a dreamer

🏨 ― 

answered over yonder~

🏥 ― 

Titania has never gotten seriously ill, the worst thing she’s had to deal with was one case of the chicken pox when she was younger, but she’s fortunate enough to have a very strong immune system; her dad attributes this to all the oranges and clementines she has as snacks. She’s not even very prone to the common cold either, having to tend to everyone else in the house during flu season, as she’s the only one not running a high fever.

🔎 ― 

🏨 ― 

Titania is quite the rowdy sleeper, her pillows are usually strewn at the foot of the bed, and her comforter tossed haphazardly aside.The sleeping position she’s most prone to is the starfish, limbs all over the place, hair in her face, stuffed animas teetering on the edge of her bed or somewhere on the rug...the works. She goes to bed in something like a fetal position, head laying at the foot of the bed, but between then and waking up all of the things she’s placed on the bed to make her comfortable are far from their initial position. 

👶 ―

She was as she is now, head in the clouds, mind too keen on those ideas of hers to pay attention to others. But there was less discipline there, her parents not yet placing as many boundaries on the young girl. When she was younger it took much more from her mother and father to pull her away from her books and her fantasies. She constantly had these fairytale stories strewn around, she was always reading, always escaping. 

💢 ―

‘‘Sorry…’‘ A pause as his mind scraped towards her name. He knew who she was, of course. Samuel knew everyone in this town. His keen mind was a curse, but also a blessing. He had never had to scramble to remember or know something. But in this instance, for once in his life, his mind was far away. ‘‘Titania.’‘ A small delay, but enough to be noticed. He smiled, hoping that perhaps it was enough to be forgiven. ‘‘I apologise, my mind was, ah, preoccupied. Are you walking that way? Let me walk you.’’

“No, really don’t be,” if Titania had a dime for every time she’d run into someone in this town, she’d have quite a few dimes; so really it would only make her feel bad if he kept apologizing. And then he said her name, and Titania had no idea what his name was, and she really began feeling poorly. She was good with faces, great even, but many times the name didn’t reach her ears, or she asked for a name and found herself flying away with her thoughts before she was given an answer. 

☕ ―

Titania was most definitely addicted to coffee throughout her teenage years. All those night she spent in her room illuminated by the light of the moon, and she needed the caffeine boost to keep her awake. She’d make herself a cup with half and half and about four packets of raw sugar…nothing too complicated. But then it kinda started making her jittery, and the crash that came after wasn’t very pleasant either.

So, she switched to tea. It started with simple greens and black teas, but then she got a fancy tea subscription for her birthday and she became something of a pretentious teas drinker. If she’s been at home all day, chances are she’s had about three cups; less caffeine but still quite caffeinated. 

Her tea is usually milk-free, with nothing but a few sugars, and maybe, just maybe, a few drops from a lemon wedge. 

🎵 ― 

☆ ― 

Titania is the happiest in her room. She can say that she was lucky enough to be given the attic, and she loves it; she’s given just the right amount of sunlight, it’s spacious, and she finds that can hide away from those responsibilities that tail her every minute of the day. Although the walls are a pearl white, her room is decorated with posters and sticky notes, bits of art here and there and a corkboard filled to the brim with her ideas. She’s happiest where she can create; happiest where she is left to her own devices without the need for airs. Happiest in the comfort of a home that all at once gives her comfort and unrest.

▼ ― 

Pigtails. They were very much a staple for Titania, as she ran around the house and they bounced around in sync. And she was always doing something around the house ― just not her chores. She helped her father with the cooking, and always left the kitchen with dirty cheeks and dirty overalls. She chased her father’s familiar around the house, tiring out the olde doberman and then spending hours cuddling with the large animal. 

Although most of her clothes were hand-me-downs from Tempest, her father often sat her down on his lap, allowing her to pick out fabrics here and there so that they can add frills to her jeans, or patches to her shirts; the man was an enabler, and his daughter was a rambunctious young thing whose curiosity he wanted to nurture. She was more invested in creating than taking her of her chores, but he knew she was brilliant.

∇ ― 

☠ ― 

The young woman has always been something benevolent, a force that was far from quiet but nothing angry. She can be erratic, and far from level-headed but she’s not often angry. And when she is, it’s a wet anger, a feeling bubbling up somewhere in her chest, and only rising and rising until the sobs begin. And then she’s crying, not howling like the wind does in her pain and anger but something silent. Something almost graceful. Titania usually says no words if the tears come, she doesn’t trust her voice to carry any words.

