[open] living like we're renegades

[Gale]

Gale run away with me-- lost souls and reverie running wild and running free   The distant cry of the seahawk wakes him. Blinking sleepy blue eyes, Gael shakes his head even while a yawn takes him, struggling to rid himself of sleep. He’d been having a dream, one that he is already forgetting. There’d been a green mare that might have been Divest, and a whole flock of ospreys. A strange dream, to be sure. The sun is little more than a soft glow above the sea, its light diffused by heavy clouds. They carry thunderstorms, Gale is sure, a frequent occurrence during the late autumn and early winter.  The brindle stallion enjoys the rain – or at least watching it fall from a dry place – but there is much he must do before those clouds cross his beach. Erne, the osprey whose call had woken him, has flown nearer, and now circles overhead. The bird does not show emotion on its face in a way that Gale knows (now could he see from this distance even if he did), but there is happiness in the mental tether between them. Erne is eager for the rain as well, knowing that after, the fish will rise to the surface to catch the water-logged insects, only to be caught themselves by the osprey’s impressive talons.  But now is the time for patrol, not for fishing. It takes little more than a heartbeat and the closing of his own eyes. It’s a special trick and one he’s still perfecting, but it is invaluable on this sparsely populated isle. When Gale opens his eyes again, he sees the island resort from Erne’s perspective. Far above the trees, with vision more precise than Gale’s own. This bird vision makes some things look strange, and focusing overlong on the differences results in immense migraines once he returns to his own eyes. Instead he allows Erne to look as he likes, his predator’s eyes scanning for movement rather than detail. Unnatural movement. The first thing he sees is Eyas, meandering down the northern shore. Had she slept, he wonders? She has not slept much of late. But Eyas is not what he seeks, and Erne banks away, gliding on the warm and storm-thick air until he’s circled the entire island. There are no strangers here, no changes during the night. With a contented thank you to his companion, Gale slips back into his own eyes. The world is fuzzy, and will remain so for some time, but that method of patrol is worth the half-hour or so of blurred vision. It’d take five times as long to do the route on foot, after all. Gale had done the math after Eyas asked, though he hopes that with more practice the recovery time will be shorter. With that done, the young chief of the island makes his way toward the spring that flows into the southeastern shore. From here, he can see the distant haze of Tephra and the volcano reaching into the clouds. Soon the coming storm will turn the horizon gray, but for now he drinks his fill and breaks his night fast with the salty purple grasses that grow atop the black dunes.

[Nashua]

He has time for one last trip. One last 'grand adventure', as Yanhua likes to call them, before winter sets in. Nashua had thought about flying to Leilan's island again. The young stallion wasn't averse to the idea of another trip to see the Freyr of Icicle Isle and his young ward, Alcinder. But then, he had already made that journey. His mind is already dreaming of a new adventure. Beyond Tephra, perhaps? The early autumn weather was still fair and this day (though thunderheads loomed) might prove to be another unseasonably warm and pleasant one. He is teased again for his capriciousness by his twin but the promise that grinning Nash makes is the same: he'll be back.

The day is beckoning to Nashua and the sun is already higher than he'd like when he takes to the sky.

Though this day had started amiable enough (the breezes light, the currents fair), the darkening horizon is telling. The clouds look expectant with rain and one copper ear flicks, trying to determine if he hears a rumble of thunder in the distance. The wind picks up and Nashua can feel the temperature drop as the weather front pushes closer to the Tephran coast that the chestnut colt has left behind him. The young pegasus has a daredevil moment where thinks that he might attempt to ride out the approaching storm but even as fool-hardy as he can sometimes be, he uses his better judgment to rule against that idea. When he is older, maybe. When he has put his wings through a few more tests.

It sounds like the kind of idea that Celina would approve of, anyway.

As the dropping temperature continues to rise, Nashua lowers his elevation and he's rather a turbulent sight in the sky above when he isn't flapping his auburn wings. With his wings spread out, he can't soar long and it makes his landing on the island beach more of a nosedive than he intended. Not the most graceful of landings but as a coming two-year-old, Nash still has time to figure those out. He will figure them out because the young stallion has a determination to become as good of a flier as his elder siblings. The sand beneath his hooves is black, he realizes and takes a moment to consider it as he looks down between his forelegs. Similar to the beach he landed on when he visited Icicle Isle but the climate of the Resort is inviting. Warmer. Almost tropical, even though winter approaches the rest of Beqanna.

