i'm two quarters and a heart down

[Celina]

The moon is a slim crescent in the dark sky, visible only through infrequent breaks in the clouds. The stars are all but hidden behind the thick black remnants of the evening’s storm. With several dozen miniature glowing lights around her to light the path, Celina slips through the woods. She could have done it without the light of her aura, she knows. But she might have tripped and made unnecessary noise. Horses at night are listening, not looking. She moves quickly and the trees are thick enough that she is certain she will get through the land unnoticed. And she does ,breaking onto the granite sand beach with little delay. Her belly rumbles hungrily, and she is soon belly deep in the water. The fireflies overhead stop their random blinking. Instead, they work in concert, a single glowing orbs that darts across the surface of the water. They dart this way and that, movement reminiscent of a minnow in the shallows. It moves ever closer to Celina, the water beneath it seeming to shiver now and then. As though something glides just beneath it, following the little lights. When it is just near enough to touch, Celina strikes. Her jaws open a little too wide, with certainly too many teeth, and she snatches a slippery creature out of the water. It’s an eel, one she makes short work of. She swallows it nearly whole, crunching only a few quick times. She repeats the process twice more, missing her strike at the eel the second time and succeeding the third. This time she brings the eel – the snake fish, as she thinks of it – to the shore. There she can lay it out on the sand, taking careful bites of the flesh rather than swallow it bones and all. So engrossed is she in her salty meal, that she does not hear the sound of another’s approach. celina i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type

@[Nashua]

[Nashua]

NASHUA

The Moon (or lack of it) had been the inspiration for the story tonight.

Nashua can’t quite recall all of it but he knows it went something along the lines of this: in a time long before he was born, the moon vanished. Where it had gone, no horse had known though they trekked across the lands looking for it.

There were more words, more descriptions but his mother had elaborated with images of a bay stallion with a white feather in his mane. An image of a large, pale owl hovering in the branches above him. There had been other images, too. A place where the night sky was infinitely more open than the barricading branches of Taigan redwoods.

What exactly the rest of the story entailed, Nashua couldn’t remember. He had looked above them, searching through the shadowy outlines for whatever part of the sky was offered instead. At some point, his mother had finished the story and had murmured sweet words into their ears as she always did.

And then she was gone.

When it is only the autumn sigh of the wind through the woods and the soft breathing of his sleeping twin, Nashua unfolds his long legs and he goes looking for it. He goes looking for the lost piece of the Moon.

(The moon, the stars are all hidden behind wisps of black clouds from the storms that thundered through earlier. Still, his mind is determined to find it.)

He finds a newly fallen tree, something that has been dead for what he assumes is eons. Leaves have scattered everywhere and dance with melancholy revelry on the crisp breeze. Nash follows a cluster, enthused with the way that they pivot against the darkness and faint light. Ambling and distracted, he barely notices that the mighty trees give way to a lonely beach.

It’s the lights around the figure that distract him even more.

”Woah,” he murmurs as he slowly approaches. So captivated by the glow, he doesn’t think to stop. ”You have stars around you.”

His eyes are up, not down and the winged boy misses her meal altogether. He’d gone looking for the Moon, but as he gazes up, he doesn’t mind finding a few stars instead.

and for every king that died
they would crown another

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@[Celina]

[Celina]

Celina reacts without thinking, taking a protective step over her half-eaten meal. This is her meal; she’ll not be sharing it. Her mouth is parted, her sharp teeth bright with fish blood, but she doesn’t snap at him. She refrains, but it is a near thing. He might be an investment but that doesn’t meant she has to share her eel with him. He doesn’t even look like he could eat it, with those flat little teeth she sees in the firefly light. Celina wrinkles her nose, and carefully draws the eel further under her belly (just in case he makes a lunge for it). He seems rather distracted by her companions, and she pulls them closer to herself. They illuminate the sharp edges of her features, and the iridescence of her stripes glimmer pale-yellow green. “Can you turn down that glowing?” She asks him. “You’re going to be really bad and hide-and-sneak if anyone can just follow the moths to you.” There are two of them, she remembers. Twins, a multiple birth like that of her own siblings. (Or so she has heard, having been unable to pin down Tiercel long enough to squeeze the truth out of him). They are important, even if she doesn’t quite understand how. Unwilling to leave her eel where he might take it, Celina narrows her pale eyes and looks him over. The other one has wings. He might have been a better choice, but Celina will make do with what she has. “I’m going to make you the better brother.” She tells him at last with a satisfied nod. She is all early adolescent confidence, the idea that she might fail (or perhaps should not even attempt) never crosses her mind. “That way, when Dad asks why you’re better than the other one, you can tell him I trained you and he will love me the most.” After telling him this, which she assumes he will agree to without question, the filly remembers that he’d said something about her stars. “And they’re fireflies. They’re not stars. Just bugs that ate those real tiny stars you can see if the sky. When the bugs yawn: that’s when you can see the light they swallowed.” Being without a magnifying glass and with a mischievous older brother, Celina has never though to question this fact, and passes it on confidently to the younger colt. “Do you have other cool things? Can you shoot lasers out of your eyes or turn into a rangakoo?” Again, the confidence, the total lack of doubt that Pteron might have been teasing about the name of the hopping things in his and Momma’s stories of Loess. celina i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type

