Titania detests what this place does to her.

The speckled mare has found herself more and more irritable as the time crawls on. Winter’s arrival smooths the edges of the oppressive heat, but the humidity still clings, sticky like tree sap, and the birds from the northern Islands have arrived in full force. If she thought it was loud before, now the noise is deafening. She finds herself standing, more and more, some distance from the rest of the herd, flattening her ears and lashing her tail in warning should they come too close for comfort. Is it the child, then, that without a doubt now grows in her womb, that taxes her physically and makes everything less bearable? Or is it the ravenous, bloodthirsty energy that surrounds them? The spirit of this jungle is one of change, of constant moving and fighting and looking out only for oneself. It lurks, impossibly dark, around every nook and cranny.

Titania misses the cool snap of winter. She misses Rille’s soft voice, his loving, reverent touch. A few times - when it’s too much, all of it, and she just can’t anymore - she has snuck out to the beach under cover of darkness to look up at the stars. She does it very sparingly, for she cannot be seen doing so, not if she wants Rougaru to think she has cowed to his will… but when she does, she thinks of him, her sky-and-stars, and wonders if he, too, glances towards the heavens and remembers.

This afternoon, deep in the heart of the forest, Titania lingers under the dappled shade of the canopy, lost in thought. She’s tired, having been kept awake by birdsong a large portion of the night previous, and has searched for a quiet spot away from the flocks in which to doze. One hind leg rests tipped on the edge of its striped hoof, her head low. She would be asleep but for the bugs that bring her tail to crack in hard swishes and her neck to shake every few seconds. The constant pestering is bad enough, but when something bites her, right on the sensitive flesh of her flank, she jerks her head up with a squeal, ears flat against her skull. The small mare jostles about in place, reaching to bite back the damn things, but her teeth click shut on empty air. “Ugh!” she scoffs; having been roused back to full consciousness, her deep brown eyes cast about hungrily, settling on a tender young fern growing near her hooves. Without a moment’s hesitation, she cranes her muscled neck down to rip the plant out of the soil, roots and all. Disdainfully, Titania spits it out onto the ground, using both of her forehooves to trample it to a pulp.

Almost immediately she regrets it. She is no steward of this forest, as Rille was of his Thicket; she doesn’t know if this fern serves a purpose or if it’s invasive, if it belongs here or if it’s a transplant, like her, just trying to survive in less-than-ideal conditions. Staring down at it now, Titania feels less abject hatred for it as a symbol of Rougaru’s wretched prison, and more overwhelming sadness - for it, but also, selfishly, for her. It’s not the fern’s fault she is trapped here, held unwillingly under Paradise’s heavy energy, changing into someone she doesn’t recognize or like.

Titania sighs, scuffing dirt over the poor thing. Tonight, she thinks, she will sneak off to the beach once more, soak up the light of the stars and the moon, and remember a time when things were different.