Tempest couldn’t help but think that, ideally, customers wouldn’t be reading Moby Dick in the store in the first place. They should have bought Moby Dick, taken it home to read, and then decided to temper their curiosity about marine animals by coming back and buying an encyclopedia to go with it. In which case, said second potential purchase would be easy to find, because it would be shelved by the other encyclopedias. Tempest took a deep breath through her nose, her nostrils flaring. Yelling would not be a constructive tactic.

“Put… them… back,” she said slowly and deliberately. She was not yelling. But a small patch of skin on her forehead turned a shade darker than the rest, and a vein in her neck throbbed. 

“I don’t care if they make sense. I want them to make money.”

Her nose scrunched together in that way it always did when things became disagreeable. Sometimes, she felt the most inadequate around Tempest because it seems she did the most wrong around her. Her older sister wasn’t mutable like a system of books, and Titania had this way of trying to bend things, even when she knew they might break. She’s just stubborn like this, now more than ever poking at boundaries she would normally have left alone before the war. 

And rearranging these books also helps her. When her fingers twitch with the need to busy themselves, and these books surrounded by others that are of the same ‘creed’ wish to be with books that really truly are similar, Titania begins pulling them of the shelves like a madwoman, determined to find them a better home. It’s so harmless, that she can vicariously live through them in order to ignore her lack of autonomy. 

It doesn’t hurt to change, she wants to say, but the rational voice in her head is laughing at the words. Systems are in place for a reason. Systems if done properly have predictable outcomes. But...

“I’ll put them back, but at least consider what I’m saying.”

the keyes carnival. open!

Ambrosia coughed. “No,” she groaned to herself. “No.” A handkerchief was retrieved from her coat pocket. The involuntary coughing fit continued as much as she tried to stifle it. In her periphery she knew there was at least one other presence, and she would have preferred to be alone… wherever the hell she was.

Oh. Ambrosia coughed two more times and crumpled the handkerchief in her hand, staring up at a carousel shrouded in shadow and sensing the faint smell of pop corn that could have been fresh from hours ago or years ago. The carnival. Of all places.

Each breath came slow with a high pitched wheeze, the cold air only exaggerating the pain in her chest. Blinking a few times to focus her vision, Ambrosia took an unsteady step toward the carousel and then crumpled against the wooden frame. “I’m fine,” she insisted when she heard footsteps. She wanted to get up but half sitting on the ground seemed preferred for the moment. “What the hell happened?”

It was some form of cosmic irony. It had to be. Each time they were forced together, it seemed they again were forced apart. Titania took a deep breath from where she lay on the floor, the act causing a dull pain somewhere in her ribs. She wanted to laugh really. There she lay inside the booth, surrounded on three sides by those portable popcorn machines, and light illuminating the space from an open area to her left. Had to be the carnival. 

Titania sat up, slowly just in case the pain in her rib was from a bruise, or a fracture. Well, she wasn’t the only one in pain. A few feet away from her she could hear coughing, and the sound pushed her to stand. It was a fight with her own tired limbs, but she somehow managed to push herself onto her feet, making her way towards the figure opposite of her. It wasn’t a voice of anyone from the Church, but what did it really matter. Titania was inclined to help. 

“It doesn’t sound like you’re fine. You might need medical attention.” They’d all need medical attention at this point. Titania raised a hand, and moved her hair behind her ears, using one of those elastics she kept on her wrist to tie her hair back into a ponytail. She’d hoped the action translated to something along the lines of ‘please listen to me, I wont budge and neither of us has the energy to argue’. Titania slowly made herself over to the woman, shrugging her shoulders slightly. “Any ball of concentrated energy tends to do this...from what I’ve read.”

☮️ ― 

Titania Wood is a social creature, really she is. If she meets your eye on the streets of town, she’ll smile; she’s usually cordial and nice to those around her; and she’s a very nurturing and caring person at the root of it all. But she doesn’t have many friends. As a child there was such a tight schedule given to her, that she couldn’t just go into town and play tag with the other kids. And if she was ever surrounded by others, they were usually other than herself ― save Finn of course.

☯️ ― 

Titania wears her heart on her cheek; if she likes something, you’ll know by the smile on her face…if she doesn’t, well the scrunch of her nose and furrow of her brows is more than enough of a tell. But she’s easy enough to satisfy, quite the simple small town girl really. 

