him burn himself out on it. Let the truth sink in his gut like a stone until he too is comfortable with the weight of it.
She is uncharacteristically quiet as the heat simmers in the air between their bodies. Normally, it would fuel her. But the sudden fire in his eyes has her looking away in apology, the only one she’s capable of. His next question surprises her enough to draw her attention back to him. “Tiphon? No. No, I don’t think so.” Her voice is hesitant, unsure. If the angel knows, he’s never shown them any indication of it. If he doesn’t know…well, Titanya doesn’t want to be the bearer of news a second time. “Our father – our real father – was a great man. You should consider yourself lucky to find out he was Tiberios. Don’t be angry with me because I cared about mother enough to keep her secret. You would have done the same thing had she asked.”
There is a sudden noise in the forest. The two younger horses quickly reveal themselves to be the culprits of the crashing foliage. The mare doesn’t look their way at first. She’s too engrossed in the conversation that had been a long time coming, too fired up to want to back down now. “She always said I looked too much like him, Terran. It’s why she made me the bad guy, made me the one to carry her guilt. It’s why she loved you more than me.” Hot tears form in the corners of her amber eyes, but she shakes her head violently before they can do any more. Neither of them deserve this, to carry secrets, to lose a parent they never had in the first place – none of it is fair.
Titanya looks to Jinju and Ander in turn, forcing her face to soften a little. “Hey guys, I’m so glad to see you” she says, a weak smile playing on her lips. “I’ll stay if that one over there says I can.” She won't force her company on them and she won't beg. He knows she's too proud for anything other than a simple yes.
Titanya
I've got no roots,
but my home was never on the ground
