[open] back to you; any

[Nashua]

(and it's harder than you think)
telling dreams from one another

He does this enough.

Nashua stares across the horizon, and watches as sunlight glimmers off the churning water like another universe. He'd wanted to be an explorer, once; he had wanted to see every acre of Beqanna and even Beyond. The only limits that the striped pegasus had ever wanted had been the physical ones of his wings. He had wanted to see every horizon and only be hampered because his wings would not be able to carry him there fast enough.

But the wanderlust of the boy had been transformed into the duty of a kingdom. He had grown up to be a King instead of an adventurer, and the only reckless thing he does these days is wasting his time by staring off this icy coast. The winter wind gusts past him, stirring his speckled feathers and tendrils of his flaxen mane as he angles his blazed head downwind. The scent is faint - but there aren't many horses on the Isle - and the Freyr knows immediately that this is not his Thane nor his mentor, Leilan.

Curiously, the winged horse moves away from his spot on the dark, glassy-pebbled beach. It doesn't take long to find her, as her gold spots glint as his gold stripes do. Nash dips his head in greeting, and the openness of her smile allows the pegasus to close his mind to his troubling thoughts (his stolen son, his missing brother, about Gale and Mazikeen). He good-naturedly grins back and tells her, "No. I don't believe we've met before."

There were others who Ciri had brought back to the Isle - like Leokadia - that he was aware of; and even the strangers that made the stop to Beqanna's northernmost point didn't go unnoticed. (The Northern King might have earned a reputation for being distracted for his familial problems, but he hadn't grown so inattentive that he no longer noticed who washed up on his shore.)

"Nashua," he tells the new arrival, thinking that his name was the only thing that mattered.

Her name - Kensa - was familiar. When he had been young, his mother had been stolen and two mares had stepped in to fill the void that Lilliana had left behind. Two aunts, and one of them had been an aspiring diplomat in Hyaline before it became home to unspeakable evils like his half-brother and his mate. (And he contemplates telling Kensa that her former pupil Elena did eventually become a Queen herself.)

Did she want to be recognized?

Unsure, Nash tilts his head towards the sabino woman. She still smells of the mainland, with scents of various places clinging to her copper skin. "You've picked an odd spot to vacation," he says instead with the obvious humor (of visiting the Icicle Isle in the heart of winter) tugging at the edges of his pale mouth.

NASHUA

@Kensa