@[Nashua]

[Nashua]

NASHUA

There is a sharpness in her stance that he doesn’t recognize. Yan never takes such a step with him. And his Mother certainly never does. Lilliana is soft smiles and gentle words. He finds neither of those, turning his youthful gaze up to Celina. Still, there is something about her that is alluring, that is thrilling to a wanderer’s eye. She is something he has never seen before and it sparks his curiosity, making him glow all the brighter.

Distracted, he’s busy studying the fireglow around her striking features.

Nashua shakes his head, feeling an unfamiliar feeling of shame burn the back of his throat. ”No,” he says. ”I just.. do.”

His Mother hasn’t taught him how to stop yet (and now he’ll be sure to ask her.)

It’s the mention of hide and seek that makes him prick his ears, look eagerly up at her. He likes games. The one she mentions is his Father’s favorite. Whatever reluctance had crept along the lines of his face vanishes with eagerness. ”I’m actually pretty good,” he boasts. ”Yan usually sends me a picture before he hides.” It’s their own version of a scavenger hunt - of all the places in this Forest that Yanhua has found and that he shares with Nashua.

Confused at her declaration, his brow furrows. ”Better?” he asks. ”Mama just says we’re different.” Yanhua who is more like her, who has her color and her eyes, who has a mark of his own and her gifts. He’s the one who's different. Nashua pulls his wings in closer, suddenly insecure with his revelation.

Oh, but she says that word. The one that fills his green eyes up and makes him brighten, makes him cast the shadows around them a little longer.

”It’ll make him happy?” the boy asks, remembering the shapeshifter and the way that he had brightened this wood. Whatever doubt had been preying upon Nashua vanishes as he realizes, ”Your my sister?”

It’s something he hasn’t thought about. It has been him and his mother and Yanhua for the first few short months of his life. There has been nobody else and suddenly, when he is told to stay put, Taiga is opening up to him an assortment of ways. ”I didn’t know bugs could eat the stars,” he blurts out but he believes her. Obviously, it’s true because she has the physical proof of it flickering about her.

It’s only her next demand that makes him hesitate, loosening his auburn wings so the edges of them glint off her aura. ”These,” he offers. ”I can’t fly yet. But Dad said he would teach me.” His green eyes look through the shadows and peer down at her pale ones before he glances abruptly up again, ”Like you!”

Intrigued he asks, ”Can you do that? With the lasers and rakeroos?”

and for every king that died
they would crown another

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@[Celina]

[Celina]

