“blood in the cut”

[Nashua]

NASHUA

The boy is a charming one.

He is still looking up to his mother whose face is losing a battle with moonlight and starshine; it makes her look so painfully young, so unsure. For a moment, he forgets the pair across from him. Nashua has never seen her look that way before.

His downy wings reach out, one grazing slightly above her copper knee. His head expectantly tilts, asking a question that his mouth doesn’t say. Mama?

An ear flicks distractedly back to the painted woman before he looks back to the pair. "I got lost,” the flaxen child admits. His mother looks down at him and Nash already knows her brow is arching, already knows the look he is being given (even if he can’t see its entirety against the darkness.) It’s the same one he is given for not staying where he is told to. For being too boisterous with Fechin and Brienna, for pretending (only for a game!) that his Aunt Neverwhere was a grizzly bear.

(It feels like Yan never gets this look.)

The stallion who lingers behind the other mare speaks and that causes Nashua to contemplate something, not realizing the question poised is rhetorical. "You’ve heard of it?” he asks, peering past the mare and trying to better make out the stag who rests his head so easily on her back, the teal of his eyes sparking in the dark. Stallions in the North are a rare commodity; it's hard to blame the child for being so curious. 

Growing excited and his earlier concern fading, he beams enthusiastically back up to his mother again. "They’re going North too!” he exclaims with a toss of his head. "Have you been to Taiga?” he asks, glancing back to the two-toned mare. "The trees are so tall that even the Gods couldn’t have made them taller.” He angles his body, already impatient to be on his way. "Mama says-,” and then he is cut off by a light press on his chestnut hindquarters (his mother never bites).

Hesitantly, the blue-eyed mare addresses the pair. "As you’ve probably guessed,” she says wryly lifting her slender head, "this is Nashua.” She has said his name enough times now - her bold boy who has shown no fear of the night, of the unknown. "And I’m Lilliana. Of the Taiga.” Nash presses his warm body against her chest, looking between her and the watching pair. "What do they call you?” He eagerly asks, lacking all of his mother’s eloquence. 

At least he remembered to ask.

and for every king that died
they would crown another

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@[kota]