"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
He soars over the waters of the North. Nashua makes the same journey he has time and time again. He crosses the ocean towards Nerine, coasting over the granite and proud stony countenance of his brother’s land. He continues to fly, and tilts his auburn-colored wings up towards the sun. Nashua considers for a moment what it might be like to soar above the clouds, to fly so high that he loses track of where the sky begins and the earth ends.
Will it make any difference when he lands?
For what he is about to tell Noel?
What will his world look like after he has told her that he has intentionally turned it upside down?
Nashua continues to fly, heading towards the familiar horizon of Taiga. The trees below him stand as proud as they ever had, and even a few of the silvergreen that had been the result of Yanhua and Amarine break through through the deep emerald tree canopy. So much has changed over the years, and yet there are still traces of the past reaching towards the clouds. The thought of them makes his stomach lurch, because it makes him think of Noel and in his mind, Nash replays his most treasured moments of the life they have shared over the years. Daring the wild wind blowing off the ocean from Nerine. The moment he had found in her in Nerine with Elegance and Luminesce resting in the heather behind her. The triplets - Saffron, Bolder, Bravely - and the way that she had surprised him with their existence.
The way that she had stood beside him in Hyaline, when he had been ready to risk the entirety of the North to bring their (then) youngest son home.
His throat tightens when he finally lands in Taiga, not far from the border of Nerine, and Nashua calls out for Noel as he always has.
Months had turned to years as their children had grown and he remained. He has become her anchor, tethering her to this place even when she had felt light enough to float away. Even when she had lost herself in her own misgivings. It has always been him, bringing her right back to them. Bringing her right back to their family, to this small haven they have created for themselves.
On the days he cannot be with her, she lives in the warmth of shared memories. On the days he can, she lives in the beauty of those perfect moments.
When she hears her name whispering through the trees, a faint smile comes to her lips. She answers as she always does, drifting through the mist until she finds him, familiar and steadfast. Her heart swells inside her chest at the first sight of his handsome visage, just as it has for so long. Over the years, her fears have grown smaller even as her love has grown larger.
Perhaps one day she could forget them entirely.
Or perhaps today, they would rise from where they lurk in the shadows to consume her whole.
“Nashua.” His name is a reverent whisper on her lips as she closes the distance between them. A soft smile pulls at the corners of her mouth as she lifts it to touch the familiar curve of his cheek. She cannot say how long he has been gone this time, but now that he is here, it is all that matters. “I have missed you.”
01-23-2022, 12:36 PM (This post was last modified: 01-23-2022, 12:39 PM by Nashua.)
He was selfish and Nashua was never more acutely aware of it as he was now. All it took was a call, and there she was, emerging through the deep fog like a welcome dream. Nash knew he should have said it then; he should have told her right then and there about what had transpired between him and Illuminae.
And yet, at the sight of Noel, he can only bring himself to walk forward. Each step feels heavy, as if the weight of what he is about to say would stop him. But Nashua keeps walking, keeps moving towards her because Noel has been his home and haven, and he (selfishly) wants to be beside her, where he has weathered every storm of his adult life.
She comes to him and he draws nearer to her, turning his blazed face into the delicate curve of her neck. Something that he has done a thousand times, and something that he will never do again. Noel deserved better. She deserved someone who would have given up their kingdom, that wouldn’t have allowed an ocean to remain between them. She deserved someone who would have stayed with her, who would have been there for each step their children took and would have remained when the last fledged.
She didn’t deserve someone who had gone to chase out the darkness in another and then crossed a line in the process.
”I - ,” Nashua begins to softly say, wanting to tell her that he has missed her too. Wanting to so easily fall back into the way that they had always been, but that would be a trap. It would be a lie, and while he was capable of doing so many things wrong, he wouldn’t intentionally lie to the woman who had been at his side for nearly a decade. ”I have to tell you something,” he tells her, forcing himself to step away from her and then clips out: ”Noel, we have to talk.”
She leans into his touch, reveling in the feel of him against, so warm and steady, a familiar thrill coursing through her. She has long wondered if this would ever ebb, but each touch is like the first, each breath filling her lungs with the impossible truth of him. She has begun to believe this might never wane, never grow old and wither like so many things are wont to do.