Nash glances out towards the ocean, regarding the hazy outlines of Tephra's volcano before he turns towards the smell of water. Looking to quenching his thirst after his flight, he follows the bright scent of water towards the center of the island. Nashua might have beat the storm but somebody beat him to the spring. The winged boy tilts his head inquisitively, regarding the blue tobiano in front of him. His green eyes linger on his white wings and flick briefly to the horns (reminding him of his brother) before he smiles, lopsided and boyish.

"It seems great minds think alike," says his greeting to the elder pegasus as the younger approached the spring. "Did the storm force you to land here too?"

The other stallion smells like salt and brine, of the marsh grass around them so Nash assumes not.

But he's made wrong assumptions before. 

nashua

and the days you defend will turn to gold

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@[Gale]

[Gale]

Gale run away with me-- lost souls and reverie running wild and running free   Erne holds the back half of a good-sized mackerel in his talons, but he watches the stranger rather than finish the rest of it. Gale watches him as well, through the osprey’s eyes until he is near enough to see him with his own blurred vision. Though the colt is nothing more than a blurred golden shape that smells of a pine forest, Gale recognizes him. He has seen him before, though through eyes not his own. His magic tends to wander in sleep, and he dreams of what others have seen when those others are linked to him. This pegasus is not, for all their shared blood. Not until now, at least, Gale finds himself thinking. Perhaps it is fitting that as they prepare to rid themselves of some parts of their family, other parts begin to fill the spaces they will leave. Secluded as he has been for the last few years, socializing only with a bird that shares his mind and his sister, Gale is not the best at socializing. But there is a shift in the blur in front of him that looks to be a smile, so Gale smiles back. He knows, at least, not to lead with what is foremost in his mind – has Nashua come here to find them, or by random chance? The second, it seems, as the other comes just a bit nearer. “This is my home,” he replies, having swallowed the last of the lavender grasses. “And a good place to shelter from the storm.” There is a small pause, and then he adds: “My name is Gale.” @[Nashua]

[Nashua]

It’s funny that Gale is thinking about family because that is where Nashua’s mind is, too. Smiling at the navy tobiano, it’s hard for him not to think of his family. The blue pegasus sports a rather unusual mane and Nash has only seen it before on one other horse.

It’s something that elicits a broad, youthful grin on his copper face.

"How did you stumble across paradise?” the younger stallion asks playfully as his tail flicks away the few insects that buzz around the winged adolescent as he comes to a respectful stop before the Resort’s inhabitant. ”I was hoping to reach Ischia,” he explains and turns to look over his shoulder to the South, where the hazy outline of the other island lingers lush and vibrant green.

Another tropical paradise, he vaguely remembers from his youth.

Perhaps not so different from this one. And ever the explorer, Nash doesn’t mind a distraction. He doesn’t mind changes when they reveal new places and the possibility of a new friend (sibling?). It makes his grin all the wider when he turns his attention back to Gale.

"It’s alright that I stay, then?” the copper colt asks, the smile faltering briefly. ”I can be on my way as soon as the storm blows by.” Nashua explains, hoping that the other stallion doesn’t find his presence upsetting. He'd rather risk a storm than an another stallion's wraith. His dual-toned companion just smiles though and states his name, one that belonged to his favorite phrases as a youth.

('By the Gusts and Gales', his mother used to recite to him and Yanhua when they had been small. When she had told them wonderful, lovely stories to fill their heads so they would turn into dreams.)

It seems fitting that he meets one now - a @[Gale].

