"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
Once Padme and Mourna are more settled and feeling as comfortable as they can in the tundra lands, she sets off to find the Isle’s Champion. She had remembered Leilan’s request to seek out the Hersir and speak with him concerning night shifts so she makes sure to address this task as quickly as possible.
Looking for Nashua gives her an opportunity to explore more of the Isle and she comes to find that now every part of the island is completely covered in snow. The more she heads south the snow seems to melt and fade, leaving more exposed dirt and granite. It’s slightly warmer in this area and she makes a note to move the little family further inland if Padme doesn’t discover it first. She had worried that the cold might be too much for a little one but this gives her a little more hope. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a wild choice to move her after all.
It’s on the burned beach that she finds the winged stallion. Carefully picking her hooves through the sharp pieces of glass scattered amongst the pebbles, she makes her way towards the pegasus while simultaneously taking in the remains of what had once been a beautiful shoreline. it was still pretty in it’s own way, a rainbow of color reflected from the dark soot that stains most of the sand. Still the devastation is clear and she wonders what had caused all this destruction.
“Nashua?” She calls to him when she’s a few steps away, mercury eyes sweeping over his chestnut figure, taking in the hawkish wings and glowing gold stripes that wrap around his legs. “I’m Ciri, the new Thane.” A ghost of a smile sweeps over her dark lips, swirling silver strands unwaveringly holding his own gaze once it’s turned to her. “Leilan suggested I should find you.” A single strand of raven hair falls wildly across her forehead, slightly hiding the savage scar slashed across her eye. The rest of her body exposes a violent story, only a few patches of unmarked skin remain on her smoky coat. There's always a slight twitch of discomfort when meeting someone new, when she would fall under the scrutiny of their gaze and see the questions lurked there. Still she keeps the whisper of a smile steady on her lips and waits for his acknowledgment.
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
06-06-2021, 05:58 PM (This post was last modified: 06-06-2021, 06:01 PM by Nashua.)
Nashua stands on the glass pebbles - dark stones that are a sea amongst themselves with the way that the light glistens and refracts off them - and looks out across the sea towards Taiga. His brow furrowed slightly, indicative of the thoughts crashing across his troubled mind. Something was wrong with Yanhua. What it was exactly was something that Nash hadn't been able to discern yet, if only for the fact that they both had families and other responsibilities to consider.
And yet -
And yet, Nashua thought, unable to stop the nagging feeling that always sank to the pit of his stomach. Something is wrong.
A copper ear swivels towards the sound of someone approaching. He knows that it isn't Leilan. The former Freyr had told Nashua immediately upon his ascension that he was leaving. And then his Magic had carried him away, taking to him places that mortal horses like Nash could never go. He turns his handsome face away from the rugged Taigan coast and offers an amiable smile to the black mare who walked towards him. As it almost always does, it tugs to one side. Too much humor to be kept in one place.
"@[Ciri]," he calls out to her, recognizing the name even if he doesn't recognize her. Leilan had mentioned her, had said that she was promising addition to the small Isle regiment. She bears the mark of a warrior and for a moment, Nash thinks he sees her tense when his green eyes come to meet hers. He angles himself away from the ocean, if only so that she might see the gruesome one that rips across his copper chest. A testament to the Eclipse and the awful hunger of the monsters that roamed Beqanna during that time. "Well met." Nash tells her with a nod.
"We have much to discuss," he says, seeing no reason not to dive headfirst into several topics. "But perhaps you might tell me something of yourself, first?" His grin turns slightly impish, "I hate discussing politics with strangers." Nash explains, "so we might as well get acquainted."
She is guarded as she normally is when meeting a stranger but his lopsided smile is quick to put her at ease. As he turns to meet her, she catches the ravaged marking across his chest with a glance, and visibly relaxes a little more. It seems she might be in good company and her smile changes from a polite smile into a bright grin. “Likewise.” She acknowledges him back with her own nod, titling her slashed skull to remove the obstructing forelock as the last tightness of trepidation in her chest begins to fade.
There had been no sign of Leilan since she had offered herself to the Isle and he had accepted. She was unaware that the frosted roan had left and that the stallion before her had taken his place. She had been distracted with making sure Padme and Mourna had settled in ok, still relieved that Padme's ideas mirrored her own. The northerners were a hardy breed and if they could do well here... They would be fine anywhere. It’s perhaps better this way, being ignorant to his promotion. Allowing some freedoms between them where the formality of titles can’t restrict them.
