[private] you'll wish for time to turn back around

[Nashua]

stars when you shine, you know how i feel
oh freedom is mine

Did you know your Uncle Soren has green eyes like you? his Aunt Elena had once asked him.

He remembers bristling with irritation because it was another mention of the family that Nashua never knew. His mother had told him often enough of the cousins that he had, of his grandparents and his aunts and uncles who had have loved him and Yanhua if they knew them. Even as a young colt, he knew his mother had told them that in an attempt to comfort them. Their family had been small - back before Wolfbane emerged and Lilliana had been stolen to Pangea - and his mother had used every chance to remind her boys that families in Beqanna were like its inhabitants. Horses were born striped and spotted, with wings and horns, with stars and runes, with every color and power imaginable that the mind could conjure.

No two horses were alike, just as no two families were.

And that had been the reasoning when Celina and Elio had arrived into his life: no two families were alike and if there was a family somewhere out there that he might have had, why not love this one? Why not love Celina for her sharp teeth and her glowing stars and her idolization of a father that Nash had wanted to love as well? Why not love Elio with his bright red stripes and dashing golden coat, who looked like the wildest part of a sunset and who Nash had thought looked like the bravest part of a blazing dawn? This was a family that was here and even if it was different, this is the only family that Nash has ever known.

This is the only one he will ever know.

His handsome smile falters briefly when @[elio] admits to not having been well. How could he be? It makes him wonder about Gale and the other siblings that their navy-brindled had mentioned. Pteron? Eyas? Marni? Tiercel? They are just names to Nashua and yet he wonders about them as he gazes upon Elio. How did they fare upon learning about the end of the Curse and the loss of Lepis?

Nash can't offer any comfort to them. At least not right now (and part of him wonders what they think of their half-brother before he pushes the thought away completely). He reaches out to the brother that he can comfort, the one that he feels the most comfortable at the moment (even though Yan will always be the better half of him).

"You should come with me sometime," Nashua offers. "You lead and I'll follow." The thought - the scene that imagines - is a tender one. Elio's fire-red wings glinting in the sun while Nash attempted to keep pace with his older brother, perhaps the two of them even taking a moment to show off their aerial abilities with barrel rolls and nosedives. But that has never been Elio; and what Nashua imagines is perhaps a life they might have shared if there had been no Curse, if Celina hadn't died. It reflects an innocence that burned away that day in Loess, away with Wolfbane and Lepis and so many other lost dreams.

"You're going to be an Uncle," the younger pegasus announces with a proud grin, and then it's Nashua who looks away. He attempts to clear his throat (and his worries) before looking back to Elio. Nash tells him about Noel, about how he had talked her into a mad-dash flight one day last autumn and how they found each other again after the Alliance. There are some things that feel like Fate and Nash has never fought that.

Nashua has been fortunate to have Leilan. But his impending fatherhood makes him think of the man that sired him and it leaves Nash riddled with doubts that he can't find the answers for. Lifting his gaze to his brother (and not knowing about Lannister), Nashua asks: "Think I'll make an okay dad?"

NASHUA

html by castlegraphics; art by MirrorLands

i wrote this after some wine so i apologize if this makes 0 sense, is all over the place and that it time jumps