"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
Time seemed to pass so slowly now. Nashua had not been back since the day he had flown into the sky on the heels of her bad news. The North seemed even quieter then usual with his absence. She hadn’t seen Padme or Mourna in months, she hadn’t been able to find them since the attack, and it seemed all that remained on the Isle were her and Leilan who had stayed behind temporarily. She should fix that, she thinks. She should go out and find others, should do something besides wander the snowy island with only her thoughts for company. Yet every day the sun rises and she is still here.
At first she had blamed the travel. It was hard to get across to the mainland without magic and although her legs had fully healed, the thought of such a trip was exhausting. She had fallen asleep after considering it and awoken, different. Dark feathery wings dusted with starlight poked out over her shoulders and along her backside. She extended them thoughtfully and the way her stars danced along her back made her think this was yet another gift from her old homeland in the sky above. A little motivation, a little nudge in the right direction to seek out the quest the fairy had given her. One that would bring her closer to what she had always been.
For the next few days she practiced with her new wings, finding the distraction welcoming. Easy things at first, like flying over the lake from the burning tree to the opposite side. Jumping off high points until the wind caught beneath her feathers, gliding her to a safe landing spot. Slowly she became more comfortable but still she did not leave the Isle. It just didn’t feel right, when Nash was still gone. When Leilan was still anxiously waiting to continue on his own personal quest.
The air is slightly warmer where she stands amongst the burnt remains of the glassy beach, contemplative as always as she gazes past the sea to the lands beyond. The feathers along her back ruffle with the breeze, her stars dim in the early morning light. “I died.” She thinks again as she usually does when she looks past the ocean waters where gray skies meet dark earth, as she stares at her past and that summer night in the Meadow. “I died but yet I’m here.” Why? For what purpose?
The answers pass her by as they always do and so she flares her wings, watches the waves, and thinks.
With his family becoming the focal point in his mind - retrieving his youngest child, protecting Noel, and assuring that their other children remained safe with their shadow kin - Nashua hadn't returned to the Isle. His mind had been full of worries and in the face of a Curse that has afflicted his family for generations, he had lost part of himself in the history of it.
He'll have to go to Tephra, he knows. Wishbone had said that there had been attempted theft of her daughter. They were allies and she certainly deserved to know that Hyaline had stolen another child.
His.
Leilan would deserve an explanation. The former Freyr hadn't wanted to be on the Isle long and in any other circumstance, Nashua wouldn't have kept him. If it had been any other problem, Leilan would have been the first horse that Nashua would have sought out. His pride had prevented it, because what would he have said? The draconic stallion has been the only father that he has ever known; how does he explain that the ghost of his actual sire had come back to haunt Beqanna?
When he finally returns to the Isle - returning first where his duty lay - it is them that he goes searching for. The bay roan stallion had never been easy to find, being the tricky-sort even before he had been gifted Magic. But he finds Ciri staring off across the sea, with a new pair of lovely wings hanging at her sides. (Had he really been gone so long?) Nash stops, watching the way that the light plays off her feathers before he sighs and swallows his sense of failure.
If he had spoken of the Curse, if they hadn't tried to bury it in the dark, then maybe others might have been prepared. Perhaps nobody else might have suffered.
"How are you faring?" Nashua finally asks as he approaches, allowing her to decide what she wants to speak about.
Or if she even wants to speak to him at all.
NASHUA
@Ciri
@Leilan for being mentioned / in case he wanted to pop in
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
There had been plenty of times where she had faced death but the Curse had made it a reality. Although the irritation of whose face it had been to give the final blow still bothered her, it wasn’t what kept her trapped in her own head. She had always thought when she had died that she would return to the heavens, back into the fold of stars from whence she had came. The old images of the life she had lived in the sky long before she had been born into this mortal plane still lingered vaguely in her mind, memories shown to her from the Underneath. She had been a star once, she had assumed she would become one again.