Celina gives him a little time (she knows she looks pretty cool), but after a while she is glad for the end of their pause and the answer to her question. His admission that he can’t turn off the glow brings thoughtful twist to her scaled lips, but all she says is: “That’s okay. You will just have to work on it. That can be your homework for next time we meet up.” “Yeah, different.” She tells him. “But you can use your kind of different to be a better kind of different.” The manner with which she speak is unquestionably confident, as is her nod when he asks her to confirm that doing so will make Dad happy. Of course it will, she thinks, he will be glad that she has taken in the scut work of teaching Nashua the basics. The word ‘sister’ brings a curious brightness to her eyes. Celina is accustomed to having brothers (they are all she has known), but she’s not applied the word to Nashua or Yanhua yet. Celina knows the basics of the birds and the bees, and while she’d not put the pieces together, she does now with an easy nod. Yes, his sister, the nod says. While Celina hasn’t yet formed an opinion of Nash’s chestnut mother, it does only make sense that after her own mother had betrayed them all, he would need someone else with which to make the “very best children”. Celina is one such “very best”, and given the amount of time that Dad spends watching these two, it only makes sense that Nash and his twin are as well. Not the twin for long though, Celina thinks proudly not with Nashua under her tutelage. Dad’s going to teach him to fly, the colt says, and Celina’s seafoam eyes narrow for a moment. Is he trying to imply Dad likes him more than he likes Celina because he’s going to teach him? Is he trying to one-up her so early? No, she reminds herself. No, Dad would have taught her if he’d been able. It doesn’t make Nash better, just different. Dad had been busy ‘shedding unnecessary burdens’ when Celina had learned to fly, which she imagines to be like the coils of a snake’s shed, if the reptiles were to shuck off a skin made of morality and other weakness. No, she reminds herself, she is older and bigger and obviously better still. Dad would probably like him less with scars across his cute face, Celina thinks, tucking the idea in the back of her mind in case she might need it later.  She doesn’t need it now though, content in her position as older sister and tutor. “No,” she tells him. “But I can do other stuff. Cool stuff.” Clearly about the demonstrate, the white youth shakes away the fireflies from where they’ve clustered in her dark mane. She stretches out on foreleg, and its white length glows soft yellow green. Then her teeth leave a long gash across the top of her knee, one quick bite that exposes muscle and bone. Though Celina does hiss in pain, the demonstration was remarkable both in the strength of her bite and then the way the wound heals itself over, the work of weeks compressed into the space of a few breaths. “Are you sure you can’t do that, though?” She asks, gesturing to the healed knee that once more bears her weight. “I thought all of us can. Pteron can do it, anyway. Even Elio can do it. I could bite you, maybe, see if it works?” The potential side effects of him not being able to heal are unimportant, of course. They all must make sacrifices in their work towards making Dad proud. Nashua is still pretty small, but its not too early to learn. celina i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type

@[Nashua]

[Nashua]

NASHUA

The soft light smooths the pale edges of his older sister (a word he is still getting acquainted with in his mind, like he is with her). An earnest nod is what he gives @[Celina], an agreement between the siblings that yes, he will learn. He will find a way to control it. At the very least, he’d like to dim enough to admire the green-and-yellow bugs that dance around his pale companion.

Nash steals a moment to admire them yet again, his mind still trying to imagine how far her stars- her bugs. For a moment, he’s wondering if perhaps they followed her to the sky and that is how they swallowed them.

Perhaps once his own hooves leave the ground, he might try to swallow the stars too. (But wouldn’t that make him glow more?)

It might be a silly question to ask because there is something in the back of his mind that is holding him back. There is something that almost prevents him from asking, ”So it's better then, to be different?” He’s drawing out the words, recalling all those times that he’s watched his mother and Yanhua share something that he doesn’t understand. He’s been on the receiving end of their gift before but he does have an early memory of trying to do the same thing, trying to paint a picture for Yanhua.

He remembers the excitement dwindling in his blue eyes and the frustration mounting behind his own that whatever he was trying to send was never seen, never felt.

Perhaps then what he doesn’t share with Yan is something he might share with her. Sister. It’s a word, much like the flickering aura around her, that holds some Magic with Nash.

She doesn’t need to shoot lasers from her eyes. And whatever a rakeroo (he imagines large squirrels swimming through the ocean, foxes painted purple that live in trees) is, Celina is infinitely better than any of those things.

The flaxen colt doesn’t quite comprehend what she’s doing, when she stretches out a pale foreleg. It’s the startling appearance of vivid red streaking running from her knee, the ghostly shadow of bone and muscle peeking through the wound. He can smell the blood, the brightness of it taints the cool evening breeze. The low hiss confirms what she’s done.

Nashua holds a breath, watching the laceration weave itself closed.

He gives an exuberant shake of his head, the white of his blaze catching the radiance from Celina’s fireflies. (Can she see how wide his eyes have gone?)

The pegasus colt has fallen plenty of times from attempts at practicing flight and while he does get a little stronger as the seasons march on, he hasn’t yet put together that his scabs and scars are gone the following morning. It’s been that way for as long as he’s known, anyways. It never occurred to him that others might not heal that way - that faster or slower might make much of a difference.

