[private] of the shackles and the dream

[Nashua]

NASHUA

"I’ll be back,” Nashua passively murmurs one spring morning to his twin brother.

It had become more of a habit with the chestnut yearling of late, of telling Yan, his Aunt Elaina or Brazen, his Celina - whoever happened to be there - that he was leaving. As the time passed that his mother hadn’t returned to Taiga, it became important to Nashua that his family knew he was staying. That if he went missing too, it wasn’t on purpose. 

With each passing day, it became more important that his family knew he intended on coming back. 

The fog had rolled in heavy with the dawn and it clung to his wings, the damp and his scent intermingling into a smell that would forever remind Nash of his childhood. He had wanted the skies - and some part of him still does, still longs for the openness of them - but that dream has been overridden by a creeping fear that keeps him grounded to the northern forest. (Nash doesn’t tell his twin that someday he worries that Yan will become something so intangible that he’d never find him again. Nash doesn’t tell Celina the real reasons he follows her when she prowls the outskirts of the Redwoods or why he attempts to find her the best fishing spots along the Taigan coastline. Even his aunts (and how fortunate is he to have two of both bloods?) don’t feel permanent to the winged boy. 

And that is a funny feeling - especially to a child - to feel ephemeral in a place that feels as ancient and solid as Taiga does. 

The pegasus yearling slips around the new growth of a primordial fern and when the wind blows past him just right, Nash lifts his head to catch a familiar scent coming from the shore. Turning away from the trail that he had been following, it is easy to spy Elio against looming crags that guard the beaches. The boy feels a flood of relief crash against his chest as comes alongside the golden stallion. "Fire Wing,” Nash whispers, letting the edges of his auburn wings brush against the vibrant red of the older pegasus. 

He casts his uncertain green eyes out to the ocean, "I keep feeling like…  I’m afraid, @[elio]. I’m afraid I’ll blink and somebody else will be gone.”

Nash’s stomach is in knots but as he glances to the striped pegasus, he isn’t afraid to quietly admit: "I’m glad you’re here.”

and for every king that died
they would crown another

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[elio]

elio

some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

Time heals the physical remains of Elio's encounter with his estranged family, but it only deepens the rot of the emotional wounds. A sore jaw and occasional stuttering is all that he has left to deal with his body's pain.

Lio's mind, though - that is stuck in the anxiety loop of the memory of the second his father snapped his jaw.

His thoughts are sticky and weighed down by the dark sludge of muddy heartbreak and fear. He wrestles in it: the filth, a repulsive mudpit filled with trauma and regret. When Elio sees his reflection, it's easy to imagine his sleek golden fur is matted by blood and natured.

It's easy to imagine he is a victim and a monster, because it's easier than facing reality.

Wolfbane will kill me. Celina will kill me.

A pause - that stutter that usually trips up his tongue now skips in his mind, then -

Wolfbane will kill me. Celina will kill me.

His jaw breaks again. Elio cries out again. Blood spills again.

Fire Wing.

Lio snaps his neck around, startled gray eyes settling on the adolescent figure of Nashua. The crash of the ocean is now more than a faded ringing in his ears. His breath hitches with the overwhelmingness of it all.

But that instinct to protect all of those in his father's path wins, and the pegasus is able to focus enough to think more about Nash's traumatized than his own.

"I will do my best to always be here when you need me," Elio quietly promises, feeling his heart squeeze. He knows that the coming months will be spent grappling with the curse and his own pain, but he cannot stop himself from promising. "I'm lucky to be here, Nash," he murmurs as an afterthought, meeting the boy's gaze for only a beat before turning back to the sea.

"Taiga feels different, these days."

@[Nashua] sorry for the wait D:

[Nashua]

Time is tearing his family apart.

It’s plucking them out like it has been shedding the last of his fledgling feathers. First, his mother. Then Celina becomes another transition in his young life, a changing of another season (like spring to summer) as his sister becomes harder and harder to find. And his father? Other than a few scattered memories, his sire is (thankfully) just one more fissure in his young life.

Nashua tries not to focus on the emptiness; it simply festers there and the copper pegasus always worries that his brother might pick up on it. That he might somehow poison his brother with his feelings.

He doesn’t know how badly he needs to see this one until his green eyes rest on @[elio]. He hadn’t realized how much he had worried for the sunset-colored stallion. He shouldn’t, the young pegasus innocently thinks. He shouldn’t because Elio has always been brave and Nash is still young enough to believe his older brother is untouchable, invincible.

