[mature] it is always you I find at the end of this tunnel; Nashua

[Noel]

She leans in to the soft press of his lips, reveling in the impossible perfection of the moment. Once, not so very long ago, she had never imagined something like this could exist. Had never imagined she might be the one to find it. She had been dandelion fluff in the wind then, never quite able to stay in one place. Always wandering, always wondering what it is about her that had made her feel so untethered.

She realizes now it had not been lost she felt so much as lonely. She had never truly felt she belonged, never truly been wanted before. It had been so easy to distrust it at first, but Nashua makes her want to believe. Perhaps her wings could never be clipped, but she had finally found a place she wished to return to every time she left.

Noel has never known love, not really. But with the pegasus by her side, she felt for the first time that maybe she could.

An unsteady breath escapes her lips as her eyes slide closed to better embrace the moment unfurling between them. To better give herself over to it, truly. To better feel the way his breath grows short and his voice grows rough with need. A bubble of pure satisfaction swells inside her chest at knowing she is the reason why.

With a small and secretive smile beginning to curve her lips, she curls into his chest, his lips brushing the delicate shell of her ear before she tilts her head beneath his neck and presses her own lips almost greedily to his shoulder.

“You,” she whispers, the simple, single syllable holding everything she desires. It isn’t that long ago she could never have imagined admitting such a thing. Now, it feels absolutely perfect.

- noel

Ok, well I think this officially just became MATURE lmao

@[Nashua]

[Nashua]

(and it's harder than you think)
telling dreams from one another

Nashua has imagined many things but he never imagined this.

He imagined unfurling those wide wings of his and taking to the sky, soaring to heights that others wouldn't dare, finding horizons that were waiting to be found. Nash had wanted adventure and thrill and adrenaline; he wanted the wind tangling his flaxen mane and he wanted the world below him. It's another existence (as Noel knows) in the sky.

And as a youth, that was all Nash had wanted.

But the pegasus outgrew those dreams. They changed into something broader and yet focused at the same time (and Nash always thinks of something his Aunt Elena once told him, that a horse can hold a duty to a kingdom and their family but only one ever helps shoulder the burdens of the other). The wanderer developed an ambition underneath the tutelage of the Northern king and after the destruction his father wrought (so many wrongs that Nashua wishes he could right), the striped stallion imagined helping the Isle rebuild, and then why should it stop there? Why shouldn't it expand to Nerine, to Taiga? He had thought if a kingdom was family, why couldn't a kingdom help shoulder the burdens of blood and kin?

What Nash has never dreamt of was that part of the family would be his - a lover of his own and their children; what he had never imagined was Noel.

"Do you know what I thought the first time I saw you?" he murmurs against the warmth of her pale pelt. His lips trace lightly over the top of her slender neck. He laughs briefly, remembering the day that he had encountered her on the ground against all the gray and drab granite of Nerine. "I thought you looked all wrong," he says, that voice deepening as his mouth works down her spine and moves past her withers. The look she had given him - an expression that lingered somewhere between audacity and perplexed - had made him almost laugh then and it makes him do so now as he stops moving ever so slowly down her spine.

"I thought you looked like a piece of the sky," he tells her, not revealing the part of his soul thought she looked like heaven. Those white wings catching the light, the way that it had illuminated all around her like she was some other-worldly creature. "And that it was a shame you were stuck on the ground with me." There had been nothing quite as bright as @[Noel] that day, and even now. Nobody that could light him up quite like she did.

Someday, Nashua might be a braver soul. He might be able to tell her how he feels. He might be able to put into words the way that she simultaneously grounds his soul and yet makes him feel like he is soaring towards the sun. For now, his words yield to actions. The chestnut succumbs to nature and the season, hoping that this way he reveres her is heard. 

NASHUA

[Noel]

She had never been a dreamer. Even when she was young her head had never been filled with impossible hopes or delighted whims or wild imaginings of the future. Her mind had been grounded in a way her body never had. Perhaps the very juxtaposition that kept her from finding what she was looking for.

Until now, though she hardly dares believe it.

Though she cannot quite fathom the weight of an entire kingdom upon his shoulders, she can see the way it bears down on him all the same. She may not have been suckled on dreams and hopes as a child, but now, a grown woman, she finds herself with a new and wholly unexpected dream. She is not built to withstand the weight of a whole nation’s expectations, but she could bear the weight of one man.

As she presses closer, her lips seeking the warmth of his skin, she stills when he speaks.His words catch her off guard, causing her dark eyes to lift to his with sudden uncertainty, a faint frown tugging at her lips. She cannot quite imagine the way he had seen her. She feels much too solid and real, her hooves planted firmly on the dark loam of the Taiga. She certainly does not feel like the sky - so distant and cold - here as she is, warmed by his embrace.

So she leans in, impossibly close, as though they might be able to share the same skin if only she moved close enough. Her mouth finds his neck again, words soft and muffled against him. “I have never felt stuck when I’m with you.”

And it is the truth. He never tried to tether her here, and in so many ways, it is what kept her coming back. The bone-deep knowledge that the choice is hers - that it had always been hers. And she would keep choosing him, for as long as he let her make the choice.

Once again, in this moment of shared heat, she chooses him, giving herself completely over to him in the most visceral of ways.

- noel

@[Nashua]