are you angry when the earth shakes?

[Nashua]

Nashua tries his best not to show how much the disappearance of his mother has effected him. Her absence from their life (of his and Yanhua’s) is something he tries to handle in strides - one step after the other. He tries walking around with it and he tries flying with it, though neither do anything to alleviate the way he sometimes feels. 

How he might wake up and Yanhua won’t be there for him to find. That his aunts' Brazen and Elaina will suddenly stop coming for him. He worries that his visits from Celina will eventually end and Elio will wander out of Taiga, never coming back. His family is small and fractured but Nashua stays grounded because he is determined to see it mend. That is a view he will never find in the sky. 

Her absence shows in the way that he stays in Taiga, that his exploring has ceased. Her absence shows in the way that he starts to keep watch at the borders, attempting to protect and be brave for his home like Elio had told him to be. His early evening patrols don’t reveal much; usually all the winged yearling finds is fog. 

Occasionally, he stumbles across a straggler heading to Nerine. A wayward horse curious about the Isle. Some come from the North to venture south, wanting to see what the Common Lands might provide. Nashua watches them go with a look of longing sometimes, knowing that the open lands of Beqanna provide a chance and potential, an opportunity to stretch his growing wings. 

He remembers Yanhua and so he stays, more determined to remain than the fading silhouettes that retreated into the silver Taigan mist. 

On an early evening, when he winds down a trail and the golden late afternoon light filters through the sentinel trees, a scent that isn’t familiar to him (or the redwood forest) crosses his path. The boy flares his nostrils and rustles his wings before they settle again on his auburn back. He takes a few steps in the direction that it comes from and calls out, resolute that this shadow takes a shape. "Hello?”

@[Serabi] for you