[private] the fatal flaw that makes you magnificently cursed

[Nashua]

Nashua was created from conflicted feelings.

(Not that he knows this. Nash had only ever seen his parents together a few times and there was never kindness between them. A kind of ominous presence is something he vaguely remembers about the shifter that once roamed Taiga. The way his mother used to recede further and further into herself when he came around, like he made her skin crawl so much that she wished to be rid of it.)

He doesn't know if he is like either of them; he barely knew Wolfbane and what he does know comes from siblings that knew a much different creature than the one that claimed to be his father. And Lilliana - and as she had been with most things that had hurt her - had locked her past so firmly behind her that she refused to talk about the things that had caused her pain.

So Nashua with the melding of his father's stripes and his mother's coat, doesn't know what to tell Illuminae when they finally get to the edge of the Taigan wood. His weary from the entire travail. His mind is still circling around the creature that had been in him, around the way that it burst free from his chest and some part of him wonders if it let loose something else as well. His green eyes go searching for the two-toned female and Nash begins to realize that she is looking at him less and less.

That her blue-and-amber eyes are looking up, tracing the imaginary lines of the constellations if they had still been shining there.

His mind is hazy and while he has trouble focusing on one thought, he can feel that their conversation has shifted somehow. He had tried teasing her - which is mostly Nash's way of communicating with almost everybody - and the easy warmth that had been light that kept Nashua succumbing to the darkness is gone. Had he said something? Had he done something?

For a moment, he just stands there and wonders if there was a way to call her back.

What the winged mare tells him - that the world was much better with him in it, that all she needed was for him to stay safe - leaves him slightly baffled. He wants to go after her, to tell her to wait, to ask her name. But she has turned away and is gone so quickly that in the Long Night to come, Nash will wonder if he dreamed her. Some kind of hallucination born out of his blood loss and his attempts at healing himself (though the wound was knit together so neatly, so carefully, tender in a way that Nash never is with himself).

She leaves him with the image of a mare who hadn't left a name, so on the quiet nights that grow deep and dark that remind him of the winged mirage, he simply murmurs "Thank you."