His thoughts never even go that far because Celina has given him something else to think about. She is saying names, he realizes. Suddenly, it’s not just a sister. There’s an us, and Nashua comes closer. ”Elio?” he pipes up, ”You know Fire Wing?”

She thought they all could and much like that day with Yanhua, he feels it now - a fear that he might not belong. He could find out, though. He could belong with them.

Sucking in a breath, he raises a white leg in offering. ”My turn.”

and for every king that died
they would crown another

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[Celina]

“Um depends on what kinda different.” she tells him. “There’s, like, good different like teeth and fire and stuff. And then there’s boring different. Stuff like having some shiny hair or flowers or whatever.” (they both have shiny hair, but its okay for them because they are special in other ways) “And then there’s bad different. Stuff that means you’re probably cheating, like reading minds and faking feelings and stuff like that in your brain, you know? You’re the good kinda different.” She pauses, narrows her eyes, and then nods decisively as if cementing her proclamation. ”I can tell because I’m really smart, and you can trust me because I’m your big sister.” As if to prove this, Celina reaches forward and taps him gently on the shoulder with her chin, a brief bit of affection. She has wanted to touch them the moment she’d first laid eyes on them in the spring. Even now, the desire to do so remains ever just below the conscious level. He just looked so soft. He is so small and she wants to hug him against her and feel his soft hair, and perhaps squeeze him just tightly enough that he might pop. He is the very best toy she has ever had though, and Dad would not be happy if she broke him beyond repair. Be gentle, she reminds herself. What she does not tell him, is that she suspects that perhaps she should not be playing with him at all. Dad had sounded rather stern on the subject, and Celina dared not push him. She’d wanted to play with the boys when they were small like fawns, but she “didn’t know how to mind her teeth” and might have scared them away. So instead she has watched, careful and quiet, biding her time like a proper predator. Now, with Dad out of the forest (she’d watched him go with her very own eyes, creeping north) and Nashua alone, the opportunity was finally at hand. He doesn’t look that fragile, Celina decides. She’d been his age when she started learning to fly, and she’d survived. (Celina does not think Nashua would enjoy the way that Celina had learned to fly, or the method used to teach her. No one had enjoyed that way really, and the fury of her mother upon discovery has made it so Celina hasn’t even dared mentioned it to her father. She pointedly avoids looking toward the cliffs). Still, old enough. Dad won’t be that mad. And if he is she can blame: ”Elio?” That is not what she had intended to say, but the other name falls from her lips as she repeats back the name of her brother. “You know Elio? How? Where did you meet him?” The questions are rapid and she bites down on several more. Celina’s job was to watch for her family. Has she failed? Had Elio managed to sneak into Taiga while she was busy elsewhere? She is less worried for what Elio might have done or said to the obviously unharmed Nashua, and more about what the consequences of this mistake might be. Distracted, she forgets to fully concentrate on what she is doing. Celina reacts to the golden striped leg thrust in front of her not much differently than she did the eel, snaking her head down and clamping it tightly in her jaws. At the taste of his blood against her teeth she drops it immediately. Celina does not like the taste of horseflesh, having once likened it to swamp muck but dried out and dipped in more muck. She’d not meant to bite him so hard, and so she peers intently down at the marks her teeth have left on him, holding her breath with nervous anticipation. celina i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type

@[Nashua]

[Nashua]

NASHUA

Can she feel his eagerness burning through the darkness?

He listens and he stores this away - that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ types of different. His face falls a little because he doesn’t have her teeth - he doesn’t have those fearsome things haloed from her fireflies. He certainly doesn’t fire either. He just… glows. A voice in the back of mind reminds him that he has his wings. That one day he’ll fly. Celina has wings too and so Nashua tacks that on to her list of ‘good’ different.

The bad different?

It only makes him narrow his eyes. He gazes up at before shaking his head, "Nope.” The flaxen boy says, "I don’t think I can read your mind.” There had been nothing in his head except himself (and he thinks that’s probably enough).

He’s the good different though and Nashua throws her an earnest, lopsided grin.

She reaches out to touch him with her chin and he likes the feeling her touch gives - a closeness he doesn’t often experience outside his own family. Of course he feels this way - she is family. Celina is his older sister and he pulls his wings tighter against himself as he folds his smaller chestnut body into her. She’s warm and smells like running water.

