[private] you'll wish for time to turn back around

[Nashua]

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

On the waking wings of a chilly and pale dawn, Nashua had spread his and taken to the dim morning sky. His uncertainty had prevented him from leaving the Isle as often as he once had. He doesn’t shed it but the young pegasus feels Spring in his bones, a new beginning begging to start somewhere and Nashua doesn’t fight it.

So he goes.

Nash thinks of continuing to fly south. He even thinks of heading towards the Resort to find Gale but an easterly wind pulls him the other direction, towards the Common Lands. His heart plummets at the realization when he flies over Nerine and then the Taiga, coming closer to borders of Hyaline. He had barely managed the trip to Tephra. 

But- 

The pegasus lands. (It is not as far as Nashua might have once ventured but the Forest is better than staying put, he tells himself. It's a start.) One hoof after another. The seasons would keep spinning, he realized. And as he walked through the woods, Nashua told himself that he wouldn’t shackle himself because of his uncertainty. 

It’s because of a newfound certainty that he stops. It’s because Nashua - who over the last few months has doubted so much - knows the familiar striping of gold and red that he finds himself looking at a realization. He wants to laugh, at first. Joy is the first thing that comes to mind when he sees Fire Wing and though he can’t quite bring himself to say the familial nickname he bestowed on his elder brother, he still manages to smile. A broad, almost wicked grin.

Drawing his auburn wings to his sides (perhaps conscious of the years that have passed since he has last seen his flame-hued sibling), Nashua calls out in a voice, that despite deepening, still echoes the boy that the older pegasus found in the Taigan woods those many seasons before. "@[elio]?”

NASHUA

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