"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
Gale run away with me-- lost souls and reverie running wild and running free
Nashua is closer when he opens his eyes, but Gale is silently appreciative of the concern he shows. He smiles, despite the ache behind his eyes, and reaches out to meet the other, gently touching his navy nose to the other’s tawny cheek.
Though his memory is still incomplete, Gale had not needed it to know that he is at heart an affectionate creature. It rises, perhaps, from having shared a womb with two others, pressed tightly together and utterly inseparable. Eyas’ company these last few months has soothed the part of him that needs companionship, but he is still thrilled by Nashua’s unexpected visit, and treats the younger boy much as he would any of the siblings that he had named.
The soft touch ends at Nashua’s quiet thanks, and Gale nods. The brindle stallion meets the yellow eyes of the bird, who tilts his pale head and shuffles his wings in agreement.
“He will,” Gale replies, “Even if he has to give up fish for a few days.” There is a bit of humor when he says that, and a low keen from the bird suggests some inside joke. It is not his intent to exclude Nashua though, and he is quick to listen to his brother’s mention of Pangea.
“Me neither,” Gale admits, “but Sharp Sister – Celina - ” he corrects himself without much pause, “was there when your mother was, and Wolfbane too, for a time.” After Eyas arrival and the story she had told, Gale has struggled to reconcile the few memories he has of their father with the creature that he has become. Calling him by his name makes it easier, he has found. “There are strange things there,” he adds, and shares with Nashua one such sight:
A mare, hewn entirely from stone, lightning flashing around her in a way that suggest movement.
Gale isn’t sure what the statue is, but scraps of sight in his dreams suggest there is a power to it, one that he cannot understand. The vision lasts only a moment. Gale cannot give more than that, and he feels the last of his magic slip away with it. There will be no more vision manipulation today, he knows, though a good night’s rest will replenish his reserve.
08-10-2020, 07:39 PM (This post was last modified: 08-10-2020, 07:44 PM by Nashua.)
Nashua had hovered there - a pace or so away from his brother - uncertain. The unasked question hung thick in the air, much like the humidity with the younger, green-eyed adolescent looking towards the brindle stallion with slight hesitation. @[Gale] is the essence of kindness and answers it for him, taking the lead as an older sibling might with a younger one.
Like Celina and Elio had with him.
(It makes Nashua decide that he will be a better elder one to Yanhua and the younger one in Nerine. To the other sibling that he might have. He doesn't know what that means yet but this meeting with Gale makes him determined to try harder.)
When the older pegasus steps back and looks up towards his Erne, Nash looks up too. There's a sound from the bird and it would seem that there is more than meets the eye when it comes to this pair. An amused expression crosses his dark face before he glances to Gale again, "How did the two of you meet?" He asks, like it's a perfectly normal thing for horse and hawk to share a bond as these two seem to do. There is something of his youth shining behind his green eyes and Nash wonders how two creatures of the sky became bonded to each other.
"Sharp Sister," the younger stallion softly laughs and the smile he gives Gale is the one he often gives to Celina. Rogue and lopsided. "I like that," he replies, storing the name away for something to share with her when they crossed paths again. Her teeth had always seemed a point of particular pride with Celina and there is a part of Nash that thinks she might be pleased to hear this moniker. "I used to call Elio - red brother - Fire Wing when I was small."
"I tried giving Yanhua a nickname," he adds and then shakes his head fondly with a broad grin. "He got quite good at using his horns as a rebuttal."
He grows quieter though - more introspective - as Gale speaks again. Nash listens and he knows that Lilliana had been in Pangea. That had been one of the few details told to her young sons. Wolfbane, perhaps, shouldn't shock him either since their shapeshifting sire had left before his mother had. But Celina... why had she been there? Looking for their father?
It would seem that the storm had become forgotten and only now rumbles its approach in the looming distance behind them. Not as soul-shattering as before but it resounds within Nashua and it feels like there is a monsoon in his mind. His thoughts spin around and around and it's only when he looks up to electric blue gaze across from him that Gale takes him someplace else. Away from his troubling thoughts, even if it's just for a moment.
