[private] only a heartbeat in time; Nash, birthing

[Nashua]

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

It had been an odd realization for Nashua. What had started out as running into Noel after the Alliance had blossomed into something else and when her sides grew rounder with the autumn, Nash found himself wanting to be closer and closer to her. If there was something she wanted, anything she needed, he wanted to be the first to hear about it. If something seemed remiss, he wanted to correct it for her. Nashua - who has always been a free-spirited horse - finds himself firmly grounded.

Only his duties as Hersir on the Isle and his loyalty to his mentor and Freyr, Leilan, could keep him away.

When he returns exhausted after meeting with Leilan and Yanhua in Hyaline, Noel is not in Taiga. His mother had three young ones to look after and Yan, returning to the redwood forest after him, had no more idea where the white pegasus could have gone than Nash did. The only thing he knew as a certainty was that Noel hadn't flown in months and if she had left Taiga, it meant she couldn't have gone far. Huffing and fighting the fatigue lingering in his muscles, the chestnut flares his wings and once again takes to the air.

Thankfully, he doesn't have far to fly. The pale mare had left behind a trail for Nash (unknowingly?) to follow and the striped pegasus flew North, turning towards a kingdom that he has known since birth. He hovers in the drafts above the moors, circling and spending a few hours looking for a piece of the sky on the ground. He keeps hoping to find a strikingly white form somewhere across the rolling fields below. He keeps hoping and hoping and hoping.

That hope keeps him flying.

But it isn't enough to keep him sky-bound. A late night flight and the hours spent looking for Yanhua forces him to the ground. He patrols the northern border - where Taiga and Nerine merge together in sparse pine and sporadic knolls. He tries to keep his worries at bay by clenching his jaw and tightening his wings against himself, like they might shield him from his troubled thoughts. Her scent finally blows his away, wafting across pale nostrils in a way that still reminds Nashua of clean air and clouds (even after all this time).  The winged stallion makes short work of finding her and when he does-

His heart stops.
Nash doesn't have time to catch it.

It just falls and falls and falls until he is looking at two perfect shapes - two little girls who Nashua thinks that not even the Gods could have created. They are too perfect, even minutes after birth. One has damp wings and another is finding her legs. They share a coloring with their mother but there are Nashua's gold stripes, glimmering around the legs of both fillies.

Noel looks as bewildered as he feels and so the striped horse laughs, having too much joy for words.

NASHUA

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