There is a heaviness to him, a weight etched into the beautiful lines of his body. He bears so much, and she has wished for so long she could take some of that burden from his shoulders. Could hold him up just as he holds her.
Someday, she hopes that he will allow her to do so. But for now, she remains patient.
While he wallows in the darkness of his sins, she revels in hope for the future, never knowing how precariously it has been balanced. Never seeing just how quickly it could come crashing down around her ears. Her trust is a shining thing, never realizing how easily it could blacken and fade.
Even his words do not stir suspicion. Though her heart rises in her chest when she steps back to peer at him, her gaze is filled with curiosity rather than dread. With the hope that the day has finally come he would tell her he could remain by her side, the weight of his kingdom resettled onto his brother’s shoulders.
She nods in response, wings settling against her pale ribcage, dark eyes luminous as she holds his gaze. “You know I will always be here when you need me.” Drawing in a breath, she allows her lips to curve upwards. “What is it you want to talk about?”
He has known it since he was young. He can still remember standing in this very forest, looking over to his mother, and despite noticing Yanhua’s distance from him, pleading with Lilliana, asking her why their father couldn’t remain in Taiga. He remembers the envy that came from realizing his brother shared their mother’s gift - as well as the blue of her eyes - and that his stripes and wings marked him as different from them. He remembers chasing light from land to land, driven by an almost incessant need to find the good, never realizing how close the darkness was waiting to swallow him whole.
Perhaps Reave had been right. Perhaps he did only see the world in two contrasting shades. But hadn’t it been the gray that had blurred everything? It had been the gray where he lost sight of Bolder, unable to forgive his son for continuing a legacy that should have been buried. It had been the gray where Nashua dwelled in the loss of his twin brother, blinding him to the comfort he might have found in his others. It had been the gray where he had lingered with Illuminae, and despite trying to bring out the light in her, he had brought out the darkness in himself instead.
He had brought it here, in his self-righteous pride, to them.
Noel’s trust is a radiant thing. It comes shining up at him from the luminosity of her dark gaze and it twists Nash to the very core of his soul. No, you won’t. He thinks and the revelation quells whatever light might have remained behind his summer-green gaze. He looks down at her and realizes that despite how badly he wants to reach for her, to graze his pale muzzle against the curve of her delicate cheek, the only thing he should do now is give her his honesty (which he should have always done). This is how the gray began, how it crept into his life like the fog that came drifting through the Taiga, by thinking he was protecting her by sparing her harmful truths.
”Something has… happened.”
The words sound far too opaque to his ears, and so Nashua forces himself to elaborate.
He forces himself to elaborate everything. The damage has already been done. Now it needs to be brought to light, out of the murk and the gray. So he tells her about the angel that lingers in these woods; he explains the massive scar on his chest and though Noel might know that he gained it from a monster during the Eclipse, he explains that it was her healing that saved his life, not his. He explains that the something that has happened is her, and then he stops explaining. He stops saying anything at all, and the only thing to be heard is the distant sound of waves crashing against the Northern shore.
She had been born into the world knowing she would not always be enough. And she had grown believing that it didn’t matter, so long as she was enough for herself. Her father had run from her and her mother, but Noel had never stopped searching. She had only wanted to understand what made him run. She had always admired her mother for her ability to weather the storms in her life. Had always sought to emulate it.
But that had never stopped her from wondering why he ran.
For a while though, it had ceased to matter. She hadn’t forgotten, but it had been pushed so far back she may as well have. Until now. Until the moment Nashua utters the words that tears her entire world apart. Until the man she had trusted with the entirety of her wary heart shredded it to bits.
Now she understands why he had run.
She doesn’t move, her eyes unblinking as she stares at his achingly beautiful, painfully familiar features. She has never wanted to flee so badly as she did in that moment, but her legs refuse to move. As his words fade away, she can only stare. Her disbelief gives way to a curious blankness. She should be crying, she thinks, but her cheeks remain dry.
She had given him everything, but she couldn’t even give him her tears now. For a long time, she can’t seem to summon any kind of response. But when she finally manages to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth, when she finally manages to swallow the lump threatening to choke her, she can only manage one broken syllable. “Why?”
He had told her how it happened, but that told her nothing. That did not tell her what had been in his heart. That did not tell her why she hadn’t been enough.
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