"My name is Nashua,” he says with a nod and then boyishly explains with that charming grin, "I came from Taiga.”

nashua

and the days you defend will turn to gold

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[Gale]

Gale run away with me-- lost souls and reverie running wild and running free It is difficult to tell with the general blur, but Gale thinks that perhaps some parts of the other horse are glowing. They look different than the rest of his sunlit shape, and the brindle stallion laments his temporary affliction. Better to not ask, he thinks, his sight will clear soon enough. “Ruinam invited me here,” Gale tells him, realizing belatedly that it’s unlikely that the name means anything. “He was the leader here, before me. He told me it was quiet here, and I needed quiet.” Gale is no longer sure he needs this much quiet, but that is a thought he keeps to himself. He enjoys the solitude of his home, far less bustling than Ischia. But a few more faces wouldn’t hurt, especially not if they were family. “Of course,” he answers, nodding his white-maned head. “You may stay as long as you’d like.” Nashua introduces himself, and Gale finally has a name to match the face that he pictures. The other adds that he is from Taiga, and now Gale also knows the smell of the piney land. The wind does not often blow in from the east, but he has caught it before, and this solidifies it. There is more he wants to know, though, so he asks with his head tilted and his voice curious: “What is our sister’s name? The one with the wings and the teeth?” It is multi-syllabic, he knows, but sound does not come with his dreams. @[Nashua]

[Nashua]

If he is glowing, Nashua doesn’t notice. It happens, sometimes, when an emotion distracts him from keeping his shine in control. The adolescent is so focused on the white wings, of the spinal mane of the blue tobiano that he doesn’t realize the soft glow that has started to emanate from his stripes.

His emerald eyes are tracing the lines of the perlino stripes on his neck and finally noticing the iridescent sheen that comes off Gale. It solidifies his earlier assumption and so Nash tilts his head to one side, listening to his elder (another!) brother explain that he had been invited here by the previous ruler. That he was now leader of this odd island with its black beaches and trees that weren’t quite right.

Nashua nods his head, showing that he was following the conversation though his mind was still processing this latest revelation. Another sibling.

"Thank you,” the younger stallion says. It doesn’t happen very often to Nash but he finds himself without words, unsure what to say besides his gratification. He wonders if the Island Resort was still quiet. What had happened to make @[Gale] seek the quiet in the first place?

What his half-brother wonders is something that Nash wasn’t expecting and the chestnut adolescent blinks in surprise, his brown wings settling against his sides. "Celina?” he asks. "You don’t know her name?” That was odd, he thinks. Celina knew Elio and she had told Nashua about Pteron. She had even mentioned that there had been other siblings. Other brothers and sisters (though Nash hasn’t been told about his younger, missing one). "Do you know the names of the other ones?”

nashua

and the days you defend will turn to gold

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[Gale]

Gale run away with me-- lost souls and reverie running wild and running free   The sound of his memories have not yet returned Gale, and he has long since stopped hoping for it. He has the images, and in the end, that is what really matters. His mind can fill in the rest – the sound of Tiercel’s laughter, the smell of the nest they shared, the feel of his mother’s gentle touch, the taste of the red fruit that his father was so fond of. Eyas’ tale had damaged some of those memories though, made him less certain that what he had seen was true. He thought he had felt safe, tucked between two golden parents, but had he really? He had been sure he remembered the warmth of being loved, but how could that have been real if this is where they are now? Surely if it had been as strong as he remembered, he would have had an intact family to return to – not this broken and shattered thing. These thoughts darken his mind, but Gale does not allow them to linger. The past doesn’t matter. Not anymore. The family he remembers is no more, but the family that he might make of the pieces still remains without reach. “Celina,” he repeats, the name far softer than their pale sister. Lepis and Wolfbane named their children for the heights they would reach, and that is something that Gale is sure he remembers. Nashua finds it odd that Gale had not known her name, and it is odd, and so he laughs with a shake of his head. “I didn’t. I’ve never seen her with my own eyes. Her or the red brother, who lost his feathers. And your womb-brother, and the brother from the earless mother.” He had seen that last but once, a damp bundle of legs on the edge of Loess, but he is certain that it is a brother. He had seen the conception, and cried into Eyas shoulder when he woke, refusing to share the vision that even now sours his stomach. Better to think of happier things, of children who had been wanted. “Pteron, he’s the oldest. He taught us to fly. And Marni, who went Beyond with Mother and Father when they fled Wyrm but stayed when they returned. Eyas and Tiercel, my womb-mates.” He pauses, and his pale eyes become unfocused as he flicks through a mental catalogue. “You have another sibling too, but I don’t know if they are mine.” Or if they are alive, Gale thinks, for the only time he had seen said sibling was as a widening of Lilliana’s sides that Celina had been reluctant to injure in Pangea. He had not thought thinking of family would elicit so many poor memories, and Gale’s blue face wrinkles in a frown as he stares out at the gathering storm. It is an easy thing for him to push away a bad thought or two, but this onslaught was unexpected. @[Nashua]

