Though her body holds still, her mind runs far afield. She listens for long minutes, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, and forces herself to take deep, slow breaths. Stress isn’t good for the baby, and she has had stress in spades for nearly the entire duration of her pregnancy with her firstborn. The child moves with increasing frequency, pressing against her ribs. Titania knows she should be calm, channel Rille’s soothing, healing energy, but it is hard to hold onto when she has been so far from it for so long. Uncertainty couples with her guilt, doubt creeping into her subconscious. The spotted mare refuses to examine why she’d taken her captor upon her back, why she’d still felt an animalistic sort of satisfaction at the way her cycle had been fully and truly quelled soon after. She had lain with Rille so many times prior to her forced arrival upon these wretched shores, and by that point, her heat was already on its way out. Rougaru would be hard-pressed to usurp the destiny that she and her sky-and-stars had already started, but Rougaru wasn’t soft with her at all.

More and more, Titania wonders if what she carries in her womb is truly Rille’s get, or if it isn’t, and what that might mean. For her, for the child, for Rille… for everything.

The Criollo mix is wading deep in the wells of her thoughts when the air shifts around her. She can’t hear much of Vanya’s arrival, so silent are her movements beneath the usual chorus of nightlife, but she can see the hard shine of her eyes, catch the sweet spice of her scent. Titania keeps still, wanting to reach out but worrying such a move would scare the mare away for good. Her expression remains neutral, just barely softened, ears perked hopefully forward.

Vanya’s words come awkward from her lips, but they hold the same subtle notes of sincerity as before. Titania’s ears flick back at the mention of the red-spotted stallion. Their encounter hadn’t ended well even after the roan’s departure, her own displeasure at Vanya’s dismissal souring any potential for collaboration between them. She knew she could have been nicer, could have not let her fatigue and her frustration get the best of her, but Jabari didn’t seem to notice what had been right in front of him. Maybe it was that he, lacking the proper parts to do so, didn’t see the added layers of danger in life as a mare, with the looming threat of being forced into pregnancy a near-constant companion. Titania knew for herself, now, how tempting a bloodthirsty brute like Rougaru might end. While she had been willing, had knowingly taunted and teased and provoked him into a frenzy, the mere possibility of being tied to him forever through an innocent babe… it made her sick. She could only imagine how much worse it would feel to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the emerald-eyed bastard had caused the growing swell of her speckled belly.

What Titania sees before her, plain as day, is a mare with no help, needing to be rescued just as much as any other of Rougaru’s prisoners. She sees a proud soul stuck between a rock and a hard place, reaching out her hand. Jabari saw her probing, desperate fingers as poison-tipped demon’s claws, and smacked them forcefully away.

Titania wants to snort, to stomp her hooves into the tainted earth and release some of the emotions roiling within, but their privacy is of utmost importance. Instead, she presses her lips together and releases another long, slow breath, letting the tension blow out like hot, wet air. “Yes, well,” she finally says bitterly, her voice low. “I see now why Rougaru wanted him. Their egos are both flimsy as saplings.”

There is no telling what kind of mare she will be when she is free of this place. She can be a more forgiving sort, sweeter, with more patience and understanding. But right here, right now, standing trapped in the heat of the jungle and keenly feeling Jabari’s absence, she cannot forget that he fought for his freedom, won, and left her here to rot, so-called Island bonds be damned.

Titania pushes her complicated feelings about that aside. “Fragile or not, Jabari was right about Rille. My sky-and-stars will come for me,” she whispers, “and soon.” She points her head up, thinking fondly of her white-spotted dreamwalker before returning her level gaze to Vanya.

“When he does, I imagine the chaos will keep our poor old king incredibly busy…” Casually, she takes a small step closer, her eyes holding all of the meaning hidden between the lines of her speech. “A mare and her foals could easily be swept up in it and lost.” She dares not be more explicit, paranoid still about spies lurking in their midst. Instead, the mare stands, takes a few long, slow breaths, and waits for the lost girl to follow her carefully-laid trail of breadcrumbs.