He doesn’t beat around the bush and she gives a genuine laugh at the roguish grin, shrugging a scarred shoulder as the swirling strands of silver meet green once more. “I agree.” She raises a brow, a curiosity lingering in the mercury depths of her gaze. Her stars are dim in the brightness of the day but they still hover protectively around her. Always there, always watching. “I’m pretty much an open book. What do you wish to know?” She assumes it will be a question about her many scars, it’s always been a conversation starter, but maybe Nashua might surprise her.
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
Nashua had known for some time that Leilan considered him his heir. He just thought that there would have been more of it. First, his mother had vanished as the light returned and after she hadn't come back, the Freyr became more determined to find her. Nash has formed a triumvirate of sorts with his brothers - Yanhua who is the Guardian of Taiga and Reave who is the Guardian of Nerine.
While he is confident in the abilities of his brothers to lead, Leilan had still been their protector. He'd been a Magician and before that, a dragon. Nash is neither of those things and will have to depend on the bonds of family and the Northern ruggedness that has gotten them through so many travails. The North needs horses like Ciri, willing to call this place and willing to serve it to survive.
And the Isle is one of the harshest places in Beqanna to do that.
The newly-appointed King of the North takes a moment to appreciate her stars. When he had been a younger pegasus, Nash had always enjoyed his night flights the best. Sometimes the moon hovered so close that it seemed like he might just pass it. "Well, tell me something of yourself." He questions the Thane. Perhaps he should say something of himself first. "I was born in Taiga," he tells her and starts to move down the dark pebbled beach. "Which my brother, Yanhua, now leads. And I spend most of my time there." He continues to explain (just in case she were to ever need him and not find him on the Isle), "It's where my children and their mother reside."
He leaves enough space in their conversation for Ciri to speak, with whatever she wished to talk of. Nash has always been a curious horse and the battle-marked mare beside him was very intriguing. How had she come by them?
There was a story there. And as the Freyr peers curiously over at his companion, he wonders if she might reveal some of it.
Hyaline had been an idyllic place to live. The Isle was a drastic change but drastic was exactly what she had needed. Her life in the lake had taken up so much room in her mind and heart that she had almost drowned in it, submerged beneath water that filled up her lungs as she scrambled for the surface. Meeting Gale and Padme had helped ease the loneliness, coming to the Isle and finding purpose had helped even more. She no longer constantly thought of the life she had once had. And while she still thought of Amet, memories of him no longer threatened to pull her completely under.
Nash doesn’t ask her about her scars and instead his gaze lingers on her stars that blink dimly around her. It’s enough to make her warm to the stallion and she listens to him as she falls into step beside him. Her hooves sink slightly amongst rough pebbles and dark sand but she doesn’t mind as her swirling silver gaze looks out at the nearby sea. He speaks of Taiga and a brother, Yanhua, a name she’s never heard before. He also speaks of children and their mother and this brings an old familiar pain but she shoves it away roughly before it can chase away her smile.
“I was born in the Falls, the old lands.” She starts. She tells Nashua about growing up there, about her kind mother Soliel and that she had never known her father. She tells him of her adventures growing up when she finally left and when the world remade itself, of how she learned to fight and traveled for a year or two as a nomad. There is no hesitation when she speaks of how she fell into the Underneath, of the Leshen and the ravens and the Siren in the lake. She tells him how she found out that she came from the stars that night and how she washed up on the lake of Hyaline when the Underneath spit her out.
It is here that she hesitates, for this is also where she had not been able to continue with Gale when he had listened to her story. Both stallions were good listeners but perhaps it’s because she had started this time at the beginning and now feels the need to finish it, to get to the end, that she slowly continues. She tells him of Jah-Lilah and Amet, the ruler of Hyaline at that time. How Jah had also been in the Underneath and helped Amet to cure her from the fever and infection Ciri had gotten from the battle below. She tells him of how she fell in love with gold scaled stallion, how she then met Castile, and how it all stupidly fell apart around them, teenagers who didn't understand the price of love. She tells him of the son she bore only to be whipped away by another portal before she could even give him a name.
Something in her is unleashed and comes spilling out, words and stories that had been held in for far too long. She can’t stop even if she wants to, can’t seem to make the torrential downpour of her life stop falling from her lips, although she makes room to answer any questions that he has or to fill in blanks from spots she might have missed. By the time she is done, after she has told him of the other world and finding her son being raised by Jah-Lilah and seeing Amet again before being whisked back here when that world broke apart, she feels ten times lighter. As if a ton of weighted bricks have suddenly been lifted off her shoulders. And it is with a laugh that she finally turns a rather sheepish look to him, apologies in her swirling starlit eyes.
“I’m so sorry. I haven’t told my story in a long time. Not the full of it anyways, Gale only got the first few chapters.”
