[open] i trust my life to ghosts, any

[camellia]

camellia

He does not speak and she does not either as he turns from her and she is prepared to trek across the mountains, through them if that is what it takes, but he delivers them to something else entirely.

A portal there on the beach and she can almost smell the bitter frost as they approach. It excites something in the cold, cold heart. The glacial blue cracks in her skin glow. (Is this love? Certainly it is allegiance, ice calling to ice, and she is of and for the cold, so it only makes sense that she should be pulled toward it as if by magnets.) 

This is easier, certainly, than trudging across the range. And she does not hesitate, bats no eye at the portal because she is the daughter of a magician. She does not cower in the face of magic, power, she never has.

The cold hits her all at once, an arctic blast as they step through into a world of stark, angry white. And she smiles. And this smile is something altogether different than the small things she has offered him. It is unbridled mirth, a kind of breathless wonder, as the Winter welcomes her home. Oh, she could weep with the relief she feels as the wind whips past her, around her, through her.

She sucks in a sharp breath, reveling in the way the cold burns all the way down. She closes her pale eyes briefly, savoring the cold of the snow that collects along her spine.

When she opens her eyes again, she looks steadily at him and tilts her head. “Have you ever been homesick for a place you’ve never been to?” she asks, flakes catching in her frostbitten eyelashes. 
 

@Nashua

[Nashua]

The cold is there to meet him, burning down his throat and stinging against his emerald eyes. It emerges from his pale nostrils in thin wisps of silver smoke, dancing on the artic wind and floating past him as the pegasus turns to consider his companion. There had been something structured in her countenance before, as if the very ice that cracked her skin kept so much of her frozen in place. This wild part of the Isle is not one of the usual haunts - needing to be available to his family in Taiga and the needs of Nerine usually kept him closer to the southern shore - but its gleaming ferocity always garners admiration from the winged brute.

Out here, only those able to withstand the cold survive and the brutality of this place leaves little room for anything else.

Something about the wild North seems to thaw Camellia's demeanor a little, and something softens in Nashua's polite expression. He is a Northerner through and through, and deeply proud of his home - from the craggy coastline of Nerine, to the impossible heights of the Taigan trees, to even this place; this edge of the world that gleams and shines and retains so little of the warmth that the rest of Beqanna seems to hold.

Camellia doesn't seem to mind, though, and her reaction bolsters his Northern-born pride.

"Plenty of places," the Freyr confides in her with a grin that starts to tug towards one side. "There is a whole world out there to find," and some of his wanderlust comes sparking to his emerald eyes before Nashua reminds himself that his place is here, that this is where his obligations lie. He isn't entirely sure where Camellia comes from, but having his family divided and broken apart, he knows what it is to ache for something out of reach.

"Will this suit?" he quietly asks, breaking the crisp silence settling between them.

@camellia

[camellia]

camellia

She is a stoic thing, Camellia.
She has always been colder than each of her three sisters, aloof, detached.

(She has loved them fiercely, but there has never been anything she has loved more than Winter. This is how it was always meant to be, though, and she is certain that her sisters love their own seasons just as much as she loves the Winter.)

But she softens here in front of this relative stranger, a kind of vulnerability, and she smiles something genuine. It is perhaps the only time she has ever softened because she has found Home, the only place in all of Beqanna that she truly belongs.

If she had not been so consumed by this happiness (although even her happiness is cold), she might have thought to be embarrassed by allowing him to witness this part of her.

She studies the landscape, the tundra and the angry mountains, and considers his answer. He is right, of course. There are so many places to find and explore. But this is the only place she was ever meant to find. This is the place that has been calling to her all along.

She nods but does not speak, aware that their definitions of homesick are not exactly the same, but how could they be? He is a thing of flesh and blood, just as she had been once, and she is something of snow and ice. As if she had been carved out of this landscape.

His question draws her attention back to him and she nods, glacial blue eyes glowing. She is not a sentimental thing, Camellia, but she exhales a breath that lingers in the air between them and says, “thank you.” 

What else do you say to the one soul who showed you your home?
 

@Nashua