So when her death had only led to blackness… when she had gone absolutely nowhere only to awaken with broken legs, a fresh scar over the old ones on her chest, and her own crusted blood around her… It had stung. It had hurt. And it had scared her more than anything else she had faced in this world. It wasn’t the pain of death… No… It was the nowhere that had followed that keeps her up at night. That she hadn’t risen back to the stars, that she hadn’t gone anywhere at all. The absolute pointlessness of the life she had lived so far and of the void that seemed to be calling her back. Taunting her. What was the point now? What was the point in living when all that’s waiting for her is empty darkness? Wouldn’t it be better to just accept death now?
She hears his hooves crunching against the shattered glass long before he speaks. In the moments of his approaching, she finally comes to a few decisions. Choices that she hadn’t been sure of until the moment she knew Nashua had come back. But now she makes them, considered and firmly decided on.
Despite the temptation beyond the void, she has no desire to die. Again. Ciri had always held a black streak of stubborn resistance and it rings true now as her resilience refocuses on to one simple thing. Revenge. Even if it was pointless, it was all she had in this life. So she grasps it as well as the constant anger burning in the pit of her stomach and decides to live anyways.
So she makes her next choice, taking all the trauma from that night in the Meadow and pushes it all down, down, down into that part of her where she holds all her old unresolved hurts. All those wounds that had never fully healed. In goes the empty death next to the loss of her son. Carefully she shelves the unanswered questions of betrayal regarding Gale (if it had ever been Gale) next to the scarred over remains of the love she once had for Amet and Castile. And she sweeps and gathers all those broken pieces of herself and continues to stuff them into the hole of her creation until he speaks.
She pauses for a moment, her thoughtful gaze changing into something else. When she finally turns to him, there is a small smile on her lips but it doesn’t seem to reach the swirling silver of her eyes, the metallic hue somewhat colder now. Harder. “Fine.” She lies easily, smoothly, as she unfurls the dark starlit wings off her back and flares them as she turns around to face him. She is relieved to see him in one piece but it also means one thing. Gale must still live. And that wouldn’t do. “Where is he?”
08-01-2021, 06:58 PM (This post was last modified: 08-01-2021, 07:16 PM by Nashua.
Edit Reason: because i'm a moron and put West instead of East
)
Nashua almost wished that Ciri would be angry with him.
The chestnut pegasus almost wished she would have been furious. His mind had conjured scalding words, or even prepared himself for cool indifference. Any of that would have been preferable. But the ebony mare turns around to face him and Nash stops, lifting his blazed head to better look her over. The scars - as Ciri had requested - remain and the evidence of her recent encounter with Gale is glaringly apparent to the striped stallion.
It forces him to think of the scars that Neverwhere had gained from her encounter with the Curse and he feels that writhing, black anger twist everything in him. He wants to tear something apart.
The way that his Thane smiles is even worse; no light reaches her eyes anymore. This is what the Curse does, Nashua reminds himself (to remember that this is no longer his brother; to remind himself Gale is gone). He needs to remind himself of this again and again, despite the way that he can feel the pegasus mare already burning for revenge.
He turns his face towards the coast, turning to look at the aurora that the Isle was so famous for.
His speckled wings tighten, like Nashua is bracing against the cold. But that is a lie. He's lived here long enough that the biting breezes and the frigid temperatures no longer bother him as they once did. The cold is no longer outside but within him. "Did you know that when I first met Gale, he offered to help me find my mother?" Nashua rhetorically asks her. He doesn't expect Ciri to know the full story - that his father had vanished, that his mother had been stolen to Pangea before his and Yanhua's first birthday. "Wolfbane would have laughed in my face," he continues bitterly.
(They had been taught to not say his name but what harm can it do now?
Speaking of the dead could be taken as an invitation to rise, Lilliana had once told him. But The Curse had come back anyway, regardless of what they called it.)
Gale had every right to hate his mother, the woman who had come between his parents, and yet not only had he told Nashua that she was alive, but he had told him that she had been in Pangea and told the young pegasus that he had a sister. And his brother's kindness hadn't stopped there. He had offered to help find her, to help bring her home. As the years have gone on, Nashua realized it for the deep generosity and kindness that it was.
