She leaves because it is hard, not because it is easy.
As Titanya slips through the towering trees (literally through them, making them as dense as air and as easily parted) there is no one to hear her. No one to stop her from leaving the place she’s only recently arrived at. It is a loud affair, though. She crunches over the leaf litter and dried out pine needles that carpet Taiga, rolling her eyes at her not-so-subtle escape. Not that it’s an escape, she reminds herself. It’s not like she is fleeing the family she’s just found again after years of living in the wild. She’s not tired of the raucous youth of Ander and Jinju nor the hard stare of her brother, Terran, searching for any more secrets she’s kept hidden on her angular face. She just needs a reminder of why she’s made that choice in the first place, why she’s come back to Beqanna when it is so risky for her to do so. She just needs to see all the others she willingly puts in harm’s way in order to be a part of the family she never should have left.
It isn’t easy, but it is right.
The border between the kingdom and the River is hazy and she’s not sure when she crosses it. Only when the trees begin to fall away and she hears the rush of distant water does she know that she is close. Close to what, she’s not sure. There had been talk of a new common land when she first came back to the sunrise lands after the Reckoning. A demure place made grand only by the river that swept in a wide arc across the ground. Rivers will always remind her of her first home, of the Dale where she had been raised like a changeling by a sad, sad mother. Maybe she comes because it is on her mind now. Now, reunited with the twin she’d cut herself away from forcefully and with a serrated edge, she sees the error of her ways. Home is with him. Home is a feeling and not a place.
Her amber eyes spy the glinting water just ahead.
She moves towards it slowly, as if the heat is a pulsing, gelatinous mass she’s forced to fight through. It is crazy that an image can have such an effect on her, but it does. Titanya snorts and shakes her head. Fuck this. And she runs forward with abandon.
She doesn’t stop until she’s into the water ankle deep, until she feels the cool rush of it against her mottled skin. It is only then that she notices she is not alone. There is a blue girl submerged in the middle of the river. She is the picture of peace and tranquility, with her eyes closed to the hot summer light that pools around her. She looks as if nothing could bother her – like she’s never had a worry that couldn’t be washed away in the rising waters. The darker woman envies her. She has never stood still long enough for roots to grow. Titanya clears her throat, breaking the enchantment. “Mind if I’m here?” She has no attachment to the place herself; she’ll move to other brooding grounds if the other wants her to. Besides, this wasn’t supposed to be an enjoyable trip away from Taiga, even if the water feels nice against the heat. "Titanya."
Titanya
I've got no roots,
but my home was never on the ground
@[Rapture]: idk what this is but I missed you/writing with you!!