[private] for every king that died, they would crown another

[Nashua]

When word had finally reached Nashua that there was another family member within the Taiga, he promised himself that he would seek her out as soon as he could.

(Because his mother had smiled - really smiled - at the mention of her name and it had gladdened Nashua's heart. It had brought a lightness to it, like the newly returned sunlight to their world.)

But his duties as Hersir demand his presence on the Isle and much of his time. His responsibilities as a father to two adolescent daughters take up more of it. The daylight returns and while Nashua will never get enough of it again, night always come too soon and there is always more left for the young pegasus to do.

There is something to look forward to. While Nash's mother has yet to return from the Mountain (he's heard the rumors and he battles daily with the knot in his gut that there is truth to what his nieces have claimed, that his mother had been swallowed by the darkness), others had and one of them had been the Dragon King. And with Leilan's return as well as the return of the light, he had decreed that there should be a festival to celebrate it and the winged stallion had heartily agreed.

It could be the thing to bring them together after the darkness had separated them.

She is easy to find. He has grown up in Taiga - this has been the only home he had known when his father left and his mother was stolen - and Nashua knows almost every face that dwells beneath the Redwoods. (It helps that most of them are related to him, somehow.) Hers is an unfamiliar one but as soon as his lopsided grin (so like Malachi, his mother had once told him, and yet it is a wilder version of his uncle's smile) emerges, he knows that the champagne mare the moment he spies her. It's just like what Lilliana had told all her children - about the family that came before and dwelled in Paraiso. "There are so many shades of gold there," she had said with a gentle laugh (and Nash remembers this with a memory so vivid that Yan could have seen the echo from it). "It was said that that they were descended from the sun," she had murmured after one of her stories.

Now that he sees this relation in broad daylight, Nash thinks he can see why that legend might have emerged. She is as gold as any summer day that he can recall. Almost as gold as the stripes that adorn his legs.

Coming to a respectful stop, the pegasus stops and dips his blazed head in greeting.

"@[Ori]?" he asks. His green eyes - the color of spring - brighten and the smile warms his gaze. "I thought I might accompany you to the Isle for the Solstice." Nash says  with that same grin before hastily adding, "so long as you don't mind the company." Lifting his head, the chestnut stallion introduces himself. "I am Nashua."

NASHUA