[private] the fatal flaw that makes you magnificently cursed

[Nashua]

His green eyes lift, rising to meet her mismatched ones like their lost sun used to do each morning. The air is burning in his aching lungs; each breath is a struggle but Nashua fights for each one. His story does not end with him bleeding out, alone in the dark. His story does not leave him fallen here.

She found him instead of Death.

Her mismatched eyes are what he forces himself to focus on, recounting the stark contrast between each one. (The edges of his vision are still hazy; his world is still blurred at the seams and his gaze clings to hers like she is the single life thread keeping him tethered to this world.) The striped pegasus is prostrate before her and when she has already done him one kindness, she offers him another. The injured wing that has wrapped underneath his chestnut barrel is limp and Nashua, who can no more fathom life without his wings than a heartbeat, groans as he attempts to stand.

One striped foreleg reaches out followed by the second and there is a faint glow coming from his shimmering stripes. It illuminates the dark briefly before a sharp pain dulls the light. His hind legs follow suit of their predecessors and after a few moments of graceless stumbling, Nash finds his hooves. He stands and moves the speckled appendage towards her, glancing down at the ground because he has never been this vulnerable before a stranger before.

It is easier to look at the ground than at her.

"Please," he murmurs gravely.

Nash's curved ears pin into the flaxen cornsilk of his mane when she reprimands him. When she reminds him that the appropriate response to this whole chaotic interaction should have been thank you. His pale lips purse together in a thin line and the pegasus does his best not to scowl. He stands there silently, letting the quiet wrap all around them while Nashua feels the desire to wrap his wings around himself and fly so high that he might find the sun.

But this is their world now. It is dark and full of monsters.

The striped stallion glances back towards the dark mare again, "thank you." He says, an attempt at an apology. "But it could have hurt you," Nashua tries to explain. "It-," and the back of his throat goes dry, a bitter taste in the back of it like dried blood. "It came from me," he admits as the memory comes back to him in awful flashes. He groans again and tries to center his thoughts on anything but the... the thing that nearly ripped him apart. The thing that had left a jagged scar across his broad chest and towards his left-wing.

"I thought it was a dream," he says. "I thought it was a nightmare." Maybe it is the onset of a fever that makes him talk so much but Nashua reveals more to this stranger than he has anyone, even his brother, Yanhua. "It was so real," the striped stallion murmurs, his deep voice trailing off. Nash closes his eyes before opening them, turning to watch the scowling mare again. He thinks of that night by the River and the silver mare he dreamt of (who had a familiarity that tugged at the back of his mind; Aletta, he realizes now. She had looked like his grandmother).

"Forgive me," he says, realizing that to this stranger, he probably sounds like raving. That he sounds like a mad man.

@[illuminae]