That was Gale.
And now Gale was gone; just like Elio, just like Celina.
Just like Yanhua.
"It's in Hyaline," Nashua tells her, and like Ciri, shoves the pain to the furthest corners of his soul. There will be time later - after all this is over - to mourn his brother. "Northerners are no longer permitted there." He says, an obvious statement but also a reminder that the King of the North didn't want his Thane to seek out the Cursed monster. "Nor in Silver Cove or Pangea," perhaps a rash measure but Nashua wants to take no risks. The entire East will remain off-limits, until the thing wearing Gale can either be contained or... killed.
"It died once before, in Loess," he explains quietly, "but it seems that Dragon Flame was not enough to exorcise it." Those infernal flames hadn't been enough to extinguish it and thanks to Wishbone, Nashua knows that it existed for at least a generation in Tephra. It has existed for two generations before Nash and now it resurfaced in his brother, who has custody of his youngest son. "We're going to have to be patient with this, Ciri." He finally reveals solemnly, because the only thing he can think of is seeking out his youngest brother, Reave. The Nerinian Guardian might have some ideas, or at the very least, perhaps the similar gift that he shared with Gale could give them some insight as to how to handle him.
"I've lost half my family to this and I refuse to lose more. We need a plan; a way to ensure that once It's gone, It can never come back."
08-02-2021, 04:31 PM (This post was last modified: 08-03-2021, 02:49 PM by Ciri.)
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
There had been a moment when she had thought to direct her anger at Nashua. She remembers the recognition in his eyes when she had told him of Gale, as if he had known exactly what he was before he had flown off and left her there, half-healed and emotionally shattered. As if he knew exactly what had happened. Those first few days when she had been entirely consumed in her rage, she had thought of unleashing herself on the Freyr of the North. For not warning her, for allowing all this to happen. And while her anger had yet to fade, she realized that there was only one who truly deserved the brunt of it. And it wasn’t Nash.
For a moment they simply look at each other and whatever leftover hurt she feels towards him, over being kept in the dark, fades as she sees the regret in his eyes. And the storm amongst the green that matches the one inside her. He looks away and she follows his gaze to the northern lights. Once they had brought her much joy but now she can barely stand to look at them or her beloved stars. She hadn’t taken a night patrol in months, no longer having the stomach for it. It was pointless when she didn’t even have the heart to summon her shield anymore.
She remains quiet when he speaks, quiet in the pause that follows except for a slight ruffling of her feathers at the question that’s not meant to be answered. She says nothing to his bitter words, simply takes them and swallows them where they hit the wall of her grief. And just like that her anger fades, just for a moment, as the sadness rises and finally breaks free. The tears that had managed to break free that day she had been broken were simply from pain and anger. She hadn’t cried since. Until now where they stream freely and quietly down her cheeks, tracing dark paths along the savaged skin of her face, dropping from her tightened jaw where she grits her teeth.
Gale hadn’t been the first kind person she had met when she had returned to Beqanna but he had been the only one to stick around. Had been the first real friend she had in gods knows how long. She feels the ache of his loss surround her already bruised and broken heart and she turns her head away from his brother, unwilling to let him see this moment of weakness in her as she attempts to grasp the anger again, tries to feel its burn and nothing else.
It’s easier once he speaks of “It”. Gives her a chance to refocus as she clings to the surge of rage that stops her tears and drowns herself in it until the breeze dries the dampness from her cheeks. She snorts softly as he speaks of the North being banned from Hyaline. Has half a mind to challenge that ban right then and there despite the warning behind his words. Despite his heed of patience. “I’m tired of waiting Nashua.” She finally snaps, as if she hadn’t been patient enough these last few months alone on the Isle. She barely hears him now, a ringing in her ears drowning out his common sense and pain. Missing the way he includes her as family now. The flames of her anger encase her so firmly that when she spits her reply she includes things she hadn’t even meant to say. “I want to be the one that ends it. I want to kill it the same way it killed me.”
