Common

Titania rises with the stallion, ever angrier now that he's blocked her path again. She strikes out, her squeals rolling with the wind across the clearing, and when her teeth find purchase on the flesh of his neck she bites down once again, shaking her head like a dog until he shoves her back. Even if she manages to steal a taste of it, his blood won't be as sweet as Vanya's, won't quench her thirst for vengeance. She only has eyes for her. Only Vanya matters in this moment, and if this stallion would find his sense of self-preservation and scram, Titania's job would be so much easier.

But he doesn't. Worse, he drives her away, snaking his head towards the tricolored mare and shooing her even farther back to safety than she already is. Titania screams again, sending chunks of dirt and grass flying as she launches herself forward, but he's too close, and by the time she untangles herself from him it's too late. Her throat burns as she cries out after Vanya's retreating form, rage and agony pulling on her vocal chords.

"Run all you want, bitch," she yells, "but you're mine," and don't you ever forget it.

The moment of silence between her words and the stallion's feels like hours. Her breath heaves from her nose and mouth in ragged gasps, and when she turns to meet his pale blue gaze, she burns. Rancor fills her to the brim, overflowing, and with her true target lost to shadow, this poor fool will take the brunt of it. Nothing he can do, nothing he can say, will quell the inferno blazing at her core. Only Vanya has the power to tamp it down to embers, and thanks to his meddling, she's lost - for now. Already Titania is planning to regroup, to flush her painted tormentor out from wherever it is she's hiding. It's only a matter of time before she finds Vanya again... and she's going to make absolutely sure that no one will be standing in her way.

Starting, of course, with this prick, who clearly seemed to have a death wish for how keen he was to insert himself into her affairs, regardless of her desires for his clueless mediation.

At his question, Titania laughs, the sound of it bitter like bark in her red-stained mouth. Hasn't she made it obvious? Vanya is her problem, second only to Rougaru, and now her problem is halfway to gods-know-where when if he'd just minded his own damn business, she'd be lying motionless on the ground at their hooves where she belonged. Part of Titania would love to make him take her place, to silence his scolding voice forever and teach him the manners he so clearly lacks... but the longer she stands here, the more she realizes the shivers racking across her body are from bone-deep exhaustion, and the warmth dripping down her front comes not from the blood of others but from the wounds carved into her own dark flesh. She's losing steam, and fast, her body unable to keep up with the feverish pace set by her racing thoughts, and she knows she cannot burn herself out trying to rehash years of Vanya's abuse to someone she neither knows nor cares about. Titania heaves a sigh, raspy and low and rattling, and takes no care to hide the frustrated tears running in thick tracks down her cheeks.

"I don't have time for this," she spits, and holds her head aloft, her ears folding back into the damp expanse of her mane.

"I am Titania," the fae mare informs him, "Queen of the Desert, and if you'll excuse me, sir, I have stolen children to retrieve." She turns, offering a half-hearted kick in his direction, and when she is some distance away she stops, peering at him hawkishly over her whitesplashed shoulders. "Come to me on Salem," she bids, "and I will tell you everything that lying little tramp has done to deserve the karma nipping at her heels.

Or don't," she adds, her tone shifting to dismissal. "But if I find you elsewhere - if you stand in my way again - " Titania's voice trembles, emotion rising like the tide, "I will drag you and Vanya back to Hell myself, with exactly as much mercy as she has shown to me," and with the heavy weight of her promise hanging threateningly in the air between them, she departs, leaving him to flounder alone in the aftermath of his short-sighted, ignorant choices.