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
06-26-2021, 04:01 PM (This post was last modified: 06-26-2021, 04:08 PM by Nashua.)
As Nashua had initially thought, the woman covered in scars and stars certainly has a story to tell.
He walks quietly, and listens as the smoky black starts her story in the Falls. It fascinates him and when he is given a chance, the striped pegasus explains that he had been raised on old stories of places like the Dale and the Falls. (Texas and Believer - once rulers of the Dazzling Falls had been a story that his mother had liked to share). He tells her about the Dalean royalty that his bloodline was supposedly descended from, a son from the line of King Solomon and his Queen, Lavender. He shares with her what it had been like to grow up in Taiga and that his twin has been his constant companion since the time they both could stand.
But what starts pleasantly changes. Some part of him had expected this because the scars that she wears do not come from an easy life so Nashua listens carefully to his Thane as she tells about how she earned some of them. There are mentions of monsters (and some part of him prickles at the mention, because he is the son of one) and his expression darkens at the trials that the dark mare has faced. He has known struggles but what Ciri has faced? It seems nearly unimaginable to Nash and he can only offer his patience now, listening to her recite her story and interjecting only when permitted. And when the problems turn away from monsters to the personal ways that can wretch a soul, there are some things that Nash can share.
Castile, he explains, was a name from his youth and the dragon-shifter had taken up residence in Taiga for a time. His smile returns tentatively, recalling the former King of Loess. It had also been Castile, he explains and his blazed face drifts towards the location of the remaining burn marks on the Isle, that had razed this place about a decade or so ago. And then, he reveals something personal to Ciri who has already shared so much with him. Nashua tells her about his mother being stolen away before he and Yanhua's first birthday (and perhaps giving insight into the close bond he has always shared with his brother) and that they had been brought up through their adolescence by two aunts, a fraternal and a maternal one.
And then he tells her that he considers Leilan the father that he never had.
By the time that their stories are finished, she is looking at him with an apology swimming in her silver eyes and Nashua gently shakes his head. It isn't needed. "No. Thank you," he tells her and looks at the star-guarded mare from over one speckled wing. "For sharing it with me." It was more than he had hoped for but it leaves Nash feeling that their confidence in each other can only benefit the Isle and therefore the North. It's when she mentions his brother, Gale, that the lopsided grin that he shares with the brindled stallion emerges. "That's another brother," he reveals but the warmth in his voice shines through his summer-green eyes.
"Hyaline is one of our friends," he explains. "As well as Tephra to the West and Loess to the South." There is a source of pride in this, because Nashua can never recall a time that the North has made peace with all the other kingdoms.
It is easy to converse with the striped pegasus and as they amble down the shore, they fall into a rhythm of chatter as if they had known each other far longer than just these few minutes on the beach. His story is just as interesting to her and she listens to the tales of old that he recalls. It is nice to wax nostalgia on a time long past that she had forgotten. They swap stories of their bloodlines (hers falling more from Kings of the Tundra with a healthy mix of Chamber and Amazon royalty) from what little she can remember her dam telling her.
He listens quietly to her account of the Underneath and he seems to know the proper times to interject but it is not until they reach those matters of the heart that she becomes the quiet one.
She had always wondered what had happened to Castile. It seems the other dragon that had once snagged her heart had done some wondrous (and terrible) things while she had been gone. She falters in her step as she looks at the burnt wreckage and sinks her hooves a little deeper in the sharp glass as if maybe she could feel some part of the stallion she had once known. It had always been dangerous to love a dragon. She had known that. But part of her had loved him all the same even if it was Amet that she was beholden to. She has lingering questions about the shifter but holds them close for now.
There is understanding in the swirling silver of her gaze as he speaks of the loss of his mother, of being raised by his aunts, and of Leilan being the father he had never had. Jah-Lilah had become a second mother to her as well when her own had disappeared long ago and she easily bonds with this stallion in this shared experience.
When he thanks her for sharing her story and then with a lopsided grin admits that Gale is another brother of his, she can’t help but laugh in pure delight. “I should have figured. He said the exact same thing to me when I finished telling him of the Underneath.” What a stroke of luck, she thinks, that she has come to reside here with her friend’s brother. She tells Nashua briefly of being spit back on the shores of the lake in the darkness and coming across Gale not long after when the light had returned. How Gale was the first friend she had made besides Padme in her return to Beqanna. Her mercury gaze sweeps over the burnt shores again and she can’t help but see Castile’s touch in every grain of sand and every reflective piece of amber glass. How had she missed it before? “Peace is an accomplishment in itself, let alone worldwide.” She says softly, noting his pride and thinking it well placed.