When she pulls back, Nashua frowns slightly. Has he done something wrong?

"Fire Wing was here,” he tells her. "He likes Taiga,” remembering what the dunalino had told him. He had lived here too, once. Just like Nash.

The young pegasus is still a little uncertain but the boy adds, "He gave me a feather.”

When she bites down on his leg, he isn’t ready for it. Nashua had been looking up at her, studying her green eyes.

The pain sears. "Aughhhh,” and then he bites it back. He forces down all the other things he wants to say and closes his eyes. He refuses to cry. Celina had not cried and neither will he.

He can smell the blood and it makes his nostrils flare and when he finally does look down, the damage inflicted is not as bad as he feared. His wounds don’t weave together with the ease of his elder sister’s but something happens - the glow around his gold stripes and white socks brighten and while it is not a matter of breaths (it feels like hours to Nashua), the wound starts to tentatively heal.

Beaming (and glowing a little brighter himself), the boy grins up to her. "I did okay, @[Celina]?” He asks, "I’m still a good different, like you?”

and for every king that died
they would crown another

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[Celina]

“Good to know,” she tells him with a brief nod. “But if you ever do and don’t tell me, then I’ll probably have to kill you. That would make me sad, I think.” The last is said almost pensively as she looks down at the copper colored colt. When he leans into her embrace, she shifts her wings forward, enclosing him in a hug. He reminds her of Elio, back when Elio had been small and less annoying. Dad says that Mom is the reason that Elio ended up the way he is, so Celina determines that she will keep this little one away from her mother as well. Should she keep him from his own mother? No, she decides, he still needs his mother to teach him how not to glow. That’s not something Celina can do. Once she does though, once Nashua can play a better game of hide-and-sneak in the darkness, then Celina can take him away. She’ll take him to one of the caves in Nerine, or maybe in the Hyaline mountains. She’ll train him to be the very best (except for her, of course), and Dad will love her the very best because of it. The reminder of Elio makes her grit her teeth. He is her biggest – only? – rival, and it seems he is already encroaching on her brother.  “You shouldn’t trust him.” Celina tells Nashua. “He abandoned Dad and me. He left us to go to Loess.” The rest of the reasoning is forgotten in the flash of feeth. Afterward, as she watches the glow and the slowly knitting flesh, she nods in satisfaction. With little ado, she plucks a pair of feathers from her own wing – one pearly white, the other as dark as her navy hair – and tucks them into the boy’s blonde mane. At the edge of her vision, the bits of seaglass catch the light of her fireflies. Dad had woven them into her mane with a many-fingered hand, and it feels fitting to give Nashua his own décor. “Yeah, Lil Buddy,” she says, nudging the shoulder of his healing leg affectionately, “You’re definitely the good kind of different.” celina i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type

@[Nashua]

[Nashua]

NASHUA

Nashua frowns slightly, tilting his head upwards towards his older sister. ”That would make me sad too,” he adds. He had gone looking for the Moon tonight and had found @[Celina] instead. He’s enjoyed this time with her. If she killed him (or maybe her bugs would swallow him whole if they ever flew together?), he thinks that it would make him sad.

It seems a much harder way to spend time together.

"Elio,” he says slowly, ”can’t be trusted.”

Nash frowns at that. The words don’t feel quite right. There had been nothing about his exploring companion that had felt wrong. Like his older sister, the flaxen pegasus had spent an afternoon with him and had enjoyed that the traveler was willing to spare him. Visitors to the Taiga were rare and his adventures outside the Taiga were becoming far more regulated.

"What if he came back?” The colt asks innocently. Fire Wing had said he liked Taiga. He had promised to come back and visit. If he came back, could that rectify the wrong of leaving?

While the mentioned leg heals and glows, while Celina flickers in her firefly aura, his green eyes widen and then he smiles. It’s full of excitement and he can hardly keep himself still while she places the feathers in his creamy mane. (He can see something glinting her own pale mane and edges closer before becoming enraptured with the two feathers she put there.)

He moves his shoulder closer to her while he angles his head, hoping to the striking things better in her light. It’s still hard to see against the shadows but Nash can make them out distinctly - a white feather, a proud navy one.

When he's satisfied with what he’s seen, Nash leans into her again. 

Like you, he thinks.

and for every king that died
they would crown another

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augh <3