be mine, be mine, be mine

[Benjamen]

I shine only with the light you give me

My funeral was beautiful.

That I remember.

I was buried beneath not dirt, not ash—but flowers.

The whole kingdom came.

Befitting for a prince.

“He was a good boy.”
A flower dropped.

“A parent should never outlive a child.”
A flower dropped.

“Little James, it isn’t right.”
A flower dropped.

“I cannot imagine.”
A flower dropped.

And then silence—that was my mother.
A flower dropped—save for a single petal—that she pressed to her lips and buried inside her hair.

My great-great grandmother drowned when the valley was flooded. (Two by water, one by ice, or does that make it three by water?) My mother says they hear music when they drown. My dad says they see the night sky lit with every shed-star that has ever lived. But they do not know.

I do.

But I’m not telling.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

You gotta catch me first!

Like his mother before him, James moves across the land like a flame, following the river. (“Burn bright, James, like your grandpa. You look like him, you know?”) He is young, so young. Not an orphan if only because his parents are not dead. But they don’t know he’s alive. He knows, and he remembers. Remembers it all. Thrashing limbs, limp muscles, being lift from the water far too late, far too late, warm lips against cold cheeks, tears, pleading.

He knows and he remembers the before too, before the water. The laughter, the chase, the flowers, the snuggles, the stories. The before was where he wants to be, what he wants to hold onto. It feels a little less like two halves, and a little more like Peter Pan and his shadow. Befitting, for the little boy who hasn’t grown up. If only because he never had the chance too, searching for Neverland beneath an ocean’s wave. Inhaling water instead of pixie dust. There were still happy thoughts though, at the end of it all.

His mother.
His dad.
His sister.
His godfather.
His friends.

And there are happy thoughts now—a cousin he has never met before, standing right before him. “Wings of the falcon you watched fly as you stood proud beside your father. “Excuse me,” those big blue eyes stare up at the golden stallion. “Are you Nashua?”



Benjamen; my feet knew the path, we walked in the dark, in the dark
never gave a single thought to where it might lead

image by Gary Bendig
@[Nashua]

[Nashua]

They never held a funeral for his mother.

It had been something else she never talked about - the traditions of Guardians gone to the next life. All Nashua remembers from those childhood stories had been remembrances of a willow grove. "What better place to hear them?" she had once told him, when Nash had asked why there had been ancient Willows instead of towering Sequoias. Liliana had talked about the sound they made as they rustled through the branches, that when branches with the weeping leaves parted just so, you knew a soul passing through. You knew someone you loved was close.

There are no Willow trees in Taiga. And even if he wished there was, the striped stallion can't bring himself to ask Borderline or Memorie to grow them. Some things seem better to keep separate.

Because the Willows in Paraiso seem as sacred as the Redwoods are to Taiga.

There had been no funeral for Lilliana and perhaps it had been better that way. Like the way she became something else that Yanhua couldn't talk about, the way that Leilan's portals remained open seasons after his Midsummer Festival. He could join them in pretending that there was a chance that she was coming back. But he still wondered sometimes, what she would have wanted.

So, in the rare quiet of a morning where it is only he and Bolder heading towards Hyaline for another lesson with Mazikeen, he finds himself whispering to the wind. He does it, sometimes, when it changes direction. Nash likes to think that if he murmurs it enough, there might be a breeze that could get a message to her, wherever she was.

"Bolder," he cuts out as his yearling son tries on a new color. Spring has brought vibrant shades and with it, so many different hues to try on. The young pegasus hasn't quite learned that this skill is something that turns Nashua's blood cold, that sinks something to the very pit of his soul. Bolder becomes the epitome of Spring, turning into a viridian shade of green and grins. The colt spreads his wings and moves further into the forest, intent on exploring all the new variations of patterns that he could find.

Nashua took a moment to stretch out his speckled wings and moved towards the River, eager for a drink. Flying was one thing; he didn't enjoy walking long routes. Though he can hardly make out the shape of his young son as he vanishes deeper into the woods, he is looking forward to a time when Bolder can accompany him in the air.