[Nashua]

Nashua had been born in the dark. He had been as he is now - softly glowing. From where the maturing pegasus stands, Gale loosens the hold of his younger brother's magic with his (concerned?) expression. There is trouble on the horizon, a brewing storm that doesn't linger only there. It's a flash - like a lightning strike, there and gone - but something darkens the gaze of the older stallion. Nash doesn't have the gift of his maternal siblings; he only has the dark wings that he holds firmly against his chestnut sides and the healing that Celina revealed. The one she told him that he shared with his other brothers.

He can't share with Gale what he knows. What his family has (so far) looked like.

It makes him smile to hear their shared sister's name said so gently. Nash's concern almost fades as he takes step towards the blue tobiano. Truthfully, the young stallion knew that there was little to nothing soft or gentle about his elder sister. But that was the predator in her, wasn't it? She was as unpredictable as the storms that rolled through Taiga in summer and Nash - child of a tight-lipped, poised parent - it had made him adore the pale pegasus even more. For those unexpected moments of tenderness. For Nashua - who had been born in the dark - he had loved those bright, electric flashes of light she revealed. As wild and primal as any @[Gale] or squall.

The brindle pegasus reveals that he's never seen their iridescent sister with his own eyes and Nash tilts his head inquisitively. Did he borrow sight from others? He must, just without sound, if he didn't know their names. What about the other senses? The part of Nash that loves to explore wants to nosedive into this new knowledge - this Magic that his brother has - but the young pegasus decides to fill in where Gale's gift couldn't. "Elio," he says with a laugh and his green eyes brighten with filial affection. The other half-brother had taken on a role somewhere between father and brother, filling in a hole that Wolfbane's departure left behind. (He'd been told that his father was off doing great things; that his father was greatly cursed was never mentioned to him.)

And then his blazed face turns thoughtful, thinking of the brother that he came into the world with.

"Yanhua," he elaborates with fondness coloring his tenor voice. It vanishes though - mixes with a whirling confusion before he jerks his head abruptly up: "You mean Aunt Nev? You mean that-" That the colt she'd brought back from wherever she had been was another sibling. It doesn't sit right in his gut and it twists in response, creating an expression that echoes the storm clouds that had been forming on Gale's navy face. (He'd heard about the little pegasus, about those gold dapples not so different from his gilded stripes.) Lightning strikes and an ominous roll of thunder churns from somewhere deep within Nashua.

A storm of emotion. The other one - the tangible one - becomes forgotten entirely.

He listens to the familiar name of Pteron, of this other brother he's never met but could also heal himself. Of another sister, Marni. As he learns that the stallion before him was like Nash, that he hadn't come into this world alone either. That he knew what it was like to belong to someone other than yourself before you even take your first step, who is with you from those very first heartbeats. He names the two points of his trinity; Tiercel and Eyas. It's Yanhua who he thinks of now, who counterbalances him from free-falling into the heaviness he suddenly feels.

"Another-," he interjects before he understands what Gale was implying. A sibling that didn't belong to the rest of them. Had his mother done it, then? Had she given up on them entirely and decided to have another family somewhere else? "She's alive?" Nash asks with his ears flicking back, the words falling flat and deceptively devoid of the tumultuous emotion that is raging (monsooning) in his aching chest. He shouldn't ask; not when this family web he's stumbled across is so tangled and knotted.