08-04-2021, 07:01 PM (This post was last modified: 08-04-2021, 07:06 PM by Nashua.)
Nashua has to close his eyes against an all-consuming rage; it brews within him just as it fuels Ciri and her scorching words. The chestnut pegasus doesn't begrudge her that anger. He understands it, he realizes - Nash understands the emotion for what it is, because it had been the same one that had left the Thane half-healed and emotionally struggling on the Isle while he had made a frantic journey to Taiga. It had been anger that fueled him to the misty Northern Forest and it had been that fury that had nearly spear-headed he and Noel into Hyaline afterward. The remnants of a deep wound that Nashua has suffered since his foalhood.
And it could have gotten them killed.
That same fury could cause the Freyr to make another mistake, or a misstep that could harm more of his family and those under his care. "He has my son," Nash says, revealing another reason that he was unable to directly go after the Curse. Not while it had his youngest boy.
"Ciri," he tries again, quietly, almost desperately. "Listen to me." He tells her in a voice that isn't a King giving a command but a friend urging hard-won wisdom. "It's been killed before, in Loess. And if what my mother told me is true, before that, it died in Tephra." Turning his blazed face from the green-and-blue sky, he peers at the Northern Thane. She wants to kill it, she says. She wants to be the one that ends it but Nashua doesn't think she understands. "It keeps coming back."
His jaw tightens until Nash can restrain the rising anger and the winged horse adds, "Even if there was a way to kill Gale," Nashua says, "what happens then?" She had known his brother and knew that before the Curse claimed him as it had done the others, Gale had the promise of a happy life. Living in Hyaline with Mazikeen, raising their children together and all of that was gone now. Like the ashes of their shared ancestors. "Kill him and your condemning somebody else." Another one of his brothers or sisters, or possibly their children.
He wouldn't rule out murdering his sibling, if that was the only way to keep the others safe. But as Nash saw it, that was, at best, simply buying them time.
"I plan on going to Loess," he tells her. "The North has been overdue a meeting with the South. If Gale has stolen a child from the Taiga and attempted to take one from Tephra, Loess should be on guard." Nash knows this wasn't what Ciri wanted; she wanted revenge and vengeance. He can feel her burning with it - like her shield of stars - and it takes everything in him to not allow them both to become a pyre. Silenty, Nash vowed that he would do everything in his power to give it to her. There had to be a way to the end the Curse but it wouldn't be something as simple as Death.
"Come with me," he asks her and then, "On the way back, we'll stop in Nerine. There is somebody there who might have some answers."
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
It was worse than she could even imagine.
It had been bad enough, what the Curse had done to her. What it had done to Gale. But if it had Nashua’s son… Her own internal struggle seems to pale in the enormity of what Nashua reveals and quietly she reaches for him, placing her dark muzzle to rest silently on his russet shoulder in painful understanding. She knew all too well what it was like to have your child snatched from you and raised by another against your will. Memories of discovering her grown son in the other world of Eternal, raised and devoted to Jah-Lilah, had always left a bitter taste in her mouth. As if she had been betrayed by those she had trusted most with the one thing that had meant most to her. There had never been any other choice in who would raise her child back then, she had trusted Jah like a mother. But something had felt off when she had found them again, something had shifted, as if she was intruding. Replaced.
She wants to fight against his wisdom, wants to rally against the sense in his warnings. Yet she can’t deny the truth in his words and she could scream with the frustration of it all, of this nearly impossible task set before them. "Kill him and you condemn someone else" he says and she snarls, pacing away from him as she unfurls the midnight wings fully from her back and snaps them in agitation. “So what am I to do Nashua? What happens when we inevitably run into him? Shall I just let him kill me over and over again until he grows bored and leaves me dead for good? How long do we wait till he tires of your son?” Perhaps it is a low blow and despite the truth in her concern she’s instantly flooded with guilt and finds she cannot meet Nash's gaze.