(A shadowed mare who moves with heavy steps. Lightning bursts in and out his vision until the rolling thunder answers Nashua on the beach of the Island Resort again.)
He blinks once as his eyes widen and then the young pegasus adjusts his wings, pressing them close to his sides before they settle comfortably again. It's like the lightning has caught underneath his skin and Nash knows there will be a trip to Pangea in his future. One more sight to see (and perhaps Gale will catch glimpses of it) in Beqanna. Nashua snorts lightly, his head dipping down quickly before he gives it an inquisitive rise. "Do you have a name, Gale?" he finally asks with wonder coloring his words. "Like Fire Wing or Sharp Sister?"
Gale run away with me-- lost souls and reverie running wild and running free
“I went to the Mountain,” Gale tells Nashua, his electric gaze having turned toward the osprey at the mention of him. “And when I came back to the island, having been gifted by the fairies - ” here he bows his head a bit, tilting it so that Nashua may get a better look at the curling horns between his ears - “Erne was waiting for me.” The bird makes a quiet little hiss that sounds almost like agreement. Then he resettles his wings and Gale looks back at Nashua with a smile as the younger stallion tells him of Elio’s nickname and an attempt at one for Yanhua.
The conversation is light and easy, like the way it should be between siblings. Gale is sad to lose that for the vision he shares, but he thinks it important, and Nashua recovers quickly, changing the subject back to something easier.
“Blue.” He replies with a rueful expression. He had gone with the very obvious when that had been all he had known. “I chose the name Blue for myself, when I was not sure what my name was.” That sounds like the beginning of a long tale, but as the thunder rumbles overhead, Gale knows they have time for one.
So he shares it, skipping over the more gruesome bits (like the sensation of burning alive and how it feels to be trapped in the earth), while the storm batters against the island. After that are stories of happier things, like the instructions for a game of hide-and-peek, a request for a description of Nashua’s favorite places in Taiga and the North, and a better display of Gale’s slowly recovering abilities.
09-17-2020, 01:01 PM (This post was last modified: 09-17-2020, 01:08 PM by Nashua.)
stars when you shine, you know how i feel oh freedom is mine
I went to the Mountain, Gale says and Nashua listens.
He has been to the Mountain as well (though the list of places that Nash hasn’t been to grows shorter and shorter). Nashua thinks about the Heart of Beqanna and it makes the young chestnut curious about what Gale made of it. It makes him curious about what the Mountain asked in exchange for his horns and his Erne.
It had asked him to steal a secret and Nashua isn’t entirely sure that is something he can do. (But he had been warned about Magic, hadn't he?)
The sound the raptor emits makes him laugh. He’s never seen a bond like this before and there is something about it that lightens his spirit. Nash is glad that though this island doesn’t seem particularly crowded (like the Isle), he has Erne here with him. The laugh broadens into a smile, lifting the conversation away from darker topics and back to where it should be; the present, between them, brothers.
"Blue,” he repeats and then grins. If he could completely shake the sadness in his gut, he might have offered a joke. How did you choose that name? He would have asked his iridescent brother. Instead, the winged adolescent smiles and says, "It suits you.”
Thunder rolls again in the distance and as the pair move away from the beach, they take shelter between palm trees and Nashua listens as Gale tells him a story. A story about how a name is lost and then found again. And more stories follow about simpler things - like hide-and-seek and the places @[Gale] liked to frequent in Loess as a colt. Nashua, in turn, tells him about the Three Guards (three large granite boulders) that keep watch on the Taigan and Nerinian border, about how he and Yan had played around the base of them as colts.
Nash tells (shows) him about how the fog makes the Northern forest seem like a forgotten fairytale. If he has seen glimpses of Celina there, he doesn’t need to elaborate the sheer size of the Redwoods but he still tries to explain the grounding effect that they can have on a soul. That for all the times Nash felt like floating away, it was the Sequoias who kept him grounded.
"You should see them for yourself someday,” he tells Gale as the storm finally starts to relent.
Gale
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