He stops from drinking because a colt - one too young to be wandering alone, Nash thinks - approaches him. Nash watches the young foal and then lowers his head (an action that comes as second nature after raising five children) to the boy, "I am." Lilliana's son says, peering into a shade of blue that makes him ache. He summons a smile for the black-and-white youth, "and who are you?"

NASHUA

@[Benjamen]

[Benjamen]

I shine only with the light you give me

“Can I haunt you if I die?” He asks his older sister, his head cradled on her shoulder as if he can no longer hold it without the strength of his sister there to catch it. HIs ghost talking sister sighs. “I don't want you to haunt me,” she says in a way that is neither gentle nor harsh. “Okay, then I won’t,” he says in a way that is neither sad nor angry. Elli placed a kiss on his shoulder. “What I mean is, I don’t like thinking about that, James,” she tells him with a solemn look in the shadows of her face. “I wont haunt you,” he says because he suddenly realizes, he doesn't like thinking about that either.

James doesn't know this, but Elliana, she looked for him, high and low. Through every shadow cast by tall buildings, inside every shadowed tree, even in the shadows of rolling waves off the sea, but she never found him. Would never find him.

Worlds away, James grew up on the same stories as Nashua, as Yanhua, and all the rest. He knows about Paraiso, could tell anyone who would listen about those weeping willows and how they cry tears of joy and not sorrow. Could tell you about the thundering falls and how the mist it creates carries whispers of ancient voices, ancestors past. Like Nashua, James has never been there, but it doesn't make it any less magical or the stories any less real. Paraiso in written in his blood, as it is of all legacy children.

The feeling inside his chest is buoyant as he stands before Nashua, it floats on the surface, almost lifting him up and off the ground as if he too had wings. Wings of a falcon he watched fly as he stood beside his father. “I knew it,” he says in quiet victory, and maybe it was, but how could he lose? Armed with Marcelo’s vision and a boyish confidence that belong to the young and the stupid.

“Benjamen,” he says, reborn. “James is what my family calls me,” he says. “So you can call me James,” he hints with wide blue eyes that disappear for only a moment in a sweeping blink. Once more he moves his gaze to the elegant wings that sit quietly at the stallion’s side. “I think…I was supposed to find you.” A quiet smile that is quiet and gentle like starlight, like his father. “I’m Elena’s son.” And it is evident in the blue of his eyes and the marking upon his forehead that with a quiet breeze is revealed, and is in the shape of an ivory heart…



Benjamen; my feet knew the path, we walked in the dark, in the dark
never gave a single thought to where it might lead

image by Gary Bendig
@[Nashua]

[Nashua]

The newly-crowned King of the North watches the boy with a kind of mute wonder; there is something familiar about him. Something that keeps persisting on the edges of his memory, that keeps demanding he remembers why the youth is so recognizable. Some faces are just that way, the angles and planes come together in common places for some. Nashua considers that logic until the boy he announces that he knew it and the striped stallion lifts his head a little, as if taking a step back might change the confirmation he sees on Benjamen's young face.

Nashua glances at the mention of his family and the pegasus looks towards the treeline for shapes or shadows there. Noel always encouraged space with their children, letting them roam and wander and for an instant, but he always had hovered. So he expects a mother or a father to emerge. Perhaps an older sibling to come round up the wayward colt, much like he had been as a boy.

"Well," Nash says, "it's nice to meet you, James." A smile touches the edges of his lips and lifts, hoping to make the youth more comfortable until his family arrives.

Those wide blue eyes keep intoning something to Nash as he peers down at the boy. There is that feeling again, like the churning of a tide or that first bite of frost after a summer's warmth. Something is about to change. And it does when Ben looks up at him again, the wind sweeping his forelock to the side and revealing a truth that Nashua would have believed for that marking alone. The colt explains, though, what the Northern stallion had already suspected. He looks to the treeline again, searching for the palomino mare. "Is your mother here?" Nashua suddenly asks; Elena had come once before.

Why not a second time?

It never occurs to Nash that a boy so young would travel so far alone. It never occurs to Nash that the boy might have appeared as his mother once did, only this time, it wasn't Nashua or his brother in trouble. It never occurs to him that in a place far away, the place where James had been born and subsequently died, that something went wrong.

NASHUA

@[Benjamen]