The silence that follows her outburst is deafening and she cannot look at him, her cold silver eyes turned back on the burnt remains of the beach. Considering the destruction left in the wake of Castile’s fire. Sometimes you need to take big risks for big rewards. Perhaps it was time to stop thinking as a simple fighter and start thinking smarter, like the dragon kings she had once known and loved. Nashua’s voice drags her from her thoughts as he speaks of going to Loess and Nerine. A trip doesn’t even come close to putting a stopper on her rage but she bites her tongue as she finally nods in agreement and does her best to swallow her anger even as the sparks of fury singe the back of her throat.
“What about the rest of the Isle? We can’t leave them unguarded.” She asks quietly, finally looking back at him over her shoulder and peeking through star-dusted feathers. The residents may not be many but that wasn't an excuse to leave them as sitting ducks if the Curse felt like breaking someone else's legs. Another pause before she asks an even softer and more uncertain question. "Do you think he could still be in there somewhere? Gale?" Is there still a chance to save him or was he truly lost for good?
08-10-2021, 07:24 PM (This post was last modified: 08-10-2021, 07:28 PM by Nashua.)
Nashua looks back at the sky above, a sort of half-night that always seemed to linger on the Isle. Daylight did come in the summer months but the further that the sun drifted towards the autumn, the days would grow so short on the Northern Island that come winter, it lasted only mere hours. The sky above Ciri and Nash is dark; not quite as deep as true night but his green eyes glint on the varying shades of the Aurora.
Through stories told from his relations like Ori and Elena, Nashua knows that his ancestors worshiped the elements like the horses here revered the Mountain. They listened to the wind, followed rivers, and asked the stars for guidance. And what would you say about this? asks Aletta’s grandson bitterly. His blazed head is held high but the enormity of their situation sits heavily between Nash’s winged shoulders. One brother is Cursed; his twin his missing; and Bolder…
He’d been trying to spare the boy - as he tried to spare Luminesce - the looks and stares that had followed him his entire life. The stripes, the wings, the green eyes were a testament to his parentage, but shifting? Northerners were a hardy breed, able to survive the coldest winters in Beqanna and some of the harshest weather. That same tenacity that dug in and gave them the ability to survive up here also gave them long memories and even deeper grudges.
For the Northerners that stayed, there was no forgetting the crimes that Wolfbane - whatever shape he took in the North - committed.
The stars - not surprisingly - remain silent to Nashua’s plea.
His copper ears flick back at Ciri’s backlash, but all the questions she asks are valid ones. What are they supposed to do? Wait for It to come North? Wait for It to take another child? Wait for It to inflict devastation on another unsuspecting soul?
Winds, he missed Yanhua.
”We start where we can do the most good,” Nashua says, low and distant in an attempt to detach himself from his anger. The sparks of it are on the tip of his tongue and Ciri almost sets him off. He looks away from his silent counsel of starlight and turns his flat green eyes on the onyx pegasus pacing nearby. We start with what we can control, he thinks, because there is no saying what Gale will do or where he and Mazikeen will go next. ”If Loess knows about him, then Ga..-,” Nash corrects himself and pushes away the dull ache beating inside his scarred chest, ”then It loses the element of surprise. Perhaps there could even be some kind of discussion between Tephra and the North and the South on what to do.”
Hyaline currently has several entities. He’s had a few sleepless nights thinking that perhaps they could fuse the Curse to one of them. All of them had been horses at one point and then like Gale, had been turned into something else. Perhaps through some kind of Magic, they could turn Cursed Gale into something different. The Curse could be trapped and bound to something instead of someone.
”I plan on speaking to Leilan,” Nashua continues. ”He placed portals through the North during Yanhua’s coronation; if he can do the same again, it should make traveling between the Isle and Mainland easier in the meantime.” Quicker, as well. It would allow Nash to be more present in Taiga while his twin is still missing and allow him to do whatever Noel and their remaining children need of him.
Though he’d like Ciri to come, if she wanted to remain behind, Nash wouldn’t push her.