"Can you see if she'll come home?"

nashua

and the days you defend will turn to gold

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[Gale]

Gale run away with me-- lost souls and reverie running wild and running free   Elio, Nashua says, and Gale thinks of the sun and his brother’s red coloring and a smile as bright as the other’s laughter spreads across his face. It’s their father’s smile, carefree and warm. Then he tells him: Yanhua, and the name fits what he has seen of the boy through Celina and Wolfbane’s eyes.  Though Gale has no connection to the red mare or the earless one (who he thinks of now as Antneve), his empathy runs deep. His face falls with Nashua’s, and it seems impossible that a moment ago he had been eagerly waiting to learn the name of the sibling that Celina could not bring herself to harm. When Nashua asks, Gale pushes aside his doubt and the already present burn of his eyes, and tries his best. Maybe it is that he is already weakened by his surveillance, or maybe his magic is not meant to be wielded this way. Whatever the reason, he winces and shuts his eyes tightly after a long moment of furrowed-brow concentration. Gale’s head shakes in defeat, his forelock acting as a snowy overhang to protect him from even the pale light of the cloud-wrapped sun. “Nothing,” he tells his younger brother, “But that’s normal. I don’t know your mom so I can’t share her eyes.” According to stories, the power he wields had once been enough to subdue empires. Gale worries sometimes that he is an incompetent magician, a poor inheritor of his ancestors’ gift. Eyas tells him that maybe the world is stronger now, or perhaps that the strength has been watered down by dilution of blood, or that Gale is filled with other magics too, and that a body can only hold so much. (Gale likes this last explanation best of all, for he is proud of his wings and his healing and his bond with Erne). At that thought, he glances up at the bird, who is perched in a turquoise palm. “Erne could look for her, if you’d like.” Gale offers. “She was in Pangea when I last saw her, but that was a long time ago.” A crack of thunder follows the lightning, and the sound is far closer than the last peal. “He could go after the storm, I mean.” @[Nashua]

[Nashua]

He likes Gale's smile. It's an easy thing to bask against; to use it to prop himself up against the darkness that has spread into this conversation. The smile on the older stallion makes him recall hazy, summer days in Taiga when the extent of his worries had been if he would be quick enough to keep up with longer-legged Yanhua. Golden days that glinted off the shining sides of Elio. Brighter evenings that had been illuminated by Celina's "stars" (because he never could convince himself they were just bugs) as he crept along twilight tidal pools.

Before his father disappeared.
Before his mother vanished.

Days that, had @[Gale] looked through his eyes, would have appeared rosy and happy.

Nashua has always enjoyed meeting his siblings. There had been some part of him that had been thrilled to discover that it just wasn't he and Yanhua, that there was more to his family than he knew about. (He never wondered about why there were so many; in his ignorance, he assumed that they were like he and his twin - an outcome of autumn.) The copper pegasus had always compared meeting his half-siblings to finding another piece of himself. An internal scavenger hunt that spread across Beqanna. An adventure just waiting to happen.

When Gale's smile falls with the coming storm, Nash's brow furrows in a concerned line. He doesn't move towards the tobiano but his head starts to reach out, like he might offer some type of physical support to the pegasus he hadn't known before today. A moment of tenderness between the distant knells of thunder that echoes along the black sand beach to where they stand.  His older brother opens his shocking blue eyes and shakes his head, that he can't see anything. Nashua had can hardly be disappointed; he had woken this morning with the same revelation he always has where it concerns Lilliana. That she might not ever come back.

"Thank you," he says, aware that his voice came out much quieter than he intended. It was almost drowned out by the sound of the surf and the wind that had started to pick up, gusting by them. "If it won't put him in danger," Nashua speaks while giving a firm (appreciative) nod of his head. The chestnut glances up to where the bird - Erne - has perched himself among the spikes of the palm. The look doesn't last long.

The storm bellows closer than it had been before and Nash pulls his brown wings tighter against his sides, trying to ignore the sudden drop in temperature. "I don't know much about Pangea," he admits before his expression tightens. "There was some conflict when I was younger between Taiga and the East but all I've heard is that its a land of strange beasts and predators." Fantastical creatures. The type of characters that could (and should) remind a foal not wander too far from their dam. He and Popinjay had encountered two when he had been barely a yearling; a horned, scaled giant of a stallion and his red-eyed companion. A brief confrontation that he hadn't given much thought to until... well, now.

Nash blinks.

"Who do you know in Pangea?"

nashua

and the days you defend will turn to gold

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