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

[Nashua]

NASHUA

His eyes widen eagerly with Elio’s admission, his mind contriving an image of a woman of smoke and fire, who as the older stallion describes as a ‘walking flame’. The pair of them might stand beneath the guarded towers of Taiga’s trees but the colt’s imagination has already flown clear across Beqanna, to Loess. He’s never seen such a thing, had never known he wanted to see such a thing but @[elio] has painted it for him.

It’s an image already being crafted in his young mind, clear as day.

The young colt takes a few steps closer, wondering if perhaps the pegasus stallion will elaborate more on Loess, more on the fire-woman, more on anything of their outside world. (Taiga is big enough, for now, but there is a calling in him that so wants to know what else is out there. It can be so hard to see behind their walls of mist and evergreen.)

There is no more talk about that but there is a consolation: a lone red feather that dances from the winged man's side and when Elio motions to grab it, Nashua stands there with bright, hopeful eyes. "Can I?” he asks, though his voice drops to a whisper. There is hesitance in the dunalino’s eyes and there is a gnawing in the back of Nash’s thoughts that remind him that he’s seen it before. He’s seen his Mother look that way a few times - a reluctance he still doesn’t understand.

It’s enough, though, to make him pause.

His mind turns and a thought clicks into place. Elio is giving something to him. He should offer something in return.

"I have a fort,” he attempts with a childish tenor. "It’s a secret though. Mama says Yan and I are the only ones who should know about it.” That does make him apprehensive because this isn’t Yanhua. But maybe, he thinks with a shy smile, they could turn it into something of their own.

"We could take it there,” he tries again and then a little braver adds, "My name is Nashua. But maybe we could have nicknames.” His eyes linger again on the red wings again, thinking that nicknames and secret forts sound like the kinds of adventures a well-traveled pegasus like Elio would have. "Mama calls me Little Feather,” he does smile good-naturedly at that. Not the most stoic or brave of monikers but he loves to tell her how someday she will have to call him Big Feather when he’s grown. That ever elusive someday.

His green eyes drop longingly to the red feather on the damp soil before he looks up again, "Maybe you could be… Fire Wing?”

and for every king that died
they would crown another

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@[elio]