The copper stallion’s thoughts seem to refuse to settle but they pause when Ciri finally glances back at him. When she asks him a question that he had asked himself a hundred times. His stoic demeanor falters for just a moment. ”Maybe.” His voice catches on the word. ”I don’t know, Ciri. Maybe I remember it differently because I was so young, but it seems… not like before.” Nashua doesn’t mean to unburden himself so much to the Thane; but the overwhelming guilt he feels for her attack and his failure at keeping her - and Bolder - safe gnaws at him. ”Worse,” he states and then blinks - fighting another rush of emotion before he succumbs to his rage, ”But don't do that." Nash warns her suddenly, "Thinking like that will get you killed again."
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
She can see his temper flaring deep within his summer eyes and knows that she’s pushing it, blatantly speaking to her King with open disrespect. She hopes he views her through the lens of a friend and not as a King. Not today.
She listens to him silently, sullen and somber, but each word wedges itself into painful pieces of her. And when it comes to the matter of Gale, if there was even a Gale to matter about, the gravity of it all settles firmly across her scarred back and settles as a heavy burden just beneath her wings. The fact that he thinks this Curse has come back as something more terrible than before… It’s too much. It’s all too much.
This wasn't just a normal fight, a light boxing match. This was charging into a full on war.
He probably hadn’t done it intentionally but his warning slices through her like a sharp blade. A muscle begins to work in her jaw as she raises her head slightly, her silvery gaze freezing over into pure ice. Killed again. It echos over and over in her brain. “We wouldn’t want that would we.” She says softly, too softly. A sort of deadliness in her tone, her voice strangled near the end. Perhaps she had deserved that dig, after bringing up his son. Knowing how much pain and fear he must be feeling.
Slowly she forces herself to relax but the fire in her belly refuses to die, the flames licking at her throat as the anger wraps its hot embrace around her, flickering in the stars that hover protectively around her. “I’m sorry.” She finally says. A pause. “You’re not the one I’m angry at.”
08-11-2021, 06:50 PM (This post was last modified: 08-11-2021, 06:52 PM by Nashua.)
His temper finally loosens and sparks his tongue.
Nashua had been trying to hold it all in - imagining that patience that Yanhua often encouraged him towards - but there is a storm brewing in the chestnut pegasus and the winds blowing in him suddenly turn into a tornado. He had been a child forced to grow up without a father, thanks to Curse. It had stolen his mother’s smile for years and Yanhua could never bear to speak of the memories he had seen radiating off Wolfbane.
But then Nash had met some of his brothers and sisters.
Celina had died in the fires of Loess, another death that he places the blame upon the Curse. Elio had his own haunting memories of their notorious father and had eventually gone missing. Another casualty that he blames on the Curse. Pteron had never been unkind nor had Tiercel but Gale had been his only half-brother to take a vested interest in him; that seemed to genuinely want to build a relationship between them. And now Gale is gone as well.
The Curse had manifested itself in him, and then had taken his youngest son.
"No, I don’t.” He rages at her, years of pent up anger suddenly released (undeservedly) on the Thane as his voice thunders out across the Isle. "You want to kill Gale, but there are many others who will want Gale dead before this is over. Even if you succeed, It will come back.” His green eyes are blazing with a fury that he has shown to very few, if any. "And if this cycle continues, on and on until what?” He fumes, ”Until Beqanna is reduced to ash?”
Her stars wrap around her as Ciri apologizes and Nashua knows that he should as well. He was the one who had left on the Isle half-healed. He was the one who had never spoken about the Curse, never mentioned it again after Lilliana asked him not to. The whole story had made him sick and left him as he felt now; so furiously angry and helpless feeling with nowhere to strike or lash out. She isn’t angry at him, she says. Nashua knows that but his expression turns to steel as it settles on his copper face. It only breaks slightly, revealing that "I’m angry too, Ciri.”
![[Image: jCdBK6.png]](https://img.nickpic.host/jCdBK6.png)