While fairy tales took up most of her time as a child, there was room for more scientific books, something along the lines of The History of Magic, and The Encyclopedia Britannica of Herbs and Hexes. 

Where small trinkets are concerned, Titania adores those little postcards with faraway places; it’s not from a desire to visit them, but more so a window into something other than her home. She likes citrusy teas, as well as black tea with blue corn flowers, and she loves her father’s cooking above all...where food is concerned she is the hardest to please.

☼ ― 

There’s vanity there. When she was younger, Titania would go into town every so often buying beautiful garments of clothing here and there that caught her eye, but these were pieces she never had the courage to wear, with the Church’s rules about colors and plainclothes. Sometimes when she would choose an outfit for the day, she’d feel her fingers twitch with the urge to grab a colorful blouse or some patterned slacks, but Titania always refrained. She’d style he hair modestly, wear neutrals and faded, almost grey, greens ― although there were a few times where she allowed herself the luxury of adorning some colorful jewelry or a fancier scarf― and she barely wore any makeup. Those things changed when she came back, first daring to wear a warm yellow blouse with one of her more greyed and muted slacks, and even adding shoes that weren’t those grey tennis shoes she’d worn to death. 

♥ ― 

It’s something that’s been bringing some discomfort to her as of late, the shift in attitudes from her mother and father. Once she returned from the war, her mother and father expressed their pride in their youngest daughter. In the moment, Titania had just assumed that they were more than happy that she had returned, and that their grand appraisals would simmer the longer she had been home. But Titania was wrong. They would try to cook her favorite meals as often as possible, welcome her home the minute she walked through the door and would seemingly bend to her every will; hell, they didn’t even complain about her tendency to space out.

Titania just wants her parents to treat her the same, as their less than perfect child who still had so much to learn and so much growth to do. They assume that the war has changed her somehow, and they’re not wrong, but they go about this change in a way that isn’t favorable to Titania. She wants to be scolded for missing out on her chores, wants her mother to enter her room at the crack of dawn and open the blinds so that Titania is forced to wake up. But most of all, she wants to live as they had before things happened, she wants them to stop treating her as if she was something like porcelain ― they are both growing old and should be concerned with themselves, not protecting and caring for a daughter who should be doing as such for them.

♦ ― 

Titania keeps all of her receipts when she goes into town; not because of something like taxes or using those expenses to formulate a budget, no, it’s just that the young witch reads a lot. She’s often picking up books and random, and doesn’t like to dog-ear the pages, so she can be found digging in her purse for one of those receipts in order to use it as a bookmark. She’ll have a book in hand with all these flimsy pieces of paper sticking out, and TItania finds it quite resourceful. 

Tempest yanked A Journey Through Temporal Space off the bookshelf from where it was wedged between Squash and Spirits, and An Anthology of Apples. Great. Now she had to comb through this whole shelf to make sure there weren’t any other wayward volumes. As if she didn’t have enough work to do between manning the store, balancing the books, and completing a few under the table jobs on the side. Which had almost paid enough to get that blasted hole fixed on the far side wall.

“Titania!” she shouted, her voice muffled only slightly by the stacks of books between them and the wind whistling past the tarp that covered the hole, “Have you been reorganizing the shelves? How many times have I told you to leave the books alone?!”

@titaniias

Roald Dahl was a genius; of course his children’s books were amazing but the man also knew how to craft a thriller. And Titania appreciated thrillers; fairy tales were amazing yes, but she found that she could no longer enjoy them as she had before the civil war, and sometimes a more grim tale was better suited for her darkened edges. The Best of Roald Dahl was one of those books you could spend an entire day reading from cover to cover; and it had become Titania’s mission as she stowed herself away near the almanacs and encyclopedias that people rarely went looking for. It was a shame really, who didn’t want to know about the moon and the tides? Maybe if they were placed near the werewolf fantasies they’d get more attention.

She’d planned on making a mental note when her name reached her ears. Oh god. Titania remained in place, frozen for a moment. What could it have been this time? Had she been what? Yes, yes she had. The book she had been enjoying so much would have to wait, as she placed it on one of the higher shelves to keep from prying eyes, and made her way around the maze of their bookstore until she found her sister. 

“Hear me out, the system of organization is fine, but books don’t bend to such structure. Sometimes you’re reading Moby Dick, and then you get curious about the creatures of the sea and want to take a look at the Encyclopedia of Marine Animals...and nobody wants to navigate an entire store to find that second title. It makes sense, Tem.”