[private] when you are younger, you will wish you were older.

[Nashua]

stars when you shine, you know how i feel
oh freedom is mine

If she had left, Nashua wouldn’t have begrudged her for it.

He’s a stranger. There is no scent clinging to his skin that claims him as a Tephran. He has no blood ties to the volcanic kingdom. The only horses who may potentially vouch for the young pegasus probably only have hazy memories of him by now and he doubts that either filly recalls the twin brothers from Taiga.

And aside from all this, he has been poor company of late. He thinks of the scars that had lined Elio’s red-and-gold hide, marring what should have been a happy reunion. He thinks of the sadness he had seen behind Gale’s eyes the last time they spoke. And because he thinks of his brothers, he thinks of the crumpled body of Celina at the bottom of the canyon in Loess.

Damnit.

It makes his green eyes mournful and his wings drop slightly, no longer held so tightly against his copper sides. Nash decides to look away from the buckskin and back to the sea. Better to let her approach be her own decision. Given his current train of thoughts, the striped pegasus wouldn’t blame her for disappearing back into the jungle fauna that Tephra was famous for.

She surprises him. Instead of vanishing, she accepts his silent invitation. If he had been in a better mood, he might have even joked about it. A dark ear flicks towards the sound of her soft greeting before he turns his blazed face towards her. Nashua has never met a stranger and despite the melancholy that he feels weighing him down, he smiles. He's determined not to meet a stranger today.

"I’m afraid I don’t come to Tephra often,” the wanderer admits. "I used to travel more and I had planned to...” His words trail off (or they become so quiet that they drown out against the sound of the surf before them). The buckskin coughs and though Nashua tries to keep his concern mostly hidden. Olena has turned her gold-and-blue marked face away from him and Nash watches her carefully, unsure of what he’d do if a coughing fit ensued but still at the ready to do something if it did.

Nash was good at diving head-long into things with no plan. If Olena needed some kind of healing assistance, it would be no different.

The silence comes drifting between them like the crashing waves before them and then finally, the other pegasus speaks. "Nashua,” he offers to the girl. Because he is so intent on studying her face, the secret of her vanishing hooves remains a kept one. He smiles, lopsided and boyish for his companion, as he steadily meets her blue eyes. "Do you mind some company?”

NASHUA

html by castlegraphics; art by MirrorLands

@[Olena]