[private] Let the feeling come take you - Leilan, Nashua

[Nashua]

stars when you shine, you know how i feel
oh freedom is mine

Gods, he’s missed his brother.

Nashua is often here on the Isle and then gone again. It’s no secret that the chestnut pegasus has been driven by a wanderlust that had been sparked almost since birth (it’s how he met the Freyr). What exploring the borders of Beqanna is to him is what patrolling the borders of Taiga means to @[Yanhua], the green-eyed stallion thinks.

They are finding purpose in their daily lives - even duty - but in the accumulation of those things, moments with the horned Champion of Taiga becomes more and more infrequent. Nash had been looking forward to Leilan’s coronation for many reasons but standing beside him was perhaps the greatest one: Yan.

A moment of quiet passes between the twins when his younger brother eyes him and Nashua grins back at him, lopsided and charming. He flicks his flaxen tail and turns his attention back to the Dragon King, watching his mentor curiously. There’s a twinge of anticipation in his chest, wondering what they make of each other.

It’s his brother’s manners - a politeness brought with him from the Taiga - that settles it and Nash flashes his green eyes gratefully at his brother. The Golden Child, he might have teased. His twin literally glowed gold from his mane down to his tufted tail. It was Nashua who had always felt a little different, as Leilan blatantly points them out between the two brothers. The Horned One. The Winged One.

"No bets,” Nashua finally laughs, breaking his unusual silence. "Just chance.” Confirming, perhaps, mostly what Leilan had assumed. (While Nashua had considered entering the Alliance longer than a day, when the moment came, he leaped into like he did most things: wings wide and his thrill already soaring.)

Yanhua bumps into his shoulder and Nash pushes back, playfully extending his brown wing. "After all the damage that those," (he points to the proud, curled horns atop the taller stallion's head), "put me through?" Nash smirks back, knowing that most of the skirmishes of their shared youth could probably be placed at his hooves. Nashua the little explorer had also been the instigator of their foalhood. The striped one grins, all brotherly-affection. "No way."

He snorts gently and then focuses his attention back on Leilan, remembering that the reason for this reunion wasn't all about fun and games. "Cormorant and Alcinder and I have been practicing," he tells the Freyr of the Isle, turning serious. When we can. He doesn't add. (The roan leader already knows that his young ward is as often gone from the island as he is here.) But Nash knows what he says implies exactly why the King of the North is asking. They are all young and regardless of how much they might practice and spar on the Isle, in Nerine or Taiga, the North is young and therefore, untested.

NASHUA

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