there's a devil in my brain with a pitchfork and a flame

[elio]

elio

some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

Above the crossed paths of long-lost brothers, the sun begins to bear down warm enough to clear the fog. A chilled breeze passes, rustling the changing leaves of the canopy and tangling Elio’s already mussed forelock. He shakes his head disagreeably as a stray lock covers an eye, one single dapple of morning sun tracing circles across his face.

“Of course,” Elio states, dropping his lips to a thin, sincere smile and gesturing at the feather with his nose.

The gears turn in Nashua’s head as Elio’s eyes drift to the markings on the boy’s legs the fog had hidden. Gold, like mine, he muses, then frowns as what should have been an obvious realization hits him: and striped. Nervously, Elio flits his eyes to the surrounding trees, lingering on shadows he cannot pick apart. There, as far as his eyes can strain, he nearly convinces himself a murky, golden equine form awaits.

Don’t be stupid.

Nashua is not the first familiarly striped child he has stumbled upon, and he certainly won’t be the last; but no matter how many times he finds a stray piece of his father, that paranoia never grows old. Guilt nags Elio again, for nearly souring a boy’s adventure with something so trivial and unlikely. She forces his hand, that guilt, convincing him he now owes Nashua something better than a feather.

Elio blinks down at Nash, finally registering the words fort and Mama says. His moment of hesitation might have lasted longer if the look on Nash’s face while offering a nickname wasn’t so endearing. He might have politely declined and winged home to Lepis had the words Fire Wing not been so hopeful.

And he might have turned tail and run had the guilt over coloring a mere child with his father’s pain been eating him alive.

“Okay,” Elio starts, hesitantly, then warms up: “Okay!” He dips his head to grab the feather and tangles it just enough to hold in Nashua’s mane

“Take me to your fort, Little Feather.”

@[Nashua]