[private] the fatal flaw that makes you magnificently cursed

[Nashua]

Nashua is aware of the cold and the dark.

He thinks it's because Illuminae has freed from the frigid grip of Death. He thinks that because he had been so close to dying, everything around him suddenly feels more alive. There is a depth to the darkness that he could have never perceived; there is a chill in the air that has made him shiver like he never has before. Nash tries by clenching his jaw and gritting his teeth to control the shaking, but like a newborn foal, he stumbles and his wings sag and he has no control over the way his body trembles.

There is a shifting within him - a binding and bending of his bones - that he is aware of and had he known how much it took from the mare beside him, Nash would have given it back. He would have pressed into her, done what he could to restore her because it is never been his intention to take anything. But his mind is as tired as the healer beside him and his thoughts wander too far, taking him back to his childhood. He wants to escape the horrors that are all around them and in his retreat to the past, he wants to bring @illuminae, too.

She doesn't deserve the dark, he thinks. She deserves something far brighter.

Something shifts, then. The conversation turns and Nashua slows, trying to process the change.

"Yes," Nashua states; the thought of them forces determination to work through the murk in his mind, the way that his striped legs feel like iron. "They live with my...," and he slows, because what does he call Noel? There has never been a word for the type of sanctuary she has been for him, the way she continues to stay in Taiga when he had thought she never would. He's never had a word for Noel and he doesn't know what to call her now.

He is more unsure of twisting unease in his stomach when he looks over at the mare beside him and Nash struggles to keep his wings up.

One snags on a withering bush and the pegasus curses quietly, using what energy he has to draw it back to his side. Their conversation has kept him aware from drifting (both with his hooves and his mind) and he struggles to come back to it. His troubled expression - one full of stormclouds - dissipates for a moment when she says that his stripes could be just his; he laughs quietly, suddenly untroubled by the idea. How wonderful would that be?

Perhaps someday that might be true.
Perhaps someday, after a few generations pass, the Northerners might not so easily recall the striped man who terrorized them.

It's a comforting thought as they trek towards the Taiga. His future had been gone a few hours before, snatched away by the Eclipse until the dual-colored mare beside decided otherwise. And now, it was returned to him through a random act of kindness. Nash is glad that his traveling companion is smiling again, to hear the laughter in her voice because it seems like she might share the sentiment. Even if she is sharing that sentiment with a stranger. "I've never met a No One before," he tells her, hoping his teasing might encourage her to share her actual name.

And at the reminder of home - that they might be close to Taiga - Nashua is very aware that he owes her his life.

"Thank you, again." He tells her, because it seems like the very least that he can do. "If you hadn't come...," his voice trails off, drifting into the expectant quiet around them - a silence that could only happen when the world is full of nightmares. Nash rebels against it by saying, "Should you ever need it, you have my help."