[private] Distance never made me stronger [Nashua]

[Nashua]

He listens eagerly. The old lands are of interest to Nashua, whose mother had traveled from the Beyond to Beqanna to find them. Most of the natives of the Land of the Sunrise seemed to know about them and the Reckoning that followed but Nash has never encountered anybody who had resided in them. The striped pegasus was well aware of Immortals - those like Leilan and his mother (and some part of him was starting to think Yanhua who had had hardly changed over the last few years) - but it seemed rare to come across those who lived during those times.

Nashua had once wanted to be an explorer before he became a King. And so as he tilts his blazed head towards Ciri, she lets him take him back to a time that was unknown to him. He asks her about the Tundra, because there had been some old ties between the Tundra and the Isle. The Brotherhood, he says, wondering if it was a term that the dark woman was familiar with. It had been in Ischia for a time before moving to the Isle. And it might have been tied once with Nerine, when it still had been home of the former Amazons.

There is another smile - somewhat rueful - as he explains that the Guardian of Nerine is another brother.

But it softens at the mention of Gale. Nash doesn't mind sharing that his older brother had been a sort of mentor for him, that when he had been a young pegasus, he flew to Islandres and met the brindled stallion for the first time. He knows Gale as good-humored and kind and so it doesn't surprise him to hear that he had been Ciri's first friend when she had returned to Beqanna. There is another swell of pride in his chest when the dark mare compares them; the striped pegasus considers it a high compliment.

His stance lifts a little and the Freyr takes the time to explain the other things that he and Leilan had discussed before he left. That the North was open to those meant no harm to its residents. He alludes to them being a somewhat isolated population at times but after the burning of the Isle (and he takes the time to explain that there had been a battle in Nerine when he had been younger, a group of Magicians from Pangea that blasted the coast; that there had been a Cursed monster that roamed the Taigan woods for a time and terrorized some its residents; that the monster was his biological father is something he intentionally leaves out because the Curse is dead and gone).

Ciri's hesitance pulls him back from that time and his green eyes glance towards the scorched earth in the distance. He wished that he had answers for her. Atleast more than the ones he had. "They said he went mad on Fae magic," he says, repeating the rumors that he heard around that time. "He lost his mind and came here. It came back but once it did, it was too late." Nashua explains because the Castile he remembers had been a lucid one, a horse that he remembers with a quick wit and sharp humor. "He didn't stay in Taiga long." It had been after his mother had been stolen, Nashua continues on. The Nerinian Queen had been attacked by the monster that roamed the Redwoods and then vanished. There had been so much going on at that time and the whereabouts of Castile had gotten lost along with it. "There are rumors that some of his kin are still in the hills of Loess," he offers.

@Ciri

NASHUA