Elio’s grey eyes - like a brewing summer storm -  settle on him and when they do, some of Nashua’s anxieties abate. His brother is making promises and Nash is still young enough to believe that Elio will be here when he needs him. (It doesn’t occur to him that there might come a day that he won’t; or worse, that something could happen to him and Elio wouldn’t be anywhere at all.)

(Or maybe Nash does know these things. It’s just easier to believe in this - in them - than to reflect on splintering souls instead of crashing waves.)

The edges of his dark feathers linger by the vibrant red of Lio as it catches sunlight and the adolescent sighs, wishing that he didn’t feel the weight (heaviness) of his brother’s words. Wishing that he could do something to lighten them and feeling all the more frustrated with himself for not knowing how. "Was it very different before... ?” Nashua wonders aloud, remembering that Elio had lived in the Taiga before he had been born.

"I think Yan can feel the forest,” he admits, remembering what Celina had said about Good and Bad Magic. He was different from his dam and brother; whatever they felt was something entirely their own. It wasn't something he shared with them. "It makes me feel like there is something wrong with me because I-,” the yearling cuts himself off, trying to seal away all those frustrations swirling and roiling in his chest like the sea before them.

Snorting softly, he keeps looking out. "I feel you, Fire Wing. Like I do Yanhua."

ooc - always worth the wait!

[elio]

elio

some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

"Hmm," the golden man hums to himself, settling his gray gaze on the ominous ocean before him, then adding, "The people were different." He ponders Nash's words, getting stuck on the little nuances, the need, the honesty. He finds he must remain silent for a while to really comprehend his brother's meaning. In that time, his eyes close. He almost looks peaceful.

"There's nothing wrong with you, Little Feather," Elio states slowly, quirking his lips up at the nickname. The semi-smile slips its hold quickly, though, for the striped man can sense how serious their relationship has and will become.

They are no longer simple tree-dwellers, hopeful and surprised. Now, united by a confusion neither can seem to describe, the brothers settle into a discomfort. It weighs painfully on the stallion's shoulders, and for the first time since he was a boy, Elio loses control of his magic. The bewilderment and love come pouring out of him, ruthless like the rush of a burst dam.

"I'm so sorry," Lio says after a two-second pause, his emotions once again tucked inside him.

"What do you mean? You can feel me?"

@[Nashua]

[Nashua]

It's easy to fall into a lull with Elio when he looks like that.

It's easy to find peace in a moment when Nashua has felt like there is a storm brewing on the horizon, even if he can't see it. Even if he only feels it from time to time. A stirring in the air, an undercurrent in the breeze that charges it. That tells Nash things are going to change again and he needs to be prepared.

But for what?

His green eyes are looking out at the autumn sea, capping with white as the waves break towards Taiga's rocky shore. Nashua's nostrils flare with the gust of wind that brings an incoming tide of salt and brine with it. The adolescent pegasus stares out past the rocky crags from this corner of their world and towards the horizon. His wings ruffle with the wind and something in the young stallion can't quite seem to settle. His young mind is filling with thoughts of the Icicle Isle and Nerine, of how he is soon going to be of an age where he might be useful to Taiga.

Yanhua had mentioned the idea of wanting to do more for the Redwoods now that they were leaving their foalhood behind them and it had stuck with Nashua. He wanted to do more, too. But how? How when their only role so far has only been Wards of the Woods?

Elio tells him that there is nothing wrong with and Nash finds himself leaning into his brother's words. They provide steadiness for the younger striped pegasus and he wants (so badly) to carve a truth from them; something resilient like the impressive Redwoods that stand guard behind him. Another burst of air blows past the pair but it carries something more than the chilling bite of fall. There is something more on the wind besides frost, something else that lingers between the glass-like layers of cold and sun.

Nashua's lean sides heave with the bewilderment that Elio projected and something in his chest stirred with the love. It makes his eyes widen and the yearling side-stepped from his older brother. "L-like that," stammers the younger pegasus. "But n-not." When he glances up to Fire Wing, he is struggling to explain himself. How does he describe what just happened? He's never been the recipient of such projected magic and as his brother tucks back it back within himself - as neatly as he might one his vibrant red feathers - Nash stands, astonished.

"Like family," the boy says, finally able to control the tremor in his tenor voice. "Brothers," Nash says again, admitting the word out loud. There is a part of him that thinks his mother wouldn't approve of this but she is no longer here to ask. Hasn't been here for almost a year.

And @[elio] is.

"Did you know?"

nashua

and the days you defend will turn to gold

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