She hesitates only a moment before she meets the bright green of his eyes. Because there is something that is pricking at the back of her head that will bother her until she asks. “Does anyone know where Castile is now? Is he still alive?”
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
06-26-2021, 05:35 PM (This post was last modified: 06-26-2021, 05:37 PM by 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.
It had been strange to fall asleep one day in the lands of old and then awaken in an entirely new one. It had still been Beqanna but… different. Magic was a strange thing that she couldn’t wrap her head around sometimes but she tries to explain to Nashua how she is far from immortal and time had always seemed tricky around her. She knows the terms of both the Brotherhood and the land of Sisters, having once had a mind to join the jungle ranks if she ever grew tired of wandering. Her familial lineage is limited but she tells Nash that most of her ties with those two kingdoms specifically rested on her maternal side. Her mother had rarely spoken of her own dam, all she knew was that she had been brutally murdered well before her time and it was too painful for her mother to speak about. She had learned a bit about her great grandfather Cross, a brooding man with red eyes that had once ruled the Tundra and served many other kingdoms. His stories were legend among his kin, having many rivalries and adventures under his long life including several wars and plenty of love stories sprinkled throughout. Not all the stories had been kind or pleasant about him but he had done enough to be remembered in various ways it seemed. She was unaware that he actually still lived having outsmarted the Afterlife, a secret kept from them all.
As Nash fills her in on yet another brother, she chuckles softly and amusement sparkles in the metallic swirls of her gaze. “How many of you are there?” She teases lightly and wonders what it was like to grow up with such a close knit family. What did it feel like to have a sibling you could confide in? She explains to him how she had always been an only child as far as she knew. There had been mention of her possible sire once, Atrox, but she had never truly explored that option of trying to find him. Once she had been curious but now she didn’t see the point anymore. Family was what she would make, she had decided. It couldn’t be based on blood alone.
He catches her up on other major events that she had missed and other things she had not been aware of and she takes it all in with not many follow up questions. Eventually though it leads back to Castile.
“Fae magic” he explains and despite the hurt she still carries from that time in their young lives (when Castile had turned his head away from her when she had needed him most) she can’t help the pang of pity she feels for the dragon she had once known. Despite what they had gone through she had never wished him ill and she hopes that wherever he is now he has found peace. At the mention of kin in Loess she recalls the massive black dragon that had flown over the meadow, covering her with its large shadow, and she nods her head knowingly in response. It didn’t scare her to think of the scaled beast then and it still doesn’t now, despite knowing the brutal fate that had followed Castile.
She had always had a thing for dragons after all.
“We’ve been chatting all day and I didn’t even tell you why I came to find you today.” She finally says with a bright grin, making it clear that she hadn’t minded their talk at all. Quite the opposite. “Leilan suggested you might need someone to take over night patrols. As I’m at my best beneath a night sky,” A toss of her muzzle behind her to indicate her stars, ”I thought I might offer myself for the job.”
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
07-04-2021, 04:51 PM (This post was last modified: 07-04-2021, 04:52 PM by Nashua.)
The Freyr continues to listen to Ciri as she speaks of the old lands and her experience in the new ones. It is an odd thought, to fall asleep in one place (and another time) and to wake up in another one. She has the memories of an entire life before this one and Nashua can't help but feel a twinge of pride as he thinks that she exudes a Northerner's spirit; they are a resilient lot and the striped pegasus thinks that the onyx mare will do well with them.
"A few," Nash answers back teasingly.
But he confides in the Thane that he has another pair of younger siblings through his mother - twins that reside in Taiga - and then briefly explains his relation to Gale is fraternal. Ciri was raised as an only child, he learns. A daughter of a stallion whose name that he has heard before (because Hyaline is the place that the mother of Noel resides) and his blazed head nods, marveling quietly at the longevity of life in Beqanna.
"And here I thought you just wanted to enjoy my sparkling personality," he banters back to his Thane.
His grin tugs at one side again and the winged horse comes to stop along the dark pebbled beach. He nods, indicating that the Isle would be happy for her help. "It's yours," he tells his companion. The chestnut goes on to explain the patrol routes that he has taken in the past - trails that usually keep the mainland in sight and others that lead to the heart of their tundra home where the other Islanders reside. He does his best to check in with them but with Leilan's absence, that has become increasingly harder for Nashua to do.
Ciri's skills and experience will be an added boon for them this winter.
The fortunes for the North continued to rise and as Nashua glances back to hazy Taiga, his current company makes him optimistic for the first time days that it might actually last.
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