[private] when you are younger, you will wish you were older.

[Nashua]

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

He wonders if the devastation of the Isle never bothered him because he wasn’t born there. Nashua had talked about it with others, had mentioned it and offered what news he had to the casual passer-by. (That always seemed so important to Nash, that when he talked about what happened to the land he swore his allegiance to, that whoever he speaks to knows that it is rebuilding and that it is regrowing. That it not only be known for the devastation it suffered.) 

But coming back to Taiga had been… surreal. 

They were fortunate, his mother had said (but she always has said that). Only part of the Redwoods had been burnt and the trees that had been felled were weak or sickly. He had been reminded that the Northern Forest had been burnt before and it had been struck down by the ocean. Taiga was not razed to the ground nor was it drowned. It still stood.

But there had been no words to describe the way he had felt upon seeing the trees he had raced around as a child blackened to char. There had been no words for the part of the Forest that been lost. The closest his mind could even fathom had been dream-like. 

Nashua had wished his return home had been a dream. 
The only thing that had prevented it from turning into a nightmare had been that his mother, Leilan, and Yanhua were safe. 

When Nash takes to the sky again, when he tries to resume his wandering, he doesn’t get very far. There is the pull to the Common Lands but he doesn’t think he is ready to venture in that direction yet. Almost all directions feel too close to South and the young pegasus isn’t sure if he will be able to venture that way for some time. Not without thinking of Celina. 

He doesn’t have the heart to fly over Loess. Not yet. 

So the wind he takes soars him towards the sea. It takes him past the Tephran volcano that most horses in Beqanna use a landmark and the ocean beckons Nash in white-capped, foaming greeting. He almost makes it past the beach but decides against that, too. (When had he suddenly become so indecisive?) 

Knowing that kingdom protocols demand he stay at the border, Nashua remains on this beach that is wide and open and wild. The scent of brine fills his nostrils and though Nash knows he’s in Tephra, knows exactly where he is and where he could go, he stays on this beach and wonders if this is what lost feels like.

NASHUA

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@[Radar]